Parking the latter of the three for a moment, let me tell you about something cool that’s been on my radar
recently.

Y’see a while back a good friend of mine pointed me in the direction of a website called ‘Someone Once Told Me‘. Along with a note along the lines of “Dude, you have to get involved with this!”

The gem of a human being behind this site is a man named Mario Cacciottolo who, as well as being an all round lovely chap, is an excellent photogrpaher. His idea for the site is simple:

…an attempt to gather and chronicle some of the things that people have heard in their lives, the messages and expressions that have stuck in people’s head, for reasons both obvious and odd.

What SOTM actually means is that people are asked, sometimes by appointment and sometimes randomly, to hold up a large piece of paper, upon which they write something that someone once told them. Or emailed. Or texted. Basically something that’s been communicated to them. But told, preferably.

A black and white photograph is then taken of them, and one new picture goes on the site every day…

You with me yet?
Got it?
No?

Well how about I show you the one that Mario took of me at the London Social Media Cafe recently?

- Yes, fairies do live at the bottom of my Mum’s garden –

Lovely huh?
The idea – not the picture of me… well, that ain’t bad either

All of the photos are different in each way and every time Mario posts ones up he accompanies it with a small story detailing the context of the SOTM.

I’ve lost a good couple of hours going back through that site and there really is so much stuff in there, it’s quite astounding. The site itself, is now over a year old with a back catalogue of nearly 400 photographs that cross Continents, Languages and Religions. Happy, Sad, Sexy and Fun – SOTM really is an amazing project.

As I mentioned at the top of this post, I was pointed towards this site ages ago but only met Mario in person very recently at London’s Social Media Cafe, aka The Tuttle Club. It was the last event to be held at the Coach & Horses on Greek St and there was a real buzz in the air and everyone was smiling.

Mario chose a good day to visit!

One of the best things about the project is that it’s not exclusive to Mario to taking your photo. Literally, ANYONE can get involved, there is a page on the website that explains how you can send in your own SOTM images and mark your place on the site for all eternity.

I’m yet to properly sit down and talk to Mario about the future hopes for SOTM, but I know he’s recently started collecting audio clips from his participants to further enrich the pages of the site. One hopes that all of this creative output will one day lead to an exhibition of some sort and, having just spent the best part of two hours putting this post together (I got lost in the site – AGAIN), you can count that I’ll be first in line for a ticket when if and when it opens.

So come on, what did someone once tell you?

I mentioned last week (amongst other things) that I would be ‘back once again to some cool BBC-based activities’ that I couldn’t actually talk about. Well, I could but I didn’t want to until it was all done, dusted and in the bag as it were… Well in the bag it is so.. Now I can tell you

This past weekend I was invited onto BBC Radio Five Live‘s ‘Pods & Blogs‘ programme to talk about all things mobile. Well, not all things mobile, (that’d be silly), but just mobile news-based stuff. Things like the T-Mobile G1 ‘Google Phone’, (which I actually got to have a play with a while back), the Firefox ‘Fennec’ Mobile Browser, The Future of Mobile Conference, Mobile Broadband and the new Sony Ericsson W595.

So – for your listening pleasure – I’ve put a little Ovi file together of the whole show. It’s about 24mins long and I come on around the 18min mark. Hope you like it…

You can

download the show

In the meantime, writing this up reminded me of the last time I did some stuff with the Beeb. Which, thinking on it, I don’t think I actually blogged about… Hmm. Maybe I should rectify that then? If it’s not too late..

Yeah ok, so way back in March I was invited onto BBC Radio 4‘s Today Programme on behalf of my employer, SpinVox, to talk about ‘The Business of Blogging’… i.e.: What is it I actually do for SpinVox and why (I think) it is important that brands have a presence in the blogosphere..
Because it is y’know… Important.

Rory Cellan-Jones gave his full write-up not long after the show aired but, in keeping with the Ovi multimedia theme of this post – you can listen to that particular segment of the show down below – with thanks to Neil from iGadget Life for capturing it for me.

As ever, your thoughts and feedback are welcome.

J.

There are three other parts available to view that I might post, depending on the feedback on this one…

So, what are you waiting for?

Feed back already!

So, without further ado, here’s the first batch of footage that I’ve managed to throw together…
Hope you like it and, if you make it to the end…

The whole thing rocks in at about 11mins approx and it gets quite geeky in places

…please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

What with this being my first proper attempt at this whole video-blogging malarky and y’know, all feedback is very, very welcome!

It’s Sunday – Blogathon continues… Cheating slightly, but like I said, it’s the weekend.

No major content today, although I am having a good think about the stuff that I’ll post in the week…
Monday is when the fun begins.

That’ll be tomorrow then.

The mission from here on in – for now at least, (until I clear my back load), is to try and blog once a day. I need to get this thing moving and the more time that passes the more information I have stored up that I simply have to share…

(plus there’s the small matter of my head *actually* exploding if I don’t get it all out soon)

And that is my promise to you dear and loyal readers.
Watch this space.
One post a day.

Starting.

Now.

At the time, obviously this felt like a fantastic idea and, although this isn’t me backing out already…
I must say that what with today being a Saturday and stuff…
Well…

It’s the weekend, innit?

I don’t know about you but I like to rest at the weekend. So, if you don’t mind – I’ll still keep to my guns, ‘One post a day Whatley’ will continue – but all the cool stuff, I mean – the really cool stuff – will come during the working week as it were. Y’know, Monday – Friday. That alright with you?

Cool.

And with that please excuse while I head back to My Happy Place…

See you tomorrow…
Maybe