Original jingle
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In last weeks podcast they feature a specialy composed version sung by an amateur choir from Baldock in Hertfordshire which is a town I know fairly well (or at least has a pub I know very well as you can see here, here, here and here). Unfortunately for the Choir Adam and Joe were not very impressed, you can listen to the choirs efforts and the following critique here:

The Baldock Choir
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Those poor 11-50 something year olds.

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

I wonder what he’d make of the view now.

Go and have a play and take a look around the ladge blog, one worth keeping an eye on.

To set the scene, the guardian has an interview with Veronica Wadley.

Saying ‘Sorry’ for the past smacks of a Soviet courtroom ‘confession’. ‘Sorry’ has all the hallmarks of a KGB-style smear campaign.

The paper is now out on the streets and the immediate opinions on from twitter aren’t great.

The new London Evening Standard… oh dear oh dear oh dear – justin_williams

Typography? Leading? My eyes hurt!http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/ Will the Evening Standard be apologising for this? tayler

Oh Dear London Evening Standard. Oh deary me. Dboy

Kept my free copy of the “new” Evening Standard for about as long as it took me to walk across the street & back in my office. Still trash! webcowgirl

And more here: http://twitter.com/#search?q=Evening%20Standard

bring a screen shot of 3 sites that inspire you for a warm up discussion: 1 information giving site, 1 income generation site, 1 other

Which is something I thought would be worth sharing here. So here are my three:

Information giving

For infomration giving I’ve picked google reader. I refer to it many times a day, have a reader on my phone  and use it as my main tool for keeping up to date with the web world and beyond. At last count I subscribe to over 200 feeds and I could never track all those sites without a robust feed reader

Income generation

I shop a lot online, as much as possible. One site I am happy to recommend for their online and offline service is photobox. Their service is quick. Very quick. Place an order in the morning and chances are they’ll be delivered the next day in a hard backed envelope. You can share photos with other people and let other people order copies of your photos, even changing the price so you can make a profit in what is sold. The site has a clean and clear design and is simple to use all that an online shop should be.

Other

For this I picked a section of the London 2012 website. I’ve covered this in an earlier post and my thoughts havn’t changed. It’s still a great example of location based media content. And the time slider gives a great historical view of information too. Winner.

This month I’ve picked the “creative spark” design by Vinod Batus from India. “The entire concept of this art came out when i was playing around with various photoshop brushes. The effect came in so beautifully that i instantly named it Creative Spark.”. Many thanks Vinod andof course to Smashing Magazine! Maybe one day I’ll submit my own entry…

It reminded me of a simliar game, with the same concept but on a much larger scale. At travelpod they have a flash game where you must place a flag on the map of the world to mark the location of cities and famous places with points are awarded for speed and accuracy. There are 12 levels of difficulty with cities becoming more and more obscure as you progress. Give it your best flag at www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq. Unfortunately I didn’t make the 30,000 threshold to get past level 6, I’m sure you can do better!

London (harder, better, faster, stronger) from David Hubert on Vimeo.

I’ve gone for this one (bit festive but I like it), which one will you choose?

www.smashingmagazine.com