Haikurious George

The Power of WTF?!

2009-11-06T10:20:00.000-08:00

Oh dear. I don't know why I started to read this. You'll know how I feel about anything with an ecademy url associated with it. But I did.

www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=138052

The guy writing is called Ty Mac-Head Tyson. Shouldn't that have been a warning?

Why are all the comments under an ecademy blog so luvvy and sicky. No one talks like that?

Question: How many people do you think are going on to google today to type iphone 1000000? The answer, in their keyword calculator, is a big fat zero. But to give some credit they do estimate 36 people a month. The power of ecademy!

So, Thomas Power, when you next google yourself (which I understand you and your wife do on an hourly basis), and find this little piece, I hope you'll welcome me back into your life. I really must save a slot for you in my calendar.

A quick recap

2009-11-05T09:45:00.000-08:00

I know you're probably subscribed to my blog, twitter feed, or are indeed already on Facebook. If you are one of these people, then congratulations, you're on the right path to Heaven 2.0.
Paul Walsh, Jul '07

I hope you're enjoying the LDNnudetech unofficial preview calendar as much as me! It's been a hoot so far and whilst I know many of you won't give your public support, I've been delighted by the overwhelming support via private messages I've received. So here's a quick recap of the first four shots
George

January

Featuring the calendar creator (well he stole the idea off Robert Loch, much like the moonwalk idea which he stole from Rob Manuel, but we'll call him the creator for the sake of argument) Milo Yianapodopodpolousopodopus and the star of the tech world: multi-business, super-entrepreneur Paul Walsh (remind me, what businesses did he set up again?)

February

This picture is just wrong. Totally wrong. How they got the expresions right for this shot is amazing. So well done to legal expert and has-been Sam Sethi and our calendar regular Paul Walsh for their time in this shot.

March

This was a surprise hit amongst my readers. Thanks again to Paul Walsh for having the dignity to don a baby outfit and look like a twat. I owe you one mate. This features the twiterati couple Andy Mcloughlin and James Whatley who are, of course, very much in love. But it wasn't always like that. Rumour has it that Andy took a punch from James one night in Soho for talking to ace reporter Vikki Chowney. You bastard Andy!

April

Thanks again to Paul Walsh for dressing as a girl. There's no greater sport in the ivy league of business people. Paul looks on rather jealously at big ole failed entrepreneur Robert Loch and Meed-ya girl Jamie Klingon (looking pretty fit).

....So 4 months down and 9 to go. I can't thank those who have volunteered so far enough for your time. Who's left to pose? Let's just say no one is safe.

Leaving the circus

2008-07-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

"Goodbye you needy, distracting pain in the arse; my mother was right about you"
Paul Carr

What is it that makes Ecademy so hideously unattractive, so akin to a happy clappy cult? Members I've come across are a mix of no hopers straight out of the Stepford Wives and evangelists offering to give you the confidence you didn't know you didn’t have.

Ok, I'm a bit angry with them so may come across a bit strong but I'm trying to be unbiased. Ecademy can't be all that bad? Feedback from members is excellent. In fact you never see a bad comment. Take a look at this one:

"I am an avid Ecademist. It is a network which works - has dynamism and serves its members. The founders are untiring in keeping a personal relationship with the members. By comparison - Linked-in, Xing etc are cold and impersonal."

This was posted underneath one of the best TechCrunch UK articles ever which I'll come back to in a moment.

It seems you are either an Ecademy type or you’re not. I'm happy to say I'm not. Like thousands of others I naively joined when I started a business many years ago and am still on their database counting towards their 1.9 million members. As co-founder (Billy Graham understudy) Thomas Power has confirmed, only 190,000 active members log on a month so it's hard to estimate how many of those 1.9 million have lapsed but it has to be a good few hundred thousand. Since I joined I have been regularly contacted by the type of people I define as freaks (a true Ecademist would be a little more complimentary). My first ever read:

"If you want any introductions to other Ecademy members then please let me know. I have about 150 people in my online network covering most skills, and I am quite good at finding 'horses for courses'. My company works with growing businesses with a specialisation in fresh thinking and creating new ideas that will aid growth. If you want to have a chat sometime and bounce some ideas around then please do give me a call.

Good luck
Simon Read
www.simonread.com"

150 people - whoopeedoo! He was so good at 'horses for courses' that his website no-longer goes to a site about him, it's now 'parked' by acquirethisname.com and temporarily redirects to an online poker site. Of course I could be wrong. Maybe Mr Read decided that dot coms were so 2007 and went for a dot name instead. I can't really be bothered to check. Ok, bit of bad luck with that one, perhaps if I'd responded to him all those years ago things could have been different for simonread.com. My next message read:

"Hello. I notice that you are new to Ecademy. I'd like to say hello and welcome. It’s a very friednly (sic) place here...Wishing you well,

A.
www.sparkleinbusiness.co.uk"

Leave me alone! I hate all this American false friendliness! Poor A. It seems she's no longer 'sparkling in business' either. But I bet she's still counted in the 1.9 million members.

OK forget the messages, you get the gist. On to compatibility. Finding other 'members like me'. A great idea for a feature - if it works. So, let's see who I'm like. One click later and there are pages of people like me. Just like me. Magic!

Not giving away any names, here’s who I match with: someone who offers profile makeovers; someone working for the University of Life; An intuitive leader from Intuitive Leadership LLP; a WiseTiger; two life coaches; and this business guru:

"If you have ever wanted to speak in public without fear and in a way that makes others want to listen -- I can help. If you have even wanted someone to help you to write better speeches, presentations, promotional material and sales letters, talk to me. If you have ever wanted someone to deliver your presentations for you, write your direct mail, brochures, speeches, websites -- I'm your man."

So, do I need to give you my feelings on the subject or are they clear enough. And I haven't even got on to their events yet, or their weirdo, loves the sound of his own voice, 70's throwback Mike Southern - The Beermat Entrepreneur. Another time.

Yesterday I read Penny (co-founder and wifelet of Thomas) Power's latest blog. I was very nearly ill. The tone, the smugness, she really has no idea how she sounds which is totally clear from reading more of her blogs all in the same tone.

Please read it here

There's no matter of fact in this article at all. Just a bunch of sentences that sound nice and make Penny sound even nicer. "In ten years we have never argued, never disagreed on the strategy" / "I call myself the Heart of Ecademy, I am the 'Intention', Thomas is the 'Brain' of Ecademy, the thought leader and the head of the community; Glenn is our 'Nervous System', he keeps us all working, joins us up, he is our CEO, he is the 'Tools" / "Everyday, when I am on the computer, answering messages, when I am training, speaking or meeting members, I have only them in my thoughts "what can we do to help your business get stronger", that is why I get up in the morning. That is why I love Ecademy."

So, a rare occurrence for me, I decided to post a comment.

"That has to be the most sycophantic, smug, self-appreciating article I have ever read. Do you look at yourself in the mirror every morning and tell yourself how great you are"

Within minutes my account was suspended. So I wrote to Thomas and told him how I resent the policing system they have which only keeps the nice articles showing. He did respond but not with any real explanation.

I want to refer you back to Mike Butcher's piece back in February. It was only a short piece just about the company being ten years old. You can read it here. Nothing special except for Thomas Power's lack of clarity on their numbers. It was the comments that followed that really made this incredible reading.

In summary, after the article the first few comments were pretty genuine. Then suddenly a flurry of comments appeared that were not just pro Ecademy but real loyalist kind of stuff. Mike Butcher then suggested that these were being prompted by the Power's. It then transpired that Thomas had, in fact, put a link to the article on his blog as well as on Twitter. Thomas and Penny also both put their defensive comments in. It didn't stop there. One of the Power's business partners Roger Hamilton was then cited in a few subsequent postings. At the time he was being investigated on a number of claims that he was extracting money from small businesses by dubious means. One of the actual claimants also posted a comment. Mike ultimately had to close the piece. This one sneaked in, and as it was on TechCrunch, it was not hidden like mine:

"I was a member of Ecademy but got fed up with the Law of Attraction rubbish. Apparently people can state, for instance, that the Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves, or that cancer sufferers attracted the disease to themselves and still remain as members of Ecademy. But don’t mention Roger Hamilton, the well known scam artist, you will be thrown out immediately."

We can speculate quite a lot from this. 1) Can the Power's take constructive criticism? - I guess we'll see soon enough 2) Do they over manipulate their own images to come off as squeaky clean friends of the small business - in a kind of Scientologist style? 3) Are there fascist undertones within their leadership? I'm not suggesting there are, just speculating, and 4) Are they involved in any of the alleged scams that their business partner Roger Hamilton was?

Who can say? But I can tell you this. I don't want any part of their organisation in my life. They have created a community that is a breed of its own and I'm very proud to say I'm not an Ecademist.

Goodbye Ecademy

The Week

2008-07-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

"Obviously my intention is to expose you. Enjoying your work though"
Robert Loch

I write from Hyde Park where, having now posted my work for today, I can relax after a very amusing week.

A few interesting tech things happened.

Yahoo is taking its DRM servers off line. So anyone with Yahoo music is basically stuffed. Hard luck suckas!

Twitter got hacked (allegedly). Anyone who was logged on at the time lost their followers. It's likely you also contracted a few viruses - run your anti-virus!

Actually a few million sites got hacked, as did a few Oyster cards!

Savvy Chavvy won a Catalyst award. Not sure how the recipient collected the award with a chicken drumstick in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.

A businessman managed to sue his old mate for putting up a fake Facebook profile. Boy could I be in trouble!

...And finally Google pulled out of the Digg acquisition.

The latter deservingly wins today's haiku dedication as follows:

Digg's big deal goes west
No Google acquisition
Boardroom tears for sure

I've recently been busy messing around with the London web community and have lots more messing planned. Very much enjoyed a game of Botticelli over email with Detective Inspector Loch last night. I was even tempted to include him in my conspiracy but then I might as have well given him a loudspeaker with my name blaring out of it.

Enough for now and remember George is watching you. Spread the word!

Back to my sunbathing.

Street View fun

2008-07-26T06:49:00.000-07:00

"If we had 3 million exhibitionists and only one voyeur, nobody could make any money"
Albert Brooks

As lightning always strikes twice, so, it seems, does the Google Street View Car. Thankfully, partly due to the many European privacy organisations along with the Daily Mail, my face is likely to be blurred out. Phew!

Both sightings were in the West End of London last week and each time the car was blasting out loud music, unintentionally (or perhaps not), confusing some people to its actual purpose. Even my first thoughts were that it was some kind of roadshow or festival promotion, the tall boxes sticking out the roof being speakers rather than cameras.

It didn't take long to realise my mistake after noticing the very clear branding on the car, most likely a legal necessity. And, on further research I notice that this last week shows the biggest increase in sightings of the car in the UK including:

girlonetrack: Just bombed it down my road in sandals to catch up with the Google camera car so I could take a snap of it. I failed.

ajhicks: Just went past a google streetview camera car in shoreditch.wonder how long it'l be before its available to use

...and my favourite

danux: thinks if the google car came to Tyseley it would probably get its camera nicked

What is Street View? It's a new service from Google Maps that gives you a 360 degree view of any where the camera has been: you can find a street and walk down it. I tried to have a bit of fun with it and walk the wrong way up some freeways - wasn't actually much fun in the end. So I tried to cross the freeway and walk into a lake. Unfortunately, this wasn't possible as you can only follow the exact line the camera car took. Darn! But theoretically this could follow. If Google can use similar technology to Microsoft's Photosynth then anything could be possible. Anyway back to the sightings.

It appears the UK and Germany had the most recent sightings suggesting that, privacy issues permitting, London will have its very own Street View very soon. Although it could just be that we had more hours of sunshine than normal this week, essential for the cameras to work at their optimum.

Americans have been having lots of fun with the service. People flashing at the camera, and the spotting of incidents including various crimes, accidents, nose pickings and just plain weird moments. A number of websites have emerged capturing some of the better voyeuristic moments - Street View Fun.com and Google Street View Sightings.

But it's not all been fun. Some people caught on camera have not been too pleased. One disgruntled couple believe that their house price has gone down as a result and are attempting to sue Google for $22,000. This amount also includes costs for mental suffering. Last month, the Pentagon banned Google from making close-up images of military bases after it was revealed that pictures of the Fort Sam Houston army base in Texas included access control points and other potentially risky details.

The images are made from 16 static shots combined to give the 360 degree view and the guys behind the technology have not ruled out the possibility of live streaming in the future.

Keep tweeting those sightings and let’s see if we British can have more fun with them than our American counterparts.

Aren't we a sad bunch!

Moo loves you!

2008-07-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

"You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun"
Al Capone

My sources tell me it was an interesting day and night yesterday in the London web community with the much hyped moo party and the afternoon Internet Mixer.

It all began at the roof garden of Coq D'Argent in the city. But as the organisers had 'coq-ed' up the arrangements with the venue, it was moved to the East Room in Shoreditch. Nevertheless, most people found their way to the private Tabernacle Street club. and had plenty to drink on the hottest day of the year so far.

As usual Paul Birch was dressed for the occasion. Included amongst the bunch were the hosts Robert Loch and Paul Carr (surprisingly sober), and special guest star Michelle Dewberry. From the East Room it was a short journey to Brick Lane and the moo.com party.

What can I say about the evening that you can't say better? So here's a transcript of various tweets through the night.

18:00 clashcityrocker: Phew, finally managed to upload a feature I've spent four freakin' hours on today, T3's Top 50 concept cars! Too tired for Moo

19:00 richardmoross MOO party is in full effect.

20:00 danco: I wish I was at the MOO party.

21:00 richardmoross: £1000 just added to the bar tab! Come get the last of the free drinks!

22:00 iaintait Got denied at Moo front door so drank 3x beer elsewhere - now at east croydon weeping slightly...

22:00 Selbelina: @reynolds how did you get invite to a MOO party?

22:30 panto: Anyone else spot michelle dewbury at moo party?!

22:30 rbremer Just left moo party (sad) but picked up salt beef bagel on the way home (happy)

23:00 vikkichowney - had a truly great time at the moo party, but still think i missed people

01:00 acton Post moo party beigel on brick lane

01:00 richardmoross Finally in cab, heading home, thanks all so much for coming

01:30 girlonetrack Leaving Brick Lane, drunk. Thanks to all the friendly geeks I ended up in the bar with; bunch of nice lads, y'all.

02:30 robertloch With @paulcarr and @scottrutherford and we have no intention of ending...

03:00 robertloch I genuinely think that the moo party tonight was a massive neglect of a great brand. No effort, no creativity, no money. wtf

03:00 robertloch Moo great products, great company, great ceo, crap parties.

09:00 jon_bedford: Bumped into a very old school friend I'd not seen for 8 years at the MOO party last night - random!

10:00 KashaFrese: @ijeanes Hey! What's the Moo party?

11:00 builtbydave: @robertloch where were you? Moo party had loads of effort/creativity/money. Rawked.

11:00 natmiller: Whats all this about a Moo party? I heard the ONLY party to attend this week was tomorrow! exclusive invites only..

12:00 Champney Had a blast last night with London's finest! Afternoon drinks at the East Room courtesy of @robertloch then Moo's party at the Vibe Bar!

12:00 girlonetrack Realising that yes, I *did* have a 'Yay!' sticker stuck between my cleavage throughout most of last night. But I lost the 'FAIL' one, sadly.

12:30 oswald808: This sums up the end of last nights Moo party http://icanhaz.com/davesshoe

15:30 simonprockter Still recovering from Internet Peeps and Moo. Good to see the old Crimsonites at The East Room

Thursday just got better!

2008-07-22T06:53:00.000-07:00

"Newsflash: this Thursday
Internet Peeps afternoon
Queen Mary, top deck"
Haikurious George

The missing link between Thursday's Open Coffee morning and moo.com party has just been filled, thanks to the Nigel Dempster and Piers Morgan (cross bred with George Best and Oliver Reed) of the Internet World.

Robert Loch (super networker and plotter of many an idea unfulfilled) together with Paul Carr (author of the much feared forthcoming release Bringing Nothing to the Party - True confessions of a New Media Whore) are throwing a special afternoon Internet Mixer. The weather is forecast to be sunny and 27 degrees and as cynically pointed out by Loch, probably the only week that will be hot this summer.

The afternoon is a one off event combining a range of interesting people from London's internet sector together with the usual hangers on. And, as it's hosted by Robert and Paul, expect the Pimms to be served in buckets and the beer and wine to flow like a Sunday morning pee.

So who can we expect to see there? At time of press there seems to be only one person - the ever up for an excuse for a drink Simon Prockter of SpeedBreaks and formerly SpeedDater. But, hopefully you can also mingle with some interesting people. The event promises to be a hugely enjoyable and valuable afternoon. You need to R.S.V.P. so they can keep an eye on numbers. R.S.V.P. directly to Robert Loch.

The event starts at 2pm onboard the Queen Mary on the Embankment and goes on till 6pm at which point the venue will move to Exmouth Market for the moo.com party.

If you're still alive on Friday, I'd love to hear about it.

In the best light

2008-07-21T01:39:00.001-07:00

I know you've all been wondering what I look like so I decided to share some of my photo collection. I tried to choose some of my favourite ones, but I just couldn't find any decent daylight shots. You know how it is, there's never a camera around when you need one.

Enjoy! www.flickr.com/photos/haikuriousgeorge

Long live last.fm!

2008-07-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

"Aaahhh - I love it when the bass rattles everything in the kitchen"
jemimakiss

So the beautiful new last.fm is live and I'm loving it! There's a lot on offer out there that's confusing and time wasting. Unless you're a geek journo, what's the point of chopping and changing all the time? You end up spending more time setting up, re-finding your friends and putting in your music preferences. "If it ain't broken don't try and fix it" and last.fm was never bust but now it's better.

It's hard to explain exactly why. Yes, it looks better, it takes all your media player tunes into account, charts and recommendations are updated immediately and yes, the player is on nearly every page. Admittedly, I have had the odd problem in losing music when changing page but on the whole it's pretty reliable. Yes, it had a few problems on launch but let's just call that a victim of its own success and the tekkies seem to have it under control now.

Feature updates are a necessary duty to keep users onside but the thing that does it for me is the new design and navigation. It's simpler, cleaner and smarter at the same time offering a musical mystery tour anytime you want. As, my musical journey continues, I'm being offered more relevant choices. It's like someone has made a compilation tape for me with all my favourite stuff on - even stuff I've never heard of.

The journey through artist and track info passes you by until you realise that you've been cliking away for ages without thinking. It works. The videos are nicely organised against each artist, album or track and, whilst they're mostly pulled in from YouTube, you always find what you're looking for without clutter. Video also works in the same way as music so you get offered better choices the more you play.

It's not like me to give so much praise to anyone or anything. So I better stop before I get a new reputation. But it's rare to see a good British web application working the way it's supposed to. Long live last.fm. A haiku dedication seems only right and proper now.

New look last fm
Easier, cleaner, smarter...
British 2.0!

So be my first and best last.fm friend www.last.fm/user/haikuriosgeorg

Scouting for gossip

2008-07-19T06:24:00.000-07:00

Been a busy old week scouting for gossip which is also proving very difficult when you're undercover. Think I caused a bit of a stir with my last post - am just sorry that Paul Carr is getting all the flack for unleashing me.

Thursday looks set to be the highlight. It starts with Saul Klein's OpenCoffee Meetup at 10am. "Hmmm, I'd give that a miss" I hear you say. At time of press, there are 7 signed up and, no offence Saul, but these things are at best a bunch of no-hopers thinking that someone with a big wallet or a philanthropic web developer will come up to them and say "yes, a website that will connect owners of "'Allegro's' with other owners - count me in!". Stop it George, you don't really mean that. Sorry, coffee lovers. We all know that people leave it till the last minute to sign up for these things. I suggest in the case of this Thursday's you don't.

Watch this space. I hear this Thursday could be different. That's all I can say for the moment. Don't want to put it all over Facebook yet and have the police cancel the event. Enough already!

Except for one last moan on the earlier spelling mistakes discussion. Found a spelling mistake on Saul's blog. Near the bottom. Answers on a postcard. Sort it out Saul!

"Moo" said the confused sheep

"I could dance with you until the cows come home. On second thought I'd rather dance with the cows until you come home."
Groucho Marx

There's been a rumour going around that I might be showing my face on Thursday night at the moo.com party. Yep, that's right, complete with my moo cards and signed photos...

Nooo. But my spirit will be there, my (virtual) ears to the ground, yours - burning. Looks set to be a great evening taking over the trendy Exmouth Market with smattering of peeps from the dot com community and a few like me going for the free beer and gossip.

In case you didn't know, Moo's a great little company that prints, mostly, calling cards of your own design. It's run by the lovely Richard Moross and they've gained a lot of popularity with the online community. You can import your image from Facebook, Bebo, Flickr etc. It's easy and inexpensive.

May see you Thursday!

One last thing

Has anyone seen Samsung trying to get in on the haiku act? Through Twitter you can tweet your haiku to win one of their new Instinct phones. Why didn't they just come to me? So my question is, should I degrade myself and enter? tweet me at twitter.com/haikuriousgeorg, email me or leave a comment.

Grama on websytes

2008-07-17T05:19:00.001-07:00

"How easily we could spell if we could follow,
Like thread looped through the eye of a needle,
The grooves of light. It resists. But we stay behind, among them,
The injured, the adored."
John Ashbery

Doesn’t it annoy you when you see a spelling mistake on a website?

Even worse it's a new website or should I say page! Wubud is a new innovation from the self proclaimed ‘Irish Opportunist’ Paul Walsh. They’ve weirdly launched a webpage asking for sign ups which then goes on to imply that you can put in a false email address. Isn’t that pointless!?

24 hours into the launch of this very exciting webpage and the word ‘anthing’ is still there.

Wubud is a mobile and web application that will be pre-installed on sim cards (allegedly). Mr Walsh is a super tweeter and an authority to everything it would seem ... Except the English language. Luckily he has, at least, got an excuse - being from the Emerald Isle.

Since posting this article I notice that the offending mistake has been corrected. Screenshot below of original page:

Introducing George Wiley

2008-07-17T03:26:00.002-07:00

Introducing George Wiley

First and foremost I am the editor of Haikurious - a Paul Carr initiative.

How did I get involved? Paul explains it quite well here.

I find many bloggers (not all Mr Carr) in search of acceptance from a wider community of pointless people. Attention seekers. The problem is that blogging is the new news. Anyone can blog and anyone can follow, creating an influential new media that spreads quickly creating ‘hear say’ into reality. And this blog will prove it!

This blog aims to be a little different though, pointing out the woes, shortcomings and some highs of the dot com community, the companies, the people and the attention seekers. I’ll be turning reality into ‘hear say!’

So be careful what you do or say! George is watching you.

Who am I? I’m George Wiley. Or am I? You may or may not know me? But I know you! And in the attention seeking, vain way much of the community with whom I hang out do, I shall be attention seeking here and exposing a few truths at the same time.

Maybe I could become one of the World’s great mysteries like:

Was there a UFO at Roswell?
Where is Lord Lucan?
Who killed Bambi?
Is there life after death?
Kate Nash or Lily Allen?
Who killed Laura Palmer?

Who is George Wiley?

Actually George Wiley was an esteemed American Chemist who disappeared in the seventies. I sort of 'stole' his name. You may well have heard of the famous anonymous comedy writer Gerald Wiley (if not you can google him). Let's just say I'm his brother.

Whatever the case. Enjoy this Blog. It aims to provoke and expose.

Twitter