What will be the next Facebook or Google?

The view from Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s

new $8.5 million duplex Manhattan penthouse

Think.

Think differently.

Think outside the box.
It is economic downturn time again.

There are more opportunities out there to be grabbed.

Look around and shall work on something right now. There’s only one way to get an answer to this one: create the Next Big Thing yourself.

How? By religiously tracking consumer trends and coming up with a winning innovation that plays into changing habits, or even unlocks existing needs in completely new and profitable ways.
Overly simplistic? Maybe. But then again, there are people out there building, designing and starting Next Big Things on a daily basis.

Why not us?

Facebook is so last year -
welcome to the hit websites of 2008
Virtual pets, video diaries and travellers' logs could be the next stars of cyberspace

Moshi monsters, a new social networking website for children

That's 2008 - now is already 2009!

The Finnish school – a source of skills and well-being

Our education system is not really bad as we have produced good pools of professionals, government servants and leaders etc over the years. However, there are always rooms for improvements.

Our teachers are professionals and most, if not all of them, are committed and dedicated to their profession. My sisters (same mother) are all teachers and I have a lot of friends who are teachers, one of them is Manlaksam.

Rather than spending on purchasing helicopters, submarines or bailing out cronies' companies, we need to spend more in education and revamp the system if necessary. Leave politics out of the equation, time to really shake and move the earth for the better future.....education should be a source of skills and well-being for all citizens!

A day at the Strömberg Lower Comprehensive School

Here we go!
It’s a few minutes past eight. The dusk of the October morning has not yet given way to daylight, when the pupils of the Strömberg Lower Comprehensive School (age 7-13 years) start taking off their coats, caps and shoes in front of the coat-rack reserved for each group. An inviting, warm fire lit by caretaker Keijo Hämäläinen to cheer up the pupils is burning in the fireplace in the hall. Hellos and hi’s are being shouted along the corridors as pupils, teachers and the rest of the school staff greet each other. In this school, everybody knows each other, and the pupils call their teachers by their first names as is customary in Finland.

The boys fish Beyblade tops out of their rucksacks and set up a brief competition before the lesson starts. Each child finds his or her own group without hurrying; the groups are named after animals that live in Finnish forests: the Elks, the Bears, the Foxes, the Lynx, the Hawks, the Weasels, the Seals, the Eagle Owls and the Wolves. And there are the Beavers, a class for the most seriously mentally handicapped pupils, whom taxis bring to the door in the morning at the same time as the others arrive. The school day can begin.

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