Economic crisis, unemployment and lack of just about everything. Media show us a picture of a world in a fast spiral down into the abyss but is is really a truthful picture we see? There are people who have made a decision to let society take it’s toll on it’s own and leave it all away. I’ve found myself to read ever more articles on the subject lately and simply thought I could share some of what I’ve read. This is all about survival in the wild.

To leave everything behind is an extreme way of handling life and a way I would never see myself in. I am either way drawn to these stories since they do show the true survival power of human beings. I come to think of the documentary Grizzly Man about Timothy Treadwell who left everything behind to live in the wild – together with grizzly bears. He did it to show that the bears were not harmful as long as you lived with them and not against them. The documentary about his life really touched me and I wish for more to see it. On a similar topic I can take a moment to also mention Into the wild which describes a somewhat similar story but by a man named Christopher McCandless with a different background. Where Mr. Treadwell left society for a cause, Christopher McCandless left by a lack of one. Both films are great survival stories with an even greater depth of sadness. I do recommend them both.

There is a profound drive in each human to survive and by living our “simple” life we sometime forget this. When looking at the extreme and people who therefore leave everything and go into the wild we can do so and be amazed on what a single person is capable of. For those of us not willing to let everything to we can at least listen to the stories of those who do and perhaps learn to take a greater joy in what we have.

Simplicity is beautiful.

Images from Eric Valli’s: Off the grid.

Links to articles about similar stories

• Man who lives on zero dollars
• 86-year-old lives alone on his island reintroducing indigenous giant tortoises

I got this link sent to me regarding an odd place I’d like to visit. It an article on a site about visiting the intresting places of London and since I am also travelling there for a quick visit in just a few weeks it felt even more fitting as a story.

This is a store that was left by the current owner, not emptying the shelves or anything; and it has been sitting just where it is for thirteen years now. I find this place truly amazing.

There is many other very intresting articles on Peter’s site so if you are going to London, check it out before going!

What good have you done today?

Let’s just be kind on each other.

Hero from Miguel Endara on Vimeo via BoingBoing.

via BoingBoing.

So are these numbers good or bad; with what can we compare them? Well to the European market of course.

1.4M users acquired in just one month with one to ten ratio between paying and non-paying customers is a great launch where ever the launch may be. To do this in the US, competing with new services appearing daily is even stronger. I believe that these numbers show that there is an acceptance to paying for music as long as the service and amount of music is good. Napster was quick and easy back in its days and created the basic mental framework which made people into taking music for granted. To see it as a right instead of a service really. They created a wave and a movement which Spotify is riding on today with a legal option which also work even better then Napster did in some areas. Since Spotify made music mobile with great apps they really made music as a commodity that we can all have with us at all times. Personally I have been a paying customers for quite some time and I have never had any thoughts of cancelling since it gives me the ability to have music with me using my iPhone where ever I go.

Given the brief amount of time Spotify has been available in the US and already show a just over ten percent conversion rate between free and premium users is really good. As the free users start running out of time per month I strongly believe that the rate will increase towards about fifteen percent which is the number it has been reported from the European market according to Sean Parker. I truly hope that the music industry finally will see the potential in these services so that we can continue to have legal alternatives to get music into our lives.

If you live in the US and don’t have an invite yet, just let me know and we’ll sort it out! I see the fee I pay every month both as a subscription fee but also to show the industry how I am prepared to pay for music. Flat rates instead of individual pricing when it comes to mainstream music is my preferred way and I accept without any doubts that I will need  to buy albums and songs from artist too small be found on streaming services. Streaming is the future for music that already happened, let’s get out there and show that we support it.

I am not in any way affiliated with Spotify and write just based on my own experience. If you have any tips of other services similar or even better please get in touch with me so I can evaluate! If you already have a Spotify account, you can look at what’s in my listening lists by following the link below!

References

• http://allthingsd.com/20110808/spotifys-u-s-score-so-far-1-4-million-users-175000-paying-customers/
• http://allthingsd.com/20110307/spotify-toots-its-own-horn-one-million-paying-subscribers/
• http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/07/22/spotify.uptake.in.us.growing.fast/
• http://www.businessinsider.com/sean-parker-spotify-2010-10
• http://www.spotify.com
• http://www.napster.com

I am one of those who have two alarms set each morning where the first one goes off simply by giving me the pleasure of snoozing once. Due to that I can calculate who much I have to pledge each month using simple math.

Those of you who can stop hitting that snooze button however; this one is for you!

So I finally got my hands on an Google+ invite and thought that I would share my first views of it. I want to note right away that since this is my first night with it I have not yet so many contacts or content there so some parts of this look might be missing the full picture of some features.

First thing when I got logged in was to just start clicking through the view that was there and I had some problems at a start to see where everything were. I take this as quite understandable since it is a all new layout I’ve not seen before but still, there was a moment of confusion in the beginning. After a few minutes it started to settle though and I got aquiented.

Circles

Circles is what G+ is using to characterize your contacts in a way where you have better control over who that will see what. But the most important thing to point out with circles from my point of view is that you can have “all” your contacts there but still have control over your private content. In Facebook I always had the problem of not wanting work contacts in my account since I want a clear distinction between my professional- and my private life. Circles really makes this distinction a no brainer.

Hangouts

Me and a couple of friends tried a hangout during our first hour of G+ where we discussed as we went along how things worked. I do believe that this boosted the understanding quite a bit since we could help each other and I have to say that the quality and simplicity of video and audio during this time was great. At least as good as a Skype conference, if not even better. What we did miss in Hangouts was a whiteboard to explain functionality and also a simple way of sharing files. Hopefully this will be added along the way.

Photos

Just a quick tryout of photos and the Android client seem to be good, the web interface to be used on iOS until the app is accepted was not that good.

So, all in all after just a couple of hours of Google+ I am still very positive to what I’ve seen. There is a lot of features I want to see in there and just to mention a few; file sharing in Hangouts would be great, Twitter integration and finally Sparks is still a bit.. I don’t really get it.

All in all, Google+ is showing muscles and I like what I see.