[youtube=http://youtube.com/w/?v=rtp5gNhBZgo]
You’re not as funny as the real PC guy, you’re not as cool as the real Mac guy… and no way does she represent the typical Linux user.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/w/?v=rtp5gNhBZgo]
You’re not as funny as the real PC guy, you’re not as cool as the real Mac guy… and no way does she represent the typical Linux user.
Here we go again, folks – it’s discount time over at your local Thresher off-licence, with 40% off all wine. This caused a fuss, then a news story, then a backlash, as people realised that Thresher does a permanent 3-for-2 deal on wine anyway. But people… 40% off is still better than 33% off. And you don’t need to buy in multiples of three.
Personally, I’m ambivalent about Thresher just now, given the very large Gordon Ramsay stickers in most branches’ windows. I find him quite amusing generally, and his tell-it-like-it-is style is something I can really identify with. But I’m racing against him on Sunday morning (I think), at the Reading Half Marathon… and it brings out all my worst competitive instincts.
An interesting take on blogging from Nick Robinson at the BBC. As the Chancellor was delivering his Budget to the Commons, Nick was delivering his thoughts to the blogosphere at a specially created Budget 07 ‘blog’.
But look again – lots of short updates in a very short space of time? You might call that ‘microblogging’… perhaps a classic use-case for last week’s darling of the blogosphere, Twitter?
If I’d had more time, I was going to register the Twitter ID ‘gordonbrown’, and twitterise the speech. But, like, I’ve got a day job. (And I’m quite proud to say I published my 600-word write-up of the speech within 30 minutes of Brown sitting down. ๐ )
You know what? I think I might just print this out and hand it to people. I can’t imagine a much better summary of the forefront of marketing thinking.
In a BBC story headlined ‘No 10 hits out at Brown accuser’, reporting comments by the Chancellor’s former permanent secretary:
You don’t have to look too deep to find the irony there. There’s a very good piece by Nick Robinson about all this, by the way. Apparently, Turnbull thought he was speaking off the record. There’s no such thing any more, your lordship.
An excellent Google Maps-style interactive on the BBC News website, showing an aerial map of Baghdad with dots marking the worst atrocities, each linking to the appropriate news story; and coloured polygons showing the changing ethnic makeup of city sectors. Literally a new dimension to your understanding of the story.
I’m expecting to see a lot more of this kind of map-based navigation, as people become more familiar with the Google Maps API. There are some good examples out there already, like Flickr’s geotagging. I’m also hoping to do something similar with a major client, as we spec up a publishing solution for lots of regional offices.
I mentioned last week that my broadband had suddenly halved its connection speed for no apparent reason. And after further discussion with the Tiscali support desk, it appears I’m some kind of idiot.
I got a call from their second-line guy midway through yesterday’s Arsenal game (thanks). He was very nice about it all, and pointed me to a website called samknows, which tells you stuff about your local telephone exchange. Very good site to have to hand, actually. And according to Sam, I ‘cannot receive 2Mbps ADSL’ – and I ‘may be able to receive 1Mbps ADSL’. Unfortunately, he couldn’t explain – and didn’t really seem to believe – that I had been getting 2Mbps quite successfully until a fortnight ago. Perhaps I was hallucinating.
So here we are: connecting at 1.1Mbps or thereabouts. It’s actually fast enough for almost everything I do… and if anything, it seems to be a bit more reliable. I’ve had occasional issues getting online at peak times, which this seems to have cured.
But take my advice, people. Get a screengrab from samknows.com’s availability checker while you can… and have it ready in case things grind to a halt for you, too.
I’ll be honest… I didn’t think it would or could work. But I’ve just sat for I’m-not-sure-how-long watching Current TV, and it’s remarkably compelling. Famously backed by Al Gore, it bills itself as ‘the first TV channel created and controlled by the people who watch it; featuring the latest trends, subcultures and stories affecting twenty-somethings in the UK and Ireland.‘ And this twenty-fourteen-year-old is quite gripped.
Basically, it’s a steady supply of five-minute-ish documentaries – some, but not all, made by amateurs. There’s no ‘schedule‘ in the conventional sense… certainly not on the Sky TV programme guide anyway. So you flick it on, and you don’t know what’s coming next. If you aren’t the slightest bit interested, who cares – something else will be on in a minute.
But perhaps even more interesting is the website. Not only do the viewers produce the material, they edit it too. Registered site users can ‘greenlight’ or ‘redlight’ a video that’s been submitted, affecting its overall rating. Positively-rated stuff makes it to broadcast, negatively-rated stuff doesn’t. And yes, money changes hands.
It isn’t the manic free-for-all it might have been. I feared it would be like the front page of YouTube… or a 24-hour edition of Jackass. It isn’t. It’s intelligent, it’s amusing, it’s surprisingly good. The revolution can be viewed on Sky channel 229, or Virgin channel 155.
I’ve been aware of cashback website Quidco for a while, but only just bothered to sign up to it – because some of the deals on offer are eye-popping. For example… I’m about to reach the end of my current mobile phone contract. And being the online type that I am, I’ve been keeping an eye on 3’s X-Series with unlimited internet access.
The X-Series deals just got a little bit better: for an equivalent of ยฃ32.22 per month (over 18 months) you get a free Nokia N73 smartphone, plus web, email, instant messaging and Skype. If you want the newer E65 phone, which really does look lovely, that’ll cost you ยฃ50 up front, plus ยฃ40 per month. Included in the tariffs are 750 x-net minutes and 150 texts, or 300 mins and 1000 texts. Characteristically generous from 3. But – if you go through Quidco, 3 will give you ยฃ100 cash back. Not a typo, folks – that’s a full one hundred.
I’m currently playing my existing network off against the 3 deal, but so far, they can’t even come close. And that’s before I mention the ยฃ100 cashback deal. Looks like I’m switching in a few weeks.
I’ve just started work with a local community group keen to build a civic website. I’m looking at open source CMS solutions like Drupal as the base system… but I must admit, I’m wondering if the best idea isn’t simply to aggregate stuff from elsewhere. Apparently that’s the direction the BBC is heading, according to this report of a chat between some of their leading lights, and their opposite numbers at the Telegraph.
But for me, it’s not so much the need to transfer (or shall we say abdicate?) responsibility for moderation. Instead, it’s a recognition that these specialised third-party sites are inevitably going to be better at what they do, than anything you or anyone else could cobble together.
Take the example of photo sharing… you won’t find a better website than Flickr. So why not just create a group, and let the members feed into it. Let Flickr take all the pain of hosting, user access rights, etc etc – not to mention the expense. That’s why they’re there. Meanwhile, you just consume the various RSS feeds (or whatever) back at base.
I’d almost describe it as the next step in ‘social networking’. Do what you do, in the best place (for you) to do it, and as long as RSS feeds are available, we can aggregate it. If anyone sees a catch, let me know. Preferably sooner rather than later. ๐