Ad illiteracy

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Originally uploaded by Emma and Lorenzo Wood

Hot on the heels of MySociety’s iPhone app for their wonderful FixMyStreet service, Lorenzo spotted this in the wilds of Shoreditch…

Numbered CCTV is one thing (a la Westminster’s unique parking location references (UPLs?)) but texting incidents is a step further.

The cynic in me wonders if this means that the cameras are not monitored until they get a text?

Thinking further forward, why even bother having a camera: just get people to send in photos by MMS with the reference number of the nearest lampost…

Stand by for a new wave of crime – stealing mobiles of people reporting incidents…

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Twitter / Neal Preece

Well, I’ve read too many 2009 predictions and resolutions and am thoroughly sick of them. Then I came across Neal’s thought on Twitter and it made me laugh: had to share it – my favourite pronouncement of 2009…

“I’ve thought long and hard, and have decided on my New Year’s resolutio n. 1024×768.”

Classic.

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Leaping Donkey (IMG_3300.JPG)

Originally uploaded by ikj

We decided not to slob this New Year’s Day and so made a picnic and headed out to walk in St James’ Park. The idea was to have the park to ourselves, no traffic, free parking and a bracing run around then humble picnic (since of course nothing’d be open).

Wrong!

London was packed with left-over revellers and there was also the New Year Parade (apparently been going for years – never knew). This meant we couldn’t park, couldn’t get to St James’ and ended up in Mayfair wandering through the end-of-parade bits as they “de-paraded” (what do you do at the end of your particular parading? “Stop”? “De-commence”? “De-parade”?).

Anyway, a whole troupe of donkeys (actually, I should say a ‘pace of donkeys‘) passed by: some dressed as Rudolf, pulling traps, carrying kids – madness. The Donkey Breed Society, it seems.

Anyway, this particular Jack was in a right old mood, bucking and kicking. He was really out of character with the weirdly jovial pace (and all the more funny because of that). I just managed to get a shot as he had all fours off the floor.

This levitating donkey struck me as a nice start to the year.

Happy New Year to one and all: peace, health and prosperity to you, as well as a few moments of feet-off-the-ground fun!

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Apostrophe is more like ‘Nopostrophe’ with their season’s greetings…

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Someone’s had an irony bypass here…

Courtesy of Lorenzo’s photostream.

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Couldn’t have invented this – I just wish I’d been the one to find it

“When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed. Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.” So that was what went up under the English version, barring lorries from a road near a supermarket. “

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | E-mail error ends up on road sign

Gwych. Rhagorol.

Surely the Welsh Assembly should now take a stand and call for the belated and much-anticipated outlawing of OOO messages?

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BT is selling off some secret WW2 tunnels, originally built as air-raid shelters during the Second World War.

Water, leccy etc all provided. Probably quiet too. Views won’t be great (!) but it’s quite a talking point and you’d be able to jog for a mile each day without leaving your home.

Secret WW2 tunnels up for sale

Saith BT:

The property is now being offered to the market for purchasers with the resources and profile suited to re-using the site.  Sadly, however, restrictions mean there is no opportunity for the tunnels to become a smart new hotel, home or office.
   
Hewitt, said, “We are looking for a purchaser with the imagination and stature to return the tunnels to productive use. The site has the most fantastic history and, now that we have no requirement for it for telecommunications use, it is right that we should offer it to the market.  Here’s hoping it has a fantastic future as well.”

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The San Francisco Citizen | Google Employees Press 14 Buttons to Operate Their Toilets.

Wow. Admiration and fear.

I don’t understand quite how “Front Wash” can be effective while yet not splashing one’s shirt…

I also have a concern about continued functioning during a power cut. Backup power generation?

For those who’ve read Philip Kerr’s Gridiron - “a story about a highly technical building (nicknamed The Gridiron), which becomes self-aware and tries to kill everyone inside” – your main response to this will of course be fear of a rather horrid way to die…

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Still, the time to find and listen to those skills would be <thinks> before printing thousands of carrier bags</thinks>.

Then again, maybe not.

Let the presses roll. Oh, and see if we can find St Christpoher’s Place on Google Maps…

UPDATE: I’ve shown this to 8 people, none of whom found the typo without prompting.

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Heh – gloriously tart-yet-restrained review by Nico Macdonald on Sienna Miller’s appearance on the Today programme. A deft swipe at celebrity vapidity, unchallenging interviewing and the content-free orthodoxies around ‘carbonanitification’ discussions. I won’t quote it – just have a read

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This made me chuckle: an over-zealous, non-cycling, generally unaware parking attendant in Westminster seems to have missed the fact that Pall Mall was closed specifically for the TDF official cars, but hey ho. Can’t imagine this being chased all the way round the Tour though…

Otherwise it was a really fun day: hanging out with Matthew and Al, shuffling along the Mall and watching the heads of cyclists we didn’t know pass in a blur in the distance.

London seemed to swallow the vast number of spectators, and some welcome sun gave everything a warm, holiday feel. Despite so many roads being closed there seemed to be limited disruption (I scootered straight into town and parked easily on St Martin’s Lane, just a few mins from the screen, stands and presentation area in Trafalgar square). The wide space on the Mall and Pall Mall meant that there wasn’t really a crush anywhere.

Now, all I need to do is watch what happened on the telly

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Oh, I know it’s doing the rounds of the web, and it’s also probably a cunning joke by those oh-so-funny folk at Google, but it is rather charming literal response to a mapping question.

The big, unanswered question, however, is why the landfall in France?

This isn’t just an anti-London/UK dig since the routes to Dublin and Cardiff also hit France first… Maybe a love of tunnels by the Map Bot? We should be told!

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I’m not sure what to say. Chatting to a friend over the weekend about biodiesel we were debating whether the water cost (for growing the crops as biomatter) would become as problematic as the carbon cost – especially following an interesting article in the RSA journal a month or so ago about how some food practices “export” the water impact from rich countries to poor. The article, entitled “Water Fight” notes that “it takes 11,000 litres to grow the feed for enough cow to make a hamburger, and between 2,000 and 4.000 litres for that cow to fill its udders with a litre of milk”.

That’s quite a thought – especially for a Londoner with the drought conditions of last summer still in mind.

Leaving aside the rather unpleasant thought of smouldering pig-fat emanating from the exhaust pipe, I wonder whether the overall impact of raising more swine – with the cost in foodstuffs, slurry, the electricity or gas to render the corpses and other cheery thoughts – will actually end up being more sustainable than burning old trees or non-oinking biomass.

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With thanks to Jayne for this tip – a really fun site.

It’s a three-trick website and really not as unpleasant as the URL might indicate – certainly work-safe (until you start snorting at the hate mail section though: awesome).

I like this guy’s writing. Pity he’s too lazy/selfish/restrained to write more

Enjoy! I don’t want to spoil the surprise by telling you more, but it’s good to see that primary research is not dead

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Glorious site!

I’ve already posted about the origami envelop from the good folk at Flying Pig. Their recent newsletter mentioning the Christmas models for you to cut out and make (ideal for entertaining the kids).

The newsletter also mentioned, tongue in cheek, that the owner, Rob Ives, has “been forced” to remove links to the ‘naughty’ card creations – CardBawdy (as in ‘cardboad-y’, I assume. Heh). You can see the delightfully British ‘bonking bunnies’ above.

It’s a cute piece of marketing since – unsurprisingly – Rob’s the person behind CardBawdy too.

At £2.95 for the rabbits though it’s hardly any more expensive that a posh birthday card, yet way more fun.

Pass me the scissors, please!

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I’m tempted to chuckle at this as being the latest manifestation of the US ‘bizmeth’ patent madness, in which people can ‘protect’ the process of doing something obvious in a sensible fashion.

IBM’s patents are gloriously old, and predate the internet as we know it. These are akin to finding feudal land rights, or ancient rights of way, impinging on the gleaming new freeholds of the web.

I’m not a fan of bizmeth patents, as this thread on NowEurope demonstrates. Greg made some good and sensible comments there about the need for quality, how it’s the process that’s protected rather than the implementation and the difficulty protection. Greg also provided a succinct position paper on the defeat of the European Software Directive.

I don’t really mind who – other than the lawyers – profits from this: I’m just going to enjoy for a moment that the ‘inventors’ of the ‘1-click ordering’ (“whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model”, to cite their patent) are getting a taste for being sued for inventing the obvious, or discovering the optimal.

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Even the medium of the Internet has its limits

Because some things just have to be face to face.

For an opportunity to interact with your piers (sic), see who’s doing what in the industry, and have a wonderful evening at one of London’s top hotels, make this experience a tangible one: Attend the 2006 Interactive Marketing and Advertising Awards, being held on the 8th November at the Royal Lancaster Hotel

With such a collection of piers I’m sure the event will be “well supported”….

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“There’s nothing quite like an Award winning lavatory to stimulate local and often national media attention!”.

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Having heard the interview with Stuart Rose this morning on the Today programme I nipped over to the website to ‘listen again‘ in order that I could bring the news of M&S’ internet sales to the readership of InternetRetailing.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, at my scoop! Since 0755 BST Stuart Rose has been ousted and replaced by Philip Green…

I’m assuming that this will be corrected soon, so in the meantime here’s the fuller running order so that you can enjoy the fun of stumbling across this for yourself.

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