Technology
I Updated My Blog’s Sidebar!
It’s been in the works for over a year. But last week it actually happened: I left the building. Or rather stayed at home, and didn’t log into Zoom. Anyway, I don’t work for Wieden+Kennedy anymore. (You might know that this isn’t the first…
Long Read – The New Propaganda
Long and very bleak but very important piece from The Guardian: Information Trap. My jaw was dropped for most of it. This blew my mind. In the case of the vote to leave the EU, Borwick, who seems to approach such challenges like a Rubik’s…
The Outline is an antidote to the shitweb
I don’t fully agree with all of it all the time, but The Outline is a wonderful thing. A publication that’s well written and beautifully designed for phones and computers. Loved this piece that came in the email yesterday: Productivity Is…
A cornetto, a SIM card, a Vogue, and some Bitcoin please
Slides Q&A from Ravensbourne
Last night Tony and I did a talk for a bunch of wonderful students at Ravensbourne. In order to get the damn thing prepared in time, in a collaborative fashion, we used Google Slides. Whilst nerding around trying to get the thing sorted I…
Slack: Work This Way
Great piece in The Guardian this morning by @jemimakiss. It’s all about Slack and the culture behind the company. Reading through the piece it struck me how similar the cultures of Advertising Agencies and Tech Start-Ups are. And how…
Working differently at W+K London
We’ve just started something that I’m rather proud of (note: this is specifically a thing we’re trialling in the London office of Wieden+Kennedy). A couple of weeks ago we announced a bunch of changes to the way we work, some of the most…
Experiments in Medium-ing
Why am I interrupting the deep slumber of Crackunit to talk about Medium? I think it’s about time I gave it a go. I’m reading Medium content more and more every month. And over the last couple of years I’ve started to feel like I’m missing…
Advertising Has Grown a Penis on its Face
I did a talk the other day at Here London. I had a truly lovely time. The other speakers were all – without exception – amazing, talented, interesting and passionate. I felt spectacularly un-worthy. I whanged-on about what I reckon might…
Ugh, calendars.
The Chokehold of Calendars is well worth a read. In my experience, most people don’t schedule their work. They schedule the interruptions that prevent their work from happening. In the case of a business like ours, what clients pay us to…
The Small Things That Make the Difference
I’m visiting a mix on SoundCloud (this one if you care). The top of the page looks like this: Then I start playing the mix, and look what happens to my tab: Spot it? If not let me make it clear… SoundCloud have always been very good at…
My Talk at Under The Influence
Here’s the talk I did at Iris’ excellent Under the Influence day. It’s basically about digital experiences and magic and how the two are interconnected. Hope it’s OK – from my perspective I think it wanders a bit at the end (I sort of ran…
Google Visualisation Gadgets – Cool
I discovered the world of visualisation gadgets through this excellent blog: http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/ They’re things that can basically turn a table full of boring data into interactive gadgets that you can publish and share as…
10 Reasons Digital Is Better Than Advertising – Remixed
This is all going to seem a little strange. Why on earth would anyone want to remix a presentation in such a fashion? Well it’s a funny story you see. I was mucking around with some basic VJing software. It’s a thing called Quartonian that…
Boo hoo. I missed Rider Spoke.
I’m a little gutted. I just got the programme for the Brighton Festival and got all excited when I saw that Blast Theory’s location based cycling thingy Rider Spoke is coming to Brighton for a weekend! Woo hoo! Then I called up to try and…
Adobe Downloads Cost More Than Boxes – WTF?
I feel bad posting bad stuff about Adobe being as they’ve just launched 2 really cool things: Buzzword.com is an amazing online word processor (the export functions are dead tight and you could almost survive without MS Word), and…
URLs Out – Searches In
I was watching TV last night and an ad came on for continuing education. It’s one with fingers walking around the place. The ad was OK. I didn’t really pay much attention. But at the end of the ad the call to action was – “search for EMA…
Is It Broken?
Brilliantly simple. We’ve all had those moments when a site’s not working. And you wonder, is it down for everyone or just me? http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ answers the question for you. You enter a URL and it tells you. Smashing. I…
My New Invention – Suspense Pregnancy Kits
Pregnancy tests are a staple of TV drama. You can’t have a soap opera without the cliffhanger moment when someone is waiting in a bathroom staring at a wet little stick to find out if they’re up the duff or not. And these days the…
Absolut Machines
Dickon from work pointed me at: ABSOLUT MACHINES. It’s so killer it’s not even funny. They’ve got a load of top drawer interactive music machines that you can play with over the internet. And the way they’ve done the queueing and stuff is…
Typographic Synthesizer – So Good It’s Magic!
You know sometimes when you see something so amazing that you almost forget to breathe while you’re looking at it. Well I’m just about finished hyperventilating after the end of this video. The guys at Meek.fm have created something that…
Facebook Add To Friends QR Code
This is bloody great. Facebook app + QR code. Sounds like someone playing ‘cool shit mashup’. But here something’s been made that is much greater than the sum of its parts. It’s really simple. You add the Facebook app. Click ‘make my…
NewsGlobe
Charticles one day, NewsGlobes the next. It’s all getting a bit ‘Day Today‘ round these parts. NewsGlobe is a project that’s come out of the next.yahoo.net stables. There’s a description of how it came about here. For last month’s Yahoo!…
Powerpoint Karaoke
All this Pecha Kucha stuff is starting to get a bit dreary. The idea of PowerPoint Karaoke seems a lot more random and challenging. Basic idea is: people stick real presentations ‘in a hat’, then presenters get allocated a random…
The Best Online Music Toy Ever
This is the simplest and best thing I’ve ever seen for creating music fast. It’s massively usable. You can literally get into it by clicking a few keys – admittedly you’ll be making derivative euro-dance. But it’ll sound totally competent…
Oh My, That’s Lovely
Magnetic Ink, Process video from flight404 on Vimeo. Beautiful computer generated art, made by the supremely talented Flight 404 using Processing. Personally I think the whole thing is really helped by the use of non-computer music. If you…
Tutortainment or Entertorials
Connected to the entertaining demos post the other day. I love the way that these Photoshop Tutorials manage to tell a story of marital breakdown and infidelity through a bunch of nerdy design-tip-screencasts. I was laughing out loud at…
Q: Is It Possible For A Widget To Take The Mickey?
A: Yes.
For the Twitter Haters
If I didn’t have Twitter I wouldn’t have had these nuggets delivered to me. Two of the most important things I’ve read in some time… You can’t say that Twitter’s useless now. This proves it. I hope Russell and Hugh don’t mind me posting…
Mac Software Bundle
If you’re a Mac-head it’d have been hard not to have noticed MacHeist over the last couple of weeks. Basically it’s a bunch of small software makers who’ve joined together to bundle up their software at a too-good-to-miss price point. You…
All Loading Devices are The Devil’s Work
OK, I can bitch about circular loading devices. But I swear now that bars are no bloody better. I’m trying to archive off a whole chunk of my iTunes library that I don’t like so much. And it’s taking hours and hours to do it. But what’s…
Geometry Wars – Particle Man
This ad for Geometry Wars I liked. It’s almost another kind of entertaining demo, sort of: It makes me smile and chuckle. They’ve also got some bonkers online advertising which I can’t actually find right now. And the website is also…
P-p-p-product D-d-d-demos – The Beardyman Way
I’ve been looking around for interesting product demos recently. We’ve been talking to clients how demos can be both entertaining and informative. A couple of well-known entertaining product demos that spring to mind are Ikea’s Dream…
Funny 400 Error
Well it made me chuckle anyway. I found the error by typing in a bad URL at the MacRumours site.
3d Video
Wow. This 3d flash video (using papervision) is simply stunning. I predict a lot of this technique being over-used a lot in the next year. But it’s perhaps a glimpse of what Google’s street level mapping might become in the not too…
Toy Hacking
I’m really excited about the upcoming Toy Hacking workshop. I’m all signed-up and ready to go, but still quite in the dark about what I’ll actually come away from it being able to do. In my fantasy vision I’ll become some kind of mad…
Page Not Found – You Moron
Sometimes when a website is broken it feels like the computer blames you. That’s a bad thing. It’s rarely your fault. I’d been joking about making a 404-page featuring Igor (our head of technology and sys-admin dude) telling off site…
My MacBooks Fcked
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! Some gy splled coffee on my laptop on the way to work this mornng now the letter between y and o on the top row of letters wont work nor will the semycolon, apostrophe and the nmber between 6 and 8. Ts a real pain in…
Facebook Group – How Much Would You Cost?
I’m trying to figure out the value of a whole person (on Facebook). It seems that everyone’s talking about how we’re all being sold off bit by bit. So why not all flog ourselves whole to the highest bidder. Come along join in. Sell…
Why Marketeers Are Too Excited About Facebook
I almost can’t bring myself to write about Facebook. Everywhere I go I overhear people talking about Facebook. From people in the street on their phones talking to people about how they’re going to Facebook them to arrange a night out, to…
Vectorizer – WOW!
Check out VectorMagic it’s a fantastic online vectorization tool (I’m not sure why but I like vectorization better with a z than an s – I’m sure I’m not allowed to choose willy nilly like that, but this time I’m just going to). Basically…
The Nerd Handbook
Do you live with a nerd? Do you have friends who are nerdy? Do you sometimes wonder what’s going on inside their heads? This blog post is perhaps the definitive glimpse inside the brain of a nerd: The Nerd HandbookI nodded too many times…
Minority Report Wii
Elaborate hack that makes the Wii work like that crazy fingertip Minority Report interface that everyone loves so much. It’s quite a long time before it gets to the money shot and it’s quite high in geekiness. via: PSFK
Live Internet Streaming Man
Pretty soon we’ll all be like this. Photo from KK+ on Flickr. UPDATE: If you want to do live streaming from your phone keep your eyes peeled for Flixwagon. Eran popped by with news of a soon-to-launch startup, see comments for more.…
The Changing Nature of Information
By the same guy who did the great thing about Web2.0 in a similar style. Very nice. It’s a really good quick summary of a lot of the things talked about in David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous.
Google Vanity Ring
Too good. An project that looks at jewelery and status in the digital age. The creator Markus Kison says: Update of the ring as a status symbol. It shows the number of Google hits you get, when you search for the name of the person who…
How Much For An Ad On A Bus in Google Street View?
If you’ve not seen it yet Street View in Google Maps is amazing. Lifehacker reports that it’s now in 15 US cities (and it’s coming soon to the UK judging by the fact that we saw a Google cam car driving round London the other day). I’ve…
Skate – Nice Game, Nice Campaign
There’s a new game coming out called Skate. I think you should be able to guess what it’s about. It looks absolutely stunning, not sure that this clip will do it justice. I think they’ve also done some cool stuff with the control system by…
I’m Gonna Be Rockin The Commute
I’ve always wanted to be a guitar hero, but couldn’t face the callouses. Now I can create earnest rock music on the train… Jam Sessions on the Nintendo DS. I’ve pre-ordered and am waiting
O2 doesn’t support Macs, but does have the iPhone. Odd.
I wonder how that might change O2s policy on not supporting Apple Macs. I had a very odd conversation with someone in O2 customer support the other day where they told me that they didn’t support Macs. Apparently, according to the lady I…
Sharing Audio On YouTube
It’s interesting that people are using YouTube as a way of sharing audio. Obviously it’s not designed as an audio sharing site, but it does the job pretty well. I’m guessing that people are using it this way because: 1. YouTube has a…
Police Bluecasting
I got bluetoothed yesterday at Euston Station. It was O2 sending me a TV ad to watch on my phone. A boring and mildly depressing use of technology. But it reminded me of this, much more ‘interesting’, use of bluetooth that I’d read about…
My Stereo Thoughts On FaceBook
I’ve got lots of thoughts about FaceBook, some positive some negative. And I was trying to come up with a way to encapsulate it all. I sort of think I have, but there might be some holes in my analogy… For me, this is FaceBook: It’s like…
Why I Like This QR Code Poster
I like this QR code poster. Here’s the reason why: It’s very big, so you can take a photo of it from across the road. Good usability. It’s mulit-layered. If you don’t know what a QR code is, it doesn’t matter, it just looks like a big…
Overheard – Quote of the Day
I share a table with 2 techy types – I’m not going to name names ;-) This morning overheard a great little snippet from a conversation about how it’s difficult to get back into ‘code’ after a long weekend. Yeah, the human brain wasn’t…
Toshio Iwai’s Tenori-On From Yamaha
Toshio Iwai has made a load of cool audio widgety things. The thing I know best is Electroplankton on the Nintendo DS. But he’s done lots of other stuff too. I’ve just come across his latest device to hit the streets, Tenori-On, it’s a bit…
Arrested for Broadband Theft
Blimey! From today’s Argus Lite (the Brighton equivalent of Metro)…
Now That’s What I Call a Table!
This has been around for a while, but someone just sent it round work again. Stunning bit of physical interface shenanigans
The 7th Deadly Sin – We Have a Winner!
I’m absolutely flabbergasted at how many comments the 7 Deadly Sins of Digital has had. It’s up to 85 comments and still growing! But I figured it was time to pick my winner for the 7th Deadly Sin. Trouble is, there are so many great ones…
Funny URLs – I’m Sad
You know you’re a bit of a geek when… …You chuckle to yourself at a URL. I was just visiting the T-Mobile site and got this error page. Fair enough it’s very early in the morning and they’re probably doing some kind of update so I’m not…
7 Deadly Sins – It’s on Fire!
There’s some great comments coming in on the 7 Deadly Sins post. It’s going to be a struggle to pick a winner. I’ve got a couple of favourites already though. Problem is there’s going to be nothing left that we can do online once the list…
Shift Happens – Watch This Video
The second thought provoking animation of the week… Watch it. It’s good. Makes me realise that understanding and appreciating bits and bytes is really important. And maybe one day I’ll be able to apply it to something that makes a…
Firefox eBay Edition
This could have been around for ages, but I just saw a banner for it today for the first time… It’s basically a version of Firefox for people who do a lot of eBaying – it’s basically just a load of extensions for Firefox that have been…
The Mullet Strategy
Business up front. Party out the back. MySpace, Youtube, Wikipedia they’re all employing ‘The Mullet Strategy’. Genius, read a bit more at: http://buzzfeed.com/buzz/The_Mullet_Strategy
What I learned from ‘We Love Technology’
&tI promised to write some more about We Love Technology 2007, but I’m not going to write that much about the content of the talks. There are much better bloggers out there doing that kind…
We Love Technologie
I’ve just spent a lovely, if rather long, day in Huddersfield at a conference called We Love Technology. It was really cool. Lots of great speakers and another event that I’ve left with a buzzy head. I’ll write more about it later, but for…
How to make unique Moo Invite Cards
I love Moo Cards – they’re great. But I’ve always wondered how they could be made more ‘useful’. This blog post on how Adegga.com managed to print unique invite codes on a bunch of cards shows how, with a tiny bit of imagination you can…
They Just Had To… Blend an iPhone
I thought I’d posted the Blendtec ‘Will it blend?’ ads from YouTube before, but it doesn’t look like I did. Anyway I thought they were great, genuinely viral ads. Showing a slightly geeky professor / home shopping channel presenter…
Wiiiiiiiiiiii
My Nintendo Wii has been in a box for the last couple of months. But this weekend I had some mates over and we played it for a good few hours. It really is a very good thing. When glancing down my RSS feeds this morning (I think I was…
Twitter Serendipity
I was looking at Dan’s Twitter feed earlier and I saw that he’d noted (whilst at Glastonbury) that the Klaxons sounded like, as I think he put it: “a bag of cats”. I went back to try and find the tweet as I agreed with it so wholeheartedly…
Forget ‘Your Name on a Grain of Rice’…
I’ve always loved ‘your name on a grain of rice’ in fact at one point I wanted to get a collection of them. My name on a grain from every city that I visited and put them in a rice gallery in my house. But now I don’t care. I want my…
Nice USB Sticks
Actually they’re custard creams: And they’ve got Bourbon versions too! Check: www.getusb.info for more (but it doesn’t look too tricky to hack your own together out of those rubbery ‘joke’ biscuits).
Twitter Screensaver
I did something very simple with Twitter that I quite like. I took the RSS feed from my ‘friends’ page. Then fed it into the Mac RSS screensaver (which is installed as standard on a Mac). Now whenever my screensaver activates I get a…
Lovely Install Screens
On a Mac when you install something you get this screen which normally tells you to drag the application into the applications folder. Quite often you just see the application and you have to figure it out for yourself. Good companies make…
The Electro Plankton Quartet
As part of Russell’s Interesting 2007, I got to play as part of ‘The Electroplankton Quartet’. Although we’re likely to get very big and very famous, I thought it was worth setting up a MySpace page just to prove that we existed (just in…
Chemical Brothers ‘Shop’ in London
Not sure quite how I feel about this. I like it. But I’m not sure it’s a very good use of money. I’m trying to make it a better use of their money by blogging about it. The Chemical Brothers have taken over a disused shopfront to promote…
Awesome ‘Green’ Sony Electronics
Sony are developing a range of concept products that don’t require chargers or batteries. They all use mechanical energy. Read the story here: http://www.sustainableday.com/?p=66 My favourite is this mechnical camera with no display called…
Interesting 2007 – My Thoughts
My review: Interesting2007 = FunTed 350 smart blogger types in a room watching some of the best (and most random) presentations I’ve ever seen. Whatever I say or show, someone else is going to do it better. Best places to look for more…
I do like Vimeo!
Following my post about 20 seconds ago asking if I liked Vimeo I got a comment from Jacko from Vimeo. He doesn’t sound very angry at all. And he had a problem with Quicktime, so I guess he can say that. I had a problem with Virgin Media…
The Slowternet
I’ve been using a ‘high-speed’ Internet connection in a Romanian hotel. Thing is, it’s not really high-speed at all. I hadn’t realised just how much I take broadband (at decent speed) for granted. I’ve been trying to think of a good way to…
Do I Like Vimeo?
I like the player of Vimeo. I quite like the design of Vimeo. I like the fact it’s smaller than YouTube. I like the thing that shows activity on the homepage, it’s nice and it makes it feel active and stuff. But then I saw this: And I…
Loop Festival Brighton
A celebration of Digital Culture they say – I reckon some crappy music coming out of laptops and a knackered old projector that no-one can see properly in the sunlight. Actually I reckon it’s going to be rather good. Some of the musical…
Spot the Bull
This is one of my favourite projects of recent times. It ticks all of the boxes that get me excited about the work Poke do. It’s a simple idea, that hasn’t been done before (as far as I can tell). We were basically tasked by Orange to come…
MP3s Out of Stock?
I love Boomkat – it’s a great niche online electronic music store. The content is great. It gives you a real sense that the guys running it are totally in love with the music. Plus the previews of tracks are long enough and they load…
Searchmash (from Google)
I think I’ve found the perfect search engine. Or pretty close anyway. It’s SearchMash. If you look at the T&Cs it’s a product of Google Inc. If you do a search you get Google-like results. Apart from a couple of handy little differences…
Feedburner’s ‘Headline Animator’
This is cool – Feedburner have got a neat thing where you can create a dynamic RSS fed banner for your site. Mine is rubbish because I made it very quickly (and I’m not very good at that kind of thing). But it’s dead easy and quick to do…
Some More Thoughts On Twitter
From Ian Curry at frog design: Twitter: The Missing Messenger He makes the connection between Twitter and Tumblelogs too. But there’s two bits in his post that I especially like. It’s basically blogging reduced to what the Russian…
Blogging Without Writing
I don’t think I’ve ever written about Tumblelogs before. Partly because I didn’t think I could figure out what they were or why they existed. But I think I’ve finally sussed it with a bit of help from this Wikipedia definition of…
Free Joost Invites, Who Wants Them?
I’ve got 2 invites for the beta of Joostâ„¢ up for grabs. Anyone want them? In UGC style complete the following in 12 worlds or less (in the comments): I’d like a Joost invite because… OK – Compo Closed – I’ve picked the winners. Dan and…
Arcade Reality
This is very cool. I want to see more things that use phone camera’s like this. I don’t know why, I just do.
Sorry IMified Chaps
Dave from IMified left a comment that the message I got was an AOL limit thing. And as such is not their fault. Fair play to them. As he indicates running a service on top of someone elses platform is always going to be a tricky one! Keep…
IMified
Now this sounds good – IMified! I like Instant Messenger. I like the fact that IM clients are lightweight applications that can be accessed anywhere (as long as I’ve got mobile or web access). And the promise of opening up applications so…
RSS Readers
I’d assumed that lots of people use Netvibes as their RSS reader (because I do). But this chart shows that it’s way down the list. Almost half of the people who subscribe to Crackunit’s RSS Feed do so through Google Reader or Google…
Bandwagon – iTunes Backup
Bandwagon is an iTunes backup software / service combo. I read this and thought of me: Bandwagon is for smart people that have a huge music library that has never been backed up. At least the last bit’s true. Another nice – ‘link to us…
Joost on the Mac
Joost for the Mac got properly launched on Saturday (well into public beta anyway), so like a good little nerd I rushed off and downloaded it straightaway. First impressions… Very slick piece of software Very intuitive Video quality is…
I’ve never seen this before…
I was searching for “Sothern Trains” and I got this error from Google. Quite a surprise. Google is one of those services you expect never to give you an error. And when something odd happens it doesn’t feel like a brand letting you down…
Twitter Mobile – It’s the Little Things
Just set up Twitter to work with my mobile. And this just exemplifies the thought and smartness that have gone into the application. And what’s so good about it? The code that you have to text in, is all made up of letters that are on the…
Twittering On, and On
Seems like the world is going Twitter crazy at the moment. I’ve been signed up for a while now, but was a little confused about what it’s actually good for. I love the simplicity of it. It’s really easy to get it up and running and very…
Virgin Media, Slight Redemption
As some of you noticed a couple of people from Virgin posted in the comments on my post. Which was pretty good. So I got in touch. They dealt with my problem quickly and efficiently. And now I’m online with Virgin Media broadband. It all…
Virgin Media Really Sucks
Above you can see the promise made by Virgin Media on their website. Below you can read about my experience and how it differs from the above. I know Virgin Media is new, and I know it’s bound to have teething problems. But there’s only so…
Virgin Media – Customer Control?
Well, Virgin Media launched today with a big old shout: a full wrapper of the Metro and putting Richard Branson in a box in Covent Garden (as only he would do). I like the way they’ve simplified some things, and all their talk of customers…
iCal and Google Sync
At last a 2 way sync between Google Calendars and iCal on my Mac. Now wherever I update my calendar it can be reflected between the two places. And you can sync up multiple calendars. Seems to work really well. Still in beta, and soon to…
More wi-fi sharing
Whisher are another new player in the global wi-fi sharing thing. It’s simple, you join up, share your network, and you get to use other people’s shared networks wherever you are. It’s not a new idea and there’s a few more established…
Semacode Update
Blogs are great. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I asked a question about semacodes on websites. Went to bed. Then I woke up and someone’s left me a great answer. It’s like a big huge collective brain that goes on thinking…
Website with Semacode, Why?
Semacodes are pretty cool. The all knowing Wikipedia with it’s dazzling array of cross-links describes a semacode thusly: a URL can be converted into a type of barcode resembling a crossword puzzle, which is called a “tag”. Tags can be…
Wii Gets You Fit – It’s Official
Absolutely awesome. I was waiting for someone to come out with the ‘Wii can get you fitter‘ story, but I had no idea it’d be done so brilliantly thoroughly. Results: It works! With no other changes in habits a drop in weight, a drop in…
Venice Project Becomes Joost
The project formerly known as The Venice Project has now turned into Joost. It’s the latest venture from the guys behind Skype and in a nutshell it hopes to do to television what Skype did to telephones. As they put it: ‘taking the best of…
The Dumbness of Crowds
I’ve not linked to Creating Passionate Users for a while. As it’s probably the smartest blog in the entire universe I like to link to something now and again. This post on the misappropriation of ‘the wisdom of crowds’ is a classic…
iPhone
I can’t not say something more about the iPhone. I’ve just seen the demos on Apple.com it’s pretty damn cool. And you have to wonder what else they can use that lovely touch-screen interface for…
Another Apple Post
This will just be one blog post about probably the most blogged about thing ever. The new Apple iPhone. Here’s a couple of thoughts… It is the ultimate in gadget porn Features some proper interface wizardry Looks like another…
Last Night a Blog Post Saved My Life
I’ve been searching for ages for a way to manage all the music that I have stored on a second hard drive. Worrying about how I could manage more than one iTunes library and not end up with loads of duplicates, or worse still, losing stuff…
Nice Gaming Quote
I was sorting through some of my old notes and I came across a quote that I jotted down during a presentation by Massive (the guys who do in-game advertising). Talking about why gaming is more impactful than TV: You can’t play games and do…
One Laptop Per Child
I’ve not paid much attention to the development of the One Laptop Per Child project recently. But looking at it again, it’s truly one of the most inspiring projects around right now. Their aims are really interesting: The MIT Media Lab has…
I Love Second Life
Someone mentioned to me that they were surprised by how much I hate Second Life, so I probably need to put the record straight. I don’t hate Second Life. In fact I love Second Life – above you can see my alter ego Taito Dahlstrom wearing…
F**K you and your Second Life ‘firsts’ you bunch of Adf**ks
I’m glad that someone with some heritage and history in Second Life has come out and said this: Second Life Herald: Gallery of Lies. And said it very loud. I’d have loved to have written this piece, but as my Second Life consists of about…
Microsoft Live Local – Birds’ Eye View of London
I was attempting to write something about Friday’s Microsoft Day that I went to. But I visited Live Local search to look something up, then realised I could see my own house from the air, from multiple different angles. And it’s, dare I…
Amen to That
This is a long video clip. 18 mins in total. And it might bore you if you’re not a music geek. It’s all about how a 6 second drum loop from the B-Side of a single by The Winston Brothers, released in 1969, has become a cornerstone of…
Jobs on Zune
From Fast Company: Steve Jobs on the iPod .Vs Zune . Steve Jobs blasts the ability to ‘send’ music to other people via Microsoft’s new Zune player (apparantly it takes a long time and they can only play the DRM enabled track 3 times)…
Aaaargh!
Could this be the most pointless thing ever? Probably not. But it’s a massive folly of some description. Someone has spent a whole heap of money creating a video based ‘human face’ to a search engine. Type in your search and Ms Dewey makes…
Second Life Primer
This video makes Second Life look pretty interesting (although I do sense a bit of hyperbole in there…). Personally I still can’t get my head into Second Life. Changing my outfit was by far the most interesting bit. via Big Picture
Email is for old people
At least that’s what teenagers think, read more at Arstechnica: Teens: E-mail is for old people
YouTube Haters
Asi who writes the excellent No Man’s Blog left a comment yesterday about the fact that slating YouTube is very much the in-thing to do right now. And he left me a link or two. Having read a bit more around the topic it seems to be shaping…
Netflix Prize
This must be one of the most blogged about stories of the last week. But I’m going to do it anyway because I think it’s really interesting and it spans the worlds of geekery and marketing perfectly… Netflix are offering $1,000,000 to…
Forrester: YouTube is goin’ down
A Forrester blog (Devices, Media, And the Future of Everything) has a post from one of their analysts that predicts that copyright will be the downfall of YouTube. He draws parallels with what happened to old-Napster. Certainly an…
South Bank Show Podcasts
I’m highlighting these podcasts because watched the South Bank Show on Sunday night for the first time in ages. Specifically because Irvine Welsh was supposed to be taking Melvin Bragg around bits of Edinburgh. I lived in Muirhouse where…
Families and Technology
This press release from Yahoo! and OMD apparantly shows a resergence of traditional values among tech-savvy families. Stuff like eating together being important and things like that. There’s a lot of interesting nuggets in there, but my…
RSS Explained…
…the Oprah Way! I’ve been a real bugger sometimes and asked people to explain what RSS feeds are in an interview. Not to see if they necessarily know or not. But to see how they respond to answering a tricky, techy question. Now if…
How lovely are these icons..?
I’d say very lovely. That picture shows really how these beautiful (free) Mac icons look inside my computer. Imagine how cool I’d look if only I could be bothered to change all my file and folder icons. Damn! My inner cool is beaten by my…
It’s all too (point oh) much
I think New Media Age journalists must have some kind of autocomplete thing turned on in their word processors – just stick 2.0 after everything, regardless. Unless they know something about Apple’s plans that no-one else does?…
YouTube Value on TechCrunch
Even though their site has issues with it’s error messages (see below), it’s undoubtedly worth quite a lot of money. This article on TechCrunch has a good top line discussion on how much it might be worth and outlines the big challenges…
Moo.com – flickr cards
Great great great! Get your Flickr photos printed onto mini-cards (they’re like 1/2 height business cards). They look a bit like They are v2.0 of Pleasurecards (thanks Stef) which I have some of and are great quality. The application which…
Application Love
After an earlier gripe about YouTube’s shoddy error message, here’s a beautiful piece of application design that’s cheered me up no end. From the brilliant and ever useful backpackit.com and their writeboard (collaborative document editing…
Errors in Errors
It’s been a wee while since I posted an interface gripe. So here’s one I got today at YouTube: So, what’s wrong with this? 500 Internal Server Error. That sounds like a lot of waiters with gut problems. Serious. What did I do wrong? I must…
MySpace Murder Foiled
I’m sure this is going to get a lot of coverage: MySpace Murder Plot Foiled – September 14, 2006 And I’m not going to bang on about it too much, but it reminds me of a conversation that I’ve had with a few people recently about online…
Youth
Ooooh oooh yes please. I’d love to know how to grab youth attention using these new fangled new media channels and technologies. Sounds exciting. Damn! I should have guessed, breakdancing kids on mobile phones. The answer was staring me…
Home Cooking…
After mulling over Steal this Film as mentioned previously I’m still not any surer about where I stand. There’s one frame from the movie that keeps flashing back into my mind though: Of course it’s not the same as digitisation and…
MyHeritage – Face Recognition
For quite a while now MyHeritage have been offering a ‘see who your celeb lookalikes are’ applicaiton online. I’d always ignored it (too much effort finding a photo and stuff, plus you have to register) until someone at work sent it round…
Join the Darknet
The Swedish Pirate Party has launched a service that lets anyone send files or information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. Technically they say, this is called a “darknet”. I could spend a lot of time…
Bully – The Game
2 posts about game related things in one day. Perhaps I’m turning into a wannabe gamer without even knowing it. I just had to post this trailer for the new Rockstar game ‘Bully’, it looks amazing. Given their history with games like Grand…
Goggles
You know those thigs that seem glaringly obvious once you’ve seen them, the ones where you go: “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that”. Well here’s one: Goggles :: The Google Maps flight sim Take Google maps and turn it into the landscape for a…
Microsoft Brainwash
Whilst watching the demo of this interesting new Microsoft product: Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth – Video I noticed that the guy had a bottle of Microsoft Brainwash on his desk. Surely a funny gag that’s been put in there by some kind of…
Thumbs up for Riffs
Riffs: Your Social Recommender – Ratings, Rants, Raves, and Reviews It’s like “hot-or-not”, but applied to everything in the world. A really simple ratings engine for life, the universe, and everything else. Nicely put together and has…
How hot is the bottom of your laptop?
Don’t know if this is true or false: Cooking Breakfast On A Macbook. You see this kind of thing faked all the time. Like the guys cooking an egg between 2 mobiles. This seems to be getting picked up all over the place though. The…
BT luvs Bebo
TechCrunch report: Bebo Shuns $550 Million Acquisition Offer San Francisco based social network Bebo, which recently raised $15 millionfrom Benchmark Capital, rejected a £300 million ($552 million)acquisition offer from British Telecom…
Yahoo! Podcast Mystery
I’ve got no idea how this happened. But I noticed that Yahoo! Podcasts were starting to send people to Crackunit. So I traced the link back and found this page: iain tait | crackunit.com – Episode Page on Yahoo! Podcasts It looks like I’ve…
Flock Irony
Actually I’m not quite sure if it is irony. But it felt a bit like a kind of irony. I’m using my favourite thing of the day, Flock, to blog about my new favourite thing of the day, Flock. It’s basically a version of Firefox that’s been…
12 Reasons Businesses Don’t Blog
Useful list at eConsultancy of 12 reasons why UK businesses don’t do blogging. Some good thought in there.
Flickr Enabled LCD Frame
ThinkGeek :: eStarling Wi-Fi Gmail / Flickr Enabled LCD Frame I’ve seen this kind of thing before and there’s something really nice about the thought of having a frame that you can subscribe to a Flickr RSS feed of your photographs, or…
Thomas Pink iShirt
Who’d have thought it. Thomas Pink bring out a shirt which holds your iPod in a concealed pocket, has Oyster card cuffs, and routes cables neatly. I almost wished I had to wear a suit to work. For about a nano-second. Thomas Pink: Commuter…
So much good stuff…
I should be going to work right now. But I keep finding amazing things that I feel the urge to share… Following on from ‘convert your website into a pattern’, here comes ‘what does your website sound like’. A site that turns your website…
A MacBerry?
It’s an interesting, but at the same time perhaps terrifying, rumour. Macworld UK – Rumour: Apple and RIM plan iPod wireless? Legions of perma-connected white-earphoned zombies giving complete and undivided attention to a device with the…
Netvibes Rocks – Harder
Netvibes (my favourite Web 2.0 personal homepage maker) has just added a whole raft of brand new features and enhancements. The most significant of which is a whole new ‘community site’: eco.netvibes.com It’s like a feed directory, but it…
Turn Yahoo RED and Raise Money
American Express RED are trying to rasie £10k to fight AIDS in Africa today. All you have to do is click on a banner on the front page of Yahoo.co.uk (and it doesn’t even take you anywhere!). Each click raises 25p. Click here to do it!…
Social Networks = New Media
Nice piece about Social Networks and audience/users as ‘cultural products’. GigaOM : » Social Networks are the New Media Robert Young talks a lot of sense about how self expression is key to peoples use of these sites. And there’s a nice…
Nike+
Wow. Nike and Apple have unleashed Nike+ By connecting sports shoes and iPods (using a tiny plug-in receiver) they’ve come up with something pretty sci-fi. Your shoes talk to your iPod, then your iPod talks to you, tells you how fast…
We Feel Fine
It’s taken me a while to put together this post. It’s been sitting in my drafts folder since early last week, and in the meantime lots of you have probably seen wefeelfine.org. I’ll try to summarise why I think it’s such an important site…
Interview With Me
Piers asked me a few probing questions about Poke‘s Webby winners. I answered them as best I could. Hope it all makes sense. Seemed to at the time of writing. Inspiration From IF! : Interview With Iain Tait, Poke
Fun Features 2
After my previous post on Photo Booth. And how small simple novelty features can sometimes be the makings of a product, I thought I should share this: it’s a feature on a Casio camera that allows you to take 2 shots and combine them ‘in…
Teabuddy – Still on the Boil
Teabuddy.com – Poke‘s solution to teamaking shirkers in the workplace, got a mention in Saturday’s Guardian Magazine. Looks like they’ve just lifted the quotes from an earlier Wired interview that Nik and I did. I still love the fact that…
New Flickr Layout
Eek! I guess it’s just because I’ve been using it a lot recently. But I just logged on to Flickr and the new design really freaked me out. I guess that’s what happens when something that you use all the time changes without warning. If…
More on Participation
Following on from the earlier post about people participating in communities I thought this post contained some great stats: The 1% Rule: Charting citizen participation. Points to the fact that 1% of Yahoo! Group members start groups and…
Online Community Motivations and Reputations
Faris left this rather good link about motivations for contributing to online communities to in the comments. I’m not going to summarise it here. But there’s a couple of thoughts I had about how this might change in the future… It’s…
Webby Awards
This year’s Webby Award winners have just been announced. And I’m chuffed to say that Poke have managed to bag a couple. One for Talking Point for Orange, and a People’s Voice for Feed Me Better for Jamie Oliver. I’m personally really…
Sphere – Blog Search
Sphere: a useful new blog search engine. Seems to index things very fast. My posts from yesterday were already in there. It’s got a particularly nifty ‘custom date range’ function which shows time and volume of posts in a nice way…
More on Ziki
After posting about Ziki a couple of days ago I got this email (Severine, I hope you don’t mind me posting this): Hi Iain I’m Severine from Ziki. Just wanted to thank you for signing up! Thanks also for your post about Ziki :-) I didn’t…
Box.net
I was looking for a free online storage thing for Sophie (so she could share stuff between home and work). There’s loads and loads of them around right now. But I wanted something with plenty of storage space and that’s easy to use. After…
Get a Mac – TV Ads
Apple – Get a Mac – Watch The TV Ads – OK, they’re playing up all the old stereotypes, but they’re well casted, well written and don’t mess about. Expect about a gazillion spoofs from PC lovers on YouTube before the week is out…
Ziki – Social Networking Plus
I think this is an interesting new service. But I’m still not 100% sure. They describe themselves like this: Ziki connects people, businesses and groups based on who they are, what they’re interested in and what they’re looking for…
YouTube’s Big Bill
In the last 6 months video has really started to take off online. There’s a whole host of new video sharing sites springing up. But hosting video costs money. Lots of money. This article: Your Tube, Whose Dime? – Forbes.com estimates that…
Flickr Mashups
I’m pretty sure I’m way behind the curve on these (as per usual). But here’s a couple of amazing uses of the Flickr API (if you don’t know what an API is, this might help. Or then again, it might leave you baffled). Tagnautica – A really…
Longtail Recommendations
Supersmart Ged (who I know from Yahoo!) pointed me to the longtail recommendations engine on last.fm. I’d been to the page but I’d never noticed the slider: have a play, it’s really good (you might need to be a user to access it). It’s a…
New MacBook Pro
I’m very lucky. I got a new computer. It’s a shiny new Intel-based MacBook Pro. I have to say I’ve not noticed that I’m getting more work done in a shorter period of time. But I’m sure I will eventually, perhaps. My favourite feature is…
Free AppZapper
One digital life reports on a really neat promotion run by MacZot. They reduced the price of the Appzapper application by 5 cents for every blog that linked to the site. Mac bloggers went nuts for it and the price went down to completely…
Tivoli iSongBook
I really like this new Tivoli iSongBook, it’s an iPod speaker system plus radio (edit: I’ve just realised it’s not new at all). There’s so many iPod speaker systems out there, but none of them really do it for me. Even the lastest Apple…
Constant Partial Attention
Interesting article about always being on. It doesn’t say anything massively new really, but I think it neatly crystalises some of the big issues. Not having full concentration on any one thing at a time is something that I’ve been moaning…
Pandora x Last FM
TechCrunch » Pandora and Last.fm Together…sort of – I couldn’t work out which one of Last.fm and Pandora I liked best for my music recommendation needs. Now someone’s sorted out my dilemma, they’ve mashed the two together. Hoorah!
Using iTunes to backup your music
Now here’s a tip I’ve been waiting for. It’s not rocket science. It’s iTunes science! How to backup your iTunes music library, and most importantly of all, keep it backed up. I used to walk around in a constant state of paranoia that all…
PEZ MP3 Player
Who cares about Apple, Creative Labs, Sony and all those guys. Surely the best MP3 players simply have to be made by Pez. It’s got a tiny memory, looks really flmsy, the battery life is bound to be shocking. But there’s something strangely…
RSS what?
According to a report from Marketing Sherpa: Currently at least 75 million consumers and businesspeople in the USA and UK use RSS on a regular basis. However, depending on which study’s stats you believe, only 17-32% of RSS users actually…
Smart Error Page – Odeo
You know those pages that come up when a web page has moved, or you’ve typed the address in wrong? (For the technically minded they’re called 404 errors, but you don’t really need to know that unless you’re in the business). You don’t see…
Videos From the Googleplex
Google have released a heap of videos from their internal archives: In addition to helping distribute content from across the world, Google would like to share videos featuring our company. Some great stuff in there, especially the…
Original iPod announcement
37 Signals pull out some highlights from the original iPod announcement thread at MacRumors. You can normally judge the reaction of Mac fanatics to Steve’s announcements by dipping your toes into these forums. This snapshot from 2001 show…
Sony Ericsson and Blogger/Google
Sony Ericsson are adding Blogger support and Google Search to their new phones – nice tie-up for all concerned I reckons. Scheduled for Q2 this year. Some nice views of the new Sony Ericsson handsets on their Cebit 2006 site. My current…
Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users
If you don’t use del.icio.us, start. Now. OK, now you’ve started, before you get too carried away, read this article: The Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users » Slacker Manager. There’s so many powerful uses for this…
Google Image Hoo Ha
BBC news reports on this rather odd story from the US. A judge in the States has ruled that Google have violated the copyright of Perfect 10 magazine (a high end ‘adult’ title). The violation results from the fact that Google shows…
Why youth heart myspace
I get why MySpace is popular, but I don’t get why it should be 30 million people popular. So I was happy to read this article by Danah Boyd at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It’s a rough transcript of a really…
LED Throwies
Simple, cheap and pretty. These LED Throwies stick to any metal surface and make it look pretty. Can imagine some really nice interactive type applications with these at the core. Check the video at the Graffiti Research Lab (their re-use…
Evil Google logo
When I’m tired and not feeling on top form I can never really be bothered to look at stuff online. The one site that always cheers me up a bit is Boing Boing, you’ll never fail to find something interesting, odd, funny or inspiring. I’m…
BBC report on UK gamers from 6-65
From Boing Boing: BBC report on UK gamers from 6-65 – contains some amazing figures. “59% of 6 to 65 year olds in the UK are gamers. In total there are 26.5 million gamers in the UK. The average age of a UK gamer is 28 years old, and the…
Dance Dance in the Classroom
Boing Boing: Dance Dance Revolution at 765 schools – story about the fact that in the US they’re now using Xboxes with dance mats to help kids get less fat. If it helps I suppose it can’t be a bad thing. Can it?
Zombie Infection Simulation
Sometimes I see things online and it makes me think. “I love the Internet”, and I love the crazy, crazy, eccentric freaks that inhabit it. The Zombie Infection Simulation is one of those things. I’ve got no idea why this exists, apart from…
The Postal Service vs Apple
I like the The Postal Service a lot. Their album is great. I also like Apple a lot. Their products are great. As has been well documented the latest Apple Intel Ad looks a lot like the video for “Such Great Heights” by the aforementioned…
Techno Faux-Pas
Whilst browsing in Micro Anvika today I was looking at the plethora of digital music players, ranging from the gorgeously designed to the truly horrible. When out of the corner of my eye I saw one particular piece of gadgetary. I thought…
PowerPoint Kills
I’m not someone that believes PowerPoint is inherently evil, it’s not. It has some flaws (as does most software), but I reckon the thing that hurts it the most is the use of templates. The whole thing is set up with bullet points as the…
Directions on your iPod
Mash-up alert, it’s not perfect, but an interesting service combo nonetheless. Get directions onto your iPod (video, photo or nano). http://www.ipodiway.com/. Unfortunately is US and Canada only (for now).…
HassleMe
HassleMe – nice little online app that reminds you to do stuff. Not as fully featured as rememberthemilk.com or backpackit.com (my online reminder/to do service of choice right now). But, I do love the fact that it offers: If you add more…
PumpPod
Saw this poster collection on the streets of NY – Pumppod.com. Damn, there goes another one of my brilliant money making ideas, if only I was quicker and better at things.…
Digital Newspapers
Have I been living with my head in the sand? A bit, probably. But I spotted these today. Printouts of newspapers. The Times, in the morning. in New York. Looks like it’s just been squirted off a laser printer. No bulky shipping, no big…
iTunes Signature Maker
iTunes Signature Maker – this is a fantastic idea. A small online app (java I think) – that creates an audio signature based on your iTunes library. The site suggests: Load your iTunes signature onto your iPod, e-mail it to some friends…
Mobile Marketing
Yesterday I spoke at the Mobile Marketing 2005 conference. I actually quite enjoyed it which surprised me. It was a tricky old thing. From speaking to lots of people later it’s obvious that there’s a lot of different levels of knowledge…
ConQwest
Picture Alarm Clock
From we make money not art: Wake up with a picture. A lovely re-working of a vintage alarm clock. Not the most user friendly thing in the world, but nice.…
Yahoo gets Flickrd
Business 2.0 – The Flickrization of Yahoo. It’s a long article, but makes for interesting reading about how social software is begining to spill over into many aspects of Yahoo!s business. One point that they make that particuarly…
Google Analytics
Google Analytics – Google offers free web stats through its new service. Based on the popular Urchin software this is a great way for site owners to get detailed site analytics (for free!). I still like my simple to read Mint stats too…
BlockJam
I was checking out a BoingBoing post on LED puzzle blocks which look pretty awesome in themselves. But there’s a footnote that links to a Sony project called BlockJam which just blew me away. (Check the video of the prototype). It’s a…
Hulger and Skype
Nik, one of my co-partners at Poke has, in my opinion, finally nailed a proper useful-use for his Hulger Phones. Although an interesting design statement and a humerous novelty when attached to a mobile, I don’t think anyone would really…
Technorati Tags Plugin
I’ve finally got around to getting my head around just how good Technorati is. I knew it was powerful. But not that powerful. So I’ve installed BunnysTechnoratiTags on my blog. Meaning that I can make sure I’m properly hooked up with the…
Presentation Zen
Bill has bullets, Steve has space. Presentation Zen: Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic – a blog posting about presentation styles that made me laugh out loud. Incredibly insightful and worth a read. Via the ever visitworthy Seth Godin.…
Talking Point for Orange
Here’s a little something I’ve been working on for a good while now TalkingPoint for Orange. It’s a hybrid between a poll and a discussion forum. The objective being to give people a chance to leave their opinions on issues in an…
iPod Nanos on Tokyo Metro
From Cult Of Mac Blog – iPod Nanos on Tokyo Metro – This is a great (if a little expensive) promotion. Having said that, this is one of those ads that creates so much residual ‘buzz’ around it that the initial investment is totally worth…
Geeks Gotta Have It
An amazing multi-charger cum light – imagine a world free of chargers, where cables are neatly stored away, out of sight. And, in its place, a wonderous ambient light source. This is the item that a whole planet of geeks’ girlfriends have…
43 – The Magic Number
Well there’s 43 Things which I’m a huge fan of – a community based around ambitions and things we’d like to do, genius. And really nicely done. Then there’s 43 Places – a community rooted in the places that we’ve visited (or would like to…
Collaborative writing online
Collaborative writing software online with Writeboard. Write, share, revise, compare. Well that’s what they say! It really is a lovely little collaborative app – great if you’re trying to do the old ‘to and fro’ with a bit of copy. Those…
Powerpoint Tip
MS Office Tip: Black out your Powerpoint Slideshow this really is a top tip. If you’re doing a PowerPoint presentation (I know that it’s pretty much like handling the wand of satan, but lots of us have to do it), and you want people to…
PC Magazine: Top 101 Web Sites
PC Magazine: Top 101 Web Sites – really annoying laid out. But a good reminder of some of the best sites out there, and you might even discover one or two new ones. I did.
BugMeNot.com
After running around excitedly telling everyone how much I love BugMeNot, someone told me I’m way behind the curve on this one. I was slightly crestfallen for about a nanosecond, then I remembered that I’d just found one of the most useful…
The State of the Blogosphere
David Sifry (the founder of Technorati) gives his view on the state (and size) of the blogosphere. Some interesting numbers in there. Perhaps naively I had no idea of the scale of fake blogs as used by spammers. It’s true that you learn a…
Growing pains for social bookmarking?
Broadband Stars – Covering the social media revolution: Growing pains ahead for social bookmarking? Interesting comment on the growth of web 2.0 apps and how the democratisation of them may ultimately lead to problems. Also refers to the…
Mk Gr8 T
SMS kettle: best invention ever? – maybe not, but it is the invention that we’ve been waiting for! Ever since the launch of Teabuddy.com we’ve been waiting to complete the loop, to enable the site to turn the kettle on. Now we have it……
Yahoo! and MSN up a tree…
…K.I.S.S.I.N.G. (well maybe). Interesting report on MSN and Yahoo! joining forces on the IM front to present a united front against the ‘Google-Threat’. Interestingly they appear to be leaving poor old AOL out. Almost makes me feel sorry…