I’m a fan of continued education.  I’ve carried on learning formally though the OU for many years. But the OU courses available in the US are few so I’ve been looking around for something else.  Many of the available courses in New York that would feasibly fit into my schedule are the more practical or […]
Girl Geek Dinner and Maryam
There was Girl Geek Dinner in London yesterday ably organised by Sarah Blow. Ian Forrester did his usual superb job of videoing the speakers and here’s Maryam Scoble‘s speach.   From reading the reports, it sounds like I missed a great evening. I was honoured to be mentioned, along with Nicole Simon, as one if the […]
Bar Community Marketing
The bar over the road from me has a wonderful Word of Mouth scheme for getting new customers.  Every Thursday, it opens up the bartending role to guests – that is, anyone who wants to have a go.  The only catch – you have to bring in your friends. There’s a big sign up behind […]
Vaio Viral
This set of games has to be one of the most addictive I’ve seen. But to you by Kempt for Sony Viao, it just takes the form of one game after another. All short and suite, some of them incomprehensible (you click and something happens) it just keeps you onthe page with all the different […]
Cocktails in New York
Looks like there are going to be some drinks on Friday night, the Jason Calacanis Happy Hour. Could be a pleasant way to spend a Friday.
Web Video Hosting
How many video sites are there now? Plenty, and they are still popping up every week. YouTube is the biggest but Google are still pushing theirs despite buying YT, Microsoft recently launched theirs and Revver is going strong with the shared revenue model. Chris Pirillo takes a look at three key players in this string […]
Shrinking Household
I’m sitting here trying to keep out the way of the movers who are slowly packing up all my stuff (feeling guilty, I just make them tea every hour or so).   My working space gets barer and barer; the desktop PC has gone, the desk (or what passes for one) has gone and the next […]
BBC UGC – Yes or No?
User Generated Content, Citizen media, particpatory content. Whatever you call it, it’s not going away and the number of advertisers jumping on the bandwagon with various degrees of success increases everyday. The BBC has been there for a while and now we have two stories demonstrating various successes. In the first, BBC News 24 has […]
Choosing a Blog Consultant
Eric, over at CommonSense PR, has listed 5 key points about choosing a blogging consultant. Some excellent points there, especially about checking the blogging history of the consultant and ther references. I would add a further one, in that also check the variety and breadth of previous work. One thing I have found with digital […]
Packing Choices
Today, I’m preparing to pack, the movers arrive on Monday to take everything away and put some of it on a boat that will hopfully arrive in New York in about 2 months.  Unlike the last time I did this, moving to and from Amsterdam, a lot of the stuff will be put into storage. […]
Jury’s Hotel SEO
If you use Google to search for Jurys hotel, the first result is the main page for the hotel group. But the next few pages demonstrate the powerof a Search Optimisation strategy and 15 of the next 19 results are also jurys, but lying across a range of subdomains such as bristolhotels.jurysdoyles.com. But if you […]
Starbucks – It’s Red Again
Starbucks’ itsredagain is their Holiday website. It’s definitely multilingual, having you pass through 2 pages to choose your language and even gives a subtitle choice for those lacking speakers ;-).  There’s nothing groundbreaking here, with a choice of send your own greeting card or submit your Christmas tradition to be added to the interactive map. […]
Lonelygirl15 – a review
Wired have a nice write-up about the team behind LonelyGirl15, looking at the background and possible future. The article mentions a few things that helped the success along, how they responded to the fans and how they managed the revelation that Bree was not ‘real’. they kept within legal bounds by not trying to sell […]
Primetime Online – watching the networks on the web
Due to my lack of electronic goods, my TV watching has been restricted to waht I can find and play on the laptop. Now, yes, downloads would give me copies to keep, but sometimes the instant gratification is what I need so I turned to the networks and their forays into online programming to see […]
And some bad service
I had read about how bad Time Warner cable were but did not really expect it to be this bad. The first issue was the inability of being able to turn up within the 4 hour time span allotted to the order. The guy was only 20 minutes late, but it would have been far […]
Some recommendations
From my trip to Boston at the weekend I would recommend The Gryphon House Bed And Breakfast, in Back Bay. Friendly staff, lovely rooms, nice breakfasts. It’s not in downtown but the subway station is just round the corner and from my perspective the MIT campus was in easy walking distance. And if you are […]
Virtual Worlds – Futures of Entertainment
Not the Real World Anymore Virtual spaces are more than sites for emulating the real world. They are becoming platforms for thought experiments — some of which involve fantasies we would not like to enact in the real world, others involve possibilities that we may want to test market before putting into practice. Much more […]
Fan Cultures – Futures of Entertainment
The first session today is on Fan Cultures. Once seen as marginal or niche consumers, Fan communities look more ‘mainstream’ than ever before. Some have argued that the practices of web 2.0 are really those of fan culture without the stigma. Courted, encouraged, engaged and acknowledged, fans are more and more frequently being recognized as […]
Opening Remarks – Futures of Entertainment
Josh Green gave the introduction speach this morning – Viscerality and Convergence.  A very image driven presentation so no live notes taken.   The key message is about the reactions to technology; how we bash hit and play technology until it makes our rules. Look at the reactions, in images, the doctoring of the advertising, that […]
Futures of Entertainment Day 2
Waiting for Day 2 of the conference to start, hopefully my arms will stand up to more typing today.  We only have 2 sessions, the first on Fan Cultures and the second on virtual spaces. The speaker list is over here and the conference blog is here.