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I Love Free T-Shirts But I Don’t Like Sweary T-Shirts
Thank you kindly to the guys at Sell Sell for sending me a free t-shirt. I love free t-shirts. When I get sent them I’ll blog about them or Tweet them or whatever. I’m a free t-shirt-whore-blogger. Here’s the t-shirt they sent: I don’t…
The Coolest Blog in the World
I’m so jealous of this blog. It makes me feel so very uncool. http://theimpossiblecool.tumblr.com It’s an unfussy Tumblr that features the coolest people ever. Great photos and well chosen quotes. Simple and well, cool. I guess. Dudes from…
Reasons the Internet is Brilliant #2B
Here’s a reason, right here: http://www.penciltalk.org/. It’s a website about pencils. I like pencils. Actually I kind of love pencils in a strange sort of a way. But this guy loves pencils more. More than me. More than everyone I know…
Bowler Hat Bike Helmet
I was joking with Katie at Poke the other day about how a big bowler hat would make an ideal cycling helmet. Well she’s just mailed me to say that it’s not just a silly idea, it’s a reality! Well done chaps at Bobbin Bicycles (although at…
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…
The End
No I’m not packing in the blog. I’m just linking to a smashing set of images. This was mentioned in the Guardian before Christmas so has probably been well blogged. But I love this Flickr group of movie end frames. There’s some lovely ones…
Father Ted Read My Blog!
Well that’s not strictly true. But I was looking at my stats when I noticed some unfamiliar activity… That’s not strictly true either. But I did get some traffic from this lovely blog http://whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com/ which is…
Dealing With Blog Block
I was chatting with Andy about blog block on Friday. Neither of us could quite explain why we were feeling it. And I’m not sure I can explain it any better now. But this diagram has some of the components and some of the relationships…
Credit Crunch Minimix
To try and lift everyone’s spirits I’ve put together a little (30min) mix of uplifting feel-good tracks to see if I can raise the mood of the internet. It’s a mix of styles from soul / mashups / hiphop / drum and bass / other so there’s…
Flickr Unleashes the Might of the Animated GIF
I just went to enable Flickr Stats so that I could see what’s been going on in my world of photos. And imagine my surprise and joy when the ‘processing stats’ page threw up an assortment of the finest in old-skool animated giffery… This…
A New Design
Sophie’s away. So I spent most of the weekend geeking out and re-building my blog. I learned a lot of CSS stuff. But it did quite often feel like it was the boss of me rather than the other way round. Which I’m sure isn’t how it’s meant to…
For More on The Augmented Reality Scene
Image borrowed from: http://www.artag.net/ If you’re looking to find out more about the whole augmented reality thing I wholeheartedly suggest that you check out Ori’s blog. It’s got lots of interesting stuff on there and seems like a…
A New Summer Mix – This One’s A Bit of A Banger
I’m going to stop putting my music mixes directly on Crackunit. For a few reasons. Paranoia being one. DJ mixes have always been a grey area in terms of licensing, etc. So I’m just going to tidy them over to somewhere else, just to be on…
Orange Unlit Tour – Welcome Hedluv
We’re putting on a tour with Orange. It’s part of the whole ‘I am’ thing. The Unlit Tour is about an artist going on the road and creating his own ‘I am’ story as he goes. The tour is going to be ‘made by everyone’. From the people who…
Blogging From WordPress App on iPhone
And watching Never Mind The Buzzcocks Blimey. It worked.…
All Comments Are Not Created Equal
Sometimes blog posts just write themselves. Today I got two comments that obviously resulted from smart, online-aware people seeing what’s been written about a topic on the web. One of them is fantastic. The other one terrible. The…
Custom QR Velcro Patches
There was quite a bit of interest in the Facebook QR Code T-Shirt that I featured a while ago. So I figured this velcro QR code patch might be of interest too. Each patch is a unique QR code that you, the purchaser of said patch, has…
What Advertising Can Learn From Radiohead
I wasn’t going to blog about the House of Cards video and it’s brilliant integration with Google and the geekosphere. I wasn’t going to blog it because everyone else has. It is bloody brilliant though. Yet another example of how Radiohead…
Photos of TV
A brilliant collection of strange moments on TV screens. Found via a new blog in my repertoire: Spinning Around Seventy Seven (or it might be Seventy Seven Spinning Around). Anyway you can find it here: http://t4w.blogs.com/spinningaround/…
Creative Similarities?
On the David Elsewhere stuff Tim just commented: I liked spike’s version from a year or two ago. With a link to this video: It’s a different thing doing a different job. But I can see how one would perhaps make you think of the other. For…
David Elsewhere and Motorola
Here’s a new thing that Poke have just finished. Well it’s not completely new. It’s taken a bit of time to get out into the world for various reasons. in fact some of the very eagle-eyed amongst you might have noticed that I posted some of…
A Hierarchy of Blogging
As I mentioned the other day I’ve been a little slack in my blogging recently. I started having a bit of a think about my blogging behaviour to see if I could make sense of this most recent lull. I’m sure the self-analysis was partially…
Webbys 2008
Just got back from the Webbys in New York. We were over there to pick up a People’s Voice for the Orange Never Ending Web Page. There’s evidently no photo of me picking up our Webby, so here’s a picture of Richard from Moo picking up their…
The Orange Balloon Race – Playballoonacy.com
Here’s the start of another major thing that we’ve been working on for Orange for a while now… Registration is now open for the first Balloon Race Across the Internet. Visit: playballoonacy.com Basically we’re going to set off loads of…
Teabuddy Scandal Alert
Ouch. I really want to nip this one in the bud before it gets out of hand… George Parker (who’s work and brutal honesty I admire a great deal) has written a rather fruity post about something that I wasn’t going to comment on. Basically I…
Compfight.com
Andy our latest new Poke chap alerted me to the awesomeness of Compfight.com. It’s a Flickr search tool that allows you to find and view lots of Flickr images quickly with some key filters (like Creative Commons licensing). It’s a top way…
Two Things I Thought Everyone Had Seen, But Turns Out They Haven’t, Yet
If you have seen these already, sorry. I thought that they’d done the rounds but I’ve mentioned both of them to a few people who’ve all looked at me blankly. So I thought I should share… Facebook in real life: And this guy who breaks out a…
10 Things Google Found To Be True
I reckon there’s some gems in this list. Stollen mercilessly from the most excellent Core 77 Blog.…
Portfolio Night
I was lucky enough to go to Portfolio Night 6 last night. Set up by the enterprising young dudes behind http://ihaveanidea.org/ it’s billed as a chance for young creatives to meet creative directors (for a fee of £10). I felt like it was a…
2 Amazing Videos
Both entries to Radiohead related competitions. This first one was a D&AD brief last year for a video for a Thom Yorke track. It won. It’s quite dark. But it works it’s simplicity nicely. And this from the ever stunning Flight404. Have…
Flowing Pixels from the 8-Bit Pool on Flickr
Some nice stuff in this Flickr Group of 8-bit stuff I particularly like the pixel pot plant too. via: Wonderland…
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…
Crayon Madness
This is the kind of thing you miss when you’re away from the Internet: Color + Design Blog / All 120 Crayon Names, Color Codes and Fun Facts by COLOURlovers All 120 Crayola crayon colours in Hex and RGB along with their original names and…
Some Things I Saw Last Week
When I wasn’t blogging last week I saw some things: Nu-rave extreme fashion in Brighton (they’ve got some amazing Sun Microsystems sunglasses in there – perfect for the Skins obsessed-geek in your life) A road that looks like a sex organ A…
I’m Almost Back
It’s hard to get back into the swing. I’m almost there. But my first day back was a big old day of Fast Strategy at the IPA surrounded by way-clever people. I feel a bit scared about starting to re-blog after that. And tomorrow I’ve got a…
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…
KDDI Eye Project
Massive morphing movie shapes featuring UCG films and photos. Very very slickly done. Eye project from KDDI. And the ‘blog this’ widget (above) is nicely executed too (although I think ‘join’ is a pretty harsh call to action that would put…
Google Ads Phishing
Got this today: Damn them. It’s a fake that leads to a well disguised Chinese phishing site. Looks like it’s been happening quite a bit. The copy is slightly different but the technique is similar. Then I got sucked into reading about…
Seth Godin Kicked Me In The Nuts
Ah man. Sometimes you can’t help but link to one of Seth’s posts. It feels a bit lame and boring because everyone reads his blog anyway (don’t they?). But sometimes he kicks you in the metaphorical gonads with one of those, clever…
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…
Judging Viral – Viral in 5 Words
I’ve been doing some bits and pieces of awards judging for various folk this year. It’s all been interesting so far. The one I’m most worried about is the D&AD Viral Category. I’m the chairman of the jury and I’m guessing that there’s…
What a Wonk
Following on from the post about URLs out, searches in. According to Ad Week: W+K in NY have hired a search dude (By the way I’m not suggesting a causal relation between my blog post and the hiring before anyone thinks I’m being a total…
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…
Exactitudes
I’d spotted this exhibition in the press and then stumbled on it totally by accident in Selfridges basement this evening. It’s amazing. It’s a series of photographs of style tribes. They say: Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and…
Pre-YouTube Silly Moments In Techno
I should probably start a separate category in the blog for this stuff. It just seems to keep on coming… I loved this clip for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s a bunch of cheeky young ravers from Edinburgh. I would have been living there…
4×4 Meme: More About Me
I got tagged by blackbeltjones with the 4×4 meme. So I rolled over and became a part of it. Plus it gives me a chance for some totally self-absorbed and pointless blogging. It looks like this meme has mutated a bit over time, but I’m going…
AgencyTart – Nice Contact Page
A superb use of ‘punch in the aorta’ when applied to blog spammers: From a new site on my blogdar – agencytart.wordpress.com a sweetly vitriolic blog with a passionate hatred of lots of bad things. I hope the author finds their negativity…
A New Mix For The Weekend
Actually that’s a lie. It’s not a ‘new’ mix. It’s a mix from last weekend. But I’m posting it now. This is from Asi’s birthday party last Friday. It was a party in a pub. So I felt I had to play a bit more ‘rowdy’ than I normally would to…
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…
Monkeys and Drums and Stuff
Scamp has written a really good piece about ideas and their appropriation by advertising. It specifically talks about the Cadbury’s Gorilla and the fact that it was originally pitched to someone else, and there was once a drumming Gorilla…
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…
Loving Love
I popped in to see the chaps at Love in Manchester today. I don’t normally just turn up in strange towns and nip round to see people, but I got nice email from them yesterday as I was on the train (completely out of the blue), so it felt…
Do You Want to Do Digital?
Scamp asks the $6m question: Most above-the-line creatives claim that most digital creative work is poor, and they will be able to do it much better, when they’re asked to. However, my question to above-the-line people is… do you actually…
McDonalds’ Freakout
I’ve got no clue what’s going on… Comment is all pure guesswork. If you can clarify please do… Is this an ad from Japan? Is this a really mentalist remix of an ad from Japan (it really gets going about 2/3 the way in)? This really does…
Last.fm Goes Fulltracktastic
Big news. Last.fm gets full track listening capabilities. As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website. Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any…
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…
The Little Haters
I really liked this piece about ‘The Little Haters’, the tiny voices in your head that try to persuade you not to to stuff. Outlines the killer combo of procrastination and perfectionism to a tee… Your browser does not support JavaScript…
Amazing Stop Motion Wall Painting
fantoche from blu on Vimeo. Wow. Odd it doesn’t have any sound. But just incredible anyway. Check out some of the other amazing things at their blog: http://www.blublu.org/blog/. Very inspiring and humbling in equal measure.
This Tie Is Incredible
Yes folks. This is a first for me. A blog post about a tie! I’m not a tie connoisseur, but I loved this. And I love the fact that they’ve made it a clip-on so the knot doesn’t spoil the 8-bit flatness. Genius. What a tie. Availible from…
Great Interview
I just read an interview with Kurt Vonnegut. He was such a dude. And so very very smart. There’s a short ‘edited highlights’ version on Tim Ferriss’ blog (he’s the author of The 4-Hour Work Week), where I came across it. If you want the…
Amazing Mix!
I chanced across a fantatic mix at twentyfourhours (one of my favourite MP3 blogs). It’s the mix I wish I’d made. It’s the Aeroplane Airspace mix on this page here. Aeroplane are from Belgium and you can check their MySpace page here. It’s…
Quote of the Day
A very senior and experienced person in the digital world who is normally a vocal advocate for web 2.0 type stuff and who has multiple blogs just said: “I should do more with things like del.icio.us, but I just don’t like sharing stuff”…
How To Do Digital Planning
I’ve been trying to post something like this for a few months now. But it kept morphing into a badly researched history of planning mixed with a poor how-to guide. And of course I kept veering off into bloody flag-waving about how digital…
How To Do Digital @ Scampblog
Great post by James Cooper (creative director of Dare) over at Scampblog. I particularly enjoyed his skillful deployment of the 180 degree handed complement: 2. Be original. Same rules apply to when all you lot who moan about whether…
3 Killer Blog Posts You Have to Read
http://www.skelliewag.org/ is a great find. I’m really liking it a lot. 25 Headline Formulas That Have Plagued and Blessed Web 2.0 by Skellie is a great article. As is The Top 20 Ways to Come Up With Amazing Ideas. And who could ignore…
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…
Asi’s FaceBook Apps Analysis
Asi’s gone and done one of his mega posts. Now he’s moved from looking at the top 100 YouTube clips to looking at the top 100 FaceBook apps. Nice work. And very useful for lots of people… No Man’s Blog – Facebook Applications Trend Report 1…
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…
A Minor Update
I’ve made a few tweaks to the blog. A few bits might be missing for a while. But hopefully not too long. I’m trying to rebuild it in a way that I sort of understand. And right now I sort of do. Just. If there’s anything that doesn’t work…
Fire Video Gets Honours, But Why?
The video from yesterday of the fire got a link from the Guardian’s News Blog. Their embedding of the video in their blog meant that the clip had over 6,000 views yesterday which meant that it got the following ‘honours’ on YouTube. I was…
My Love of Spam
I have a strange obsession with spam. Now I can look at lovely illustrated lines from spam thanks to the skills of Linzie Hunter. Check the Flickr group right here. via: the excellent Core 77…
Making Good Shit Stick Is Tough
Don’t get me wrong. I love the meritocratic world of the web. Good stuff floats, average stuff gets suspended in the sea of mediocrity and bad stuff sinks without trace. And that’s the way it ought to be. It used to be really easy. Back in…
Great Book – 99 Ways To Tell A Story
Whether you like comics or not this is a great book. The author takes the same, very simple, story (a guy going downstairs to the fridge) and tells it 99 times in different ways. There’s loads of variety and you don’t have to be a comic…
These ARE the t-shirts you’re looking for
These T-shirts have to be some of the finest in the universe. Via Nik’s new buythistshirt.org blog.…
Mini – Lunchbreak Moonwalking
Yesterday I blogged about theotherlunchbreak.com – Mini’s really nice lunchtime learning sessions. I managed to get along to the ‘Learn to Moonwalk’ session and it was great! Sorry about the rubbish quality – my phone video camera just…
Why I Love Abel and Cole
We’ve been getting organic boxes from Abel and Cole. Apparently it’s the done thing when you’re greenish and in your mid-30s. But in the couple of months we’ve been using them we’ve not ever really managed to finish a box. So we end up…
Hype Machine Stunt
Like this a lot. Hype Machine are going to launch their new site once 10,000 people are looking at this page: http://hypem.com/new Brilliantly it’s not when 10,000 have looked at it cumulatively, they’re waiting for 10,000 to have the page…
WTF WWF – Massive Paper Plane and Boat Project
Here’s the short version of the story: With the WWF we’re building a massive paper plane and massive paper boat. We’re then going to fly / sail them (somehow) to the Houses of Parliament. If you sign up to the online petition your name…
Nike, is it Supersonic?
Right now you can’t move in London without seeing some kind of ad for Nike Supersonic. According to the blog spam I got the other day: “Nike is launching an exclusive invitation only event for 3,000 people in London to push their pace…
Saving the World One Design at a Time
Ben’s blog is always great. But here’s a bit of greatness that you should make a special effort to read: I’m a designer, use me better – it’s Ben’s presentation from the Applied Green conference. It’s just dead good. It shows that…
The Art of Chart
I’ve blogged http://indexed.blogspot.com/ before, and by George I’m sure I’ll do it again. Coming up with seemingly endless killer doodle charts on index cards that are sweet, insightful and make me laugh is a feat that deserves regular…
Blogging From An iPod Touch
It’s silly but I had to do it
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…
Blogger Relations – Digital Agencies Suck at it Too
In retrospect I shouldn’t have had a go at the Ogilvy PR Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics – incidentally they’re back with a V2 which you can find here. Having looked at some of the things I’ve been getting recently, people involved in this…
My Favourite Post in Recent Memory
The Logic+Emotion blog is consistently good. This post about execs not getting ‘new media’ is so spot on it hits the middle of the spot in the middle of the spot at the centre of the bullseye. An extract: “The industry has brainwashed us…
My First Post…
As a mature 35 year old. And I’m celebrating already. Not because it’s my birthday (today the 28th Sept, if you’d like to send gifts). But because I’ve been given the temporary accolade of ‘Best Link’ on BuzzFeed (for a bloody obscure post…
I Still Like Cartridge Save
I just got my second ‘sponsorship’ payment via PayPal from Cartridge Save. So that’s all working out nicely. Thanks guys. If you missed the story about my deal with Cartridge Save you can read about it here.
Lolcatz vs Post Secret
A mashup so good I almost burped pure joy. For lots more visit: http://lolsecretz.blogspot.com/ Of course for it to make any sense at all you need to know about Post Secret and Lolcatz…
Marc Ecko’s Latest ‘Stunt’
Marc Ecko, he of ‘Tagging Airforce One‘ fame, has come up with another big noisy stunt. He’s bought a baseball for 3/4 million dollars. It’s a controversial baseball. It’s the ball that was hit by some dude (Barry Bonds) who got 756 home…
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…
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…
I Love Unlikely Internet Heroes
I always feel a bit lame blogging stuff that’s been on BoingBoing, but I couldn’t resist Ronald Jenkees. Read their post for more details.
I Love M83
It’s true, I do love M83. Their new long player Digital Shades vol 1 is out now. M83 make great epic soundscapes. I’m not really sure of the best way to describe them, there’s moments of noisy shoegazing bands like My Bloody Valentine, but…
Old But Pure Gold
I’m sure I should have read this before. But for some reason I hadn’t. It’s perhaps one of my single favourite blog posts ever: Hugh ‘GapingVoid’ MacLeod on How To Be Creative I discovered it when looking at his cartoons the other day…
Brands, Bands, Fans
Music strategy and comms agency Frukt send me a lovely email every month called Brands | Bands | Fans which is a top snapshot of the way that brands are ruining music. Or in some rare occasions doing something that’s actually quite good…
A Whole New Mind – Brilliant Book
I read a book yesterday in one sitting. Well a couple of sittings if you include changes in mode of transport from bus to train. It’s very rare that I do that. It’s also very rare that I find a ‘business’ book that grips me like this one…
Are You A Synthesizer?
Yet another great post from the Logic + Emotion blog. I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks. But been struggling to find anything to say anything about it. I think that’s because it’s such a good post. It’s all about the…
A Tale of Modern Blog Blagging
I got an out-of-the-blue email a couple of weeks ago asking how much I’d charge for a text link from my blog. I thought about it, then realised that I had no idea. I know a bit about CPM and CPA numbers and I know how much traffic I get…
SFMGFiPod
This made me LOL. It’s a music blog post. Normally the guy posts up decent music, but he’s got a thread called SFMGFiPod (which stands for ‘shit from my girlfriend’s iPod’). He’s basically posting up the stuff that his girlfriend is…
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…
Brighton Pride
I went to Pride in Brighton on Saturday. And it was great. The weather was good and gays and straights were out in huge numbers having fun. Struck me how nice it was to have an event that was founded in people just wanting to celebrate…
Great Climate Change Video
Forget about An Inconvenient Truth, it’s all long and boring and stuff. Watch this instead… To my mind this deserves to have a lot more views than it’s had – so I’m going to make it my mission to get more people to see it. Please blog it…
ToyotaSpace – I Don’t Like This
To me this shows exactly how not to approach bloggers to get them onside. I’ve not put in a link to the site, and I don’t want one back from them. But if you do want to visit the site you can figure out the URL from the text above. Reasons…
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…
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…
Logic+Emotion: Thought of the Day
Caught this great quote on the excellent Logic and Emotion blog: “Design is so popular today mostly because business sees design as connecting it to the consumer populace in a deep, fundamental and honest way. An honest way. If you are in…
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…
Adam Crowe – How Ants Do It
I love this. Adam, thank you for such a concise and brilliant analysis of FaceBook: Adam Crowe » Blog Archive » How Ants Do It [By the way I am on Facebook now. But I don’t like it. I find it all a bit yucky. I’ll post my thoughts on why…
Awesome Blog
It’s not that often that I just link to a blog and say that it’s just really great. But that’s exactly what I’m about to do. http://www.ohmythatsawesome.com/ It’s just a blog where the bloggers write about really cool consumer products…
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…
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…
Ideas Forum in Bucharest
I’ve been in Romania for the last few days. Which has been really interesting. I’ve been getting to hang out with Russell and Faris, which is always a nice thing. We’ve been talking at a thing called the ‘ideas forum’…
Blog Closed For a Bit
I’m on holiday for a week or so. Hooray!
Miami Nice
Sorry for lack of blogging. I’m in Miami. I’m at the Clios Advertising Festival thingy. I’ll write some stuff about my impresions of what people have talked about and generally what’s going on when I’ve had a chance to digest and ponder…
I’ve been TaxiBlogged!
My thing about YogaLadder has been lifted by the London Taxi News: There’s a YogaLadder in My Taxi | London Taxi News I feel special. As I’m now on the TaxiWeb here’s something else taxi related. I saw this parked near Old St yesterday…
I don’t hate advertising. I just like digital better.
Well I finally did it. I finished my list of “10 Reasons that Digital is Better than Advertising“. Which is a personal triumph. It’s the longest sustained thought of my blog so far. Even longer than my ranting about Virgin Media! Even…
Widgets, Dials, Switches and More
Yesterday I was looking for some pictures of ‘counters’ to use in a presentation, Nik sent me this blog: No Ideas But In Things It’s a blog of photos about real-world interface elements. Incredibly single-minded and focused. But for me…
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…
Toronto Zoo Again
After Jealous Animals, a site I blogged about before, comes Bugsrock the tale of some cool cockroaches. Toronto Zoo do good stuff again. I can imagine kids and adults loving their work in equal measure. Which is surely the aim of Zoo…
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…
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…
Haters Extreme
One of the best and most inspirational bloggers around, Kathy Sierra, has been rightly scared and upset by a bunch of vile stuff that’s been written about her online. She has an amazing blog and a network of incredibly strong supporters…
Horrible Misguided Integrated Campaign
Basically this site: http://www.information-revolution.org and it’s associated advertising try to position this organisation as a sort of free choice organisation campaigning against the dominance of Google. But it’s a campaign for Ask…
I Like MOMA
This is the second time I’ve said I don’t want to blog about what I had for breakfast. But in a roundabout way I’m doing it again… This morning I stopped at a little stand called MOMA at London Bridge (I have to admit the first time I saw…
Like a Virgin
It’s really odd. But since I’ve been away for a week on holiday I’ve found it really really hard to start blogging again. I’ve faced the blank WordPress interface a couple of times now, but I just can’t seem to do it. It’s not that I…
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…
Yacco Blogs
Nice to see that Yacco, Poke‘s new creative director, has started blogging. It’s early days, but I’m sure there’s going to be some nice things on there… I made a NetVibes tab that contains all of the Poke bloggers in one place. It’s quite…
QR Codes – There’s More
Following earlier posts about QR codes (or Semacodes) – the barcodes that your phone can translate into cool stuff – thought I ought to post this from the MIT Advertising Lab on uses for QR codes. I can’t help but think that the ones above…
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…
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…
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…
Flickr Romances
Funny article on ‘How to turn your Flickr crush into real romance‘, specially posted for Valentines day over at Wired. Starts off with a story of a real life Flickr Romance, then gives you the 10 steps to finding love on Flickr. I…
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…
A Couple of Cool Things
Burton have designed this (as yet unreleased) sleeping hoody. I’ve always struggled to find the perfect item of clothing for long journeys. This looks like the designers have nailed it (or at least had a damn good go). The Complex blog…
I’m Not The Only One With Haters
This post over at Russell’s blog entitled: Bugger made me rather depressed. All of the criticisms levelled at Russell are the precise same things that makes his blog so damn good! I’m affectedly bumbling and luvvie in my writing style, I…
Sorry for glitches…
I’m moving house today. Or rather some people considerably more qualified to move my stuff are moving my house today. I was trying to help, but I was just getting in the way. So instead I’ve decided to hide out and do something semi-useful…
Boxes Not Blogs
Sorry it’s a bit quiet round here. I’m busy packing up all my things to move house so my life’s in boxes at the moment which is a bit stressful. And I’ve not got much time, or space, to do blogging-like activities. Just in case you’re…
Our ‘Secret’ Creative Director
OK. It’s time. I can now finally reveal the all-new 3rd Poke Creative Director (after all the buildup). He’s the guy on the left. His name is Yacco Vijn – pronounce it as Jacko (like Whacko Jacko) Fine – pretty simple, and he claims it’s…
User Archived Content
From my occasional series of ‘here’s something from the musical archives that’s pretty cool’ posts. I love the fact that YouTube allows for the sharing of this kind of content. It’s probably not strictly ‘legal’. And it’s not strictly…
Computers Behind Blogs – Intro
Here’s a little pet project I’ve been thinking about for a while. I wanted to do something that shows the computers that people blog from. I reckon it might give an interesting, non-verbal snapshot into the bloggers’ world. So I’ve gone…
When Good Companies Blog Good
Here’s a site that Poke built that I’ve never written about. Probably because I had nothing to do with it. But it’s a great little site. Partly to do with what we did for them. But as least as much, if not more, because they’re using it…
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…
Better than Tufte
Everyone always bangs on about Tufte and his books about displaying information. And yes, they’re very nice books. But I’ve got a new heroine: Jessica Hagy and her Indexed blog. Never have so few well-chosen lines on so few index cards…
Second Life Sex, Get it Here…
Yuk. I just looked at my stats. And it turns out that the Google search term that brings most people to my blog is… “Second Life Sex” Damn, I’ve just realised that by even writing the term again, I’ve probably increased my google ranking…
Blog Recruitment Rules, OK…
Buzz and me with our new ‘mystery’ creative director A follow up to the Poke Seeking Creative Director post… In short, rather than doing normal job advertising, or going through recruitment consultants, I wrote a ‘job ad’, then Nik and I…
Google Maps Adventure Game for Penguin
If you’re into adventure type games. Or just want to win some great prizes. Or are a real nerd and want to see how we’ve used Google Maps as part of our quest interface. Head over to MaliceBoxQuest.com, something Poke have put together for…
I’m in Viral Shock!
Bumped into this piece for Mountain Dew over at Faris’ Blog. As I commented over there. I’m in shock. It’s a ‘viral’ that I like. And I liked it so much I passed it on. Making it really and truly ‘viral’. I’ve got to go and lie down
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…
Media Organisations of the Future
Faris has a good write up of a presentation by Simon Waldman of the Guardian: What is a media company? I saw the same presentation (or a version of it) at a Microsoft day late last year. And I have to say I thought he put forward a really…
CMOs on Digital and Traditional
Following the BBH Lynx win post I thought this research into the attitude of CMOs(commissioned by Sapient) reported some interesting stuff. LIke the fact that 68% of CMOs prefer to work with multiple agencies, to derive the benefits 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…
Tag-5-things-o-rama
OK! OK! I’m going to do it. I’m gong to succumb to the blog tag 5 things meme. Thanks to the following for tagging me. I might have missed some others (if I have let me know and I’ll add you to my thank you list). Oakie Dan Burgess @ Tap…
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…
Campaign Against Real Life
Funny and nicely produced spoof of the Dove Evolution thing. Can be found at Campaignagainstreallife.com. (Note: I was being a fool last night and accidentally posted this as ‘campaign for real life’ – thanks to Richard for the correction…
Long Break (phew)
Well that’s one of the longest blog breaks I’ve had since starting up. I’ve not been doing much really. Christmas was pretty much like a short hibernation for me. Did some very good sleeping and a little bit of family type stuff. Then…
My Top Stuff of 2006
I’ve been thinking about doing a post on stuff I’ve liked in 2006, if you’ve got a blog it seems like you have to. But I didn’t know what to put in it or how to organise it. But I got re-inspired by The Design Conspiracy annual (a thing of…
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…
Powder Your Nose in Style
I like this. A luxury private washroom on Oxford Street. Brilliantly named WC1 (well I liked it anyway!). A glamorous urban sanctuary, WC1 is the world’s first one-million-pound powder room. It has been designed with impeccable hygiene and…
My Mini Adventure
I sort of wrote myself an unwritten rule that I wouldn’t blog this. But when I did a search for Mini Adventure London and nothing came up, I felt a bit bad. Mini have obviously spent a lot of money on an awesome piece of experiential…
2 Interesting Blogs
It’s nice when people you know start good blogs. It’s sometimes an interesting way of finding out more about someone than you used to know. Cookie has started up made-in-england.org (I really hope the title isn’t a reference to that crappy…
Sorry, Not Much Going on Blogwise
Sorry for the blog quietness. Although I’ve not been busy blogging I have been busy doing other things. Like working. And more excitingly trying to buy a house in Brighton. I’m looking forward to living near the sea. From this you can take…
Breaking the Cycle of Depression
A couple of days ago I mentioned that I was de-motviated. Then I got some lovely comments (and a couple of emails) from nice people, which re-motivated me :-) Then I posted something over on Faris’ blog about how certain trends (like…
Poke: Seeking Creative Director
Poke are hiring. We’re looking for a new creative director. It’s a nice place to work, or at least I think so. We’re looking for someone quite particular. If you’re interested, or think you know someone who might be, please take a look at…
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…
The Geekiest T-Shirt Ever?
I’ve seen a lot of geeky t-shirts in my time. But this one is pretty much the king of the nerd-castle, awesome… (As you might have spotted, I’m struggling a bit with blogging at the moment. A combination of lack of time plus a general…
The Value of Experimentation
I agree with Russell when it comes to the value of experimentation and play. Asi also brought it up in relation to the video-fronted search engine I mentioned yesterday. I’m all for play and doing new stuff. But there is a degree 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)…
One Day in History
I liked this idea about capturing a day in history through blogs: ‘One Day in History’ is a one off opportunity for you to join in a mass blog for the national record. We want as many people as possible to record a ‘blog’ diary which will…
Participation Inequality
Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities. Jakob Nielsen’s piece on the split between lurkers, synthesisers and creators. He puts it at a 90-9-1 rule. But has some other interesting examples, like blogging…
Interactive Cinema Ads
Brazillian interactive cinema ad for Fiat using text messages. More details on the MIT Advertising Lab blog Interesting idea, and something we’ve had discussions about before. But I always felt it was really irresponsible to do something…
Modern Man
I’m taking part in the Carnival of Modern Man over the next couple of weeks (because I was asked). It’s an interesting project by the PSFK guys and I thought it would be good to stretch out my blogging muscles a little bit. So you might…
Crackunit is One!
Hooray. This current version of Crackunit has made it to the age of one. That’s more than any of the other versions did… I was thinking about the history of Crackunit and my blogging and I couldn’t remember how long I’d had the domain for…
Birthdays
I totally missed Google’s birthday (28th September). But I picked it up today thanks to Mike at DigitalAgency Perhaps the reason that I missed it was that it was my birthday on the same day and I was too worried about being old. I like…
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…
Organic Blog
Not a blog about stuff with no pesticides. Stuff about the web agency Organic. Actually they might be pesticide free too, in fact they probably are. They’ve got a nice blog: Three Minds @ Organic. A smart blog with interesting things in…
When good ads go bad…
I like the new advert for 3. The one for free Email and IM on your phone. If you’ve not seen it, here it is: I was really really disappointed when I opened up my weekly Zoo magazine (it’s a work thing, honest) to see this press version of…
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…
Help me find someone
Not in a Where’s Wally kind of way! I need to find someone for a project I’m working on. It’s a type of person I’ve not really worked with before. A kind of person that I don’t know where to find and how to reach them. So maybe, just…
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…
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…
I love London (a little bit)
Some of you may have seen my ‘I love London’ blog – an experiment to try to get me to love living in London a bit more. And whether having a blog that makes me look out for good things would help me to see good things. After a strong start…
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…
Holidays, Blitzen and Blogsitting
It’s been a few days. But I am on holiday. For some reason whenever I go away people say “you’re always on holiday”, but I promise I’m not. Regardless here’s where I am: Algund-Lagundo – it’s a lovely place, but slightly odd; it’s in…
Disintermediating Citizen-Media Podcasts
It had to happen really. Web 1.0 had it’s own bullshit generator, now Web 2.0 gets one too: Emptybottle.org – The Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator I also find some perverse pleasure in the web 2.0 buzzphrase generator.
Top 10 Presentations
Great list of the Top 10 Best Presentations Ever, a pretty tough list to compile and they’ve done a nice job. There’s a few in here that I’ve seen before, and a few that I haven’t. For Apple geeks of particular note is Steve Jobs launch of…
Geotagging in Flickr
Very cool new feature in Flickr, you can geotag your photos using Organizr. Simply drag your photos onto the Map (provided by Yahoo! Maps) and they immediately get a location attached to them. It’s really really simple and works…
New Design
Stan Lee suggested that maybe I should consider a new web 2.0 logo, and pointed me in the direction of the Web 2.0 logo generator. What do you reckon?…
Crackunit gets a tidy up
It was time for a tidy-up. My blog template was starting to break in places. And I’ve found that I was writing longer posts. Which may or may not be a good thing depending on your point of view. But it meant that the big type was getting a…
Digital Frustration
Just in case it gets lost in the comments. I thought it was worth blogging the fact that Tony Davidson left a comment in response to my ranting the other day. Thanks. It’s always nice when a monologue turns into a dialogue. Stops you…
Digital Creativity Revisited
Yesterday I posted this: Tony Davidson on Digital Creativity I got into a bit of a rant about it. You’ll find it’s easy to bait anyone who works in digital in this way. In fact there’s probably a good sport in there somewhere. It’d be…
Tony Davidson on Digital Creativity
The above image is blatantly stolen from the excellent DigitalAgency blog. But short of retyping the whole thing I couldn’t think of any other way of doing it. It’s from the D&AD Student Annual, written by Tony Davidson (Creative Director…
Clerks 2 – A socially networked film
The Social Customer Manifesto: Silent Bob Speaks I liked Clerks when I first saw it. I liked its low-budgetness, especially the fact that the store in the film had a broken shutter (to hide the fact that the only time they could afford to…
I lied
I know I said I’d shut up about a certain topic, but… Kevin left a comment asking what I thought of his opinions on the Agency.com thing. So I thought the least I could do is take a look. He makes some very good points, however, as I said…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Dell Blog
I’m a bit behind on this one but Dell have started a corporate blog. It’s getting very mixed coverage: Good(ish): Scobleizer – Tech Geek Blogger » Four little links say volumes at Dell site Pretty bad: Micro Persuasion: Dell Starts…
Social Notworking
This makes me want to weep. Wal-Mart’s ‘Hub’ for teens that allows them to ‘express their individuality’ (and win cool stuff!). Ths writeup in AdAge highlights most of the issues… Advertising Age – Wal-Mart Tries to Be MySpace — Seriously…
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…
The Stuff Designers Wish You Knew
If you’re in the business of design or working with designers you ought to read Seth’s post on how to live happily with a great designer. I know the designers I work with would like you to read it ;-) technorati tags:design
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…
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.
Mentos Do Good
Mentos Turns Coke/Mentos Geysers Into Video Contest – this article says it as well as I could, so I’m not going to repeat it. But I suppose you need to know what it is, so here’s a quick summary. Put Mentos in Coke. Booooooosh. Quite…
Broken iPods. What to do?
I’ve got 2 x 4th gen ipods at home, both with knackered hard drives. My inner environmentalist says that I can’t throw them away. But getting them fixed will cost £150 quid each. Which just isn’t worth it considering they’re old and…
Blog Shares
Not quite sure how it all works, but it looked like a bit of fun and something I should at least know about. I’m preparing to have my ego crushed as this proves my blog is less useful than a blog about something really useless. Oh yeah, my…
I like adverts with good words
This is one of a set of adverts for Tate Britain that I like a great deal. They use words well. I stopped to read them. I enjoyed the reading. I felt better for having read it at the end. The Judges at Cannes seemed to like them too. For…
Scalextric World Record – Zootube
Here’s a little site I’ve been working on. I’ve been keeping it a bit quiet because it’s a bit laddy (well a lot laddy in places). But it is appropriate for the target audience. It is for Zoo Magazine after all! The site documents the…
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…
I Hate Viral(s)
I’ve grown to hate the term viral: I hate the fact that it’s overused. I hate the fact that it’s misused. I hate the fact that ‘viral’ appears as a line on media plans. I hate the fact that people now call them virals. With an (s) as if…
Web Dogma
It’s been a while since I’ve read Boxes and Arrows, it’s a very good collaborative blog about information architechture and related jiggery pokery. One thing caught my eye today: Dogmas Are Meant to be Broken: An Interview with Eric Reiss…
2000 Bricks
Brian kindly left a comment pointing to 2000 Bricks, a project not 1000 miles away from 1000 Paintings. There’s an interesting graph on his site that shows activity on 1000 Paintings has changed over time. He calls it the Short Tail. I’m…
Bonfire Of The Brands
Neil Boorman (ex-editor of ex-Sleazenation, Shorditch Twat and other titles I’m sure) is writing a book called: Bonfire Of The Brands As part of his experience he’s burning all of his branded goods in a big bonfire as part of re-evaluating…
Is better better?
Seth Godin talks about the difference between trying to be better and trying to be different: Seth’s Blog: In search of better I’ve puzzled over this one for a bit, and the trouble I have is that better is always better. Wheras different…
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…
Gnarls Barkley – Crazy Video
Cool Hunting blog the Gnarls Barkley video for UK chart smash number one hit – Crazy. It’s top. A really simple idea beautifully executed. Based around a morphing set of Rorschach ink blots it’s a worthy accompaniment to the track. I don’t…
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…
Eau De Play Doh
Play-Doh Fragrance – pretty much everyone loves the smell of Play Doh, don’t they? I know I do. But does that actually mean we want to smell like Play Doh? Well if you do, you can. Thanks to this limited edition cologne. Even if they don’t…
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…
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…
Ugly Design Works
This is an interesting debate. I think I might not share it with some of my colleagues for fear of inciting a mini-riot Ugly Design Works… Most Web Designers Miss the Point. I do think there’s some truth in it though (eBay anyone?). It…
Help Me Create a Del.icio.us Network
A new feature of del.icio.us is the ability to create your own networks. It’s a replacement for the slightly confusing inbox feature. I’d love to create a little network of like-minded people so I can keep in touch with the hot stuff that…
Bridging Real and Virtual Money
MAKE: Blog: The Future of Credit Cards – Earning virtual currency for spending in the real world & other world bridging. (Now there’s a snappy link!) Interesting article on the rise of virtual currencies and the ways that the lines between…
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…
Busy not blogging
I’m faced with a daily paradox at the moment: the busier I get (sometimes doing quite interesting stuff) the less time I find that I have to blog about it. I need to get better at putting aside a few minutes a day to keep the site up to…
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…
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…
Feedburner – RSS + nice touches
I’m now going to attempt a cunning blog maneuver, I’m going to try and join two recent posts together (admittedly in a bit of a clumsy way). Feedburner is a really cool service for bloggers or web site owners. It allows you to make your…
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…
BannerBlog
BannerBlog.com.au : Where Banners Click – nice site from Australialand. A regularly updated feast of online advertising with contributers from lots of agencies around the world (including Poke’s very own Tobie Cameron).…
Diablogue: Life takes….
Diablogue (a new find on the blog trail; thanks Russell) pointed me in the direction of a new online Visa campaign produced by AKQA. Life Takes Visa As the Diablogue guys say there’s some sweet moments in there. But I can’t help but feel…
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…
Whatever: Writing Tips
Tips on writing better written in a simple and easy to follow fashion – Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don’t Want to Work at Writing. Almost everyone I know could benefit from reading this. And even if I don’t know you, I’d still…
Flipping the Funnel
Flipping the Funnel (ebook) – as ususal Seth writes in a way that makes you think, “duh, of course, who didn’t know that”, but then you realise that you didn’t, and he’s just implanted something new and brilliant in your brain. A really…
Going Underground
Is it really possible to overlay music onto the London Underground map? Each line representing a genre, giving proximity and intersections real meanings? Sounds bloody impossible to me. But someone’s given it a red-hot go. Nice work –…
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…
dumb, crass, stupid, sexist lavazza
Interesting thoughts on complaining via buzz tracking. Russell doesn’t like the Lavazza posters with busty women on them (russell davies: dumb, crass, stupid, sexist lavazza). I think the image, as a photograph, is middle-shelf…
A List Apart: Articles: Web 3.0
I almost feel like I know the guy in the empty seat, or certainly someone cast from the same mold. Zeldman writes about the state of the web. A List Apart: Articles: Web 3.0. But ours is a medium in which, more often than not, big teams…
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…
Sunrise over Canary Wharf
I didn’t ever want to start making this a what-i-had-for-breakfast-blog, but a combination of a few things have driven me to this post. 1. A new camera – finally I’ve got one that I can carry around without needing a rucksack, hooray! 2…
Frog Review
All usability reviews should be carried out by talking frogs. And no, I’ve not spent the weekend licking toxic toads! Check this site if you don’t believe that frogs are the future of usability: Frog Review: Ticketmaster. I can see these…
The Joy of Stats…
Whilst checking my lovely new easy-to-read stats package ‘Mint’, I noticed that an old friend and colleague had linked to me. A click later and hey-presto Kief Morris is alive and well. And he’s even said a nice thing or two about me and…
Bouncy Balls!
Sony Bouncy Balls TV advert. For me this is one of the greatest ads of recent times. Not only is it a thing of great beauty. It’s executed brilliantly. It demonstrates, in a way that everyone can understand, the key product benefit. Oh…
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.…
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…
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…
The best thing about Web 2.0
Creating Passionate Users: The best thing about Web 2.0 – As per normal Kathy Sierra makes some amazingly valid points over on one of my favourite blogs. Isn’t it bugging when you read articles that express what you’re thinking so much…