Month: May 2007

Sweden yesterday opened an embassy in the virtual world Second Life. The initiative to open a virtual embassy, first announced in January, has resulted in massive positive publicity around the world, although quite a few news outlets noticed that Sweden was beaten by the Maldives by one week. A quick search results in 130+ international articles the last week, so the 400,000 kronor that it cost to build the digital mansion was money well spent.

The Second House of Sweden, is a copy of the embassy building, House of Sweden, located in Washington, D.C. It was inaugurated yesterday by Sweden’s blogging Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who’s avatar had some trouble navigating during the ceremony.

“There’s a question of finding the place,” Bildt said, as he crashed the online version of himself into a tree.

Bildt also sent a friendly greeting to Sweden’s neighbours:

“I expect to be invited to the opening of the Norwegian embassy in a couple of decades.”

Footnote: Photos and more at Sweden.se.

Tags: sweden, second life, virtual embassy, sverige, carl bildt, second life. Ping.

Just when you thought the blog hype couldn’t reach any higher, Aftonbladet reveals how you can “blog your way to the perfect body”. Gunnar has the photo evidence.

Via Beta Alfa. Tags: blogging, aftonbladet. Ping.

Quite ironic. Swedish free daily Metro illustrates an article about integrity on the web with a photo the paper did not have permission to use. Citronmuffin has the original here.

Tags: metro, foto. Ping.

Employees from the TV production company Strix attacked the Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt on Tuesday night at the premiere of the film “Pirates of the Caribbean”. Reinfeldt was attending the event with two of his children when a reporter approached him with a fake microphone (branded with SVT’s logo) and splashed water over him. The “practical joke” was part of a new show, “Balls of steel”, that is supposed to be broadcast on SVT (the Swedish public service tv). In the show, famous people are ridiculed and then interviewed about how it felt (yes kids, this is high quality, public service entertainment).

With other fatal attacks on leading Swedish politicians fresh in memory (the murders of Anna Lindh and Olof Palme), few saw any humor in the so called joke. The Swedish security police SÄPO have reported the incident to the police and Eva Hamilton, the managing director of SVT, has been forced to apologize for the attack.

Robert Aschberg, managing director of Strix, pooh-poohs the whole kerfuffle in an interview in Resumé where he says that it “has taken ridiculous proportions” and that “it interferes with our production”. Really?

Journalists are now afraid that their access to leading policitians will be restriced due to this incident.

Sidenote: This was probably not the kind of PR that the film company was aiming for with the movie premiere.

Update: Artist Per Gessle of Roxette fame was another “victim” for the show. The reporter tried to get Gessle to push a button on a pen that would have given him an electric shock. When Gessle refused the reporter shouted “sucker, fucking sucker” after him and his son. Aschberg comments: “…I think he should have taken the pen, it would have made the show funnier.”

Tags: sweden, strix, fredrik reinfeldt, svt, per gessle. Ping.