Month: June 2014

Five things on Friday #78

Things of note for the week ending June 27th, 2014.
(sorry it’s late)

LOOK AT THE THINGS

1. Paper Later
Discovered via my friend Robbie last night (who had just taken delivery of his own copy). PaperLater is a super neat and super retro way of enjoying the articles that you save to your ‘read it later’ app of choice, e.g.: Pocket or Instapaper).

Paper Later

What it does is, for £4.99, pull all your saved-for-later articles, lays them out in a decent format, print them up on sustainable / recycled newspaper, and then delivers the whole thing to your door.

Lovely stuff.

The beta is UK only for now and you can sign up right here.

2. Petit Tube
Like Forgotify before it, Petit Tube is a website that celebrates the esoteric content of the internet. In this case, bringing out the very best (or worst) of YouTube by digging up those videos that have zero [or close to zero] views against them. This is deep exploration of the the long tail; here be dragons.

Seriously super random.

3. Phases in Mobile
A characteristically great post from Ben Evans. This week, using the TV ads of the past ten years to analyse how much the face of the mobile consumer space has changed since 1994.

Zero to 2bn customers in ten years. What will the next ten bring?

Read: Phases in Mobile.

4. Facebook’s ‘Experiment’
This story landed two days ago and it is spiralling like crazy. If you’ve not read about it yet, start with Marginal Revolution and click, click, click from there. This will not go away quickly.

5. Superman: DOOMED.
This isn’t an item about Superman. Well, it is. But that’s not what I mean. Guillem March is an artist working in comic books today. He uses his blog to demonstrate the process of creating, amongst other things, covers for different books.

This week he showed the process from this –

Screen Shot 2014-06-29 at 17.55.10

To this –

Superman Doomed cover color

I love this stuff.

That is all.

_____________________________________

Bonus items are all videos this week, enjoy –

 

Five things on Friday #77

Things of note for the week ending June 20th, 2014.

Bat bites. Like Whatley bits. But battier.

1. Burberry Twitter Cards
I’ve written about Twitter cards before and this year we’ll be seeing more and more of them appear in our collective streams. Further evidence of that is brought to us by a brand continually at the nexus of fashion and technology innovation, Burberry.

Imagine you’re Burberry and you want your oh-so-loyal and avid Twitter followers to absolutely tune into your next runway show. Got that far? OK. Now imagine you create a tweet with a calendar invite embedded in it.

Calendar Invite Card!

Ta da! Amazing.

Now, I want you to continue imagining you’re Burberry. But this time I want you to feel a pang of regret for the 98.98% of your followers that didn’t see your calendar event tweet (fact) and instead have to try and catch up somehow.

Well, that’s easy! You’re about to imagine a tweet with an embedded image gallery that your fans can easily browse, all without leaving Twitter.

Amazing Gallery Card!

Aren’t you fantastic, Burberry. Well done.

Via.

2. Good Music

MOOOOSIC

I’m a Spotify fiend. This Spotlight on new music playlist is the best new one I’ve listened to in a while. You should listen to it too.

Oh and for bonus sunshine action, subscribe to this beauty – Welcome to Summer folks x

If you don’t use Spotify well…

Sorry.

Maybe I’ll link you to something next week.

3. Hannibal
Last night, I finished season two of Hannibal.

Hannibal

Mads Mikkelson stars an the eponymous anit-hero/villain/cannibal and the show is loosely based on the events before and during those of Red Dragon. Telling the story of Will Graham and his first dealings with Hannibal Lector, Hannibal it is a stunning show.

Some of you may have heard of this show, some of you may have already finished it. But if you haven’t, or if you’re looking for something new in a post-Breaking-Bad, post-Game-of-Thrones-Season-4 world, Hannibal is it.

The season two finale is one of the best pieces of television I have ever seen.

I am still gushing about it.

Just watch it.

Now.

4. Ghostbusters 3

ghostbusters

It is happening. Bill Murry will return. It’s based on the video game. It’s based on Hell invading New York. Bill Murray won’t be back. It’ll feature new, younger ‘busters. It isn’t happening.

Much has been said about this long-gestating non-project but ever since Harold Ramis passed away, I’ve been firmly in the camp of IT ISN’T HAPPENING, but Max Landis (son of that awesome director guy I met once) has a hella wicked idea for the opening scene.

WHY NOT READ IT?

5. DERMAPHORIA
Last weekend I was extremely lucky to be invited along to the opening night of the East End Film Festival.

DERMAPHORIA

The opening film? DERMAPHORIA.

Described as ‘An inspired experimental chemist, wakes up in a New Orleans jail, accused of arson that’s linked to an illegal drug-manufacturing ring. Suffering from amnesia, he’s unexpectedly released on bail, determined to find his missing girlfriend.’ DERMAPHORIA is an unforgiving trip into the mind of a drug-addled way of life and is a non-stop back and forth between the worlds of the way up high and the deep come down.

It is JAGGED.
It is grimy.
It is a horror show of what it’s like to be under the illusion of being touched by God and it does not give its audience an easy ride at all. So go in ready. DERMAPHORIA requires concentration. You, like the film’s protagonist, will feel lost, frustrated, and at times utterly beaten.

I can’t recommend it enough and, without the East End Film Festival, I doubt I would’ve seen it at all. Good work, EEFF. Keep it up.

Find it and see it, as soon as you can.

Here’s the trailer.

Sidenote: Ron Perlman’s in it. I met him afterwards. That wasn’t as cool as I hoped it’d be. Ah well.

—

Until next week,

Whatley out.

_____________________

Bonus items this week –

 

Five things on Friday #76

Things of note for the weekend ending June 13th, 2014.

no-synthetic-biology-allowed-960x594

Tons of video stuff this week. If you’re reading this in a newsletter, I’ve thrown in the links to the videos along the way so you TOO can enjoy teh awesomez.

1. Silent Crickets
On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, Marlene Zuk has been studying crickets. Between 1991 and 2000, the crickets got more and more quiet and in 2001, Zuk heard only a single calling male cricket. The volume had decreased, but had the volume actually decreased?

The crickets hadn’t disappeared. Zuk would go for nighttime walks and see multitudes of the insects in the light of her headlamp. If anything, there were more of them than before. They just weren’t calling out. When she dissected them, Zuk found out why.

Male crickets call with two structures on the backs of their wings—a vein with several evenly spaced teeth (the file) and a raised ridge (the scraper). When the cricket rubs these together, the effect is like running your nail along the teeth of a comb—you get a thrrrrrrrrrrrp sound. But on all the silent Kauai crickets, the file was growing at a weird angle and had all but disappeared. Their wings were flat.

The reason?

The crickets were targeted by a parasitic fly, whose larvae burrow inside them and devour them alive. The flies finds the crickets by listening out for their songs and they’re so effective that, in the early 90s, they had parasitised a third of the males.

But the silent males escaped the attention of the fly. As they bred and spread, they carried the flatwing mutation with them. By 2003, the cricket population had rebounded. And in fewer than 20 generations, they had gone from almost all-singing to almost all-silent. The crickets have become a classic textbook example of rapid evolution.

Nature is awesome. Via.

2. Slow motion Ballet

slow mo ballet

In this video, six members of the Washington Ballet demonstrate their most challenging moves.

Worth watching.

3. What day is it Sunday?

Video link.

4. The best of E3
I am a gamer. If you’ve listened to this past week’s Voicemail podcast, you’d know that I confessed to not reading anything about mobile technology over the last seven days because, thanks to the Electronic Entertainment Expos – aka ‘E3’ – I’ve been totally and utterly bingeing on game trailers at almost every opportunity. The three stand outs?

BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT
The fourth third* game in the Arkham series, this final part of the Rocksteady trilogy looks IMMENSE.

The one thing need to know? You get to drive the Batmobile.

*Batman: Arkham Origins, though officially part of the Arkham games canon, is widely accepted to ‘not count’ as it wasn’t built by Rocksteady Studios and, as a result, is a poor imitation of what makes a good Arkham game.

[video link]

ASSASSIN’S CREED: UNITY
There’s no doubt in my mind that the Assassin’s Creed series is probably my favourite set of games of recent years. AC: Black Flag was a day one purchase for me and this latest iteration looks like it might be the same.

The one thing need to know? In the video the commentary mentions that certain parts of Paris have been built at a 1:1 scale. That’s awesome.

[video link]

NO MAN’S SKY
This one very nearly passed me by completely (so big love to Matt for making sure I didn’t miss it), No Man’s Sky is a simple science-fiction game about exploration and survival. It looks stunning.

The one thing you need to know? Your character exists in an infinite procedurally generated universe. In. Sane.

[video link]

5. Clickhole
This is everywhere right now.

CLICKHOLE
The Onion is a satirical take on American news. In a post-listicle world, where click-bait and headlines such as ‘Seven things Nigel Farage could learn from Vladimir Putin‘ are commonplace, you could read this as some kind of post-modern take on what ‘news’, or news delivery, has become.

Or you could read it as The Onion not-that-subtly trolling the hell out of Buzzfeed. Either way, they uploaded 16 pictures of Beyonce not sicking in quicksand yesterday, and you won’t believe what happened next.

And that’s it, we’re done.

Except.

We’re not.

Bonus items for your oculars this week are:

  • The Calvin & Hobbs story
    If you missed this, read the write up. I must confess, I’ve never been a huge C&H fan (sorry), but this story made me smile from ear to ear.
  • Winging it
    Everyone is totally winging it, all the time. A great read.
  • Articulated TMNT
    The concept of ‘arty images of 80s pop-culture accompanied with deep and meaningful thoughts’ is not new to me however the mutant turtles are going through a bit a revival at the moment, so this seems timely.

See you next week.

Five things on Friday #75

Things of note for the week ending June 6th, 2014.

THE THINGS! THERE ARE FIVE OF THEM!

1. Click bait fixer!
Filed under ‘my favourite new Twitter account of the week’, @SavedYouAClick is here to thwart clickbait headlines and save you time. Examples below –

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

2. Hercules
I love THE ROCK. There, I said it. I don’t care. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s latest film, Hercules, is out soon and it looks a suitably special-effects-laden cheese fest that I’ll be seeing at the cinema because that’s the kind of thing I like to do and I don’t have to justify it to anyone. GOT IT? GOOD.

Anyway, here’s the latest trailer –

ROAAAR!

3. The Listserve
The premise is simple: one person a day wins the chance to write to a growing list of subscribers. Add your name to the list and that person could be you. What would you write if you had the chance to speak to 25,000+ people in one go? The Listserve is beautiful, ugly, perfect, dull, exciting, boring, sad, moving, and sometimes utter drivel. It is human.

Sign up today. I read a good one recently called ‘The Girl in my Phone‘ – maybe start with that.

4. The Last Billboard
Speaking of interesting lotteries, The Last Billboard is a 36 foot long rooftop billboard located on the corner of Highland and Baum in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Each month a different individual is invited to use the billboard and display their own message on the custom designed ad space.

tumblr_mcb726EQxP1rggf2to1_1280

tumblr_n58m0wSyQd1rggf2to1_1280

tumblr_mq9py1Mt0r1rggf2to1_1280

It is quite wonderful.

5. Farewell, Fantastic Four (?)
You can park this one under RUMOURSVILLE however there have been a lot of murmurings of late about Marvel dialling down on the marketing of all things Fantastic Four just as Twentieth Century Fox starts to get going on its latest iteration/reboot of the franchise.

Fantastic Four imagery was apparently taken down at Marvel HQ and an artist claims that they were instructed by Marvel not to use “FF characters or supporting cast such as Dr Doom, Galactus, Surfer, Skrulls etc” when it came to sketches for the 75th anniversary. Another artist backed the claims up, submitting an instruction sheet from Marvel which read, “all Marvel characters related to Fantastic Four are now off limits and will be immediately rejected by Marvel.” It even listed the characters that couldn’t be used. Even Fantastic Four-related assets have been reportedly been taken down by Marvel, so that promotional partners and licensors can’t access them.

The reason? Money, of course. But Screenrant has a great rundown of the conspiracy so far.

If true, comic book fans lose out, as always.

Bonus items:

1. The best Nicolas-Cage-based prank ever.

2. Thinking about The Internet of Things.

3. A happy hello to all the new and lovely Five Things on Friday newsletter subscribers. If you’re on the list, you’ve probably found it via a fancy Twitter Card. Wanna know how you make your own? I got you covered.

See you next week!

How to: set up Lead Generation Twitter Cards

Lead generation cards are free to use and set up.
This is how you do it.

Lead Gen Twitter Cards of WIN

Regular readers of this website will know that every Friday I put up a collection of the five most interesting things I’ve seen that week.

The posts, imaginatively entitled ‘Five things on Friday‘, are relatively popular. So much so that recently I decided I’d turn them into a weekly newsletter, so that a) folk can get the good stuff delivered to their inbox and b) I could learn how to do it.

And how am I going to get subscribers for this newsletter? From the lead-gen Twitter card!

What is a Lead Generation Twitter Card? Twitter itself expresses the definition thus:

Twitter Cards let you bring rich experiences and useful tools to users within an expanded Tweet. The Lead Generation Card makes it easy for users to express interest in what your brand offers. Users can easily and securely share their email address with a business without leaving Twitter or having to fill out a cumbersome form.

And they look a little bit like this –

Lead Generation Twitter Card Example

Fancy, right? It’s a one-click sign up. EASY.

What I’m going to walk you through today is how to set up not only how to set up lead-gen Twitter cards but also linking them to a Mailchimp mailing list and WordPress blog feed.

I’m good to you.

STEP ONE:
SETTING UP THE TWITTER CARD

First, go to Twitter. Well, not strictly speaking. You need to go to ads.twitter.com.

Screen Shot 2014-06-05 at 12.16.41

EDIT: THIS HAS NOW CHANGED

Before you can see the screen below, you will need to enter your credit card details. Twitter will no longer let you create Lead Gen cards (or Website Cards for that matter) without your credit card details.

I’ve entered mine and have steered VERY CLEAR of hitting the ‘promote’ button.

Without entering these details you will not be able to see the buttons demonstrated from this point onwards.

FYI.

Cards_-_Twitter_Ads

Sign in with your Twitter account (you don’t need to be an advertiser to do this), click on ‘Creatives’ in the top nav, and then ‘Cards’, hit the big blue Create Lead Generation Card button on the right and you’re away.

Most of this first part is pretty simple: you need a description, an image (650 x 150) and a privacy policy. This last part is a little ridiculous, but I’ve created a special page that says I’m not going to sell your email address etc. But there’s no policing around this, so feel free to put a big ‘F U’ in there instead and see if anyone actually calls you on it.

Finish that bit and you’re pretty much ready to go with your first Lead Gen Twitter Card.

Hurrah and hurrah again.

BUT!

You probably want to do a bit more once you’ve got those lovely email addresses. If, like me, you [want to] run your mailing lists through Mailchimp, then this is what you need to do next.

If you scroll down a bit on your lead-gen card page, you’ll see a ‘Data settings (optional)’ section. This is where you add in your Mailchimp id details.

STEP TWO:
SETTING YOUR TWITTER CARD TO TALK TO MAILCHIMP

When you get to Mailchimp (assuming you already have a Mailchimp account), set up a List in Mailchimp. I call mine ‘5 Things’. You might call yours ‘Magic Beans’ or ‘Web Curios’.

Lists___MailChimp

Go to your Lists section, click on the drop down arrow (next to Stats) and head to ‘Sign Up Forms’, then ‘Form Integrations’, and then – oh look, here are the bits you need for your Twitter Card.

And that’s it, you’re done. Anyone that clicks on your Lead-Gen Twitter Card ‘Sign Me Up!’ button will have their email address delivered into your Mailchimp mailing list.

STEP THREE:
SETTING WORDPRESS TO TALK TO MAILCHIMP

WordPress_›_AutoChimp_«_WordPress_Plugins

This part had me going around in circles for a good couple of hours and y’know what? It’s EASY. Go download a plugin called ‘AutoChimp’, boot that up, and pick what tag/category you want to publish (again, for me it’s ‘5things’) and that’s it – you’re done!

It’s not a short process but it’s a relatively simple one.

Some examples –
Test.
The Voicemail.
Mat Morrison.
WWF.

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