Gamers vs Avatars
Great online gallery of gamers alongside the avatars that they use to represent themselves. The fact the commentary is in German kind of adds to it in a strange way. Tip: click the images to move on to the next pair. Via We Make Money Not Art
technorati tags:gamers, games, avatars, gallery, exhibition
Very Smart Casual
Smart casual is one of my most despised terms ever. What could make it worse?
How about turning it into ‘Very Smart Casual’. Ouch. But I suppose being given the alternative choice of ‘Dress to Express’ is a nice touch. So it’s chinos with a razor sharp crease or a latex fun suit then.
I’m pretty sure this is not my kind of Nite Club.
Companies get 2.0ed
The YayHooray community get all over redesigning big corporations in the style of web 2.0. It’s all over Digg and del.icio.us, so you might have seen it already. But it is pretty funny (if you’re a design geek).
All the cliches are there: expect lots of reflections, rounded corners, gradients and more. Yay Hooray | yh collab: redesign famous logos in web 2.0 format!
technorati tags:web2.0, logos, corporations
More Viral Stuff
Faris from Naked talks about the fact that viral ‘just is’. Also uses the nice ‘real world viral’ example (oh, hang on, that’s just a virus isn’t it?) of the 118 vests. Also mentions a foul Coke example of labelling videos as ‘viral 1, viral 2′ on a website. Yuk. That reminds me, I’m not a fan of ‘virals’.
technorati tags:viral, 118118, coke
My New Blog Experiment
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 more about great things in London. And make me more attuned to noticing these things around me.
Basically, can blogging inspire positive thought.
The project was inspired by a conversation with Russell last week about how blogging can affect your view of the world (in a good way) and an invite to try out Vox (a new service from Six Apart). I started this morning.
Have a look: http://iaintait.vox.com. Leave your thoughts.
technorati tags:blog, experiment, thinking, thought, london, vox, sixapart, blogging
All the Fun of the Fair
Sophie and I went to Lovebox on Saturday and a jolly good time was had by all. I didn’t take my camera with me, as I’d have done in the past. Instead I took my new phone. By the end of the day I was a bit tipsy and got a little snap happy. These photos from the Waltzers are some of my favourites.
I was sure that my phone-cam would never replace a standalone camera. But I think I might have just changed my mind.
technorati tags:k800i, photos, lovebox, fairground
More on Zopa - Speed Blogging
Following my earlier post on Zopa. Dave, one of the Zopa founders, had picked up on my post and responded in the comments section within 15 minutes of the original post going live.
I’ve always been impressed by Zopa’s use of their blog and the fact that they get out there in the thick of it, leaving comments, engaging in debate, etc. But a response time of 15 minutes. That’s got to be some kind of record.
technorati tags:zopa, bogging, ressponse
Trial By Blog
As I’ve mentioned before, we’re working with Zopa at the moment to do a redesign of their website. It’s a great company and a great project.
I was in a meeting last week when Dave from Zopa said “Oh, I’ve stuck some of the designs on the blog to see what people think“. My reactions were twofold and simultaneous:
- Wow, that’s great. A client that’s so forward thinking they’re doing exactly the kind of thing we’d have asked them to do had we thought of it first. Brilliant.
- Holy shit. What the crap are they doing! What if people don’t like the designs. That’s 8 weeks work down the toilet. Ohmygod what a catastrophe.
Suddenly I realised that all this so-called openness, honesty, transparency and dialogue is a whole different ballgame when there’s a big chunk of other people’s work at stake. This namby-pamby play-blogging I do is child’s play by comparison. I’ll never scoff at a client’s blog-fear again.
technorati tags:zopa, blog, design, fear
What's hot on YouTube
Really useful breakdown of the 100 most viewed clips on YouTube. Nice work: No Man’s Blog: YouTube trends report #1
The top line is that of the top 100:
- 58 are user generated content
- 31 are music videos
- 4 are commercial adverts
- 3 are commercial virals
- 2 are movie trailers
- 2 are Asian tv show clips
There’s further breakdown of the user generated content on the site. But interesting to see that ‘real’ ads have been more viral than ‘viral’ ads. Goes back to the whole viral is bad, viral is good (stuff) argument from before.
technorati tags:youtube, viral, content, top100, viewing, tv, advertising
Big Chill / iTunes Promo
Nice promo idea - when my Big Chill tickets turned up they’d suck in a ‘free 3 songs from the iTunes shop’ card. Sweet. What they hadn’t done is create a page of ‘recommended’ tracks or anything like that, which might have been a nice addon.
But free things are nice 
