Sometimes it really does pay to RTFM I bought an Apple magic trackpad yesterday, and I’ve been driving myself and some of my Apple Fanboy colleagues round the bend trying to work out why it wasn’t doing something very fundamental. One of the key things that I need the trackpad to do is wake my MacBook Pro from sleep in closed clamshell
fail Dear Microsoft, I fixed your social marketing campaign for you Last week JJ & I stumbled across the Hamburg leg of the Kinect Tour – a Roadshow to promote the new Xbox motion control games system “Kinect” (formerly Project Natal). We impressed by the tech, but less impressed by Microsoft’s attempt to add social media to the experience. It actually works First
linkedin LinkedIn has a language problem that is actually meaningless. So get over it. Folk I know, particularly I’m thinking here of folk best described as “social media types”, are a bit sniffy about LinkedIn (direct link to my profile). I wonder if it’s stuff like this that puts them off? The capture below is a box I get when adding someone to my network on Linkedin. Before I can a
digital culture Apple keynote events: the Macguffin of mythinformation Tonight saw the latest Apple “Special Event”, and the launch of some new shiny kit and software from Cupertino. This seems a timely opportunity to plug a project I’ve helped out on for Sage publishing. CommunicationSpace is an online community space for the discussion of media and communication res
conference I’ve been away. I have people to take my photos for me. Thanks to Ana, Dubber and JJ, I didn’t have to lift a finger to document my week in Hamburg. Here’s a week in other peoples’ pictures: Hamburg, Ecrea 2010 – by Ana, and by Dubber and by Jennifer. Thanks you guys for amping my shit and building my frand 😉 I owe you all a pain au chocolate. SHARE
conference The laptop is the new suitcase I’m sat with JJ waiting to fly home after a successful week’s conferencing. All week she’s been hunting for a sticker that sums up her trip. She just pointed out “laptops are the new suitcases” – the image of a suitcase covered in labels from far flung places has been replaced for a lot of travellin
conference My paper to ECREA conference – further reading The following are papers, chapters, and web pages I touch on today in my paper What’s the hash tag? Folksonomy, brand, and control: organising and owning conversations on Twitter at ECREA’s 2010 conference in Hamburg. SHARE THIS: * Share * * Twitter [https://theplan.co.uk/my-paper-to-ecre
TV liveblogging – Taggers & Non-Taggers I’ve just been re-reading The Emerging Viewertariat: Explaining Twitter Responses to Nick Griffin’s Appearance on BBC Question Time byNick Anstead & Ben O’Loughlin. If you’re interested at all in TV and the ever popular trend to liveblog it, it’s worth a read. I just wanted to pick out a section abo
Schrödinger’s big shop Apparently an ASDA big shop costs me £5 less than a big shop at other supermarkets. How’s that now? I buy what I buy at the shop based on a number of factors: What I need What I want What I see that I think I want What I see that I remember that I… Continue reading Schrödinger’s big shop [https://th
Our tech team are tweeting @BSMtechsupport A nice little idea from Birmingham School of Media’s technician team: they’ve started tweeting updates about their work and news about support services around the University. The account is fairly new so hasn’t had much traffic but here’s what’s good about it: 1. A lot of our students use Twitter, o
hyperlocal Why hyperlocal “fail” is sometimes actually hyperlocal “win” I’ve just read an article called “5 reasons your local blog will fail” (http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2010/09/5-mistakes-that-make-local-blogs-fail259.html ). It’s an interesting read but it assumes profit as the only way to benchmark success of a local blog and it assumes advertising as being the way
Social media job descriptions and interviews This week I’ve asked my Twitter contacts for help. I need copies of job descriptions for creative industries jobs (basically design for web & print) for a class exercise coming up in a month or so. I didn’t get that much feedback (but thanks to the folk who retweeted and who did write to me).… Conti
Reading the Reader’s Digest Prize Draw mailer For the past few years I’ve been getting Prize Draw letters from Reader’s Digest. They are quite incredible things. The whole thing is painstakingly designed to suggest that (a) I’ve won (b) I’m being written to personally. Neither of those things are strictly true. I’ve been meaning to analyse some
rant Right UK PLC, it’s time you helped us out with this Income Tax error thing One of many sofas I won’t be buying for a while – pic CC sosylvie There’s a problem in the UK’s income tax system which means millions of Brits have underpaid their tax, some by several thousand pounds. While people should certainly pay the right amount of tax, retrospectively taxing people and expe
creative commons Free up your flickr images – relicense everything as Creative Commons It’s nice to see your work used by other people – to illustrate a blog post, as part of a presentation, or maybe even printed out and hung on a wall. Yet a lot of people lock folk out from using their work by restricting usage when by slapping a restrictive copyright notices on it.… Continue reading
apps Supersize me – how much would it cost to upgrade all of your freemium services? Freemium is a popular business model for web apps and online services. The idea is pretty simple (and a touch obvious): offer a great product that people want to use, and let them have it for free; charge a fee to the small proportion of the users who need it to do just a little more.… Continue read
howto RSS without the faff (Safari on a mac and iPhone) Amongst other things, RSS is a great way to follow websites without remembering to go back and check them all the time. For example say you want to know when I’ve written something. Rather than coming to my website, you can use RSS to make it come to you, every time I update it. There… Continue read
howto If you’re Reading this I’ve downgraded my phone to iOS3 iOS4 was fun wasn’t it? I could zoom when taking photographs, and tell people what I was reading instead of what I was Reading. But when you’re phone crashes out from Safari every time you load it, and when there’s a 30 second delay between key strokes on your keyboard, it’s time to either get… Cont
fandom What’s Next? #westwing Fan fiction on Twitter A week or so ago I started following Josiah Bartlet on Twitter. Turned out he was already following me, as he likes to follow people who are tagging tweets #westwing. I don’t get a lot of the references to contemporary American politics in his tweets, but there’s the occasional reference to the show
marketing Do you strip or crunch? A lazy marketer’s guide to social media campaigns Imagine the following brief: Bourbon biscuits want to relaunch to attract new younger consumers; our demographic is dying out and young people are more into fudge brownies from Starbucks, we need to bring Bourbons into the 21st Century. What’s the betting that agencies will come back with the follo
facebook Chris is working for Facebook while he’s asleep, try it now Here’s an interesting one for you. I got a message from Facebook today that said: “Chris is chatting with Facebook friends using AIM, try it now” Now I’ve mentioned that to Chris, and it’s not something that he asked Facebook to send out for him; point of fact he doesn’t use AIM for Facebook chat. S
Using Twitter in Higher Education While archiving some old files just now I came across this article, which I wrote for Viewfinder magazine last year. Viewfinder is the magazine of the British Universities Film & Video Council, and the article is pitched at helping academics think about how they could (should?) use a tool like Twitt
books A posh restaurant style poached egg: home cooked comfort food at its best I just poached an egg. I just poached a proper grown up actual poached egg. Now let me tell you something about poached eggs: I can’t cook them. Let me tell you something else: I bloody love poached eggs, me. So much so, that I keep a little league table of bloody brilliant poached eggs. It looks… C
howto The “one email address, many alts” Google trick Ever wanted to set up an alternative profile on a service but been unable to because you need another email address to register a new account? If you use Googlemail / Gmail then you can sidestep that pretty easily… This is really simple, and yet a lot of people don’t know about it. When you… Continu
apps My new favourite web app: Tom’s Planner – Gantt Charts This is one for my students mainly, but also anyone who needs to visualise a project quickly. I haven’t needed to make a Gantt chart for a long time, but I’ve been on a bloody training course on Microsoft Project, and even bought an epic book on that package. Today for the first time in years, I… Co
