Mikael Palmstedt

So I was in Malmö the last couple of days to clean out the office and fix some other stuff. Also managed to rent out my apartment, phew.

When working from Malmö I was using the facilities of the now slightly over one year old Midzone AB. Midzone is a pretty nice idea for us people on the run who don’t really know where they will spend their time the next six months or so. Focus is on networking and meeting new people and Midzone is promoted as “the new way of working”. I think the concept can be succesful, at the moment the guys running it are great sales people but lack the proper marketing and strategic skills to take the concept to the next level.

So to summarise; officespace in Malmö with a nice officedesk with lovely view for just SEK 2100 per person (about EUR220)… and the best part is, you can cancel it with one months notice.

Photos taken with a Samsung SGH-700, so don’t expect to much.

Since there’s a risk I will start a new project in a few weeks that requires me to work with asp.net 2.0 C# for around 20h per week I took a quick look on the framework.

Number one impression is that it feels like using Visual Studio is almost like cheating a bit :). The code comes to you easily and even though I never looked at ASP before it felt extremely easy to get going with. It takes away much more of the actual coding from you than eg ZEND editor.

With regard to structure I haven’t really figured it out yet, I prefer MVC structures since this is what is usually used in more low level programming which is what I have worked most with. In VS you basically have the view in one page, and the code behind it plus of course the underlying DB but still … hmm lets see.

Guess I will loose all my geek cred if I start working with MS :).

The Leipzig games convention opened yesterday, Die Welt had quite an expose about the event and gaming in general. Most focus was put on onlinegaming and the amount of time spent playing them.

In my opinion onlinegames or computertime in general is replacing time previously spent watching television and reading newspapers, I guess its also possible social onlinegames are somewhat predating on live social interaction in many cases. Something that could become troublesome later in professional life. That being said I know quite a few organizations who rely more on IM and email than actual conversations even though the collegue are just a few meters away ;).

Die Welt was concerned with time spent playing and the violence in games, as far as I could read (granted in german articles there for sure is a possibility of me missing or misunderstanding things ).there was not one note of possible positive impact the move from television and newspapers to spending time in front of the computer could have.

In my opinion kids age 12-15 who play games similar to Civilization, Settlers, Sim city, Half life and World of Warcraft are much more intellectually challenged by these games at that age than what is taught in junior highschool (based on my own experiences of course).

Ok there is also the risk of not being able to let go later in life continuing to play games 15 hours or more per week also after you pass 20 ;).

BV Capital has put up a simple but fun page called Startupvergnuegen. Using googlemaps you can place your startup on the map and put in your slogan, now we are just waiting for a few more Swedish companies to join :).

This was found from Blogging.vc but I’m sure there are several more pages just like it, tips appreciated.

Found at Kastrup Airport Copenhagen:

So when you have given up on your dreams of greatness, riches or whatever, Niro has a place for you :).
I guess the good thing about such an ad is that the applicants really does not expect the world but can instead just be positively surprised.

Its quite fun to see the difference between Germany and Sweden with regard to onlinebehaviour. Through PeoplePath AB we run the sites Djur and Haustierstall, looking at paid membershipconversions through cellphones we can see that Germany has a conversion per unique person of barely 1/3 in comparison to Sweden. In my opinion Germans are much more priceconscious and tends to neglect quality and especially objectivity in favour of cheap prices (with the exception of cars :) ). Quite visible also when comparing German and Swedish supermarkets.

To put it short, the McCafé is great, great decor, chairs, coffee, cakes and food … but … the café is connected to a regular MacDonalds restaurant … hence if you wanna sit in peace and quiet taking your afternoon coffee (I guess regular black coffee is trendy again) you will see the aftermatch of the guy that sat at your table before you spilling ketchup, mayonnaise and ### knows what outside his tray. The guests of the McCafé and the MacDonalds is not kept separate, so of course everyone buys a cheap burger meal and go sit in the somewhat nicer McCafé section … having your coffee looking at people eating burgers just is not the same.

I guess in the near future there will be McCafés that are not connected to a regular restaurant, but until then I think McCafé will not really hit off.

Starting Oktober 1^st I will be working 100% out of Berlin (so back to germany after about a year working out of Copenhagen/Malmö) with occasional trips to Stockholm and Copenhagen about once a month. Currently I have a small temporary apartment in Friedrichshain close to Warschauer Strasse. If you come to Berlin I can really recommend taking the time to walk down Grünbergerstrasse a Friday evening here in Friedrichshain.

Here a very unoriginal photo from eastside gallery in front of the wall a few hundred meters from the station at Warschauer Strasse plus a picture of the street outside Karavana café in F-hain, I can recommend their breakfast menu’s :).

Shopping around for a wordpress theme, so the question is … use the layout of www.palmstedt.com or make a completely separate one … the though choices we all have to make …