Back from Australia. It was a great trip. The trip took about 20 hours. I'm totally caught by jetleg and I woke up at 4 am this morning. We went to Brisbane, Sydney, Fraser Island, Herron Island (click on the link for more info on the islands) and Melbourne. Fraser Island is the worlds largest sand island. Emma and I had great time together and I'm planning to move to Stockholm pretty soon....

On the cultural side, we attended the opera "Carmen" in the Sydney Opera House. It was a very warm experience. The air condition in the building was not very effective. Here's some pictures from our vacation.

I did some reading on my trip to Australia. I finished up Victorian Internet, which compares the telegraph with the modern internet. Pretty interesting book that is light reading with interesting observations about innovation.

I also read a book about the world's most successful investor, Warren E. Buffet. His book, Buffett : The Making of an American Capitalist follows Buffet from his early childhood to the present day. His investing record is truly amazing and he has consistently beat the market the last 30 years. His successful investing style is explained here. It looks easy, but if it was so easy, everybody would be doing it. I like Buffet's down to earth personality and his ability to explain things in its simplest form. Simplicity is genious!

The final book I read through was a book about Richard Branson called Losing my Virginity. This autobiography introduces the founder of Virgin Atlantic, the successful low-cost airline that fought a vicious battle with British Airways. Richard Branson is a risk-taker that has succeeded(So far).

I just checked in at a hotel in London. Tomorrow I'll be attending some travel conference somewhere in London. The hotel has a wireless connection, but I have to sit down in the lobby to access it. Wireless networks are popping up everywhere. Soon we'll have wireless phones with direct always-on access to the internet. What will happen to the phone companies?

I'm reading the book Victorian Internet for the 3rd time. I covers the first real worldwide network; the telegraph. The book compares the telegraph with the internet. Pretty interesting to read how there were geeks and techies back then as well. Even more interesting to read how these technology freaks became absolete when the technology went from technology controlled to business controlled. We are seeing the same trend when it comes to the internet.

SMS marketing is getting pretty hot. Consider a medium where the advertisers pay someone to receptable for well-targeted ads. The recipient controls what type of ads they want to receive and at what rate they receive it. Wouldn't it be great to be able to let the newspapers and TV stations know what type of products and services you're interested in and then get paid everytime you viewed them? The term infomediary comes to mind. It's an old term, but a very interesting one..

I forgot to mention that I'm heading down to Australia for a couple of weeks. I've never been there and I think it'll be fun:)

I'm meeting Emma down there! What an adventure. My boss got a little upset when I forgot to tell her how long I was staying down there. I'm getting a little tired of my job. To much politics and discussions and not enough action. It's depressing to work with people that are more focused on going through the motions(processes), rather than worrying about the results. I guess it's a conflict in philosophies? What do I know?

Sometimes it seems like people are more interested in finding problems than finding solutions.. I wish I didn't care, but that's not part of my nature.

Well.. hopefully a couple of weeks "down under" will get me back on top;)

Happy new year. A new year with new opportunities. Yesterday I decided to go visit Australia. I've never been there, so it's about time. I'm leaving on February 7 from London. What a blast!

I finally sold the Jeep I imported from the US. I got cash and a Mercedes E230 in exchange. Nice little profit.

Finally I got some help at work! I actually have two people to help me with the internet initiative at www.norwegian.no ... One of the guys has experience from EBookers. He's seems talented and works hard. He's a smooth talker and easy to work with. He has some very good connections in India that will help us with som search engine optimization.

The other guy is a web designer. He's a hard working guy... We finally got moving on a new web development project. We've chosen to work with Apt. They have a good reputation and has done some amazing stuff.

I went to Stockholm last weekend and spent some quality time with my girlfriend. We stayed in a nice hotel and had nice and romantic weekend. I actually enjoyed SHOPPING! What a disaster.. People are asking when we're getting married.. I'm getting tired of the question.

The fall depression is here... It's dark and rainy outside. Today I haven't been out of my apartment. But life goes on. Soon it's Christmas;)

Today I'm going out to Tor. He's hosting the Grimstad Croquet club's annual championship.
It'll be a blast. On monday we launch the new booking engine for www.norwegian.no.. hopefully everything will be successful.