Overdue remarks on last week’s events.

Opening of the Consumer Finance Congress. I expected the event to be in a practical mood, quite ordinary money making topic, as it is usually considered. But no, I was caught surprised by the lofty wrapper to the subject in the introduction speech. We are apparently on a way heading to ?credit society?, a higher form of society than the one we have at the moment, even though the term itself is somehow fuzzy for me. But it feels like prevalence of credit in the daily lives is what it?s all about.

Some optimistic statements followed, regarding the positive impact of the new society on the economy and general well-being. The credit impacts the economy positively mostly in a way of increasing demand, at least that was what I understood to be the main assumption.

After this promising start there was a bit of backtracking from the industry participants, probably not used to thinking about their craft in such an elevated manner. Some even joked about the ?on the way to credit society? thing, comparing it to some slogans from times of the other economic system and the other society that we were supposed to be approaching.

Nevertheless, there are some interesting questions and as usual I regret I have no time to follow them, like, how exactly is the higher amount of credit impacting the economy (increasing the demand, fine, but first thought ? increasing also the amplitude in the economic cycles?), to what extent it is positive, what difference does having ?credit culture? make when you look at the overall structure of the economy, etc.

Btw, one thing about the ?credit culture? topic ? of course there were examples of US and UK ? but what I was thinking about, why the anglo consumers are so eager to get in debt, while the companies there seem highly averse to be leveraged. Elsewhere, it seems exactly the opposite.

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Another Polish network site, and Linkedin clone, I guess. But quite cute. Recently I’m having special feelings for names with “golden” in it.

Anyway, I found it while looking up some unexpected contact of today. They had a salsa group so I registered out of curiosity (haven’t been to salsa for ages, I prefer horse riding lately because it’s in the open air, even if there are hardly any girls to be met).

Ok small update: after 5 minutes, while breaking from writing this to read some blog entry about unsolicited invitations in goldenline, I got unsolicited invitation from a headhunter. Heh.

Anyway check my profile, with the most dressed-up picture I got (scanned it today for a proposal).

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CNN:

Polonium-210 — the radioactive substance used to poison a former Russian spy in London — is one of the world’s rarest elements, first discovered in the 19th century by scientists Marie and Pierre Curie.

It is highly lethal when ingested, and extremely hard to detect, experts said.

(…)

Polonium is so exceedingly rare that only about 100 grams is believed to be produced each year, said Dr. Mike Keir, a radiation protection adviser at Royal Victoria Infirmary.

“Only a very, very small amount of this would need to be ingested to kill,” Keir said. “Unless you can remove the material, there’s very little you can do except treat the symptoms.”

(…)

“Trying to identify the exact agent that was making him sick was like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Dr. Alistair Hay, a professor of environmental toxicology at Leeds University.

Russians did it: Polonium is very hard to get, and the Russian secret service is the only considered party capable of that.

Russians did not do it: Polonium is so hard to get, that the Russian secret service would be seen as the obvious culprit, and the move would be suicidal from a diplomatic perspective. Or would it?

Speaking at a summit of European leaders in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Putin said that ?the death of a man is always a tragedy,? but said there was no evidence that it was ?a violent death.?

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I spent half of Sunday trying to choose the future Internet provider. I wouldn?t have to, but the guys need to know which wall plug is to be moved close to the computer, and as usual they need to know it just now.

The problem turned out to be like a puzzle. All the components dependant on each other. On top of that, the providers seem to be trying to make comparison as difficult as possible.

But in the end, I reached the following preliminary results:

TPSA (Telekomunikacja, Polish telecom): in the beginning I had high hopes for them, because of their new ?multipacket? offering. Includes TV and is wi-fi (livebox) enabled by default. But then it turns out that the basic TV packet is quite poor, and together with its upgrade, the TP option becomes the most expensive. Even leaving aside the (in)famous quality of service. But still a nice try, as for TPSA. Let?s hope for better.

UPC made a good impression. Seems good price for value as far as broadband. But TV has quite limited collection of foreign channels, no French or Russian ones, and no Italian (but no one has Italian channels). I would go for it if I decided not to have a cable TV in the beginning (which makes quite a lot of sense considering that I will not have a TV).

Astercity rules as far as TV offer. They have the most comprehensive set of foreign channels including some Russian and French. Even though no Italian.

But quite pricey, too, and I will have to confirm the wi-fi thing. It may require to have a 2mbs link in order to be allowed to split the signal. And this kind of link is not exactly cheap.

So the conclusion: UPC has a nice net, Aster a good TV, while TP a slow net, few TV channels and of course the most expensive fixed line. Read: move the TV plug.

Not all Sunday was wasted in ISPs, however, because the rest of it was wasted on finding stuff like WC brush and towel hooks. Yes working on a new apartment is a pure pleasure. This month I just have to write off.

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On the weekend – slow search, and redirection to the results likewise, even with occassional server errors.

Now gmail chat not working.

Really, I should diversify my internet experience provider.

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I only took a brief look at the word processor. The spreadsheets I left aside for now.

I won?t go into the topic whether the online office will replace desktop suites and when, and how do you manage to work on the airplane, and all the others. But from the brief tour that I took, and the first document I created, and the one invitation that I sent to collaborate it, the toy has Google?s charm to it.

The interface meets expectations of elegant simplicity, the ones that you usually have in case of Google.

It was fun to poke around and observe how they manage to pack the features into the browser environment. Table editing, for example. Inserting an image. And inviting collaborators, which feels like sending an email from gmail, through the similar auto-suggest box.

I?m sure you hit the limits eventually, if you try to go too far with the tool. I would be surprised if it was already fit for complex reports or other heavy duty work.

But I look forward to having a practical opportunity to give it a real world test.

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I used not to pay much attention to Polish web 2.0 endeavours – and maybe not without a reason, since most of them seem clones of Western ideas anyway – but I took a second look, even if a brief one, after this post by Sebastian Kwiecien.

There is a presentation with the visual of web 2.0 companies’ logos in Poland. Compare to the US one.

Main message for me – there’s been hardly any innovation so far. But I didn’t have time to browse through all sites mentioned, maybe there are some nuggets to be found. Still it’s a sad situation. Someone’s gotto change it:)

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No new blogging friends, unfortunately, but more and more interesting people do blog. For example – of serious people writing serious things:

Krzysztof Rybinski, deputy governor of the National Bank of Poland (makes a very good impression, the blog, I have to find time to digest the content),

Janusz Jankowiak, Chief Economist of Polish Business Council (though in his first post he declares himself unable to write openly, due to numerous contraints – something I know about).

As for my blogging, I’m totally obsessed with something and unable to devote time to much of anything else, blogging included.. apologies.

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Didn’t even notice, and it’s already a few weeks old: Google Polska blog.

I was looking for info when they are going to introduce search for Google Maps in Poland, but so far no clue.

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