conversation
Things to do to escape your computer (or TV)
…hire a bike or roller skates or a boat. Please help by adding to this in the comments. Following on from this weekend’s activities. I’ve been thinking about what a great bunch of things Jason set me to do. All could be done with little…
Earning Eternal Respect In 48 Hours The Twitter Way
I had a fun weekend this weekend. Thanks to a number of things. 1. Weekends are good anyway. 2. The weather was pretty nice. 3. I did normal stuff with Sophie like have nice lunches. Laze around. Drink a bit of wine. Get some chores done…
Crisps and Conversations
I’ve been a bit of a sceptic about interactivity and FMCGs. Most of the time they just create digital litter. Maybe it’s just because I’m a big fan of crisps. But Walkers seem to be doing some peculiarly interesting things around…
My New Favourite Quote
By Michael Beiruit (in conversation with Peter Merholz): It’s a dirty secret that much of what we admire in the design world is a byproduct not of “strategy” but of common sense, taste and luck. Some clients are too unnerved by ambiguity…
10 Things I Learned from Mental Detox Week
If you’ve just arrived here from AdBusters you might also be interested in what I got up to this weekend – I did still use the Internet a little bit – but it’s primarily a bunch of offline stuff that I did started by an online thing… Might…
I’m Chatting at Under The Influence
Iris are putting on an interesting event next week in London. It’s totally free so go and sign up if you like the look of it. It’s called Under the Influence and it’s 20 talks spread around 5 pubs in Borough Market. Each one has a…
The Rise of The Ad Man 2.0
[I’ve written this post once already. I got to the end of it just as someone phoned me up. I picked up the phone. Fumbled it. And dropped it on my laptop which duly crashed in a spectacular fashion. The second revision is slightly shorter…
Pissing Contests
I seem to be witnessing more and more intellectual pissing competitions these days. And it’s not just in planner-land, although that’s where I’ve witnessed some of the ‘best’ ones. I’ve seen a few good technical ones, and even designers…
Blogger Relations – Learning By Doing
I just got a nice mail from the people I mentioned (or rather didn’t mention) below. It went a bit like this: With head hung suitably ashamed, a very valid response to my earlier request – you’re right, blogger relations is certainly an…
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…
Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics
So near yet so far… I was really getting on well with this Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics – Take 1 from Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence Blog. It seems to have some decent principles that make sense whether I’m wearing a blogger hat or a…
I’ve seen the future of Marketing 2.0 and it’s rubbish (but don’t worry, it’s in Beta)
[Please note: none of the brands mentioned here have ever done anything like this (as far as I know), it’s a purely fictional story of an imagined future from my slightly fuddled brain] Imagine if last night everyone who worked in the…
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…
Weinberger vs Keen @ Supernova
Really interesting 50 minute presentation and discussion by David Weinberger (Cluetrain Manifesto, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Everything is Miscellaneous) and Andrew Keen (Cult of the Amateur). I’m not going to try and sum up the…
Recruitment Musings
This is a tough, slightly reflective post to write. It’s very much a brain dump, the start of some thoughts rather than anything resolved. I’m hoping that some of the smart people out there on the internet will add to it and help these…
The 7 Deadly Sins of Digital
There’s a bunch of things that people who are just getting into digital always seem to propose at some point or another. I guess they’re things that are part of the learning process. Things that a lot of us have done, and hopefully learned…
BusyPost
I’m really rather busy right now, so finding time to post is tricky. Plus they’ve taken away the wi-fi on my morning train which is a right old bugger. But I did see 2 things on lamp posts that pricked my interest today: I’ve got no idea…
Is YouTube Really a Community?
I’ve often argued that one of the things that ‘makes’ YouTube is its community. But I’ve just been looking at the comments around one particular clip and wondering just what kind of community it is. It’s less like a close-knit rural…
10 Reasons Why Digital is Better Than Advertising – Number 8
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that makes online audiences great. They’re immediately measurable. You can see how they heard about you. You can see what things they’re searching for in order to find you. If people are talking about you…
More Virgin Media Moaning
I thought it’d had all been sorted out after my last set of ranting. But it would seem not. I’ve now been cut off. Or at least TV and phone have, broadband (oddly) still seems to be working. As before I’m not going to let this rant pollute…
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…
Second Life Sex
An interesting perspective on sex in Second Life: The ins and outs of a Second sex Life | The Register Written from the perspective of someone who seems to understand and enjoy ‘cybersex‘, this article explains the limitations and problems…
Fizzy Web
I had a meeting with a prospective client yesterday (I hope she doesn’t mind me posting this, I am keeping it anonymous). And in our conversation she said that she wanted their site to be ‘fizzy’, at first I almost laughed, then as we…
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…
A Conversation on Participation
“Why don’t we let people get involved. Give them a way to upload their short movies / photographs / demo-tracks / homages to our product / ideas / knitting patterns / kazoo melodies / etc. They can win prizes.” “Would you do it?” “What do…
WhenWeRollWeRollBig.com
A response from the Agency.com camp regarding the Subway video. It’s basically saying: “we did it, we got people talking, that’s the whole point”. I’m sure the debate will rage on around whether this is just a good piece of…
My New Blog Experiment
I Love London Actually I don’t. That’s the whole point. Me and London haven’t been getting along all that well recently. So I thought I’d try a little experiement. To see if blogging about great things in London can inspire me to think…
Genuine Marketing Gimmicks – An Oxymoron?
Sorry few posts. Hectic week. Going holiday Friday. Lots to do… I’ve started to use Radio 4 as my alarm clock. I didn’t think it would work. But people talking, gently, as they do on R4, is quite a nice way to wake up. You get kind of…
Happy is good
Me- Happy in Goa In her, always smart but never overwhelming style Kathy Sierra writes about angry negative people being bad for your brain. There’s a lot of detail and science in there, but it is really worth a read. I first read the…
Fashion Vs Style Vs Pop Video
Compare and contrast: French Connection’s new advert is not a million miles away from this pop video from last year (damn, that song is really really bad!). Thanks to Emil for the tip – came up in an IM conversation about originality in…
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…
ConQwest