random human slinky guy


Human Slinky Halftime Basketball Creighton University Omaha NE

New Popbitch book

Popbitch: Celebrity Excess And Other Monkey Business

Popbitch: Celebrity Excess And Other Monkey Business
Popbitch: Celebrity Excess And Other Monkey Business

This year Popbitch decided to publish a book as a complement to their irreverant mailings. Allegedly it has some of our favourite stories of the last nine years and, unlike their text-only emails, photos (cute animal plus celebrities), two board games, Kerry Katona’s 2009 diary, what publicists really mean when their lips move, a history of Popbitch since Neolithic days, various quizzes, jokes, otters and other stuff. I can’t wait and have added it to my wishlist for Santa.

Top ten searches of 2008 on google

It’s that time of year again when Google release their zeitgeist listing the most searched for terms of 2008 split out by country – it’s like having your very own research director except you don’t get to ask specific questions.
Top tens though work well I find – it’s a proven editorial technique alongside top trumps and image galleries.

I’m always amazed though how much information the search giant is prepared to share with us the general public. Obviously it’s an edited set of data – I know for instance despite appearances some terms searched for will never appear on this top ten list.

Unlike the AOL search data nothing personally identifiable is available – although this is more to do with it being aggregated and not the raw data.

Google is in a unique position to show trends but importantly as a yearly round up this also gives us a great insight into the hopes and fears of the online population.

In the UK for instance there has been a lot of press about the banking crisis and this has meant that banks and banking in general have been popular search terms – icesave for instance was in the media for weeks so it’s no surprise that it appears top of the financial institutions list. I’m surprised though that Northern Rock hasn’t made it into the top ten considering it’s plight earlier in the year.

Fastest rising finance-related searches in the UK
icesave
hot uk deals
natwest
hmrc
hbos
money saving expert
halifax
barclays
rbs
lloyds tsb

The most searched terms in the UK for 2008 though are
Facebook
BBC
YouTube
eBay
Games
News
Hotmail
Bebo
Yahoo
Jobs

Although if you are interested the fastest rising search terms in the UK which might indicate trends for 2008 are
iPlayer
Facebook
iPhone
Youtube
Yahoo Mail
Large Hadron Collider
Obama
Friv
Cam4
Jogos

If you are interested in the most searched for politicians or recipes then you can find the rest of the top ten search terms over at Google zeitgeist

A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes

Allegedly semen is not only nutritious, but it also has a wonderful texture and amazing cooking properties. you will be surprised to learn how wonderful semen is in the kitchen.

Apple pushes anti-virus for Macs

For the first time, Apple is recommending the use of anti-virus tools to protect Mac systems.
I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner in all honesty. Apple systems are becoming more and more popular and as such they will become a target for the virus makers.

The BBC website and The Register site both have more on the story. In the meantime I’d recommend ClamXav if you are running Mac OS X it’s free and frequently updated.

CTU ringtone from 24

Okay so loads of people are looking for the CTU ringtone again since the new series is on TV.

The details of how to create it or the sound files are all located in previous posts.

24 CTU Ringtone

The long wait to record free HD TV in the UK with Freesat+

For years we’ve been promised that Freeviw would be the future. Now of course we have freesat too but more importantly and something I’m hoping will be the future is freesat+
Essentially it’s all the best bits of freesat – the free HD programmes the regular extra free channels and no monthly subscription with the ability to record to a hard disk. All using the EPG and with smart search and pause and chase play etc.
The only people looking to make a freesat+ box are Humax and if they make it like the FoxSat boxes in Australia then they are going to be smart enough to see if y ou have set something to record and it can’t then it will search the EPG for the next showing and set it to record that one instead. Also automatic recording of split (e.g. by the news) programmes. Oh and of course everyones favourite feature from Sky+ the series link or series record option. Allegedly it will also be capable of recording ITV HD Interactive service

My only concern is that we’ve been promised this PVR for so long and now it’s allegedly being release mid November and we are almost there and no further information or specs have come out.

A great example of directed UGC

The platial map below directs people to share where they where when they heard Obama had won the 2008 presidential election. It’s a great way of engaging your audience and generating content.


http://whereiwasobama.blogspot.com/

Fighting back against the monopolists

So in my quest to get a Freeview+ box with DVD player/recorder I ended up buying an LG RHT297H which is great in most ways (a few niggles like losing the time and hence recording times when the power cuts) but is forced to only play region 2 DVDs. Now I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again if I buy a DVD from the US the UK or Australia then it should play on my equipment so obviously I wanted to fix this.

After searching on a few forums here is how to make your LG HDD DVD recorder multiregion.

Switch your player on.

When it’s booted up hold down CLEAR on remote (under the slider) and PROG Down on the front panel of your DVD player simultaneously for about 6 seconds

You will see a list of codes

Change OP6 from ae or af to 8e (move around using the left and right arrows on the remote)

Press Enter and then menu/list on your remote

Your player will reboot or switch off

Turn it on or wait for it to reboot and now your player is multi region.

🙂

Google Contacts Nightmare

So a slight problem recently with contacts.
I use a number of tools and web apps in my daily life to keep things organised beacuse I work for myself I use a number of machines in a number of offices so it’s easier to rely on web applications for some tasks.

30 boxes (30boxes.com) for a calendar as this also allows my partner to add events and we can keep track of what nights we have free for stuff which is nice.
Gmail (gmail.com) for email as it’s usually reliable and has heaps of storage space and I like the search
plaxo (plaxo.com) for keeping my contacts up to date
linkedin (linkedin.com) for business contacts
mobile me (me.com) because it came free with my iPhone and works with my MacBook address book

The problem I have now is syncing al the data.

This used to be easy as every now and then I would sync with plaxo to my work machines and that would pick up new contacts and I would dump them into Gmail manually. Not too painful and simple.

Now though the iPhone sync has got the better of me. Gmail has a whacked-out idea of contacts management in that email addresses are automatically added to your contacts list each time you use the reply, reply to all, or forward functions to send messages to addresses not previously stored in your contacts list. Sounds great in theory. In practise I don’t actually know a lot of those people and I may not want them in my contacts list.

iPhone has imported contacts from Gmail bringing all this random data and that has synched with mobile me and now my phone has 1800+ contacts only around 300 of which I actually added myself.

Google what are you thinking adding all these people to my contacts list without asking me?
Apple what are you doing allowing me to sync with data that is so different from my original set without setting off alarm bells somewhere.

Gah!