There's an interesting article (not online) in Dagens Nyheter this morning about cities that "sprawl", they grow and spread geographically as opposed to "increase in density". These cities are wasting farm land and nature and the end result is a waste of time and natural resources. An ecological warning example is Houston, Texas where only 1 percent of the population use public transport, while the same figure for Stockholm is 54 percent, Lisboa 58 and Frankfurt 35. In the light of these thoughts, this wish for a new car model, "a sedan that's specifically for people who work on the go", looks all the more provoking.

"It could be like a luxurious mobile office with pull out desk space, web integration, a place to rest your cell phone, a built in digital notepad, the list goes on. Cars aren't just for travel anymore. People live in their cars (just take a look at L.A.'s 405 at 5:30 - people become one with their car seat)."

Evidently there is a need for car manufacturers to keep up with the evolution of new gadgets and make it easier for consumers to use them also in the car. But the fact that there still is no "office car model" out there is a sign of hope, we're not completely lost just yet. (Yes, I take the bus and subway to work, every day)

Note: I wasn't really trying to argue against a wish for a car model like that. Instead, let's say that was the symptom, not the disease.

The fan blog of the upcoming cult movie Snakes on a Plane presents some remarkable stats - 265,000 visitors in 90 days. That's quite some support from a citizen marketer.

Via Church of the Customer. Tags: Snakes on a Plane, citizen marketing.

Carola and a horse. The perfect ad for tooth bleaching? Check out the photo in this article.

Journalist Linda Skugge launches a pay-to-read blog, "Saker som växer" (things that grow). For 69 kronor, readers will be able to read about her garden and her pregnancy.

Ni får följa hur min mage växer vecka till vecka och hur jag anlägger en liten radhusträdgård. Ni kommer peppras med fina bilder på allt från fula mammakläder, min växade mage och på det som växer upp ur jorden.

I'd pay 69 kronor in order to avoid reading that, but then again I'm probably not in the target audience. Read more here.

Dagens Nyheter's tv critic Johan Croneman brings up a relevant question about the political tv show "Folkvald".

"Does no-one at SVT have a problem with David Batra making political tv ahead of the election and that his wife, Anna Kinberg Batra is a candidate to the parliament for the Moderate party? And by the way, again: Why doesn't the presentation reveal that Batra is employed by the PR company his wife runs?"

David Batra denies being employed by Klar Kommunikation, according to an article in Resumé but yesterday his presentation as "creative advisor" was still live on the PR agency's webpage. However, his presentation has now been taken off the page, also the English version that was live at the time Resumé published its article.

- It's not good that the information was on the site. The idea was that I should come up with ideas and be part of certain product launches. But I haven't been employed and never done anything for them.

Anna Kinberg Batra, famous for once stating (correctly) that citizens in Stockholm are smarter than other Swedes, will not give a direct answer if her husband has ever received any remuneration from Klar Kommunikation.

- It is possible. But offhand, I don't think so.

Here is the presentation that has been taken off the site:

David Batra
David Batra - kreativ rådgivare, är en av Sveriges mest populära komiker och föreläsare. Han har skrivit och medverkat i flera TV-serier för Sveriges Television. Han är dessutom civilekonom från Lunds Universitet med inriktning på varumärken.

David Batra
David Batra is one of Sweden's most popular comedians. He has been a keynote speaker on creativity, presentation skills and humour in corporate life at numerous special events hosted by Fortune 500 companies like Ericsson, Unilever, Vodafone and Xerox. Mr Batra holds a Master's degree in marketing from the University of Lund and he is creative advisor to Klar Kommunikation.

I really don't know what to make of this, but two things are for sure.

1) Had they been candid about these connections from the start, they wouldn't have had to worry now. Transparency has its benefits.
2) What's the point in taking information off a web page in the midst of a crisis? Ever heard of Google chache?

Also, Viggo Cavling has another angle on the story.

Researcher writes about the redesign of marketing publication Resumé's website. I haven't had time to analyze the design, but I find it amusing that Resumé still have not made it possible to access the site via the URL http://resume.se/. You still need to type http://www.resume.se/

Magnus wrote about this in March.

Segolene Royal is ahead of "that man Sarkozy" in the polls. But the EU Observer finds it astonishing that a "Woman leads in French presidential polls". Again, you'd never read the same headline beginning with the word "man".

See also Women in the headlines #1.

I read in Dagens Nyheter that the Swedish alphabet just got longer. This certainly does not happen every day. It now has 29 letters instead of 28, since "W" is now considered a letter of its own, as in most countries, and not just a variation of "V". The reason behind the change is that the 13th edition of SAOL, the Swedish Academy's dictionary of the Swedish language, has been published and a large number of words beginning with "w" has been added, the most important of course is "webb" (web).

w00t!

Freelance journalist Gunilla Kinn about bloggers as media watchdogs.

Journalists think there's no use in defending themselves since "you can never win your case against a blogger".

(Journalisterna tycker också att det inte är någon idé att gå i svaromål, eftersom "man ändå aldrig kan få rätt mot en bloggare".)

It used to be the other way around, no?

Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet today launched a new blog hosting service for its readers, who are welcome to start their own blogs on Aftonbladet.se. The new blog service is a copy of Norwegian daily Verdens Gang and its successful service. Aftonbladet and VG are both part of the Schibsted group. VG are close to hosting 10,000 blogs and they have together published in excess of 50,000 posts so far.

Aftonbladet's blogs allow trackbacks, a feature that competitor Expressen does not have. Both services are equipped with an "abuse" feature where readers can protest against inappropriate content, which in itself is an irony, in that newspapers normally are proponents of free speech. Aftonbladet also allows anyone to comment on the blogs while Expressen demands that you are a member. Aftonbladet also has a feature with tags that allows you to surf blogs by topic.

All in all, my verdict is: Aftonbladet-Expressen 1-0.

Today's headlines are all about the new record levels for the oil price. But is it a record? No, not in inflation adjusted terms, see chart below (full size chart here). Oil prices were much higher in December 1979.

Inflationdata.com writes:

"The real peak occurred back in 1980. Back then the monthly average price peaked at $38 per barrel (although the intraday prices spiked much higher).

The common price quoted is for the all time high of Oil prices is the price that the highest barrel ever sold for. That price doesn't really have any effect on the price consumers paid. What really matters is the average price the refineries had to pay for the whole month."




- There is no reason to assume there will be a decrease [in the oil price], Ulf Svahn, Managing Director of Svenska Petroleuminstitutet, told Dagens Industri this morning.

Sure, that's what you would expect a spokesperson from the oil industry to say, wouldn't you?

Footnote: I have written about this before.

Not only the Swedish tabloids are fascinated by the story of "Gizmondo-Stefan" Eriksson and how he crashed his Ferrari Enzo. The story is top news on the Washington Post's web edition this morning (free reg. required) and many tv networks are reporting on the case.

"The press has really blown this out of proportion," his lawyer said.

Sure, but it is primarily Aftonbladet that persist in calling Eriksson "Tjock-Steffe" (Fat Steve), a name he probably hasn't been called in 20 years. Aftonbladet has called him Tjock-Steffe 24 times since September, compared to Dagens Industri (7), Expressen (4) and Computer Sweden (4). Quite interesting, considering the recent debate in Aftonbladet and other papers over hockey player Per Ledin who called goalie Tommy Salo "a fatty". Apparently it's ok to call some people fat...

When Norwegian journalists get information from PR people, only 46 percent always uses other sources to varify the facts, according to a survey.

I seldom discuss politics on this blog, but today I feel compelled to do so. The benefits for Swedish parents that choose to stay home on maternity or paternity leave are among the best in the world. We are guaranteed compensation of 80 percent of our salary up to a certain level for 390 days, to be shared between the father and the mother. That's all very well. Now, on top of that, parents also get 90 days, called "garantidagar" (guarantee days), with a compensation of 60 kronor per day, so basically most Swedes (compensation depends on your salary) that give birth to a baby have a strong financial support from the system.

Now, the Swedish Government has suggested that the compensation during these 90 days shall be increased from 60 kronor to 180 kronor, but that will only apply for children born on 1 July 2006 or later. This means that the parents of a child born on the evening of 30 June will miss out on compensation of 10,800 kronor, about 1,150 euro.

The social democrats explain this choice:
- It would simply be too expensive to let this increase apply to everyone on parental leave. There is a risk that all parents would use their guarantee days even if they don't really need it, says press secretary Anna Karin Wallberg.

Read that again, slowly. There is a risk that parents will exercise their rights, even if they don't need it!

What a brilliant logic. But of course, this is not the entire story. In fact, the government saves about 600-700 million kronor per year because parents don't use all their days in the parent's insurance. Guarantee days make up between 50 and 100 million a year, according to RFV.

In the article from Dagens Nyheter it says that parents with children under 8 years old, have 30 million guarantee days saved. But don't be fooled here, that's the total figure. According to a report (pdf) by RFV in 2002, between 85 and 92 percent of all guarantee days get used up, so the argument that people will use 30 million guarantee days "they don't need" is not valid. More than 9 out of 10 days are used by ordinary parents, just like the lucky ones who get babies after 1 July 2006.

That means that if 90 percent of all guarantee days would be used anyway, the only additional cost for the remaining 10 percent (3 million days) would be 540 million kronor (180 million + 360 million for the increase to 180 kr/day). I think that is a low cost for doing the right thing and not discriminate parents of children being born before 1 July.

(By now I figure you've guessed that me and my wife are having a baby in May this year.)

The BBC's press office has introduced RSS feeds for its public relations material, reports Journalism.co.uk. That's good news, but the fact that we are reporting on this as some kind of news, unfortunately shows that we are still a long way from an RSS break through in corporate communications.

In Sweden most media use RSS, but there are not many companies that use RSS for external communications. Here are a few examples I've found:

Corporations:
- Arla
- Fortum
- HP
- IBM
- MKB Fastighets AB
- Linklaters (feed) Disclosure: this is my employer
- Redeye
- SCA
- SPSS
- SwedSec

Organisations
- Bodens kommun
- Företagarförbundet (feed)
- Företagarna Boden
- Nobel Biocare
- SCB (feed)
- SIDA (feed)
- Swedish Agency for Public Management (Statskontoret)
- Swedish customs (Tullverket)
- Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet)
- Uddevalla kommun

Do you know of any other feeds, please add them in the comments.

Technorati tags: RSS, PR.

This is quite a story, New York Post's gossip columnist Jared Paul Stern has been suspended and accused of extortion. He is accused of "demanding an initial $100,000 payment from the investor Ron Burkle, one of the richest men in the world, followed by an annual $10,000 stipend" in order to protect him from negative publicity. Or as Jeff Jarvis puts it, "snark-protection".

Bonus link: check out the photo of Stern here. It's a man's bag...

Of course Romano Prodi claims victory in the Italian elections today. Them Italian fools thought they were voting for the Ipod :)



Tags: iPod, Prodi.

Many Norwegians are reading blogs. As many as 840,000 Norwegians (about 18%) are reading blogs on a weekly basis, and 7 per cent of the people surveyed read blogs daily, according to a survey by newsletter Mandag Morgen. One in three with internet access have also written something on a blog.

Footnote: Norway has a population of 4.6 million.

One of the most read Swedish bloggers, at least internationally, Fredrik Wackå, stops blogging on his popular CorporateBlogging blog to focus on his Swedish blog.