Hitler’s tache

7 May 2009 – 2:56 pm

Richard Herring has decided to live for a week with a Hitler moustache and see how people react. All in the name of comedy of course.

Moustache now trimmed and waxed. Do I get approval from brist... on Twitpic

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Susan Boyle Swine Flu Sex and MPs

30 April 2009 – 10:37 pm

Birmingham Mail - News - Birmingham News - Susan Boyle: Erdington MP apologises after Twitter swine flu joke

Local MP Sion Simon (finding his way on Twitter) ReTweeted a (vaguely amusing, but not ear-shatteringly funny) witicism:

“I’m not saying Susan Boyle caused swine flu. I’m just saying that nobody had swine flu, she sang on TV, people got swine flu.”

It’s about Now Show standard, topical, smirk-worthy rather than a belly-laugh — what it isn’t is offensive in any way.

Two unrelated comments to make:

  • Firstly how desperate is the SEO’d headline there — pick the two most talked about things online over the last week and then add MP and Twitter — would the story have merited coverage if it didn’t give the opportunity to combine all those?
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A false sense of literacy

20 April 2009 – 11:38 pm

Nice piece in the NYT about how there’s a system for chosing ten of the thousands of letters sent daily to ol’Bazaa Obama to actualy reach him:

“We pick messages that are compelling, things people say that, when you read it, you get a chill,” said Mr. Kelleher.

I think a random ten would be better, otherwise Barry’s getting a distorted picture of the literacy and poiniancy of his nation. Better to let him get an idea of the mundanity that every country is mainly composed of.

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Worthless Piece of Crap

14 April 2009 – 10:44 pm

A quick group blog we set up today, with the idea of getting to try new stuff — and trying to break it. Trying to hate it in the hope that that will be impossible, a possible cure for gadget lust: Worthless Piece of Crap

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UK TV series map

6 April 2009 – 10:30 am



UK TV series map Originally uploaded by Meg Pickard


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I’m not in a good mood

3 April 2009 – 1:46 pm

I’m not having a good week, been busy with work that (while important and good) isn’t at a very exciting stage, I’m tired (which isn’t going to get any better when I get up at 3.30am for this) and I’ve had a few tiny bits of rejection. Which is probably why a sleight in the Guardian G2 section this morning bothered me more than it should.

A week or so ago I met Guardian journalist Stephen Moss, who was doing a piece about local papers (we had a coffee and a chat in the Town Hall foyer for about one and a half hours, I was there and so was Nick Booth). He wanted to talk about whether blogging would “fill the gap” that a demise of local papers would create and kept trying to get us to say that we were waiting and wanting to do it commercially. We’re not. We said so a number of times. In my opinion it would be stupid, we’re already filling gaps and have been for years — the hole that “papers” currently fill isn’t a shape that blogging can be forced into (and papers themselves don’t fill the hole anyway).

But I’m not in the article. Nick’s new project (a very cool thing) is as it fits the angle Moss is coming from. He talks about meeting “a group of bloggers” — there were only two of us. It would have taken less time to say “Nick Booth and Jon Bounds” than it would to say “a group of bloggers” (does he want us to think a: bloggers are organised – they aren’t – or b: that he met more than two – he didn’t – ?).

Okay, reasons of space, not wanting to mention too many people (there are a lot of people in the piece), but I do feel there’s a touch of arrogance, a not telling the whole story — where there is a point made by me that he wants, he talks only about Nick’s liking for it:

“He also likes the idea that you only publish when you have something to say. It’s a light news day, all quiet on the Birmingham front – go out for a walk.”, well yes Nick did and does like the idea, but it was me that said it. It’s something I say all the time — other people do too, but it was me, then.

It’s getting on my tits cos I’m already in a not-so-good mood, but he’s a fine example of something that bloggers do as a matter of course (link to, acknowledge sources, thank people) that this piece of journalism couldn’t give a toss about. Another reason why I wouldn’t fill that gap if you paid me, and one why soon they won’t have the money to do so either.

Which is a shame, because I found the article interesting, but I can’t trust it to be the whole truth.

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Geotag the Internet – my rejected 4iP project

2 April 2009 – 2:34 pm

Continuing this week’s them of rejection (a bloke could get paranoid), I’ve just heard that my (more in hope than expectation) 4iP project has been knocked back. If you don’t know what 4iP is then a quick look at their website should help, if you don’t care then it doesn’t matter (basically, funding for “public service interwebs”). I wasn’t after the money so much as the promise that they could link you up with other people that would complement your skills —I couldn’t have made my idea on my own.

My thing was very basically a “geo-stumble upon” a way to attache geo-data to the wealth of exsiting web content that doesn’t have it. Easy to use, but mainly building up a huge bak of useful data that people could do cool stuff with. Not local search, but “geo attention“.

Here’s what I submitted, in case you are interested — I think this would be a very good idea, so in lieu of me being involved in making it I’d like to throw it out to anyone who might:

Elevator Pitch

Geo-data is about to be the next big thing on the web, but people who make sites don’t know how and where sites are useful. People are also to busy to tag thier content. A bowser plugin/web service that allowed people to say “this content is useful to me here” or “this site is about here” — and then used this data to place sites on the earth as well as on the web (or at least peoples’ attention to them). Site plus open API allows local search for existing content — creating geo-data for the millions of sites without it.

Needs and Benefits

There are billions of pieces of content on the internet, but very few have any geodata attached to them — some because they aren’t geographically relevant, but many because the will/skills aren’t there to attach that data. One of the most difficult tasks on the web is local search, and even if new content is geotagged the existing net isn’t — this will really become apparent with the “hyperlocal revolution” having huge gaps.

Approach

Technically the idea is to make recording your “geo-attention” of a site as simple as possible — just one button click when signed in (using existing services: fireeagle/skyhook/google latitude etc to record location). Your profile can then be used to recommend sites based on your interests and location, you share your attention data, “friends” share your geo-bookmarks.

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Wire And Punk

1 April 2009 – 8:18 pm

“Wire were always at odds with the rest of the late 70s punks. In today’s extract from Wilson Neate’s 33 1/3 book on Pink Flag, we find out why”
The Quietus | Features | Tome On The Range | On Wire And Punk: An Extract From The 33 1/3 Book On Pink Flag

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Fiction

1 April 2009 – 12:35 pm

I don’t write fiction much, haven’t for years, but I decided to see if I could knock something out for Tindal Street Press‘s Roads Ahead compilation. The brief was simply a “substantial short story”, which I took it on myself to write overnight — as tight to the deadline for submission as possible.

Turns out, I made the longlist, but not the actual book — so here it is for anyone who might want to have a read: Get The Bus.

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Google’s magic anus

23 March 2009 – 8:46 pm

Created by the way Google has stitched two of its Street View panoramas in Smethwick, take the advert for a filum and a moving bus and, oops:

St Alban's Rd, Smethwick, Sandwell B67, UK - Google Maps

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