Illegalize it!

I saw a hand washing poster on the street. I started thinking and guessing.

Officials have knowledge about how much a hand washing campaign costs and what kind of results to expect (x percentage less infected). Officials can make an excel sheet out of the data and calculate wheter they should make a campaign or not.

When the campaign hits the streets, I, the individual will get it wrong. I shall not wash my hands because I am a fatalist, or I know better, that hygiene is actually bad for my health. I may even think it is stuffing bacteria-hysteria down my throat, beacause of a consipiracy. In any case, I think the campaign is to keep me healthy so I weight the campaign message against my personal health.

Actually the campaign is a tool to minimize the cost on society, not a tool to minimize the illness of an individual. The same with vaccination: Not a tool to keep individual healthy, but a tool to fight epidemics, with a side effect of keeping the individuals healthy.

Officials have a range of tools to fight the epidemics. I don't know the available tools and how effective they are. But that didn't stop me to invent the ultimate tool that everyone understands. What if there was a law, that getting the flu is illegal? Big fine for getting the flu, small fine for forgetting to wash hands.

Yes, yes, impossible idea in all of the imaginable levels. But please play along with the thought.

We tend to respect the law, or own interpretation of it. At least we know what is legal, what is not and the reasons why. Speed limits are not for my safety, but for the general road safety. I don't cross the road when the light is red, if there are children around me. For the same reason, to strenghten good practices in society, I wear bike helmet, even though the law doesn't yet require it.

Epidemics require individuals to understand the big picture. That is difficult. Obaying a law is not.

Don't take this too seriously, but think about it: You may not spread AIDS, why are you allowed to spread influenza?

Swine flu tags

Swine flu has arrived here, in Helsinki: We the intelligent turn into emotional.

As I see myself worrying about vaccination timetables and my kids, I no longer worry about common cold. I guess we can only worry about one infectious disease at a time. This observation in the light of Illtags:

[x] to utilize swine flu in spreading awareness about Illtags

[] not to utilize swine flu in spreading awareness about Illtags

Even though obvious, it was actually a painful decision to make. We turned the service more swine flu oriented. We also added few "viral" features, hopefully making the service more viral than the flu. This means a bit more notifications and requests to spread the awareness of the service.

Interesting to see if the changes have any effect. Can we get 1k users this month?

Facebook adjustments and Slush

We are working on the Facebook application now. A lot of small and big adjustments and features on the way. Now we have adjusted levels of alert notifications (so that you know if there is something happening in your groups and events) and a reminder notification for the get-well gift option. More features coming all the time.

We are also attending Slush Helsinki with a follow-up panel discussion about the last year. Please attend and come to talk to us.

Learning press release writing for Finnish media

Lehdistötiedote julkaisuvapaa heti

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Uusi kotimainen terveyspalvelu etsii koekaniineita

HELSINKI, 7.10.2009 - Sosiaalisen median terveyspalvelu Illtags on vajaan vuoden kehityksen jälkeen avattu englanninkielisenä testiversiona. Palveluun haetaan suomalaisia Facebookin käyttäjiä testaamaan täysin uudenlaisen palveluidean toimivuutta.

Kysymyksenasettelu on seuraava: mikäli suomalaiset tekisivät flunssaan liittyvät Facebook-valittelunsa Illtagsin kautta, kuinka tarkkaan ja nopeasti saisimme paikallistettua ja ennustettua tartuntatautien etenemisen? Illtags yhdistää sosiaalisen Facebookin tilapäivityksissä ilmoitetut oireet Facebookin sosiaalisiin ryhmärakenteisiin. Näin kyetään havaitsemaan etenevät infektioaallot ja varoittamaan niistä niin, että osa käyttäjistä voisi mahdollisesti välttää sairastumisen.

Illtags syntyi pilke silmäkulmassa vuonna 2008, mutta on vuoden aikana kehittynyt kunnianhimoiseksi terveyttä edistäväksi hankkeeksi. Illtagsin perustajat lääkäri Markus Bergman ja IT-osaaja Wesa Aapro löivät päänsä yhteen, kun molemmat olivat pohtineet samanlaisen palvelun tarvetta.

"Wesa otti minuun yhteyttä, kun sai tarpeekseen lapsensa flunssakierteestä", kertoo Bergman. "On turhauttavaa kun flunssaan ja muihin arkisiin tartuntatauteihin ei ole varsinaisia parannuskeinoja. Tällöin ainoa keino pysyä terveenä on välttää tartunta. Toisaalta usein tuntuu, että jo pelkkä tieto tautien leviämisestä ja ilmenemisestä helpottaisi monen arkea."

Illtags avataan ajankohtaiseen aikaan, kun Suomi valmistautuu H1N1-epidemiaan. Vakava asia pistää herrat mietteliäiksi. Kuinka sopivaa on väittää, että Facebookilla voi taistella flunssaa vastaan?

"Olemme monta kertaa kysyneet itseltämme että voiko tämä oikeasti toimia, mutta vielä emme ole kuulleet yhtään vakuuttavaa syytä, miksi ei", toteaa Wesa Aapro. "Jos edes osa meistä voi välttää sairastumisen, voimme kutsua projektia onnistuneeksi. Siksi tätä kannattaa yrittää."

Hankkeeseen voi osallistua ottamalla käyttöön Facebook-sovelluksen osoitteessa illtags.com/facebook. Tarkempi hanke-esittely löytyy osoitteessa illtags.com.

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Lisätietoja:

http://illtags.com/faq/
Wesa Aapro, wesa.aapro AT kaislainnovations.com, +358505933854
Markus Bergman, markus.bergman AT kaislainnovations.com, +358503075797

Illtags goes paivakotisaa.fi

A shiny new Illtags widget was added to ConnectedDay paivakotisaa.fi service today! This means the parents of the children in 3400+ Finnish daycare centers can now join the collaborative effort of tracking the infections of the Finnish children.

Now the gates of utilizing Illtags API with third party services are open, more widgets to come!

Media day

Today we got some media attention.

In Finnish:

http://www.iltasanomat.fi/hyvaolo/terveys.asp?id=1735540

http://www.taloussanomat.fi/harrastukset/2009/09/30/suomalaiskeksinto-kertoo-mihin-flunssapiikki-iskee/200921040/139

and in English:

www.arcticstartup.com/2009/09/30/illtags-takes-the-fight-against-the-flu-online/

Let's hope we get a lot of good feedback and new ideas on the development side.

New server up and running!

Now we're out of pre-alpha, as the new server should be able to handle quite a bit of traffic! Next stop: The medical logic needs some tweaking, nothing fatal.

This was short status update. Press/blog release soonish.

Missed Mindtrek, got the server!

CTRL-F "Illtags" doesn't work with Mindtrek Launchpad finalists, maybe it is not yet time to win awards. We first need to add a few zeroes to the 274 user we currently have.

And now it is the time to do that: We got a nice server dead with kotisivut.com (thank you Miikka for understanding our mission) and this weekend we're moving to a server that can handle more than three concurrent users. Next week we're ready to start to try to get some coverage on blogs or even traditional media.

Thank you Demola!

Monday was the last day of Demola project 55, "Microblog feed parsing platform".

I haven't blogged about Demola earlier. I should have, since Demola is the main reason we have managed to create the service with practically no funding (BTW, thank you Slush!).

Demola is an open innovation environment, where great things can happen without too much hazzle. There are many ways to explain Demola. I have my own: Demola aims to project the brainpower of (tens of thousands Tampere region) students that is usually wasted on pointless assignments towards something less pointless, like real life projects.

Thank you Digioske for understanding our mission and providing the necessary resources for making the Demola project possible. This summer Jani Palovuori, Tuomas Rinne and Matti Särkikoski, our excellent Demola team created the Illtags core and it works perfectly!

This is interesting: Because one of Demola's purposes is to create new businessess, the rights of the Illtags core will stay with the Demola team. I bet Illtags will not be the only service utilizing the microblog feed parsing platform (or Tagregator as we call it). I can imagine a range of services making use of the simple technology collecting tags, combining them to user contexts.

Even though we were lucky enough for being able to concentrate on the actual product development, the summer was hectic. Facebook API, Twitter API, RESTful API, AJAX programming... all of the current technical buzzwords were strangers to us until this summer. We googled, we learned, we conquered!

At the moment I feel very comfortable with the product, even though it is full of small holes. Pre-alpha is our version of the blinking "under construction" sign. We'll remove the "pre" when we have the servers in a bit more solid state.

...and I'll test the site with IE6 when we can call it beta ;)

Adding and removing small features like a maniac

Ok, now a few knows about our service. And now we have some feedback. And the feedback makes us work hard.

This is really strange: When we opened the service, at that exact moment, I was available to see it from a new user's perspective. Before I was blinded to small or even bigger problems. Now I am able to be more critical and, well, realistic about the UI we have created. A lot of fixes done and a lot to do. Today we actually took the design we had already back in January, changing small details we have learned along the way.

There's a load of features on the TODO-list, but all in time. Which brings me to the motivation of this post. I want to share a small home-made video we created, visioning the illtags mobile service:

We're open, but don't tell anyone!

The service is open, feel free to test and explore it. We have a bit of server trouble, which is the reason you should not tell anyone about our service, yet :)

Now we're trying to test and learn what is the server capacity need for a certain amount of users.

Launching pre-alpha, waiting for revision 7000

Subversion revision is at 6852. Pre-alpha is ready, but so is H1N1, according to local newspapers.

I think the launch will in few days, maybe even tomorrow, but I'm not sure about our servers. We'll have to launch it very very silently, just for the important feedback and try to get a solid server base ASAP.

We would probably make it invite-only, but we're not really Gmail or Spotify. Besides, it's too much of a hazzle with the invitation e-mails.

Demo ready!

Buy me or Markus a beer and we'll show what we have managed to create :)

Or wait a few weeks and the service will be open for everyone. There's still a lot to do, but we try have the service up and running even as an early alpha before everyone has H1N1. Hopefully the Madonna concert next thursday is not the turning point in Finland. If I had paid 100 euros for the ticket, a small or a bit higher fever woudn't be enough to skip the concert...

No time to blog, a good sign?

No, we're not on holiday. Quite the opposite in fact. The project is going forward, sometimes backward, a bit to the side and sometimes leaping through different dimensions. It's difficult to blog any details in the middle of the turbulence, and there really is no time.

This week I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. The concept drawings are now alive, the architecture under the hood is solid and scalable. The gears are running just as we visioned, which feels amazing. It was magical to log in the service for the first time (for a moment, before the first fatal bug).

I think we're on schedule, launching something already this fall.

The flu

Maybe you have read the latest influenza news. And maybe you have noticed that internet has reacted to it in various creative ways. Our radar has picked up news visualization, Google flu trends in Mexico and few attempts to profit from the influenza. And then there's always art.

I wonder about what if our service was already ready and in wide use, how it would have affected this... It's clear that when a scary influenza starts spreading, it is completely different thing than common cold, because the officials start to take action. What internet and social media can do though, is provide data about the few last days, maybe help officials to focus the resources? I try not to think about the big brother, even though quarantining people by what they say in the internet is a heavy thing!

We'll come back with illtags.com later. We have made a few important steps with both concept and business development. We also had our first advisory board meeting, accidentally in a Mexican themed restaurant (= meant to be!). The project is gaining speed, still a long way to go though.

Planning ahead

We have spent the last weeks having some interesting negotiations with potential collaborators in Finland and around the world. We cannot tell all the details yet, but will tell you more when we get some final contracts done. We also got some additional workforce now, so our product development is proceeding at a comfortable pace now. 

So no more juicy details at this point, but we will keep you posted when we get a bit further.

New name, logo

This is what the end of the common cold will look like! If you are really deep in this web 2.0 thing, you may be able to guess something about how our service works by only looking at the white curvy lines of the logo...

Opening up, slowly

Next friday we will present our project to a set of bright minds in TAIK Medialab. Thank you Teemu Leinonen for the opportunity. Our presenation will be part of a bigger study project: http://mlab.taik.fi/thirdsector/

I think we have a screenshot of our service in one of the slides. This means we are opening up the project a bit, eventually on this "radically open" blog too :)

Kaisla Innovations, that's us!

Just wanted to let you know that we are called Kaisla Innovations and soon we'll have business cards. There's nothing in kaislainnovations.com, except that it's orange. Hanne told us that orange equals innovation ;)

Next week more update on our project. It's suprisingly difficult to be open about something that you are working on.

Some publicity 2

Here is a link to the story on Ylioppilaslehti published yesterday (in Finnish).

Tweaking and tuning forever

I've been working on our front page lately. It's the page where the critical eyes come for the first time, "what a useless service" already echoing in the mind.

Someone once said this about communication: If you throw a ball to a friend, she'll catch it. If you throw two, she'll probably catch one. If you throw three, she'll miss them all. So I've tried to narrow our message to one. It's difficult. We tell that this service is here to remove the common cold. We utilize Facebook status updates, Twitter and similar (Why there is no single word for these, why can't the microblog be commonly understood?) by collecting medical symptoms.  And in the end we warn users about incoming colds near their homes or workplaces. Where's the math of 1+1+1=1?

One page, ten seconds and five words is a too long sentence. I like easy answers, I tried to find them, but I think there are none. Sometimes the sky pieces of the puzzle must be added slowly, one by one. But in this puzzle they also have to be constantly removed.

Some publicity

There was a story about us and Slush in the Helsingin Sanomat (the biggest daily in Finland). Click here to read to story (in Finnish).

Getting busier

Hello again. It seems to get busier: we are doing more, but noticing even more things that have to be done.

The interface and layout design has been an interesting process.  It is challenging to think what kind of ideas and thoughts different colors, shapes and layouts can convey. But so far I think we have found some pretty nice solutions with visual smoothness and usability. There is still lot to work on, but we will post some pictures here when we get some parts ready.

This week we met with our Slush advisors and got many nice tips on our business development. We also got interviewed for a story about start-ups in a newspaper Ylioppilaslehti. We'll send you the link when the story is published.

We know what we are doing!

No updates for a while, no real update now. Just that as we are moving deeper and deeper into the design, I am getting a feeling that we know what we are doing.

Technology wise we are in a nice place. A lot to do (not that much actually) but there's no old code dictating bad decisions. I think I'll give jQuery a shot on the UI.

EDIT: And we have a company now!