These are awesome. The above one is entitled ‘Genetic Experiments’ and it’s by far and away my favourite. But really, the whole series is great, check them out.
3. Finding your Kryptonite
I drew this (with Paper) -
First and foremost, when you think about the semantic web, the intelligent web, the personal web, web 3.0 if you will, one is tempted to consider how ‘intelligent search’ (results served up to you based upon previous searches, conversations and location) could well be an adversary to information serendipity.
Google is probably the most guilty of all parties in this particular area [how often have you clicked past page one of the search results - really?] and this ‘feature’ will only improve with the arrival of Google+ (constantly tracking our every move across Google-related services). Of course, there are services that can aid the accidental discovery; StumbleUpon springs to mind, although even that requires a certain amount of input around your interests…
My issue is, as William McKeen, whose quote sits above this text, quite rightly points out – sometimes the joy is in the looking, the surprising finding, the enrichment of serendipity. And it is escaping us all. How does one fight to retain this disappearing pleasure? Read more books, more magazines… seek out the unknown and be endlessly curious.
At least, that’s what I’m going to do.
3. Is Google+ a ghost town?
Speaking of the big G, a huge conversation kicked off about numbers and usage last week when I asked my friends if they had an opinion on the above question. Even if you have only a passing interest in all things Google+, its users and/or its potential usage – I would recommend you take a look. You might be surprised at what you find.
5. Snickers
Back in January the above chocolate bar ran a ‘campaign’ on Twitter that involved celebrities such as Katie Price and Rio Ferdinand tweeting about said snack [but without really letting people know they were being paid for it until the very last minute]. Five tweets were sent by each, but only on the fifth tweet did the celebs let their followers know that they were sponsored – via the esoteric hashtag ‘#spon’.
People complained.
You can read more about the complaint itself when it happened, however the key parts are as follows:
“Since they got paid for sending these tweets, the ASA is investigating whether the celebrities’ first ‘teaser’ tweets should have indicated that they were part of an advert, and if the ‘#spon’ in the last tweet made it clear enough that it was advertising”
– The Drum
With me so far? Good. Well, there are (new) regulations to help monitor this sort of thing but, it turns out that post-investigation, the ASA found Mars not in breach of the code. Make of that what you will, but if you do any kind of brand work on or via social media, then the whole case is worth reading up on. The media are watching.
Here are five things (that are on time for once) from this past week that are all totally worth sharing with you, dear reader. Oh, and to top it off, I’m trying something different this week. Instead of just linking to stuff, I’m going to embed things wherever possible.
Do let me know what you think, won’t you? [Comments or tweets are welcome]
It’s pretty definitive, you can read your feeds offline and well, I’ve been using it daily ever since I bought it. If you use Google Reader and own an iPad, get Reeder. Now.
[iTunes link].
2. Amazing Cake
My girlfriend likes to bake. This is great news for my lips, but bad news for my hips. But who cares, you only live once and well, when it’s the GF’s best mate’s birthday and you’re asked to lend a hand in making THE BEST CAKE YOU’VE EVER MADE, you can’t really say no.
3. Little Bay
Keeping with said birthday celebrations for a further moment, we went in search of a restaurant last weekend that would cater our large group’s numbers as well as its eating habits. Through a spot of googling, tweeting and general recommending we ended up at Little Bay. It was GORGEOUS. And, if you ever find yourself looking for somewhere to eat ’round Kilburn way, I’d recommend it, 100%.
Good food, DAMN good prices and just a lovely atmosphere to boot. Go.
The second mobile thing that happened was the meeting of a crack group of mobile geeks in central London to celebrate NOT being at Mobile World Congress. It was fun. I barely made it on time (read: I was late) after spending the day in Paris at a meeting but still, we had quite a giggle. I’m sure there’ll be video soon too… [update: great write up from Kip]
5. TED 2023
A little while ago I blogged about how frickin’ awesome PROMETHEUS looked and how much it was definitely tied to the ALIEN universe. Well this week, the first piece of online marketing dropped, in the shape of a TED talk from 2023. If you’re unfamiliar with TED please go, right now, and educate yourself immediately. Guy Pearce features as one Peter Weyland whom, if you know your ALIEN mythology, is related to the Weyland corporation that is depicted in said world.
Five [and a bit] things of general awesomeness from last week.
Singin’ in the Rain.
On a whim, I managed to get a couple of stalls tickets to this recently opened West End musical…. and I was not disappointed. Beautiful, fun and very, very wet – Singin’ in the Rain was definitely the highlight of the week. If you’re looking for a show to see in London, then see this. .
One kick ass lasagne.
Many, many cheeses. I’ll be making that bad boy again. Oh yes. .
Not at MWC.
Mobile World Congress is the world’s largest mobile telecommunications conference and it happens every year around February time in Barcelona. I’ve been fortunate enough to attend a fair few times over the years, however this year (like last year) I won’t be making it over so instead (like last year), Dan and I are throwing a mobile-focused get together in London town. If you’re around, you should come along! .
CALM: Campaign Against Living Miserably.
Suicide is one of the biggest killers of young men in the UK today and this charity has been set up to combat that fairly horrific statistic. I met one of the founders this week and well, I doubt very much this’ll be the last time I blog about the subject (it certainly isn’t the first). For the time being however, please check out Thirty One – a new album of specially curated music from Manchester artists, and the best thing?
All profits go directly to CALM. Hop to it.
Bonuses: something I spent a lot of time working on last year was finally unveiled, Bonfire.IM became my favourite browser plug-in of all time and the Creative Social (although was somewhat disappointing in the main) yielded the discovery of the AMAZING Bear71.
Five things of note from this past week. Not as exciting as I’d hoped (I’ve had a week off and, surprisingly, haven’t spend much of it online) but here we go -
Troll Hunter! I arrived home yesterday to discover that someone had sent me both the newly-released Blu-Ray of Troll Hunter as well as a rather funky matching t-shirt. Which in turn meant that last night I finally got to watch a film that I’ve been busting to watch for AGES. You’ll be pleased to hear I was not disappointed and – freebies aside – I’d genuinely recommend seeking it out for its pure scandinavian bonkersness alone. .
The Marketing Academy opened up nominations for their third year of scholars this past week and – having been a part of the successful first year of entrants – I honestly cannot recommend this enough.
If you know of a high-potential, rising star in the field of advertising, communications or marketing, why not nominate them today? .
Recently, I was kicking off about the lack of ‘sequence mode’ on the new Nokia N8. Sequence mode, for the uninitiated, is basically a way to set the device to snap every ten, twenty or thirty seconds (depending on your preferred setting), basically allowing you to create awesome timelapse videos direct from your mobile phone.
It’s quite a fun feature that’s been present in leading Nokia handsets for several years. Alas, it is lacking in the N8.
However, to my rescue, here comes super-talented coder, Iain Wallace. Shortly after I tweeted about the disappearance of one of my favourite modes of Nokias gone by, Iain reached out and asked if I’d be a tester for an app that would do just that. I said yes (obviously) and have been messing around with ‘Lapsed’ for most of the afternoon.
This is my first take, it’s not brilliant but, expect more in the future…
The app itself isn’t open for public beta (yet) and isn’t available to download (yet). Iain’s still very much in alpha creation mode (many new dev libraries required etc) BUT, eventually, we might see something like this on the Ovi Store… Maybe.
This is today’s navlopomo, I know I have a couple of days MIA from the weekend, but I’ll get round to fixing that sooner or later. I have the videos, I just haven’t published them yet. I’ll be sure to link back to them when they’re backdated and up.
