The Swedish paper Post- och Inrikes Tidningar is the oldest newspaper in the world. It has been published for 361 years, but as of tomorrow it will only be available as an online publication. If I should give the paper one advice about the new format, then it would be to not post links on the site before there is any content on that page.

Via Erik and Treehugger.

Tags: newspapers, media, tidningar. Ping.

Christmas has not only been a period away from work, but also away from blogging. But Lotta at Citizen Media Watch has tagged me with a challenge - to list five things that I hope or know will happen in 2007. So here are five personal wishes for next year:

1. That a family member will get well.

2. That I to a greater extent will have the opportunity to meet with companies and organisations to hold speeches and give advice on PR and social media related topics.

3. I am going to be on paternal leave for six months which I hope will be a rewarding experience for both me and my daughter.

4. I wish that the summer house we are planning to build will be everything we dreamed of. And on budget.

5. That I get to travel to Brazil, although it is unlikely that it will happen.

Here are five others that I would like to answer this challenge: Andreas Ekström, Goesta & Aaron, Göran Thorstenson, Jonas Söderström and Sakine.

Tags: wishes, 2007, new year, bloggutmaning, 2007. Ping.

Peter R. Kann, Chairman of Dow Jones, lists ten disturbing trends in mass media. From Wall Street Journal (subscr. req.) via Robert:

1. The blurring of the lines between journalism and entertainment.
2. The blurring of lines between news and opinion.
3. The blending of news and advertising, sponsorships or other commercial relationships.
4. The problems and pitfalls inherent in pack journalism.
5. The issue of conflict and context.
6. The exaggerated tendency toward pessimism.
7. The growing media fascination with the bizarre, the perverse and the pathological -- John Mark Karr journalism.
8. Social orthodoxy, or political correctness.
9. The media's short attention span.
10. The matter of [the media’s] power.

Tags: media, trends, journalism, journalistik, media. Ping.

There's something about the elderly in Östergötland, that's for sure. You may have read about the world's oldest blogger, Allan Lööf, from Finspång, Östergötland. And now Norrköpings Tidningar writes about Sven Bergh from Gusum, who is possibly the world's oldest DJ. Last week the 83-year old was deejaying in Gryt (where I happen to have a summer house) and he has apparently been doing this in different locations in Valdemarsvik since the 80's. According to the article, Mr Bergh plans to continue as a DJ until he retires :)

Tags: world's oldest dj, dj, musik. Ping.

Yes, folks. It's that time of the year again. Time to take a look into the crystal ball and predict what will come in the next 12 months. Here are some things you can expect from 2007:

* Linden Labs launches Third Life within Second Life, in which the avatars of Second Life are able to create digital 3D representations of themselves, so called avatars. This is the first Third Life to be launched within Second Life. The currency of Third Life is called London dollars, which causes an uproar among English avatars.

* A blog is launched in which a couple report about how they travel across the US in an RV and camp in parking lots of the PR agency Edelman PR's offices. The blog "Edelmaneuvering Across America" turns out to be a publicity stunt by Wal-Mart with the purpose of enhancing the damaged reputation of its PR agency.

* Metro, the world's largest free newspaper, teams up with local post offices in 19 countries with the purpose of providing hyper-local news to its readers. "The mail men are already out there, visiting every house. No-one sends letters anymore, but this way they will be able to do something useful, like peak into people's houses and report what they see. It's a no-brainer, really", says Christer Fingerspitzgefühl, Chief Instigator at Metro International.

* Someone uploads a video to YouTube in which he reveals how you can open a cheap Bic pen using a very expensive bike lock from Kryptonite. The Bic share on the Paris stock exchange immediately plunges before a crisis communication team is able to restore confidence in the product. "We will be issuing a global replacement program shortly. Old pens can be sent to that place where pens always seem to disappear, it's right next to the place where all second socks can be found," says a PR spokesperson from Bic.

* Mainstream media are pushing the citizen journalism trend so far that reporters are quitting their jobs in order to be just "ordinary people". "This is the only way that I will be able to get anything printed nowadays", says one columnist at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, who prefer to be anonymous.

* Media Culpa initiates the third annual Swedish blog survey that shows that 102% of all bloggers write blogs about fashion and only 0.9% have nothing against being contacted by middle aged men who perform blog surveys.

* Swedish "anti-Big Brother" personality Pär Ström discovers the 7 1/2 floor of his office building and finds a portal directly into the mind of former Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström.

* Rupert Murdoch enters the Danish newspaper market with a new free daily which covers news and events in the Danish free paper market. Dato, 24 Timer and Nyhedsavisen are delighted that someone now is actually interested in the stories they rewrite.

* Sweden's blog princess Karolina Laika is invited to the ISS space station only to find that some of the space suits are sooo 1985.

* Technorati teams up with IBM to enable grocery shoppers to read what bloggers are saying about products. A service tracks the blogosphere and delivers search results directly to the store via RFID. Sales of pickled herring immediately drop to an all-time low after an "incident" with herring and a Christmas Party is filmed and uploaded to YouTube.

So now you know...

Tags: Second Life, 2007, predictions, Technorati, 2007, humor. Ping.

Being ranked first in Google is generally a good thing, unless you are a restaurant and you are #1 for "disgusting food" (äcklig mat). What are they serving at Restaurang Balder in Borås?

;)

Tags: Google, seo, mat. Ping.

Here we go again. Sony has been caught with running a fake blog, a "flog", to promote the Sony PSP. The blog, alliwantforxmasisapsp.com, has already been taken down but a screen shot (along with the name of the domain registrant, the viral marketing agency Zipatoni) can be found here. Sigh. Didn't Wal-Mart teach you anything?

Tags: Sony, flog, public relations, PSP, pr. Ping.

One in two PR executives are not doing their job properly. A survey of more than 1100 PR executives from agencies and corporations in the US and UK reveal that 49% of respondents don't even monitor blogs. Furthermore it says that:

"63% have not adapted their communications strategy to include proactive outreach to blogs, message boards, and other forms of digital mediums."

Blogs are fairly easy to monitor and there are a number of free tools available. Next things to watch are wikis, social networking sites, Second Life, YouTube etc that need to be on PR executives' radar.

Tags: web 2.0, social media, public relations, PR, web2.0. Ping.

There was recently a debate among Swedish bloggers about the lack of local web 2.0 applications. A list of Sweden's top web apps on Read/Write Web sparked comments that they were all merely bad clones of US sites. So in the light of that debate maybe we shouldn't be surprised that a power house such as IDG can get ink just from launching a copy of a clone. Apparently IDG have launched a "Digg site" called Hypa.se that is almost identical to Digga.se, interface, layout, colors et cetera.

"The goal is to be bigger than idg.se" says Bo Nordlin at IDG.

It is very hard to believe that will ever happen.

Tags: Digg, web 2.0, IDG, Digga, Hypa, webb 2.0. Ping.

Swedish tennis legend Björn Borg has sold the rights to his name for 124 million kronor (18 MUSD) to Worldwide Brand Management. WBM has previously had the license to the brand and paid royalties to the Dutch company Fabulous Licensing, which has connections to the Borg family. WBM now own all the rights to the brand Björn Borg and will also pay an addition fee for ten years of about 1.5 - 2% of the sales price of the products, although a minimum of 7.8 million kronor (1.1 MUSD) per year. The company is planning to change name to Björn Borg AB.

Tags: Björn Borg, brands, varumärken, reklam. Ping.

Shel Holtz writes about how Dell Computer has Second Life listed as a location among other countries in a drop down menu on their site. Go to Dell.com and choose the menu at the bottom. Select "Second Life" and you are sent to a page that will take you to Dell Island in Second Life. Pretty cool, however, it only works if you enter the US site first. For Swedes and other nationalities that option is not listed.

Tags: Second Life, Dell, Second Life, Sverige. Ping.

After my post on Friday about Allan Lööf, the world's oldest blogger, the story has now been picked up by OhmyNews and is one of the top items in Art & Life section.

Tags: world's oldest blogger, Allan Lööf, bloggare. Ping.

It was true, TV4 and Canal Digital have bought the Swedish rights to broadcast the Euro 2008 in football, according to a press release that was just distributed. TV4 will show at least 19 of the 31 games and Canal Digital will show the remaining games.

Tags: euro 2008, football, fotboll, TV4. Ping.

The Finnish based virtual community site Habbo Hotel has launched a social networking feature, Habbo Home. Habbo Home will enable users to build and customise their own home page or profile page and interact with other users writes Brand Republic. Habbo has more than 64 million registered characters in 29 countries.

Tags: Habbo, virtual worlds, social media, sociala medier, Habbo. Ping.

Yahoo is making a serious attempt to embrace the social media space by bringing together its web 2.0 assets like Flickr into social media brand hubs, or "brand universes". Yahoo is partnering with "passion brands" to create "dedicated areas on Yahoo for fans of a movie or product to congregate, share and connect with each other". The first example is a site for Nintendo Wii which attracted some 250,00 visitors during the first 24 hours of operation.

Tags: yahoo, Wii, web 2.0, social media, Nintendo Wii, sociala medier, Nintendo Wii. Ping.

TechCrunch reports that Alex Tew, the guy behind The Million Dollar Homepage, is about to launch a new site, selling 1 million pixels for $2 a pop. The difference this time is that the site will include a lottery where the winner who clicks the right advertisement will win $1 million.

Tags: TechCrunch, lottery, internet, lotteri. Ping.

New York Times writes: "China announced temporary regulations on Friday loosening restrictions on foreign journalists, a step intended to fulfill the country’s promise to allow visiting reporters to work freely in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics."

Existing restrictions require that journalists obtain government approval before traveling or conducting interviews. Under the new rules, a foreign journalist will only need to obtain the permission of the person being interviewed. At the same time, Associated Press reports that "even as the rules were made public, however, a Chinese court affirmed a prison sentence for a Chinese reporter. The different signals underscore China's mixed treatment of the media."

The rules take effect on Jan. 1 and end Oct. 17, 2008.

Tags: 2008 Olympics, China, journalism, kina, media. Ping.

Two weeks ago, BoingBoing wrote about 92-year-old Donald Crowdis and asked if he might be the world's oldest blogger. But we who follow the Swedish blogosphere know that Allan Lööf is Mr Crowdis' senior by two years. Allan Lööf, 94, and has been blogging for a year and has had his own site for a couple of years. On his blog he writes that no-one has yet found an older blogger than him:

"Any blogger who is older than me hasn't made contact yet. In a comment it has been said that there might be a 92 year old japanese who is currently blogging. Who knows?"

And today his local daily, Norrköpings Tidningar, reports that he is planning a book about his life.

Allan says:
"I'm planning to write my autobiography. I am surprised myself that I remember so much, my earliest memories are from the age of 2. The book would begin in 1914 and continue until today."

If I'm half as productive at 74 as Allan is at 94, I'd be happy.

Update: To clarify, Donald Crowdis was born on 24 Dec, 1913. Allan Lööf was born 7 Aug, 1912.

Tags: oldest blogger, boingboing, bloggar, media. Ping.