tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-206635242024-03-07T11:58:27.290+02:00Funkyware: ITCeteraFree Software entrepreneurship: Debian, Ubuntu and beyond.Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-23970718339139735232010-07-06T09:27:00.013+03:002010-07-06T13:50:43.954+03:00On pohjantähden alla, Tää koti mulla mainen, Mä elämästä laulan...<p>My girlfriend and I were out picking up a cake at the bakery last week, when my phone rang:</p>
<ul>
<li><cite>Hello, I'm calling about your application. I just spent the last hour discussing your case with my boss and there's just one thing that bothers us: do you ever intend on paying your residual taxes?</cite></li>
<li>I received those payment slips right after I became unemployed and, as you know, living off unemployment benefits in this country's most expensive city doesn't exactly leave anyone with money to spare...</li>
<li><cite>Say no more! Moving to the capital for this job was a real shocker. The rents are so bloody expensive here! Anyhow, do you intend on taking care of those residual taxes as soon as you get a job?</cite></li>
<li>Yup, just like I said in my application.</li>
<li><cite>Alright, then I guess that everything is in order. We can start processing your application today. We obviously cannot make any promise about how long that's gonna take, but I would think that the decision should come fairly soon.</cite></li>
<li>Wow! That's excellent news! Thanks again for your help!</li>
<li><cite>You're welcome, sir. Have a nice day!</li>
</ul>
<p>Without knowing, at that moment, I had just become a citizen of the country in which I have been living for the past 12 years. It was only yesterday, upon receiving the decision in the mail and looking at the date on the certificate that I realized that, when I got the phone call, the decision had already been made and the bureaucracy was only looking for reassurances that I fully intend upon acquitting my civic obligations as soon as humanely possible.</p>
<p>To say that reading the decision was a highly emotional moment is an understatement. Trying to explain the intensity of this moment to my girlfriend, I compared it to the day when a teenager reaches adulthood. This instant brought a similar feeling: suddenly, the whole EU opens its doors to me and I'm free to decide how to best use the opportunities it offers.</p>
<p>What next?</p>
<p>For now, completing this government training to become a bureaucrat. Funnily enough, becoming a citizen resolved the whole issue of background checks, which also suddenly triples the number of possible venues for the on-job part of the training. In my case, it looks like I'll be spending the next few months at the Ministry of Employment and Entrepreneurship, working on EU projects that fund R&D efforts and export sales ventures in each member state.</p>
<p>After that, I'm not sure.</p>
<p>On one hand, I'd like to apply for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' KAVAKU recruitment program for future diplomats. On the other hand, that ministry is extremely picky about whom it accepts and it's not particularly known for favoring naturalized individuals. This being said, our current Minister recently published rather ambitious plans to completely reform the Ministry by bringing in seasoned professionals from the private sector who could efficiently promote Finnish know-how and products abroad, rather than hiring more of the same Public Administration graduates, so, who knows? Maybe the time is right for someone like me to join the ranks of the Finnish diplomacy?</p>
<p>An other option that I'm considering is to permanently move to Estonia. When my last job there ended, I was left with the feeling that I could have accomplished a lot more, if only I were in a legal position to move there, rather than commute a couple of times a week. Beyond the pioneering work that myself and my diplomat friends at the Estonian embassy did in Turkey, there was a demand for us to perform the same magic in other countries of interest to Estonia. Unfortunately, not being in a position to be on-site and no longer having a job that paid for me to be there often enough meant that I had to pass on that opportunity. Now, seeing how one of my friends recently left the diplomacy and is open to new challenges, I'm wondering if now might be a good time to resume our operation and prepare our next campaign?</p>
<p>Wow... So much to think about, now that a whole continent opened its doors to me. Hienoa! Olen suomalainen.</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-88636143332057500482008-03-09T12:30:00.007+02:002008-03-10T08:35:27.294+02:00Estonian ICT conference, March 18th 2008, TOBB Plaza, Istanbul, Türkiye<p>I previously <a href="http://q-funk.blogspot.com/2007/11/miscellanea.html">wrote</a> about my visits to Turkey to develop <a href="http://www.artecgroup.com">our</a> export market in the Middle-East and how I ended up representing the whole Estonian business world in bilateral negotiations with Turkey. I'm going there again for two weeks, this time accompanied by a whole business delegation headed by Estonian prime minister <strong>Andrus Ansip</strong>.</p>
<p>Asides from various official events organized by our Turkish hosts to present Turkey to their Estonian guests, the crux of the visit is a conference hosted by <a href="http://www.deik.org.tr">DEIK</a> and the <a href="http://www.estemb.org.tr">Estonian embassy</a>, on Tuesday, March 18th. The goal of this conference is to present Estonia's extremely advanced use of ICT technology in E-Business and E-Governance. Speakers from several private and public sector organizations will explain how <em>they</em> benefited from Estonia's hyper-connected lifestyle and, most of all, how this has made every Estonian's life more pleasant, because it offers a convenient way of performing a broad range of online transactions not just with businesses, but also with governmental organizations.</p>
<p>Yours truly will speak about the advantages Estonia offers to investors and technology freaks alike, from the perspective of an industry insider who, given the opportunity of choosing his first pick for a liberal high-tech nation, dropped the Nokiaesque lands of Suomi to go Eesti.</p>
<p>The morning of conference will end with a business lunch where interested Turks can network with their Estonian counterparts and create lucrative bilateral opportunities.</p>
<p>Space in the TOBB Plaza auditorium is limited so those interested in attending should promptly contact DEIK to get their name added to the guest list.</p>
<p>Turks interested in learning more about Estonia in their own language should visit <a href="http://www.estonya.net">estonya.net</a>.</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-19860649326344135182007-12-22T20:49:00.001+02:002009-05-22T13:02:39.160+03:00Valga - Valka : 1 linn, 2 riiki - 1 pilsēta, 2 valstis<p>Thursday evening, I joined the inhabitants of the twin town of <a href="http://www.valga.ee">Valga</a>-<a href="http://www.valka.lv">Valka</a>, sitting smack on the Estonian-Latvian border, to celebrate their entry into the Schengen treaty. Ever since I first crossed the border there on a roadtrip from Tallinn to Fallingbostel, in year 2001, I knew I would have to return and, sure enough, I briefly passed through during last summer with an Estonian friend, on our way to an acquaintance's birthday party.</p>
<p>Still, that told me nothing of the town's life and left me wanting for more.</p>
<p>Upon hearing that year 2004 EU accession countries would join Schengen in December 2007, I immediately promised myself to show up and join the crowd. As it turns out, I missed <strong>Aleks Tapinš</strong> of the <a href="http://www.allaboutlatvia.com">All About Latvia</a> blog by very little, having I caught his last-minute e-mail the next afternoon. Aleks <a href="http://www.allaboutlatvia.com/article/694/a-tale-of-two-cities">blogged</a> a great article depicting the Latvian side of life and providing some background info on the town, if you're curious.</p>
<p>I arrived late-evening on Thursday via the Tallinn-Viljandi-Valga bus and checked into my hotel, then proceeded to checkpoint Valga II around 23:30, with the intention of grabbing a drink on the Latvian side and returning just before midnight for the celebrations. Hardly anyone was in sight, except for Latvian officer Čabana who was completing the inspection of a Russian car with three noisy passengers. Upon presenting her with my passport, officer Čabana cheerfully lead me to the office and slid my passport through a slot to officer Bukss, who was visibly surprised to have any tourist show up on the last day of his job to get their passport stamped. Upon explaining to him the reasons for my presence, he pointed me to a nearby bar where I could have a drink, visibly amused by the situation.</p>
<a title="Myself with Latvian border guards Kampe, Bukss and Čabana." onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirZh3g3mn7Zw2FsX-6lKsTJIs0GL7weg-Fz5Zk_mxxkAiIGpFBensWHTETaVrWL4qAfVCX8FFELaUmbN_asxB1i3usICecCSVu3ARef-xmop-kPP9ioBsVrJX_k-22O501CGzn/s1600-h/00005_640x480.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirZh3g3mn7Zw2FsX-6lKsTJIs0GL7weg-Fz5Zk_mxxkAiIGpFBensWHTETaVrWL4qAfVCX8FFELaUmbN_asxB1i3usICecCSVu3ARef-xmop-kPP9ioBsVrJX_k-22O501CGzn/s320/00005_640x480.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146883288126379954" /></a>
<p>I spent the next few minutes in a local casino in the company of three hilarious Latvian truck drivers, Zintars and Aivars, two Latvians with limited English language skills and Yuri, an ethnic Russian living in Ireland who was born stateless on the Latvian side of the town and who later acquired Estonian citizenship by claiming ancestral land on the Estonian side.</p>
<p>Upon returning to the border, just minutes before midnight, I found myself in the middle of a huge crowd of villagers, police officers, border guards and politicians from both countries - barely getting noticed by anyone. I handed my passport to an Estonian border guard who emotionally commented to a civilian friend of his nearby that, "Wow! That was the last one!", handing me my passport back just as the midnight bells rang and the mayor of the Estonian side started his speech amidst pyrotechnics lining the road.</p>
<a title="The Estonian border officer who stamped my passport on the way back." onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrc7EtWYmV35oAM_ohW-gvMDRoosqPh8q3QNRzwBbkpvobGREaENuoRV9hnmtZao6eEHtYeh9aI_iKweNqgvBPcfcdnGIsi1Cg7R5-Dx2tUthuvLOPl0w-yK9InASxBGouQtC8/s1600-h/00002_480x640.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrc7EtWYmV35oAM_ohW-gvMDRoosqPh8q3QNRzwBbkpvobGREaENuoRV9hnmtZao6eEHtYeh9aI_iKweNqgvBPcfcdnGIsi1Cg7R5-Dx2tUthuvLOPl0w-yK9InASxBGouQtC8/s320/00002_480x640.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146882665356122018" /></a>
<p>I then had a chance to chat with the Estonian mayor, who promptly handed me a bilingual certificate, signed by the mayors of both towns, attesting that I was the first to cross the open border, while introducing me to his two young daughters with whom he was about to take a stroll on the Latvian side.</p>
<p>The next morning, an even bigger and more symbolic event took place: the demolition of the fence that had been cutting the Sõprus/Raiņa street in half. You can see a picture of what the street looked like before on Aleks' blog article [edit: or on <a href="http://estland.blogspot.com/2007/12/valgavalka-ohne-grenzkontrollen-teil-3.html">Jens-Olaf's blog article</a>]. After the fence was removed, it instead looked like this:</p>
<a title="The Sõprus/Raiņa border post, minutes after after the fence that was behind it was symbolically demolished by the Estonian and Latvian presidents" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8LtWWT0Su-GbvNjXs-e_V_2ZjAIMoMFZUBEgEsY3tEhpJokligGQ7le88WxqwjUVNFufSQDhzwv4ALLf7mRu3iHrxtcYqXP0QUxxIcTbxdfHUjxNwIoTacxOJKiMvkayYAw48/s1600-h/00011_640x480.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8LtWWT0Su-GbvNjXs-e_V_2ZjAIMoMFZUBEgEsY3tEhpJokligGQ7le88WxqwjUVNFufSQDhzwv4ALLf7mRu3iHrxtcYqXP0QUxxIcTbxdfHUjxNwIoTacxOJKiMvkayYAw48/s320/00011_640x480.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146884550846764994" /></a>
<p>The crowd then proceeded to checkpoint Valga III, where a stage had been setup for the politicians to make their speeches. An interesting fact is that, because of the way the border was drawn, along a creek leading to Pedeli river, an Estonian main road was technically on the Latvian border and thus aptly named "Raja" (border) street. The Estonian mayor commented in his speech that the the brand new supermarket standing behind us was also technically on borderland and could not have possibly been built earlier, weren't it for the Schengen treaty matter-of-factedly eliminating borders between participating EU countries. The speeches were closed by a youth group whose choreography featured six break-dancing boys, dressed as Estonian and Latvian border guards and as border posts. The choreography ended with the teenage border guards carrying away the human posts on their shoulders, just as a choir of young girls replaced them with songs in either languages.</p>
<p>Before catching my bus back to Tallinn, I dropped by the Valga tourist info, only to face a nervous-looking Kapo officer in plain clothes. Upon mumbling something about the tourist info and wanting to grab maps, I noticed that a press conference was taking place behind. As he finally let me pass to the tourist info side of the building, a familiar voice said to me, "Hey! Weren't you at our place last summer with Martin Ranna?" Yup, the wife of the acquaintance whose birthday party I had attended last summer is working there and greeted with me refreshments and munchies she had cooked in prevision for the presidential visit! As was my luck, she had one of the commemorative plaques that had been given to the politicians at Valga III on hand:</p>
<a title="Commemorative plaque for the Schengen border opening at Valga/Valka on December 21st 2007."onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi0f672e9i7JHlYv811kyIxv74LecSOnY1Eei5TiWe-bmefblQP45Z4ChEVhO_GQwiO5FttPmfXXnHrvIYNrkFIfNswDj09IPESCjvB3LDtIBgEyvNNl3UWaDDt0d18YL5gDLI/s1600-h/00012_480x640.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi0f672e9i7JHlYv811kyIxv74LecSOnY1Eei5TiWe-bmefblQP45Z4ChEVhO_GQwiO5FttPmfXXnHrvIYNrkFIfNswDj09IPESCjvB3LDtIBgEyvNNl3UWaDDt0d18YL5gDLI/s320/00012_480x640.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5146889898081048530" /></a>
<p>I was glad to see the town becoming one again, even though it is ethnically divided. There are already signs of people on both sides learning one another's languages and shopping on either side of town, not to mention plans of merging the municipal bus operations of the Estonian and Latvian halves of the town, so I'm sure that they'll get there in due course.</p>
<p>For me, Schengen brought a much more practical and quite welcome change: the end of messy border crossing stamps that were rapidly filling my almost new passport, every time I visited the head office of <a href="http://www.artecgroup.com">our company</a> in Tallinn. While Estonian border guards mostly stamp passports in an orderly fashion, being careful to fit exactly 8 stamps in a single page and to put entry and exit stamps side-by-side, Finnish border guards apparently are incapable of doing so, instead systematically wasting pages by either stamping sloppily in a way that makes it impossible for more than 4 stamps to appear on a given page or by flipping to a brand new page, every time I had to cross the border.</p>
<p>In case anyone ever wondered why I'm currently representing Estonian interests abroad, despite living in Finland, this example is one of the many reasons: Finnish authorities routinely display arrogant carelessness towards the population and doubly so towards immigrants. It amounts to an accumulation of idiocy that has costly consequences on people's lives. For some, it's about being denied the public institutions' support when they need it the most and their life forever going downhill thereafter. For me, it has been about countless missed opportunities (jobs, love affairs, travel plans), plus very costly passport and residence permit renewals. Given this, I simply don't see myself ever representing Finnish interests ever again. Faith no more. Besides, the Estonians are fun and easy-going people. Siski ma mõtlen, kas ma peaksen nüüd Eestisse kolima või?</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-63673363618684103432007-11-16T22:26:00.001+02:002009-05-20T20:50:11.506+03:00Miscellanea<p>Things have been rather hectic lately, so I haven't found much time to blog. Here's why:</p>
<h4>DBE62</h4>
<p>The Gigabit Ethernet version of <a href="http://www.thincan.com" title="ThinCan">our thin client</a> took more time to produce than I expected, for a number of reasons mostly related to a few improvements we decided to squeeze into the design at the last minute.</p>
<p>However, today, we finally reached a point where <a href="http://www.linuxbios.org" title="LinuxBIOS">LinuxBIOS</a> runs as well as it did on our previous DBE61 model and where we no longer need any <acronym title="Disc Operating System">DOS</acronym> tool to flash the <acronym title="Media Access Control">MAC</acronym> address into the VIA velocity Gigabit chip we selected. Hurray!</p>
<p>Production will only commence in one month, but I'm already excited by the new model's potential, both as a thin client and as an embedded platform.</p>
<p>Another good thing is that, thanks to <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com" title="Ubuntu Linux">Ubuntu</a> developer <strong>Scott Balneaves</strong>, we managed to get all the necessary tools to support thin clients based on LinuxBIOS into <a href="http://www.ltsp.org" title="LTSP">LTSP</a>, so our Etherboot model works out of the box on Ubuntu, since Gutsy. Hurray!</p>
<p>There is one remaining issue related to recent changes in X.org core functionalities that make the AMD driver we need unstable but, again, various <a href="http://www.amd.com" title="Advanced Micro Devices">AMD</a>, <a href="http://www.debian.org" title="The Debian Project">Debian</a> and Ubuntu developers are looking into fixing this, so we should soon have spotless Geode support into Debian and Ubuntu again.</p>
<h4>Türkiye</h4>
<p>I visited Turkey twice over the last few months, because I'm putting together a pilot project to better promote the Estonian high-tech sector abroad, in collaboration with the Estonian government.</p>
<p>I have to say that the more I visit Turkey, the more I like the place and the more understand why these people see themselves as Europeans because, you know what? They are: practically every significant civilization and religion that is at the core of European culture had major events taking place in in Anatolia or Thrace and, also, a devastatingly huge percentage of the consumer goods sold in Europe are designed and manufactured in Turkey.</p>
<p>Learning the rudiments of Turkish has also proven to be a lot of fun. While I'm nowhere near as fluent in Turkish as in Finnish or even in Estonian, the learning curve isn't as steep as I initially expected: Altaic and Ugric languages share a surprising amount of grammatical concepts, while Turkish itself borrowed a lot of vocabulary from French, because the founder of modern Turkey, Atatürk, was very fond of the language. I'll venture that proximity with nearby Middle-Eastern countries that were formerly under French influence has something to do with it too.</p>
<h4>Identity crisis</h4>
<p>To me, the most challenging part of these business missions abroad is to represent a whole economic sector from a country of which I'm not a citizen or even a resident. Case in point:</p>
<p>Being invited to dinner by a Turkish investor, I noticed the waiter asking my host where his foreign guest might be from. A few minutes later, as the waiter put down a gigantic pita bread with the word "Estonia" spelled in roasted sesame seeds, my host asked, reading my business card:</p>
<ul>
<li>Actually, your name doesn't sound Estonian. France?</li>
<li>Québec.</li>
<li>And your mobile number ... 358 ... is that Finland? </li>
<li>Yup. I've been living there for the past 10 years.</li>
<li>Ah! So you don't live in Tallinn?</li>
<li>Nope. Helsinki.</li>
</ul>
<p>Looking at the waiter and pointing at the gigantic pita, he continues:</p>
<ul>
<li>Actually, make that Canada ... no, Finland ... Ah, sorry, never mind. Just keep it as Estonia.</li>
</ul>
<p>Honestly, trying to keep a straight face while saying "We" about a country of which I'm not a citizen and where I don't even reside becomes unbearable. At some point, some European bureaucrats will have to admit that I need a new citizenship, to reduce the confusion and to let me find myself a proper national identity again; the sooner, the better.</p>
<p>Besides, the absurdity of the situation keeps on jumping at everyone's face: during the second mission to Turkey, I kept on bumping into Finnish diplomats who took personal offense at me for living in their country and yet representing the interests of a competing, neighboring country. If you ask me, I cannot entirely blame them for it.</p>
<p>However, as far as I'm concerned, I've done my homeworks: I've been here 10 years, I speak the language and I don't have a criminal record. Given this, you'd think that acquiring citizenship would be a mere formality, but the Ulkomaalaisvirasto doesn't see it that way.</p>
<p>If you ask me, this country's very first Minister of Immigration, Mrs.<strong>Astrid Thors</strong>, ought to unilaterally grant citizenship to anyone who's lived here for at least 5 years, just for the asking, regardless of what circumstances brought them here or of what absurd decisions the Ulkomaalaisvirasto might have previously made on their residence permit status. Doing this would go a <em>long</em> way towards undoing the mess of her predecessors at the Ministry of Interior and it would speak volumes about how much Finnish society has evolved from the days when any foreigner was a commie they had to push over the Eastern border.</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-25932278304363084902007-07-28T15:57:00.001+03:002009-05-22T13:00:25.658+03:00Localisation beyond language packs<p>In <a href="http://q-funk.blogspot.com/2007/07/dear-lazy-fluendo.html">my previous post</a>, I briefly mentioned my K750i Sony-Ericsson mobile phone. I received it as a birthday gift this year, to replace my aging but trustworthy Nokia 3210 and, as with any multifunctional digital device, there was a learning curve during the adoption period. While some features were gladly and swiftly taken into use, some of the handset's usability issues became my pet peeve and, among them, the localization pack wins the jackpot.</p>
<p>First, let's make one thing clear: I fully understand that memory constraints prevent manufacturers from including support for every language known to man, so a handset can only be loaded with a limited set of languages for the User Interface and for T9 predictive text input dictionaries. My issue is with the concept of grouping languages by linguistic families or continental areas, when compiling the localization packs for those handsets.</p>
<p>In this particular case, I had a choice between the Baltic or Nordic packs. The former has UI language support for Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, while the later has support for Finnish and the Scandinavian languages; English is also included in both cases. T9 support is a strangely mixed bag: the Baltic pack only includes predictive input for the Slavic languages, while the Nordic pack supports all the languages of its UI.</p>
<p>What's my problem with the above language combinations? For starters, I'm in Finland. We don't interact with Danes or Icelanders outside very occasional pan-Nordic meetings and that mostly concerns politicians. Meanwhile, average Finns travel for work and play to Estonia and Russia on a fairly regular basis, which makes sense, since they are neighboring countries. However, available language packs don't take this into account.</p>
<p>How should this be resolved?</p>
<p>Either language packs are produced with specific countries in mind, rather than generic geographic areas, or the users should be allowed to freely mix and match among all available languages and get the result flashed into their handset at purchase time.</p>
<p>The K750i language pack for Finland should therefore include: Finnish, Swedish, Estonian, Russian, English and Norwegian (essentially the current Nordic language pack, but with Danish and Icelandic replaced with Estonian and Russian). Then again, this only covers official state languages. Samé dialects, anyone? I guess not, because we'd soon be exceeding the handset's capacity. Hmm...</p>
<p>Thus, the only real solution is to allow people to freely mix and match UI and T9 languages of their choice at purchase time.</p>
<p>As a bonus, this would allow me to drop Norwegian and replace it with Joual... ööö... cålisse, French and finally have a language pack that I can truly find useful. I can easily picture a Transylvanian engineer working in Finland wanting to get Romanian support or a Kurdish immigrant preferring Turkish support instead.</p>
<p>Sony-Ericsson, how about it?</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-1161268739052679322006-10-19T17:23:00.000+03:002007-06-05T19:45:20.488+03:00Linutop in Arvutimaailm and Eesti Ekspress<p>Yours truly appears this week in computer magazine <a href="http://www.am.ee">Arvutimaailm</a> [Estonian] and in the technology insert of newspaper <a href="http://www.ekspress.ee">Eesti Ekspress</a> [Estonian], in feature articles about the <a href="http://www.linutop.com">Linutop</a>. Both articles are signed by <strong>Elver Loho</strong> of the <a href="http://neeger.wordpress.com">IT-Neeger</a> team.</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-1160330078469680592006-10-08T19:34:00.001+03:002009-05-22T12:47:32.998+03:00Linutop - Internet for the masses<p>I promised last week that I would be telling more on October 1st, about the mysterious Project X that I had been sporadically blogging about over the last few months. Better late than never, so here's the story:</p>
<h4>Casablanca</h4>
<p>I met Morocco-based French entrepreneur <a href="http://www.blogwaves.com">Laurent Bervas</a> via his blog in January 2006, while looking for countries nearby EU with a promising <acronym title"Information and Communication Technology">ICT</acronym> market, because of growing obstacles in getting work in my field, due to my not being an EU national.</p>
<p>By the time the situation had reached the ridiculous extreme that friends were continuously loosing juicy recruitment bonuses, simply because their employer's <acronym title="Human Resource">HR</acronym> department had issues with hiring non-EU nationals — despite EU policies that clearly favor foreigners married to an EU national — I figured that I ought to do something creative and see which of the countries bordering with EU might offer interesting opportunities.</p>
<p>Laurent was blogging about all the exciting opportunities he kept on seeing, since he relocated to Morocco to conquer the high-end Real Estate market. One day, he wrote about Morocco becoming a rising figure in the outsourcing business for the Francophone market, which prompted me to contact him. After a couple of weeks of discussion, he cautiously dropped his idea for a niche market he had spotted: a simple Linux-based set top box to surf the Internet. He then asked if I would be interested in developing it and in launching a startup with him to promote it. I gladly accepted.</p>
<h4>Startup</h4>
<p>That's when Laurent decided to introduce me to an old friend of his, Frédéric Baille, who spent several years at Compaq, culminating with a role in the team that launched the iPaq. Fred's help was instrumental in defining the market positioning of our product.</p>
<p>Laurent and I discussed the product features at length over <acronym title="Instant Messenger">IM</acronym> and immediately agreed that the <acronym title="Operating System">OS</acronym> would be based on Free Software. That left the hardware part unresolved... or so did Laurent think.</p>
<p>Years ago, I briefly worked in the management team of an Estonian data security startup. This gave me the opportunity to network with several movers and shakers of the Estonian ICT. Among them was a promising <acronym title="Application-Specific Integrated Circuit">ASIC</acronym> and industrial design startup that produced really cool Thin Client hardware. The answer to our hardware needs, I figured, could easily be fulfilled by them.</p>
<p>My idea of contracting the hardware to Estonia was initially received with skepticism, so I made a simple proposal: why don't we hold the inception meeting in Tallinn and meet with the potential hardware supplier at the same time? Fred and Laurent accepted, so we spent part of April 2006 there, with me acting both as their friendly tourist guide and as the middleman for the introductions.</p>
<p>Fred and Laurent immediately fell in love with Tallinn's designer bars, omnipresent WiFi network and blond-a-plenty. Most of all, their visit at our potential hardware supplier gave them the answers they needed: Estonia is IT.</p>
<h4>Overview</h4>
<p>The hardware we selected is built around the AMD Geode LX, a nifty Pentium-compatible single-chip computer. It comes equipped with VGA output and four USB 2.0 ports, along with high-quality audio via 1/8" input and output jacks, plus a built-in encryption engine. We added 100baseT Ethernet connectivity (with provision for other networking options) to that, to complete the platform.</p>
<p>For the software part, we used ingredients from <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a>'s Etch release, focusing on a configuration that would enable easy access to the most popular applications for home and small business use: Instant Messenger (Gaim), Multimedia player (Totem), PDF reader (Evince), Web browser (Firefox), word processor (AbiWord).</p>
<p>The result is this:</p>
<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4075/2079/320/linutop_desk.jpg" border="0" alt="" />
<h4>Press Coverage</h4>
<p>The editorial team at IT-Neeger (an A-level Estonian ICT blog) immediately scooped <a href="http://neeger.wordpress.com/2006/10/02/linutop-vaba-tarkvara-eestlaste-ehitatud-karbis/">the story</a> [in Estonian] and it produced such a strong response that the traditional Estonian media contacted the IT-Neeger team to write a feature article (stay tuned for details). The local Slashdot, Minut.EE, also <a href="http://www.minut.ee/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/0653252&mode=nested">reported</a> [in Estonian] on the IT-Neeger article.</p>
<p>Thus, myself and Laurent Bervas spent the better part of this week being blogged, interviewed and podcasted by a variety of Estonian and <a href="http://tomy.morel.free.fr/blog/index.php?2006/10/04/127-linutop-solution-d-avenir">French</a> publications, which is how I only got around blogging this bit tonight.</p>
<h4>Marketing</h4>
<p>Contrary to our competitors, we fully intend on keeping this platform open, so our initial market will actually be Free Software developers with a penchant for innovation. As such, our first 50 units are exclusively intended for interested developers who want to improve upon our initial idea and participate in defining the final product. <a href="http://www.linutop.com">Inquiries are welcome!</a></p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-1156779599558199202006-08-28T18:25:00.002+03:002009-05-22T13:18:55.079+03:00On entrepreneurship and Tallinn<p>Lars <a href="http://liw.iki.fi/liw/log/2006-08.html#20060828b">mentions</a> in the same article that he is thinking about starting a business and that Tallinn is nice.</p>
<p>I agree.</p>
<p>Now, what if we combined both statements?</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, other Finns had the same idea, including former collegues of Lars and I, who took advantage of Estonia's outstandingly welcoming taxation laws, of Tallinn's luxurious variety of restaurants and coffee shops, of Estonia's comparatively more affordable cost of living and of the omnipresent country-wide wireless network.</p>
<p>Given this, is it any surprise that I keep on spending more and more time there?</p>
<p>Now, if someone on Toompea could only take a hint and realize that a québécois <cite>kes räägib eesti keelt natukane</cite> and who has been living for more than 8 years in the neighboring country very much <em>is</em> a local and ought to be equally welcome to immigrate as any EU national...</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20663524.post-1137542143620491472006-01-18T01:40:00.000+02:002007-06-05T20:13:09.883+03:00E-stonia<p>If these two links [<a href="http://manila.djh.dk/estonia/stories/storyReader$4">1</a>] [<a href="http://www.economist.com/cities/displayObject.cfm?obj_id=5322706&city_id=MCW">2</a>] don't manage to convince you that Estonia is <strong>the</strong> place to be if you're really serious about innovating in the <acronym title="Information and Communication Technology">ICT</acronym> sector, then I really don't know what will.</p>Martin-Érichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00394315280689943764noreply@blogger.com0