David McCandless has been doing bits and pieces for Poke as long as Poke’s been around. In fact he’s written lots of the funnier words on the funnier projects that we’ve done. So it’s nice that someone gave him a book deal.
And if he can put the internet in a book. I can put his book with the internet in it into a video…
As you can probably see the book is packed full of stuff. Thankfully it’s funny stuff. Well it certainly made me laugh out loud in places.
It might not be everyone’s cup of tea. You’ll get a taste of the content by looking at the site: http://www.theinternetnowinhandybookform.com/ – but to be honest I think the book is funnier, but that might just be me.
Even if it’s not your bag. I’m pretty sure it is a perfect Xmas gift for the nerdy web geek who has absolutely everything. It’ll save them dropping their laptop in the bath. And they can look at ‘the internet’ without fear late at night in shady places. After all no one ever got jacked for a book (as far as I know).
If I had to describe the book in a sentence its like Viz did a hostile takeover of Web User Magazine.
I’m not getting any kind of kickback for plugging this. Apart from a free copy. Which I hope I’d have got anyway. If you’d like one you can buy it from Amazon.co.uk here: The Internet (now in handy book form!)
It’s slightly more sinister than you might first think. It’s basically a bunch of kids that have used dodgy Phishing techniques to steal other people’s passwords, login and steal all their furniture (which has been paid for with real money). So it is a real crime and they probably should get into real trouble.
The story kind of reminded me a bit of the whole “will bobba for furni” story that was around a couple of years ago. That was ‘kids’ performing virtual ‘sex-acts’ in exchange for furniture. A kind of low-level virtual prostitution. The reason “bobba for furni” came about as a term is because of the bad-words filter on Habbo Hotel.
Pretty much any place that has any kind of economy ends up with its own version of thieves, rascals and hookers. Sad but true.
What about setting up the Crimternet? A kind of Australia where all the bad Internet people get sent.
Or alternatively just shout really loud bad words in public.
This morning I’m not going to cry. I’m going to shout.
CAMPAIGN MAGAZINE PARTS THE SEA OF ONES AND ZEROS AND LEADS THE ADLANDERS INTO THE NEW LAND OF OPPORTUNITY. WHERE THERE’S OBVIOUSLY A NEED FOR REAL GROWN-UP-BIG-BOY TALENT TO TRANSFORM A SHITTY BACKWARD COTTAGE INDUSTRY THAT’S FULL OF PURILE PONY ADVERTISING MADE BY PIXEL-PUSHING PROLES.
HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS PEOPLE, THE ‘PROPER’ INTERNET’S COMING, JUST AS SOON AS THAT GUY WHO MADE THE AWESOME TWIX AD IN 1986 CAN FIGURE OUT HOW TO LOG-ON TO ONE OF THOSE WORLD WIDE WEBS.
I should stop reading industry rags. Actually I don’t read them. But sometimes I see the cover in reception, and that’s enough to raise the temperature of my urine.
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 2002. There was a lot less good stuff out there, so getting seen was much easier. But we’re now entering a world where something has to be doubleplusgood in order to get noticed. (Or have a big media / seeding spend behind it).
In an idealised online world influence is something pure. Something that gets earned over time. A few years ago you couldn’t really buy online influence, that’s why ‘viral’ became such a hot topic. If you could find a few of the influencers and get them to mention your thing, the job was done (or at least kicked-off in a decent way).
But now the population is so much bigger it’s much harder to get out there (at speed) without using mass-media style techniques (buying your way in, or lunching people like a PR pro). Getting any kind of cut-through quickly is tough.
Don’t get me wrong, the long-tail is great, it drives the right kind of people in a sustainable and genuine fashion. But getting to a point where you’ve earned a sufficient degree of link-love quite often takes time.
And sometimes time isn’t on your side.
We’re stuck in one of those situations right now. The climate change bill is creeping ever closer in parliament and we’ve not got the time or cash to accelerate the Get On Board campaign for the WWF.
We need more people to get stuck in. The guys at the WWF are doing a great job of getting their supporters involved. They’re pushing as many media buttons as they can. But the story just hasn’t picked up like we all hoped it would.
It didn’t sound so hard, we just wanted people to sign-up to push for a stronger climate change bill. And we thought that using a story around aviation and shipping made sense and wasn’t too complex (or too dumb). Maybe we over-stretched? Maybe we over estimated how much capacity people have to care about the world? Or maybe we just came up with an idea that wasn’t good enough?
But you can’t say that the idea of creating a decent climate change bill isn’t a good one. That’s just a fact. However you look at it.
And here’s a nice little video showing some of the people who do give a shit messing up. Everyone likes out-takes don’t they? Featuring David Nussbaum (CEO of WWF), Sarah Beeny, Terry Waite, Lewis Gordon Pugh (the guy who can swim in really cold water) and my personal favourite Chris Packham (who used to be in the Really Wild Show with the one and only Terry Nutkins). It’s not massively funny, it’s just quite nice.
Having said all of the above we’re not doing all that badly considering that everything we’re doing hardly costs a penny and there’s been no paid for media whatsoever :-)
I’m not doing this out of any kind of loyalty to Poke, I’m doing it because I’d like more people to sign the petition.
If you’re looking at this whole thing and thinking – “you guys are being a bunch of idiots, there’s a really simple way you can make this work, all you have to do is xyz…”. Then please leave a comment or get in touch. I’ll make sure that you get fully recognised and lauded as a saviour of planet earth sometime in the future.
It’s one of my favourite things that we’ve done in a while. It’s a never ending webpage. Crammed full of fun stuff and lots of surprises. Some are online, some are mobile things. But all of them demonstrate the notion of ‘unlimited’.
Not sure I’m supposed to make this public, but people will find out soon enough anyway, there’s hundreds of wind-up phone chargers hidden in the site. I’m not saying what you have to do to find them, that bit is a secret…
I don’t want to say much more because it’s one of those sites which is really about exploration and experience. (We’re hoping that because it’s a never ending page we’ll manage to hit some record-breaking dwell times on the site).
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 well, but he doesn’t make it sound all that sexy.
The reason I posted the clip is out of sheer hatred for the journalist who asks the question.
“Easy question. What is web 3.0”
“We know what 2.0 is”
He’s such a tool.
But thankfully in the YouTube comments Atomgott brings the debate right back to reality
I dont care what they call it. As long as the amount of porn on the interwebs keeps growing.
Jib Jab – US peddlers of funny animations and stuff (my description not theirs) have just raised another $3m in funding from VCs – in total they’re reported to have raised $6m.
While this was supposed to be the beginning of the era of user generated video – the reality shaking out is more complicated than that. Specifically, advertisers are just not comfortable with the brand risk inherent in user generated content. That is changing slowly and it may continue to over time – but there’s likely to be a huge market for shops like JibJab long into the future. Likewise, video tools are now commodities and it’s all about the content you’ve got in your video service. Professional content is good, professional humor is great, say investors.
One thing worth noting about Jib Jab though is that they’re not a video production shop. If you look deeper into what they do there’s quite a lot of interactive innovation in there too. Don’t forget about making things interactive. Just porting a load of short form video-making skills online is only going to take you so far (in my humble opinion). Oh, and they’ve been very savvy in terms of getting commercial sponsorships and stuff as well.
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 chucking stuff out, which isn’t good for anyone. No one’s fault, we’ve just been busy, or not fancied what was in the box on the right day.
So I wrote them a nice mail. Explaining that it was nothing personal and if our circumstances change we’d certainly consider going back to them. I also explained that we’ve got a good local organic shop which means that we can get hold of nice things quite easily.
This is the email I got back.
Thank you for your email. I am sorry to hear you have decided to stop your orders from ourselves, but I do agree that a local organic grocer is even a bit better than ordering from us. Thank you for taking the time to let us know why you are cancelling. If you would like to start ordering from us again in the future we’ll be happy to try and adjust the amounts of produce you receive to suit your needs a bit better. I confirm the cancellation of your account and, we will be more than happy to welcome you back if your situation changes.
I read it and went, aah, that’s nice.
Then I read it again.
And noticed they’d said what! That it’s probably better not to use them in this situation! How bloody good is that!
I thought to myself, what a wonderful bit of copywriting. Then I realised of course this isn’t ‘copywriting’ at all, it was a real person writing to me, and it’s genuine, and it’s not self serving (at least not directly).
Nice one.
If you’ve not seen the Zappos story about the lady whose mother died and how they went above and beyond the call of duty you should check it out. It’s another great example of a company being human and it’s gone round the web leaving positive feelings towards Zappos wherever it goes. (Zappos are a US footwear ecommerce store by the way).
