#iaintait does not have 1,000 Google Wave Invites to give away
Dear World, I am @iaintait on Twitter. And I do not have 1,000 Google Wave Invites to give away. I don’t even have a Google Wave invite for myself. Since yesterday afternoon I’ve had thousands of people from all around the world…
Jonathan From Spotify Ruined Your Playlist
http://jonathanfromspotifyruinedyourplaylist.com/ is my favourite website of today. If you don’t know Jonathan from Spotify, he’s the guy who interrupts your listening pleasure with his little adlets. I’m sure he was forced to do it, so…
The ‘Zosjm pydax’ Website
Just came through on a spam. I wish I had registered with the Zosjm pydax website, it sounds bloody intriguing. Unfortunately when I search for it there are no results. By writing this post it means that I will now be the first (and only)…
Twitterfall + Gmail Fail Gives a Sense of Twitter Scale
If you’ve not seen Twitterfall it’s quite nice. It streams in Twitter messages with certain keywords in real time. It makes twitter feel like a bit joined up community (which it isn’t really). What really freaked me out was watching it…
Best Door Closing Mechanism Ever
At Flat White on Berwick Street Soho, London. A nice little coffee shop with a nice way of keeping the door shut. You probably can’t make it out in the photo above. So here’s a detail shot: They use a bunch of cups as a weight that pulls…
Radiohead House of Cards on Current.com
I was just watching Current TV and this film about the Radiohead House of Cards video came on… It really is a bit good.
Your Mum…
A sign of the times. I’m not sure this is how a classic ‘your mum’ gag should start, but this is a genuine email I received today… p.s. I’m proud of my mum.…
Nike 1948 Popup Store in London
Edit: Popup store has popped-down.This store now appears to be closed. So don’t make a special trip to see it. If you’re in the Shoreditch area there’s a nice temporary pop-up Nike store just opposite Market Sports on Bateman’s Row. It’s…
Universities Are Hot On Google Adwords
I logged into my Gmail and picked up a message about a D&AD education thing I’m speaking at in September. And I suddenly noticed that I was surrounded by ads for clearing places at various Universities. I don’t know why I was surprised. Of…
My Kung Fu Style is More Googleable Than Yours!
I found this quite amusing. This Kung Fu class poster looked relatively standard: Then I noticed this: I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself why I imagined: It’s amazing that Google Ranking has now become something that even Kung Fu…
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…
Google Maps Gets Better and Better
Maybe I’ve just been using the internet with my eyes half shut. And I’ve no idea how long it’s been there for. But the overlaying of photos and Wikipedia entries to the standard Google Maps offering is really nice.…
One Of The Greatest Quotes Ever…
It’s nice to be back… TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
What is a Charticle?
I was reading a piece in the New York Times about goings-on at Gawker when I came across this quote from Choire Sicha (the outgoing managing editor as far as I can tell): “I don’t want to write a top 10 list in my life, ever. I don’t want…
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…
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…
WWF Paper Boat and Plane ‘Live’
Hoorah! The big paper plane and paper boat are real, and they’re down by the Thames. Don’t forget to sign up to lobby for a stronger climate change bill (one that includes shipping and aviation for starters) at…
The Frat Boys Are Back
For me Frat Houses were always a thing of great glamour and mystery. I guess it’s the teenage viewings of films like Animal House and Porky’s that make it all seem so exciting. But this film really changed my mind about all of that. It…
Web 3.0 Doesn’t Sound Like Much Fun
I wasn’t going to post this as it’s not all that enlightening. It’s from a few months ago and is Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) talking about web 3.0 as a bunch of lightweight free distributable micro applications / services. Which is all very…
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…
The Most Creative Website Ever
I’m doing some pitchy type stuff and ran out of inspiration so I typed into Google “most creative website ever” hoping that I’d find something to inspire me. And I came to this post about the most creative website I’ve seen in a long time…
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…
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…
Likemind in Brighton
Curtis and I are hosting a LikeMind coffee morning in Brighton on the 20th July. Come along, get free coffee, meet some people, chat some stuff. If you’re not from Brighton but know someone who lives there let them know. Kicks off at 8.00…
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…
Noise Map – A Great Idea Terribly Done
If I told you there’s a site where you can find out where to get a bit of peace and quiet in London, you might think “What a nice idea”. And it is. I was dead excited when I read about Noisemapping.org. A government department, DEFRA, have…
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…
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…
First UGC Win In The Bag
Well the evil plot to pillage the world of UCG has begun. Nothing major, just 2 tickets to a club-night on Saturday. But worth 30 quid. Not bad for 5 minutes spent writing a 50 word response to something… Interestingly I sat down and…
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…
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…
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…
Google Australia Puts People on the Map, Nice.
Damn Google being able to use their own technology to be able to do something really really cool. Google Australia is celebrating Australia Day 2007 by photographing Sydney Harbour from the air, and we want to make sure as many of us as…
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…
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…
Naming Babies the 21st Century Way
On my way to work this morning I was pondering the notion of Googlability. I’m quite lucky that both of my names are spelled in odd ways, it means that there aren’t that many Iain Tait‘s out there. Apart from Dr Iain Tait at the University…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Steal this film
Following on from the Darknet post the other day, here’s some more on piracy in Sweden (and beyond). This 30 minute film gives a view of the P2P landscape (and especially the ‘bust’ on PirateBay – a major bittorrent site). Visit the Steal…
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…
Google vs Ebay
eBay Bans Sellers from Using Google Checkout – I think that says it all… I smell war.
We’re fucked
OK, not totally. But this is an interesting development. A startup that will take your designs and turn them into coded web pages by outsourcing it to cheap places around the world (returning your pages within 5 days). Prices from $150. If…
Google Nostalgia Maps
I had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon coffee with Russell Davies on Friday. We talked about lots of really interesting things. Strangely the thing that I came away with most was a weird kind of nostalgia for the village where I grew up…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Run London – RouteFinder
Funnily enough a second post about an AKQA piece of work in one day, they must be doing something right. And in this case they really are: Run London – RouteFinder. An extension of the undoubtedly great brand property Run London, this time…
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…
FON backed by Skype and Google
Yahoo News Story details how Skype, Google and a load of the usual VC suspects are backing FON. FON is a startup that aims to create a global community of wi-fi sharers. Members are either Bills (who charge a small amount for access) or…
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…
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…
Why Google Rule
Something that makes Google so cool is the fact they recognise that their competitors (or deadly rivals), have an important part to play in peoples’ lives. See how they’ve listed Ask Yahoo! in fun. Most other sites would rather kill…
Celeb Map Mashup
In the seeming endless wave of Google Maps mashups comes Celebrity Maps. Of course, we all want to know where celebs live, so we can go raid their bins, clone their identities and create an elite army of celeb lookalikes that take over the…
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…
Backstreet Mime-a-long
Who? Why? 2 Chinese dudes, sing along to the Backstreet Boys. It’s funny. It gets funnier as you watch it for longer. The guy in the background appears to be just going about his business, unperturbed by the maniacs freaking out to boy-pop…
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…