US airports really miss a trick when it comes to commercial opportunities. The other week the flight back from Chicago was delayed by 2 hours and all the only places to spend money were a couple of bars, a couple of fast food restaurants and a couple of newsagents. If I’d been stuck in Heathrow I could have probably completely outfitted a house from the shops available there. I’m expecting to spend a fiar bit of time in airports as the United service between Chicago and La Guardia seems prone to delays – this week, after being picked up at 5 am for the first flight, it was cancelled without even an apology..the group of us had to be split across the later flights.

From the Guardian (free registration required), ITV have published its Corporate Responsibility report. One area it discussed is TV advertising – only 1 in 8 people watching the commercials (that cost 3.4billion GBP per year) agreed with the statement “the commercials shown on ITV are truthful and accurate”. Around half had no opinion and a third disagreed with it. So not only do we have increasing number of ways to avoid the ads, 1 in 3 people think they are lying anyway when they do watch them.

One other tidbit I found interesting was the statement in the report

The amount and frequency of advertising is regulated by Ofcom. Ofcom licences limit the amount of advertising ITV can broadcast to seven minutes-per-hour averaged over a day. In any particular hour the precise amount may vary and during peak viewing times (6.00pm to 11.00pm) the maximum in an hour is eight minutes.
The length of commercial breaks within programmes is also limited to be shorter than the breaks between programmes

This contrasts with the amount on US network TV. I read of blog post over the weekend (which I can’t find now…I knew I should have tagged it!) that said something like over 40% of prime time viewing was ads. I know it feels like it. My unscientific method tells me that for an hour long programme, there’s a break after the starting credits, it then gives you about 15 minutes before the next break and then they are every 8 minutes. The run times are mainly 41 minutes, giving you 18-19 minutes every hour of commericals.

In complete contrast was Danish TV…I was surprised to find programmes running all the way through even on commerical channels. i course this gives rise to some very strange start times, with programmes being advertised as starting at 20.53 etc.

Denmark is one of the countries that subtitles TV programmes. This has to be one of the factors in driving a population to speak English (often better than the english). Compare this with Germany. But there was something about Copenhagen that makes the average english tourist assume everyone speaks English and this is before they’ve seen the TV (See Rick’s post). But all the cues are given to you that this is an English speaking country – signs and instructions onthe public transport are in English as well as Danish, menus and tourist information is bilingual, announcements are often in both languages. Subconsciously you pick all of this up, meaning that you do not even think of checking if they speak English, which I would always do in Germany and France

May_general 149

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

Not far from my hotel in Copenhagen was the start of the Carnival parade, that takes place each year as part of the Whitsun celebrations. There were lots of women wearing not a lot, but in a very colourful, Latin American canival way. This was one of the few men that stripped down.

Drum bands and samba were the order of the day. Given that it was cold and raining, the dancing was the only thing keeping them warm. As the troops went passed, I kep my eye on the shoes. Some groups were optimistic in thinking they could dance and grind the whole way (a lot of it on cobbles) in 3″ heels. Others decided that flat training shoes were a far better choice.

Hailstones

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

Visited Chicago yesterday for a few meetings. Whilst there, it seemed a good idea to walk back to the hotel. Until the hailstorm started and we got caught in the downpour. We tried to shelter but were still getting hit…and they were pretty big.

Although I guess the Helath and Safety card at the office having references to tornado and sever weather shelters should have given me some idea that things may happen from the sky!

Steak overload

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

I’m slowly introducing my new colleagues to an online world that they have rarely glimpsed before. Last night this started with going through Flickr to find some CC licenced photos to illustrate a presentation we’ve been putting together (including this one, taken at a New York restaurant last week).

We moved onto ego searches on Google and then onto blogging – it was at this point they discovered I have a blog. Now there are positive noises coming out from a few people about starting a blog themselves.

Flickr has undergone a slight massage – new navigation, new layout. But retaining the spirit of Web 2.0 they have now regressed =to a gamma version!

Tag Sale

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

There’s too many tags…they’re now on sale.

Our digital assassin

Originally uploaded by Blue Blanket.

I spent some of yesterday at the WeMedia conference hosted by the BBC. I was one of about 30 so-called ‘digital assassins’ bought in to tell the ‘suits’ how it really is with media consumption for news and entertainment. Not sure how well it went down overall, but as I ended up on a table that was defintiely not suits, but bloggers and geeks in the main, not much of what I said seemed to be a surpise. But that’s what you get sitting on a table near the powerpoints, with everyone plugged in and online.

The picture was taken by Julie, who was the facilitor for the table.

May London Geek Dinner 4

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

A pleasant May Day ended with a Geek Dinner with Marc Canter. Around 30 people turned up for chat and networking and to hear Marc talk about the People Aggregator, which should start to be available in a couple of months. As usual with Marc, the talk with interactive, with questions being thrown at the audience as well.

Here’s Ian and Marc posing, after a filming session.

Nike Football Two

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

At Niketown, in Oxford Circus, the windows and all the ground floor are dedicated to football and the World Cup. Nike have a great integrated campaign, TV, print, and Nikefootball.com.

In Trafalgar Square, a huge 3-a-side football competition was taking place, all sponsored by Nike, with U16 and U20 teams. They are really starting to push this campaign.

Via TechCrunch, Google Calendar finally gets launched. Except it’s not working at the moment or t least a little unstable. First impression about what is missing – export of calendars so I can put on my phone.

Apr_general 103

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

A day trip to Hamburg yesterday for an interview gave me a few hours to walk around the city. I was surprised at the lack of advertising for the World Cup, with only the odd touch like this bus shelter banner.

I also took a wander round the botanic gardens – what could be better than a hothouse when you’re cold!

The Drink Cabinet

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

I’m tidying things up..one of which is the drink cupboard. Some of these bottles have been hanging round for about 10 years (special labellings, engraved bottles from work etc).

The Chevy Tahoe make your own ad competition, menetioned previously, has got a fair bit of coverage since the weekend. THere appears to be pver 500 posts discussing it, and on a random flick through the links it looks like the majority of the blog comments are negative. But, from CNet

The contest is a success as a marketing campaign, according to Melisa Tezanos, a GM spokeswoman. Consumers have submitted more than 21,000 ads and have e-mailed commercials over 40,000 times, she said. Chevyapprentice.com has generated 2.4 million page views, and the average visit to the site lasts more than 9 minutes. The company anticipated before launching the contest that it may see some negative ads, but Tezanos noted that more than 80 percent of the commercials depict the Tahoe in a favorable light.

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It looks like they are leaving the ads up there, but are they going to just gloss over the negativity (as that quote implies) because of the small numbers or actually take heed?

Second Life presentations: PSFK have put up the slides from a recent presentation into Second life. Exploring current trends, a good look at where things are happening – well worth a visit.

Popurls is another aggregator, this time an aggregator of aggregators. A couple more levels of this and I’ll only ever need to read 1 piece per day.

Newsweek has an article about the new web, or Web 2.0 or the living web. Whatever you want to call it. It’s just the ongoing development of the web, forever changing, always arriving with newthings. Paul Boutin on Slate takes this article and pulls out the various meaings of Web 2.0:

• a mishmash of tools and sites that foster collaboration and participation.
• the software and languages used to build the gee-whiz features of these sites.
• s a bid to make money by funding a bring-your-own-content site.

But in the end, it’s the same as it was..some of is just use it differently and call it different things. To the rest of the world, as Paul say, it’s just the internet.

Solar Eclipse!

Originally uploaded by Ezu.

Some great photos on Flickr.

Here’s one from Ezu

Reboot returns in it’s 8th version. After last time, I’d fully recommend it – and this time they are asking for far more input on what you want it to be.

Looking for Chrissie Hynde Stuff? Following up from my interview notes, here’s an auction that you may be interested in:

Chrissie has very kindly donated a pair of signed Giovanna sandals to a celebrity shoe auction which has just started on eBay.

This auction is to raise money for the Mines Advisory Group which helps provide safer futures for lives affected by conflict and has destroyed close to two million landmines and unexploded bombs since 1992.

The link is:

http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQsassZgivelandminestheboot

IMG_3790

Originally uploaded by RachelC.

HTe last thing I did before leaving Vegas was go on a helicopter trip to the Grand Canyon. YOu have to do this – a brilliant few hours. I’d advising booking on the internet as opposed to through the hotel as my trip was $100 less than many of the others on the trip who had booked through their concierge.

Seven of us, plus pilot were loaded up in to small helicopter and flew out with lots of commentary to the Canyon, where we landed and wondered around for about 25 minutes before being transported back. Make sure you’re not scared of flying, or heights, and take lots of pictures.