Digital Prolixity

Hilarious use of Google Wave

2009-10-16T11:48:00.003+01:00

Just spotted this on TechCrunch. I burst out giggling in the office with 15 people staring at me with a 'wtf? mate' oO look on their face. I sent it round the office, other people giggled - some people didn't get it. Sucks to be them.

In my opinion this is the funniest thing I've seen on the web for quite a long time.

Even though I'm on Google Wave now - its a lonely place as I imagine it is for many people who probably only have a small number of contacts who also managed to get an invite. Until Wave is rolled out with a wider release, it will keep on being a bit useless.

In the meantime however I look forward to seeing inventive uses of it like the above. It does at least illustrate how useful this could be for collaborative script writing if nothing else.

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Battle of the Big Thinkers

2009-10-12T13:13:00.004+01:00

Thinking, Drinking, Sinking, Feeling. (Explored!)
Originally uploaded by PsstMinnie

I recently entered into an APG competition of the same name as this blog post. You can find out more about it here - www.battleofbigthinking.com. Sadly my entry wasn't selected to take me through to the live event where 3 lucky people get to talk about their idea for 3 minutes before the audience will vote for a winner. Its a bit of fun, and would have been great to get through to the live event, but sadly it wasn't to be.

This was my entry:

"When we're playing games, we're not suffering." - Jane McGonigal.

Jane argues that games such as World of Warcraft promote addictive behaviour through providing a level of fulfilment which is exceptionally hard to achieve in the 'real world'.

I challenge the media driven brands of today to consider this statement closely if they want to be the brands of tomorrow. In an economy where attention is scarce, most brands will be fighting for attention scraps left over by the corporations who provide the most fulfilment. Without doubt, a gaming company will have the attention monopoly in the years to come.

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Best Microsoft Ad Ever

2009-09-11T10:09:00.003+01:00

Just saw this new ad for Windows 7 and I absolutely love it. It made me smile and laugh out loud and feels deceptively non-corporate. Hats off to M$ for having a good sense of humour and letting such an awesome but non traditional ad pave the way for their biggest product launch in years.

Love it.

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Geek Porn v2.0

2009-09-06T00:02:00.003+01:00

Just over 2 years ago I posted about some Geek Porn that was coming my way. I'm sad to say that computer has struggled over the last 2 years, with several returns to Overclockers to get it fixed. The hard drive kept failing, the case window came back cracked after 1 repair visit, and the CPU heatsink came back physically bent out of shape after the second visit. However after that it was stable, and worked, and Overclockers made it crystal clear I wasn't getting my money back.

I'll put it down to bad luck as Overclockers generally have very high recommendations from most people, including my best friend who's never had a problem with their computers.

I started thinking about getting a new pr0n box because my current one (specs viewable on the link above) is failing @ quite a lot of common tasks these days - alt tabbing out of a game and trying to open a web browser taking up to a couple of minutes to complete. Despite my belief that my problems with Overclockers being a 1 off, somewhere in the back of mind it hurt too much to fork out any more money to them on a new pre-built computer so I started looking at Dell again.

Above is my new Geek Porn... the specs are insane - my wallet is screaming with hurt - but I reckon its going to be a stunning machine. Full spec below.

I'll let you know how I get on with it.

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Studio XPS™ 435-(D00SX403)
Intel® Core™ i7 processor 950 (3.06Ghz, 8MB L2 cache, 4.8GT/sec), Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 (64 BIT) - English

Item	Description
Base	Intel® Core™ i7 processor 950 (3.06Ghz, 8MB L2 cache, 4.8GT/sec)
Memory	9216MB 1067MHz Tri Channel DDR3 SDRAM [3x2048 + 3x1024]
Keyboard	Dell™ USB Entry Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY)
Monitor	Display Not Included
Video Card	1GB DDR3 ATI® Radeon™ HD 4870 graphics card
Hard Drive	1TB (7200rpm) Serial ATA/100 Hard Drive
Microsoft Operating System	Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 (64 BIT) - English
Mouse	Dell Optical Scroll USB (2 buttons scroll) DUAL TONE Mouse
Optical Devices	16X DVD+/-RW Drive
Sound Cards	Integrated HDA 7.1 Dolby Digital Audio
Speakers	No Speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)
Wireless Networking	Internal Enhanced Wireless 802.11n PCIe Card - EUR
Shipping Documents	English - Documentation with UK Power Cord
Gedis Bundle Reference	D09SX403
Standard Warranty	1 Year Premium Warranty Support
Enhanced Service Packs	1Yr Premium Warranty Support
Order Information	Studio XPS 435 DT Order - UK
Dell System Media Kit	XPS 435T Resource DVD (Diagnostic & Drivers)
Accidental Damage Support	No Accidental Damage Support
Protect your Data	DataSafe Online Backup 2GB 1 year
DataSafe	Datasafe Local 2.0 Basic
Microsoft Application Software	Microsoft® Works 9 - English
Protect your new PC	No Security/Anti-Virus Protection - English

Really nice, simple explanation of the opportunity of Social Media

2009-08-21T12:03:00.001+01:00

Its our fault that Video Games usually suck

2009-07-24T12:05:00.002+01:00

Anthony Burch passionately explains why the gaming industry is churning out high-budget shitty games which aren't actually fun or creative. Its all our fault. He's got a point. Maybe I should cancel my World of Crackcraft subscription.

Watch it. Tell me if you disagree. Or agree.

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We want to be known

2009-06-15T13:13:00.002+01:00

I remember being pointed to Post Secret a little while ago and then re-found it more recently. Its a service run by a guy called Frank who invites people to post in their deepest secrets anonymously using postcards as a medium of choice. He then scans a selection of them and puts them on the blog linked above.

Many are funny, many are sad, and many are heart breaking. The video above explains in a lovely way what motivates people to take part and send in their secrets to Frank. Ultimately.. we want to be known and we want to know that we aren't alone in facing the problems that life throws at us. What isn't mentioned is that many of the people who take part are desperately lonely. Not necessarily meaning that they have no friends or family, but much of the time that they feel disconnected from those around them and desperately want to change their situation and either learn how to connect to those around them, or find people who provide them with a stability and peace of mind that they're able to function as 'normal' people and accept that life is how it is.

Its a lovely video - have a watch - the up-front bit is quite eloquent about our new media landscape and how it affects our behaviour (within this context) and be sure to check out the blog about once/week.

Also sorry for the lack of blogging recently - work has been crazy busy. I need to have down time at work to be able to spend enough time looking around for good shit on the Internet (bizarre considering my occupation I know).

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Faking 'Viral'

2009-05-18T11:34:00.006+01:00

This ugly thing is what is called a 'proof of concept' banner. It does what it says on the tin.

A while ago I was having a chat with someone from FlashTalking who are a company which like making online banner ads a bit exciting and sexy when at all possible as well as charging advertisers reasonable bandwidth costs for the pleasure of using their internet pipes to make the banners come to life in vivo. With glazed eyes, I spoke at length about how funny it would be if we could make an online banner ad that actually pulls in a YouTube video dynamically, so when people click on the ad/hover over it, it begins to play.

"So whut? I seen videos in banners before" - The key thing isn't the video. Its the +1 count on YouTube that's good - and also the fact that you don't pay for Rich Media adserving as the bandwidth being used is YouTube's (Snootch)

The trends on YouTube are subject to many factors ranging from genuine WOM generated by things like Britain's Got Talent, to the 'featured videos' to simply watching what other people are watching. The 'most viewed' list being a bit of a holy grail for advertisers in the knowledge that if you manage to hit the top results on 'most viewed', that you've achieved the video equivalent of reaching positions 1 to 3 in Google (a.k.a you're going to increase your site traffic/views a lot for the time that you can hold that position).

The effect of popular stuff getting more popular by being popular in the first place (concise no?) has been named by someone else more cleverer than me. It is called 'Cumulative advantage' and you can read more about it here (thanks Faris for the tip).

This type of ad format will no doubt only work a couple of times (if at all) as YouTube/Google reserve the right to cease certain services/charge for bandwidth costs if people send high amounts of traffic to their services for commercial reasons.

As video ads need to be rollover/click to initiate - we're subject to digital banner interaction rates (approx 5%) for the success of the campaign. However if you buy a Yahoo! and MSN homepage takeover - you should get about 1 million video views (in a day) which should see your video firmly in the 'most viewed' list on YouTube for about a month which should in turn generate another couple of million 'natural' views. I'm not saying you should go out and buy homepage takeovers just to try this out - but if you ARE going to be buying them anyway, why not maximise your ROI in this age of 'where the money at?' by using this type of ad format?

This isn't a replacement for creating genuinely good content which may in turn spread virally across the internets - its just a cheeky way of making bog standard video go nuts on YouTube for a while.

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I Made This™

Help Needed: What's the point of Wired UK?

2009-04-01T11:22:00.004+01:00

In my mind, Wired Magazine has always had a global appeal. Perhaps this is the route of the problem..'in my mind' doesn't count for much. I did ask Google to see if they knew the answer, but they didn't. So 'in my mind' is all I have to go with at the minute.

So if we assume that Wired had a global appeal - what additional value is created through the localisation of this publication in the UK? Wired Italia I understand because of the language barrier - but Wired UK?

To me, one of the best things about Wired is that it does an amazing job of capturing interesting stuff from around the world and bringing it to my attention. Not just any interesting stuff, but interesting stuff with history, context and substance above and beyond the rules of the 'Natural Selection of Interesting'. These rules of selection which govern how content in the digital broth rise to the top of our attentionsphere are tailored to the environment of online where long form written content often doesn't win. For this reason I still rely on Wired (and occasionally the Discovery Channel) to fulfill my deeper curiosities which need those things I mentioned above like history, context and substance.

So! If in a globally connected and already mainly English speaking context - what benefit can be had from localising a magazine which draws on trends from around the world and already has a global appeal?

Am I supposed to have a subscription to both magazines? If I just get the UK magazine will I miss out on all the exciting stuff in the US magazine which isn't being covered in the UK edition?

What am I supposed to do? Its more confusing than the really tricky levels of Portal.

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Grown Up Digital

2009-03-31T14:34:00.004+01:00

We all need something to grow
Originally uploaded by Pablo Barra

Back in November '08, a lovely lady from Edinburgh Business School asked me to write a book review for the International Journal of Advertising. It was for a book called "Grown Up Digital", written by Don Tapscott who also authored Growing Up Digital and Wikinomics amongst other nice books.

Having grown up digital myself, I thought it sounded like a good thing to do so I said yes. This month the review was published in the IJA - you can read it here. I hope you like it.

p.s. I wrote it before it became apparent that people who work at Google in fact don't really like it all that much unless they are amongst the chosen few who work in the Mountain View paradise in California. Shame really - but something you learn to live with when you grow up digital... anything you write tends to become irrelevant, or simply bettered in a very short space of time.

p.p.s the p.s. won't make sense unless you read the book review. So here it is again, just incase.

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If you search for...

2009-03-09T17:30:00.004Z

I loled

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How to ensure marketing content goes viral

2009-03-03T14:25:00.003Z

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F**k my life

2009-02-10T17:31:00.005Z

I found this little gem of a site through Twitter not long ago. Essentialy its a sounding board for anyone and everyone who's having a really really bad day to share whats happened that has caused them to think "F**k my life".

Here's a nice example or 2.

"Today, I ran out of underwear and so I went into my mom's drawer to borrow a pair from her. It was then that I found out my mom uses the same vibrator as I do. FML"

and

"Today, we had some family over. A nasty need to wank seized me when I saw her : my 17 year old cousin. I went to my unoccupied parents’ bedroom. My sister's baby walkie talkie was on and the whole family heard me. FML"

All hilarious stuff. Today I tried to post my own FML.

One of my bosses called me by my brother's name - and didn't realise his mistake for a good few minutes. My brother has never worked here and I've worked here for 6 months. FML etc.

Unfortunately - FML rejected my submission. FML

Geekmented Reality

2009-02-06T10:49:00.004Z

Faris talks quite a bit about augmented reality over on his blog. Its pretty interesting stuff really - overlaying digital invormation over the real world through some handy display or even an eyeball implant (yum..), and in doing so making the real world a more connected place where the infinite information available on the internet can enrich peoples' lives in new and unexpected ways. If and when it becomes a commonplace reality, I have no doubt that the endless applications it will have will mimic the growth and development of the Internet, both surprising us and changing our lives forever.

Some really smart people at MIT (those guys are always up to some clever stuff) - have "developed a wearable computing system that turns any surface into an interactive display screen. The wearer can summon virtual gadgets and internet data at will, then dispel them like smoke when they're done."

Have a look at this pretty cool video which they've made, demonstrating the life hacking ability of their gizmo.

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How to make e-mail work on the T-Mobile G-1

2009-02-05T09:38:00.003Z

If there are any other owners of the T-mobile G1 in the UK who have contacted the T-mobile customer support folk for help regarding their mobile e-mail settings... then you too know my pain. The first few times I called, I was informed that they had not actually yet received the manual for this specific handset (you know... the one with their name on it), despite me calling them over a month after the phone's launch. The first few times I got nothing better than "Try calling back in a couple of weeks - we might know then" lol.

Over the weekend I decided to invest some good time and effort in explaining to the person on the other end of the phone who should supposedly know more than me about how mobile stuff works - that in fact I didn't need settings which were specific to the G1.

All I needed was T-mobile's UK outbound e-mail settings (which don't change despite the handset make/model). After I explained as much - and held the person's hand for about 20 minutes guiding him through his manuals - I finally got the answer that many of us have been waiting for.

So for anyone who has been able to receive their work e-mails on their G-1 but hasn't been able to respond to them - the information you need is below:

SMTP server: smtp.t-email.co.uk

Port: 25

Security type: None

Require sign-in: Tick box unticked

I hope this helps :-)

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Image from C4's Fonejacker

Snow on my street

2009-02-04T22:33:00.003Z

Just a pretty picture I took of my street on my G1. I thought the blue aura that everything has was worth sharing here.

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Kangaroo: Its time to say goodbye

2009-02-04T11:42:00.002Z

And now, the end is here... and so we face... a huge delay in a dramatically improved VoD offering in the UK. The UK Competition Commission said that Project Kangaroo "has to be stopped" and that viewers would benefit if the three were "close competitors" rather than allies.

In the long term, this may be the case (I'm still not convinced though), but in the short term this definitely isn't true.

Neither 4oD or ITV's Player have seen any substantial improvements since they were first launched, many many months ago.

ITV's Player is so infuriating that as a user I get a better consumer experience by downloading their programs over Bit Torrent rather than using their on demand service. Their pre-roll advertising loops endlessly, showing the same adverts 2 or 3 times back to back - the video quality isn't amazing - and their menu for finding relevant programming is complete shite.

4oD is, although much better than ITV's offering, is not able to compete with the BBC's iplayer in terms of user experience both in terms of navigation and video/audio quality. Its good enough however to use over and above downloading C4 shows through Bit Torrent.

BBC's iPlayer is an amazing service. I don't use its download now, watch later option because I'm not a fan of the software that this comes with - however it doesn't matter as their streaming option is the best VoD solution I've ever seen on the web [bear in mind I've never been able to use Hulu as I'm UK based]. Its not just the best service we have, but its also the only one which looks like it is testing new technologies, and then releasing them at incremental stages to let us enjoy the benefits as soon as possible. These include - "watch in pop-out player" which is VERY handy, "watch in high quality", and various in-screen sizes to let people with bigger screens enjoy a larger display without having the negative side affects of full-screen pixelation.

It is upsetting that Kangaroo will have to be panned as the technology/backend side of the business was being spearheaded by the BBC which offered a lot of hope that ALL of the programming would enjoy the superb quality that the iplayer has to offer - and it means that ITV and Channel4 who have evidently been sat on their haunches for well over a year thinking that it was pointless to improve their technology when they would be using the BBC's as soon as Kangaroo launched. Now the poor bastards are almost 2 years behind, and are deeply gripped by the effects of the Credit Crunch making it even less likely that they'll be able to play catchup with the BBC any time soon.

Verdict: Fail

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Christian Bale goes (American) Psycho on set of Terminator 4

2009-02-03T11:22:00.007Z

****NSFW****

I loled - and if anything - makes me want to go watch the film more when its released. Perhaps it IS a cunning marketing plan Millhouse, perhaps it is.

In other news Christian Bale's personal brand tracker survey has shown that his likeability has gone down 6 points since The Dark Knight. Why... so... SERIOUS?

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I loled

2009-02-03T10:03:00.005Z

Forget the year of the mobile: 2009 is all about 3D gaming

2009-01-28T15:03:00.006Z

It seems that 3D stuff is making a comeback – and this time without the nausea inducing headaches which we’ve experienced in the past. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, there was enough chat about 3D gaming/video hardware to create quite a buzz on Engadget, and last week I noticed that my computer downloaded a new patch for World of Warcraft which made the game compatible with Nvidia’s new hardware and software which should bring my Loatheb kills to life. I thought to myself – “Is 3D gaming going to become a reality, or is this the HD-DVD format of 2008?”

I’m sitting on the fence for now despite Sony showing off a functioning dem o of a Playstation 3 running games in 3D. But my scepticism won't stop me from dreaming about flying around Northrend, almost being able to feel the wind in my face.

via HyperBlog

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Star Wars being summed up.. by someone who hasn't seen it

2009-01-20T17:37:00.001Z

Awesome... or whatever.

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How the Internet was born

2009-01-11T00:15:00.001Z

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

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Gamespot... just give up please

2008-12-23T09:49:00.006Z

Gamespot's credibility has been going down the pan since the Kane & Lynch debacle which caused about half of its editorial staff to quit, but I'd like to take this moment to ask politely - will you please just have the decency to shut shop and leave gaming journalism to the professionals?

When its THAT bad that you have to recycle content from US editorial, very clearly aimed at a US audience, on the UK specific site - then surely you don't need me to tell you that your site is about as worthwhile as Friends Reunited.

Topping this all off is the fact that the functionality of your website is piss poor. After spending the time to register to leave a comment against that story, effectively saying what I have here, I still wasn't able to leave a comment even though it recognised that I was logged in.

Basically you fail at life - please leave. If you're a media planner reading this thenn please put your client's money into publishers who actually publish something of value. Also as a tip, you can buy IGN inventory for approx half the price of Gamespot ad inventory.

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Efficiency Fail

2008-11-12T22:31:00.004Z

This is a Ramzi original. Photo was taken about 30 seconds away from Hyper's office in London on my new HTC G1. I found it pretty funny that 4 wardens were skulking around. As I've been watching a lot of The Wire recently, I had a thought that if you took away their uniforms, they could be part of the infamous Barksdale crew who were waiting for a re-up and hoping to shit that Omar didn't turn up with his sawn off to steal their package.

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Living with the Android G-1

2008-11-03T22:12:00.005Z

I've been living with my G-1 now for about 4 days. On the launch day when I went and picked it up, I suffered the frustration of not being able to sign into my Google account. On this phone, that means being locked out of it completely.

Its ingenious that on launch day, when they're bound to have a heavy load on the 'system', (whichever system that may be) that the handset is designed to not let you use the phone at all, with the small exception of dialling the emergency services, without being able to sign into your Google account.

After this initial frustration, I'm glad to say that I'm loving the Android experience. As every review under the sun has explained, the software is really quite lovely, but the hardware is a bit pants. I'm afraid to say this is very true.

The build quality of the phone feels poor. I have a particularly annoying quirk on my phone where the back cover doesn't seem to fit perfectly snugly and if I press my finger on a certain place, the cover buckles ever so slightly. This is a problem I feel which is inherent in having a plastic back cover which isn't rigid - and clips which aren't really substantial enough to keep a firm hold on the grooves they slot into.

Despite these small annoyances (the kind that are responsible for many a divorce and I'm sure a few people going nuts) - I really do enjoy this phone.

The small notifications you get from texts, e-mails and IM's are almost addictive and so far haven't failed to make me smile when they appear along with the charming little alert noises which are preloaded onto the phone. I may not always visibly smile, but the times I'm not, I'm smiling on the inside.

The App marketplace, although without a lot of what I would call necessary filter options and no decent browser based counterpart (the online marketplace is a bit rubbish...), its still entertaining. About 10 new apps or updates are posted daily (so far), and that type of activity is enough to make you go back to it once, if not a few times a day to see what new apps are available.

A lot of people are complaining however, and quite rightly so, that at the moment, apps can only be saved onto the phones ridiculously small 128Mb internal storage. T-mobile have apparently said that there will be a fix for this in the near future, allowing people to store apps onto their SD cards - but with the phone having only been available for a few days and people already encountering space issues - it really does seem a bit daft that there wasn't more done to avoid this situation.

In fact there are a lot of things wrong with this phone.

But somehow it makes me happy. I've got an ipod touch and I've used an iphone before, and neither of them make me feel the same sense of glee that I'm given by playing with this phone. It does help that the 3G speeds on the t-mobile network seem to better those on the 02 network - a quick test in the office today between myself and 2 colleagues who have iphones proved as much. My download rates were between 1200-1400kbps - and the iphones were getting about 600-1000kbps which does result in a noticeable difference when browsing. All of us were getting full reception by the way.

My verdict on this piece of kit is: Buy. A lot of people talk about better android handsets being released in 09 etc - but if you're all about hyperconnectivity, then you're better off getting this now - and simply upgrading when a significantly better handset comes out. Just because more handsets will be released in 09, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be better.

I once heard a really insightful bit of philosophy which I'll share with you now:

"Life is the time you spend waiting for stuff which never happens"

This couldn't argue my point any more concisely. Technology is always advancing at a ridiculous pace - so you can either keep waiting - or you can enjoy it as it grows. Of course... this depends upon your disposable income. If you find yourself having to eat waffles for dinner, then your name may well be Kenny, and someone called Cartman might really hate you. If this is the case - then you should probably find some offline hobbies which are free - like running and such like.

Below is a quick vid of me doing an unboxing. It was done a bit hastily and on the fly which is why its a bit lame - but its there nonetheless.

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