Five things on Friday #26

Things of note for the week ending June 29th, 2012

1. Amazing Superman Art is Amazing
Part painting, part sculpture; this pixelated masterpiece is just marvellous. It’s almost as if Kal-El has been made up of those tall buildings that he famously leaps in a single bound. I like.

A lot.

2. Visit England

This is awesome.

Not England going out of the Euro 2012s, of course not. But Visit England leaping on it so quickly meant that they basically WON THE INTERNET.

At the time of blogging, the tweet in question had received over 9600 retweets and was still being held up as a champion of excellence for brands working in, and across, the world of super-reactive social media.

Well done Visit England, I salute you.

3. A 3D mapping project of the London Underground
I found this the other day and immediately forwarded it to my friend (and avid London Underground blogger), Annie Mole. She blogged it, naturally, but I couldn’t help myself either.

tube21

There’s only a limited amount of stations you can view at the moment (as they’re being built from public drawings, plans and memory only), but it’s still worth seeing if only because you get to see why the Victoria to Bakerloo change at Oxford Circus (above) is just so darn quick.

Go play.

4. The Star Wars that I used to know
This is especially timely as me and the girl are currently revisiting the series and, given the other half’s limited knowledge of said saga, we’re viewing them in MACHETE-ORDER.

Machete order makes perfect sense. In the mean time, and/or if you need any further justification, watch this epic Star Wars music video… which is just so good.

….so so so so so good.

5. Six terrible movie decisions (that gave us great movie moments)
There’s a few here that I knew already, but The Empire Strikes Back stuff is fairly cool (telling you exactly why Han was – SPOILER – frozen in carbonite at the end of the film, for example). That, combined with finding out why ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is such a Christmas classic makes this list worth a look.

Also, while reading that, I was reminded of the bat-sh*t crazy Nick Cave Gladiator 2 script that I read once.

Man, I wish that got made.

—

Bonuses: I haven’t bought a ticket to see The Amazing Spider-Man*; a London F1 Grand Prix would be EPIC, clearly; and if you missed Google’s amazing Project Glass / Live Sky-diving trick last week, then you can both watch it, and find out how they did it, over on Techcrunch.

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*I don’t know why that’s a bonus thing of note this week, it just is. I was super-excited about it, but that seems to have worn off. Perhaps it’s the over-egging of the pre-release pudding. Maybe I’ve seen too much of the all-new, all-shiny amazing one himself…  Maybe I’m just not as taken with it as I thought I’d be…  *shrug*… watch this space.

— Whatley out.

 

Lady Lemur’s Awesome Emporium

I have an iPad case. It is awesome.

So, @LadyLemur made me an iPad case...

Seriously.

Not a week goes by without someone passing comment about it in some way, shape or form. AND I LOVE IT. I’m not one to follow the crowd you see. I like things to be different (this too will also explain my iPad’s Joker-themed back decal as well as its sustainable African bubinga wood cover – I know there’s a word for this, but I don’t care).

Anyway, my point is, I used to know a girl called Roger and many moons ago we used to write a comedy blog together, and it was fun. However, times change, and it would seem, names do too.

These days Roger goes by the new mantle of ‘Lady Lemur‘ and while her blogging prowess has not ceased, her sewing and darning skills have grown immensely. So much so that what started off as a mere folksy-based hobby, is now a fully-fledged part-time job.

Lady Lemur’s Awesome Emporium is a place where you can purchase all sorts of geeky, material-based covers. From iPads to iPhones and everything in-between (read: kindles), Lady Lemur can cater for you all. Word has it she also makes handbags, but I wouldn’t know much about that.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is, if you have a piece of tech that needs a geeky cover – Lady Lemur’s Awesome Emporium is where you should be headed.

She rules.

Liam Brazier

Awesome comic book art is awesome.

I first came across the work of Liam Brazier on one of my favourite art blogs, My Modern Metropolis. Probably after I tweeted about JUST HOW AWESOME his work was, I got into a rather geeky exchange with my friend Elise Pearce – which ended up with both of us committing to buying some of his work.

Elise bought Batman ‘Cave Man‘, I went for Superman ‘Man Up‘.

However, the way that I wanted Supes wasn’t really advertised on Liam’s online shop, so I reached out to him (fortunately he’s fairly active on Twitter) and explained what I was looking for… he said it might be extra, I said I didn’t care… so we came to an agreement, and I got what I wanted.

I have... New art.

— ‘Man Up’, on my wall at home —

It is, clearly, awesome. And I believe it is also the only one, of its size, in existence.

Epic. Win.

Brazier’s work covers off the standard comic book heroes, obviously, but there’s also Star Wars, Rocky, Withnail, Teen Wolf and a whole bunch of other great stuff that I don’t know the name of.

I guess my point is, if you’re a geek with a penchant for the artistic, take a look at Liam’s work. I really can’t recommend it, or him, enough.

 

Update: turns out he does animation too. Wicked.

 

In The Theme Park

The pitch?

“One evening five dramatically different and challenging speakers, together with their equally unruly audience, go to work on the soft edges of a common theme.”

Each of the five speakers were given the same brief of which one part was this –

This, was their theme, if you will. Using that, in part at least, as an inspiration point – each speaker had to give a ten minute talk about how said theme had inspired them.

Discussions from all sorts of weird and wonderful minds filled the air, from Captain Scroggs‘ tales of flipping the music industry on its head through the fetishisation of product in the digital age (see real world example, Tom the Lion); to Jeremy Hutchison’s dissection of the centimetre-thick glass that stands between us and the goods we so desperately want… His description of last year’s London looters as ‘the over-performing consumer’ was a definite highlight.

My section, at the mid-way point, took a more futurology-based approach. With homemade slides to boot (thank you, Paper). They’re embedded below, however I would recommend that you click through to the slideshare page where the accompanying slide notes are also available.

In The Theme Park: The High Street

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Overall, In The Theme Park was a wonderful evening. Good food, both for the brain and for the stomach, good company and a thoroughly entertaining way to spend an Wednesday evening in London town.

FreeState, the agency behind it, did a superb job in speaker selection (if I do say so myself) as well as audience curation. Which, funnily enough, is probably the one thing that most event organisers overlook.

Follow @InTheThemePark on Twitter to find out when the next event is on.

No doubt I’ll see you there.

—

UPDATE: In The Theme Park have published their own blog post documenting the evening and, to be perfectly honest, having my talk referred to as ‘a digitalised version of Edward de Bono’s thinking hats‘, is quite possibly one of the best compliments I’ve ever received. 

 

 

Five things on Friday #25

Things of note for the week ending June 22nd, 2012

Date night presents ftw

1. Awesome girlfriend is awesome
I have a new Moleskine. It has Lego on it. It’s amazing. That is all.

2. Hakkasan
OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD. I ate at Hakkasan for the first time EVER this week and… OH. MY. GOD. the food is AMAZING. Melt in your mouth, gifted from heaven, purest of all Asian greatness – I literally can’t stop thinking about it.

Eat at Hakkasan. At once.

I could go into massive details about certain dishes, and what was so good about each one, or why one thing might be better than the other – but I won’t, as I am fairly sure everything on the menu is awesome. We didn’t have one bad dish (and we ate a lot). It’s not cheap. But dudes, spoil yourselves.

Best meal I’ve had all year. Fact.

(and how’s this for amazing service? The girl bought me a present – see item 1 – and, because I unwrapped it like an excited child over dinner – the staff thought it was my birthday AND THEN MADE ME A BIRTHDAY DESSERT. Just, fantastic).

3. Legoland Windsor

whoooooosh

We went to Legoland last weekend (more girlfriend-based awesomeness) and had such a good time! From wet-rides to rollercoasters, to taking arty shots of awesome Lego displays (see above) and back again. Legoland is a proper giggle. Alright we had a small person with us, who we got to spoil with bricks and who kept us all smiling the whole day there, but still. It was a LOT of fun.

Oh, and there’s a Lego submarine too. Amazing.

4. Friends
The past seven days really have been so good. I’ve caught up with a lot of people whom I’ve missed a fair bit recently and this week, be it over email, drinks or dinner, my friends have made me roar with laughter, smile with joy and generally warm all the way through with stupid happiness.

Thanks guys, you know who you are – and you rock.

5. The Girl Who Would Be King
One of my newest blog finds, 1979 semi-finalist – aka, comic book geek, Kelly Thomson – is giving away the first part of her book ‘The Girl Who Would Be King‘.

Chapters one and two are available already and I’m fairly sure three and four won’t be far behind now reading parts three and four. It’s good. So read it.

–

Outdoorsy bonuses this week: work commitments meant I had to sell my Isle of Wight Festival ticket (booo!), but the washout looks mental, so there’s one upside. No Isle of Wight means I’m free to go to Royal Ascot this weekend. I’ve not been before, so it should be ace! Festival-wise, I’ve still got Nova to look forward which, weather depending, is looking like it’s going to be great too.

Different theme to this week’s five things.
There’ll be more cool stuff next week.

 

Whatley out.

 

 

Nike, Twitter, and the ASA: new rules are required

A fifteen minute lunchtime download –

Guardian Headline

It happened.

If you missed this in the press, Nike had their Twitter campaign banned because they were found to be in breach of the ASA’s online remit around transparency.

The ASA said –

“We considered that the Nike reference was not prominent and could be missed. We considered there was nothing obvious in the tweets to indicate they were Nike marketing communications.

In the absence of such an indication, for example #ad, we considered the tweets were not obviously identifiable as Nike marketing communications and therefore concluded they breached the [advertising] code. The ads must no longer appear. We told Nike to ensure that its advertising was obviously identifiable as such”.

You can read the full and thorough article over on The Guardian, however (and if you’ve already done that), for me, this finding throws up a whole other set of questions that I first started pondering nearly a year ago.

In this IAB post ‘Rules Rules Rules‘, from August 2011, five months after the ASA remit extension – I made the following argument:

————–

“If we … think about the combined worlds of brand, celebrity and sport personality, for example – how do these new standards play out?

Case in point: Tiger Woods and Nike.

When we see Mr Woods teeing up at the PGA Tour, do we question that the Nike cap he chooses to wear is there for any other reason than advertising? No. Of course not. It’s an expectation. Something that we, as the viewing public, have grown to accept within this particular industry. It’s a given that this happens. However, it’s also assumed that – given his high profile nature – that this sponsorship must have happened. Why else would he be wearing the logo? And of course, there is no doubt that Nike put out a press release when this sponsorship was made – but how long ago was that? Tapping the word ‘ad’ on the tail of everything [paid for] that we publish is kind of silly really.”

————–

Swap Tiger Woods for Wayne Rooney and we’re pretty much in line with what has happened here.

While I, as a social media practitioner and professional, wholly endorse legislation to correctly monitor and police this nascent marketing channel, I find it hard to not at least side slightly with Nike with their defence of:

‘…both players were well-known for being sponsored by the retailer which argued that Twitter “followers” would not be misled about the relationship it had with the players.’

The ASA’s sticking point?

‘It was understood from its investigation that the final content of the tweets was “agreed with the help of a member of the Nike marketing team“.’

It’s important to acknowledge this key point: Nike had a say in what was written by their sponsored sportsman. If they didn’t, then it wouldn’t be an issue, (right?).

Placing that aside…

Everything that’s been written about social media has defined how different it is from the rest of the media types that have come before it; it changes the game.

The Snickers case [item 5], was found to be not in breach of the new remit. Nike, was. To say this is still very much a grey area would be an understatement and, as a result, the industry needs smarter, more fluid, regulations accordingly.

While HONESTY will always be your best marketing tool (thank you, Nicole), when one side thinks it was being true and the other thinks it wasn’t, an adult conversation needs to be had about consumer-wide understanding and acceptance of what sponsorship means.

And moreover, just how exactly celebrity sponsorship works together with social media.

 

 

Dark Knight Rises: Exclusive Nokia Trailer

“Mr Wayne…” 

I am so up for this. Tickets have been bought, opening weekend is in (IMAX style, natch) and, of course, the Nokia campaign is kicking off very shortly in full swing…

Check. It. Out.

^Bonus Dark Knight Rises Wallpaper

There might be a few more tricks up their sleeves between now and launch.
Watch closely…

 

How this blog stays alive

The content, obviously comes from me. The framing, the clean-theme and overall niceness that the content is framed within, that came from Pepsmedia.

However, there is a third part of the equation that doesn’t get much airtime or love…  and that is of the hosting, the ‘backend’ …the admin if you will.

And that just so happens to be one Mr Nicholas Butler.

Future of Online Video @ ICA #amp09

via Phil Campbell

Nik, also known as Loudmouthman, has been looking after the backend of this wordpress site ever since it first fumbled it’s way into the world four years or so ago. Before he came along, I was posting my mad mutterings onto a VOX blog and, believe it or not, before that, even MySpace. Yeah, I know.

But, ever since I bought my very own URL, Nik has been looking after my backend. What this means is: when I first set up, he did all the annoying bits. And, when my site is down, I get to ask him (normally via Twitter), if it is for him too. When the answer is yes, it is back up again within minutes. MINUTES.

I don’t know how it works and I don’t know how he does it.  What I do know is – for example, this past the weekend, on Sunday in fact, I wasn’t able to actually publish anything and, within 30mins of emailing Nik, the problem was fixed.

This is nothing short of awesome.

What I’m trying to say is: if you’re doing anything that involves IT, admin, web-backendy things, wordpress, hosting, security, load-testing etc…  Generally all that other stuff that you don’t really want to think about, EVER; be you big business, or tiny start-up, SPEAK TO NIK BUTLER.

I whole-heartedly recommend (and use) his services.

Loudmouthman - well it wasn't broken when I left it :)

via Benjamin Ellis

And I’m not alone either, Sizemore is a fan and, if you’re still not sold, go read the comments on this blog post Nik wrote about giving ‘lasting advice’.

Epic.

Nik Butler. This site wouldn’t be here without him.

 

 

 

Trimming in Public – Part 3

Cleaning out my RSS, ten feeds at a time. Parts one (including an explanation of the exercise) and two are in the bag, so let’s crack on with part three –

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Alec Baldwin
This is the feed from Alec Baldwin’s semi-regular column over at The Huffington Post. I don’t read the Huff, but I do read Alec Baldwin. Intelligent, witty, worldly, entertaining and overall a brilliant thought leader, Baldwin is one of those irregular posters who I get excited about every time I see the ‘(1) unread’ light up next to his name. Read this.
Decision: Keep

Alfred App
Vero Pepperrell (and her husband Andrew) designed the theme for this blog back when they were getting their business off the ground. One of their ‘side’ projects (which has since grown and grown and grown) is Alfred App, a Mac OSX Quicklaunch Application. This is their blog. I’ve got Alfred installed, and I’m a subscriber to their newsletter too so I don’t really need to be subscribed to the blog anymore. HOWEVER, if you’re looking for the defacto search app for Mac, then look at Alfred. He’s awesome.
Decision: Remove

All About Symbian – News
This is the first of non-full feeds that I’ve come across. I’ve explained RSS before, however, if RSS readers are hooks that pull in fresh content from websites across the world, then the non-full RSS feed is the equivalent of bagging an old leathery boot. Yeah, it feels like you’ve got a bite, but when it lands on the boat there’s only a soggy title and the first 90 or so words of the content. Rubbish.

There’ll be a fair few items that get thrown out for not being ‘full feed’, but All About Symbian isn’t one of them (yet). The authors of this site know their onions and, given that the Symbian platform is on its way out, I can’t see this lasting much longer. However, while it *is* here, I want to read it.
Decision: Keep (for now)

ALL THAT IS GOOD
The blog of ex-Nokian marketing guru, Dan Goodall, ALL THAT IS GOOD is a though-provoking read. If you’re in creative strategy, and/or marketing activation around digital/social media and you have an interest in community building and content co-creation, then Dan’s blog is well worth a read. Yes, I just spewed forth a whole ton of social media garbage, but Dan knows his stuff and was creating online brand equity while you were still in nappies. He doesn’t blog too often, but when he does – you read it, and you pay attention. Got it? Good. All good.
Decision: Keep 

Allix: this is my brain on…
No updates since December 2009. I love you, Allix, but you’re crap at blogging.
Decision: Remove

Alone in the Dark
Well-written film reviews. Short, sharp and an enjoyable read.
Decision: Keep

Al’s Blog
My friend Alex Barclay blogs in fits and starts; sometimes going for months on end without an update, he’ll suddenly go daily for a two week period and then close up again, like nothing had ever happened. Alex and I used to tread the boards together (well, we did two plays) and, as a budding actor in Londontown, his blog can be an amusing read. I love him dearly and, better yet, he knows how to write too.
Decision: Keep

An International Smoothie
There isn’t much I can say about Sam Ismail. He disappeared a while back and, if there’s any truth to what went down, he’s going to stay that way for a very long time. Take care Sam, wherever you are.
Decision: Remove

Andrew Currie on WordPress
Dead blog. Andrew has since moved on (I’ll talk about how awesome he is when I get to his other RSS feed later on in ‘O’ – I’m sure).
Decision: Remove

anonlinegreenworld.com
The blog of 1000heads creative director (and one of my closest friends), Robbie Dale. Described as ‘a record of the beautiful, inspiring and constantly surprising world we live in’ – Robbie’s content is often as interesting as it is surprising. Not a bad insight into what makes creative people tick; take a look.
Decision: Keep

——

Part four, coming soon.

Whatley out.