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"With allotment waiting lists massively over-subscribed and people right across the country keener than ever to grow their own fruit and veg, the aim for Landshare is to become a UK wide initiative to make British land more productive and fresh local produce more accessible to all. But all of this depends on people like you registering their interest now." cool innovation from Channel 4.
Archive | October, 2008
links for 2008-10-31
links for 2008-10-30
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"One of the joys of having the web as a corporate communication channel is that it is very flexible and can be very, very dynamic. Not all businesses take full advantage of that, though. The BBC has not been very nimble in its response to the Brand / Ross / Sachs sex scandal, and this has been especially true on the web."
Guardian moderates Lily Allen
Lily Allen continues her spat with Marina Hyde and (according to Metafilter) mentions Hyde’s affair with Piers Morgan. And is apparently moderated. Where does that get covered in the G moderation policy???
Economist showing Gallup polls before election v. final results
Gallup always predicts the winner (only exception is Reagan in 1980 and Gore in 2000), but usually over-eggs the winning margin.
Lily’s response to Marina
I thought this was rather charming, in response to the charmless heavy-handedness of this:
i think that what you wrote earlier was thoughtless and uncalled for. Murray was an all too easy target, he has a lot of respect for me and was only trying to be enthusiastic about something he feels passionate about. It’s quite obvious the part of his press release you referred to was “tongue in cheek”. As we all know, it would be ridiculous to compare me to Wordsworth or Bennett and your poking fun at his reference was cheap, really. Personally i don’t care , i’m perfectly used to people poking fun at me, but Murray doesn’t put himself in front of the camera, and in my opinion didn’t deserve the ridicule. It’s hard enough being my press officer at the best of times, and i don’t think anyone would appreciate their friend or business associate being called “madam” by someone who had never met them. it’s plain rude. i wonder if maybe there is some other agenda in the guardian blog office regarding myself, as it seems the things i have read there always tend to be quite negative? Well anyway , i hope we can put this all behind us and that you can move on to writing something else that makes other people feel stupid , and you feel more clever.
lily allenp.s i wish you had called me earlier , I would have quoted Upon Westminster Bridge (maybe the most popular of Wordsworths poems,but arguably the best) down the phone at you word for word. it was the first poem i recited at school and has always stuck with me. It was, in fact the inspiration behind my song LDN . I have never been a massive fan of Bennett though.
Shameless plug for something photographically great
My little brother is hosting his first exhibition of photography towards the back end of November. He’s a gifted so-and-so, specialising in cityscapes and landscapes, and if you like that sort of thing (as I do) it’ll be well worth your time. Prints from 75 quid, so reasonable too. Hopefully I’ll see you there.
Follow the link to find out more, or download the PDF flyer here.
links for 2008-10-28
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"Networked Insights, a company that measures brand engagement on social networks, compared the top ten TV shows for the week of September 22 to 28, as measured by Nielsens, to the most talked about TV shows on social networks, as measured by which ones were most commented on, linked to, shared, or rated. The comparison is for the 18 to 49 year-old demographic."
links for 2008-10-27
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"We continued to experiment with BBC Redux, making it work for various games consoles – PS3; PSP; Wii – and when the iPhone came out in November 2007, we added iTouch/iPhone and later 3G phones." A test case in how development of code outside a business roadmap leads to unlooked-for business benefits.
links for 2008-10-24
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"We've always been violent, but now it's stupidity, people kicking heads in for no reason. When I was a kid we used to fight or rob the people we wanted to fight or rob, we didn't walk along the street, kick someone's head in, and film it on a mobile phone. Now you've got a guy stood at the bus stop, minding his own business, and eight guys jump him and beat the fuck out of him, or stab him to fuck for no reason. It's like these video games, you can go on a video game, shoot someone twenty times and they get back up again. I don’t want to sound like an old man, but when I was growing up we had films like Get Carter and Scarface. Scarface was one of the best gangster films ever. But those films were more about the threat of violence that makes it a violent. Now people use violence as a marketing tool, that's the problem we're having right now."
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"You are the sickness yourself…. You realize all this…when you look at the black hole and it's wearing your face. That's when the Bad Thing just absolutely eats you up, or rather when you just eat yourself up. When you kill yourself. All this business about people committing suicide when they're "severely depressed;" we say, "Holy cow, we must do something to stop them from killing themselves!" That's wrong. Because all these people have, you see, by this time already killed themselves, where it really counts…. When they "commit suicide," they're just being orderly."
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"Inseparable Dependence. "Always on" plus superior performance will lead to supreme dependence on our part. There is the curious paradox that as the hard-lifting computation leaves the devices near our bodies and takes place in the invisible cloud it psychologically moves the device closer to us. As devices get smarter they get more intimate. A friend of mine had to ground their teenager for a serious infraction. They took her cell phone away. They were horrified when she became physically ill. It was almost as if she had an amputation. And she had in one sense. I was reminded of the book/movie The Golden Compass wherein the children in that world have spiritual guardian animals, called demons. These intangible animals sit on their shoulders or hover nearby and advise and comfort them. The most horrible torture in this world is to be separated from your demon. In the future, the cloud and cloud intelligence will be our Golden Compass demons. Separation from the advice and comfort affor
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# Why are we building a platform?
# How will we monetize this platform?
# Will the platform make us money, and how much will it cost?
# How will applications be able to monetize the platform?
# Can we support the platform for years to come?
Tea and the Empire
YouTube – Tea Making Tips (1941)
How on earth did they find the time to a: make this film and b: turn teamaking into such a complicated process? Didn’t they know there was a war on? There’s something in here about associated care taken in making tea and care taken in defending the country.
links for 2008-10-23
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"Haider, who voted against a parliamentary motion to lower the age of consent for homosexuals, had presented himself as a family man who drank sparingly. But after the car crash it was revealed that he had been driving at twice the speed limit, his blood alcohol level had been four times the legal limit, and he had spent his final hours in a gay bar in Klagenfurt, the capital of the southern state where he was governor."
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"Not one editor and, so far as I know, not one reporter has lost his or her job or even faced formal reprimand as a result of the McCann coverage. There has been no serious inquest in the industry and no organised attempt to establish what went wrong, while no measures have been taken to prevent a repetition. Where there have been consequences, as with the Tapas Seven, they have come from outside and been reported to the public with the most grudging economy."
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"If you’ve been paying attention, online advertising, viral memes and social media can each be wildly expensive, sadly ineffective, and impossibly difficult to measure too. That’s partly because there are poor practitioners of any craft, but largely because these are such new marketing disciplines there is very little known about how to do them well. At Pollenizer we’ve begun reviewing the ways of measuring the effectiveness of social media campaigns, and, well… picture a dusty, deserted road and a tumbleweed blowing in the wind."
Time for SF
You know what? It’s time to read some sci-fi. I haven’t read any in anger for over a decade. But what to read:
- Top 100 SF Books at Sci-Fi Lists
- Science Fiction Book Club Top 50
- David Pringle’s Top 100 (am I supposed to know who David Pringle is?)
- io9′s 20 Science-Fiction Novels that will change your life
- Dave Itzkoff’s list in the NY Times
Any other lists I should know about?
SmartMan speaks
Clever brainfood for online storytellers: tim wright: digital writer: Conversation with Christy Dena
Americans are weird but wonderful
Video of Big Bird singing at Jim Henson’s funeral – Boing Boing
Big Bird sings ‘Bein Green’ in tribute to Jim Henson
links for 2008-10-22
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"Her eldest son is a high-school drop-out. Her eldest daughter has had, so far as one can tell from press reports, very uneven attendance in high school, and no plans for college. Her other daughters seem to spend a lot of time traveling the country with their mom at tax-payers' expense. I've seen them at several rallies with the Palins this fall. Are they not in school?"
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"In 2006, Google promised to pay News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace $900 million over three years for the right to put ads on the site. Google executives have expressed disappointment in that project, which is shaving 1.5% off Google's gross margins, according to Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. In its patent filing, Google acknowledged that some of its old approaches didn't work. With the new techniques, says Deep Focus' Schafer, "Google could be the Google of social media.""
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"The private home, which will be fitted with 14 cameras, will play host to around 150 guests from political and economic experts to grass-roots voters, while the swimming pool will have 3D graphics laid over the top to explain the polls." The Day Today Is Here.
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"Democracy and capitalism are the two great pillars of the American idea. To have rocked one of those pillars may be regarded as a misfortune. To have damaged the reputation of both, at home and abroad, is a pretty stunning achievement for an American president." Boris Johnson. Yes, that Boris Johnson.
Fingers cross, MC-style
Andrew Lahde: Goodbye and good luck
This letter from a hedge-fund manager who’s throwing in the towel. It’s not Martin Luther, but it’s close:
October 17, 2008
Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say good-bye.
Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was
also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, “What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it.” I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.There are far too many people for me to sincerely thank for my success. However, I do not want to
sound like a Hollywood actor accepting an award. The money was reward enough. Furthermore, the endless list those deserving thanks know who they are.I will no longer manage money for other people or institutions. I have enough of my own wealth to manage. Some people, who think they have arrived at a reasonable estimate of my net worth, might be surprised that I would call it quits with such a small war chest. That is fine; I am content with my rewards. Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths.
Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they look forward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.
So this is it. With all due respect, I am dropping out. Please do not expect any type of reply to emails or voicemails within normal time frames or at all. Andy Springer and his company will be handling the dissolution of the fund. And don’t worry about my employees, they were always employed by Mr. Springer’s company and only one (who has been well-rewarded) will lose his job.
I have no interest in any deals in which anyone would like me to participate. I truly do not have a strong opinion about any market right now, other than to say that things will continue to get worse for some time, probably years. I am content sitting on the sidelines and waiting. After all, sitting and waiting is how we made money from the subprime debacle. I now have time to repair my health, which was destroyed by the stress I layered onto myself over the past two years, as well as my entire life – where I had to compete for spaces in universities and graduate schools, jobs and assets under management – with those who had all the advantages (rich parents) that I did not. May meritocracy be part of a new form of government, which needs to be established.
On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to make a modest proposal. First, I point out the
obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reigned in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government. Capitalism worked for two hundred years, but times change, and systems become corrupt. George Soros, a man of staggering wealth, has stated that he would like to be remembered as a philosopher. My suggestion is that this great man start and sponsor a forum for great minds to come together to create a new system of government that truly represents the common man’s interest, while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles. This forum could be similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft’s near monopoly. I believe there is an answer, but for now the system is clearly broken.Lastly, while I still have an audience, I would like to bring attention to an alternative food and energy
source. You won’t see it included in BP’s, “Feel good. We are working on sustainable solutions,” television commercials, nor is it mentioned in ADM’s similar commercials. But hemp has been used for at least 5,000 years for cloth and food, as well as just about everything that is produced from petroleum products. Hemp is not marijuana and vice versa. Hemp is the male plant and it grows like a weed, hence the slang term. The original American flag was made of hemp fiber and our Constitution was printed on paper made of hemp. It was used as recently as World War II by the U.S. Government, and then promptly made illegal after the war was won. At a time when rhetoric is flying about becoming more self-sufficient in terms of energy, why is it illegal to grow this plant in this country? Ah, the female. The evil female plant – marijuana. It gets you high, it makes you laugh, it does not produce a hangover. Unlike alcohol, it does not result in bar fights or wife beating. So, why is this innocuous plant illegal? Is it a gateway drug? No, that would be alcohol, which is so heavily advertised in this country. My only conclusion as to why it is illegal, is that Corporate America, which owns Congress, would rather sell you Paxil, Zoloft, Xanax and other additive drugs, than allow you to grow a plant in your home without some of the profits going into their coffers. This policy is ludicrous. It has surely contributed to our dependency on foreign energy sources. Our policies have other countries literally laughing at our stupidity, most notably Canada, as well as several European nations (both Eastern and Western). You would not know this by paying attention to U.S. media sources though, as they tend not to elaborate on who is laughing at the United States this week. Please people, let’s stop the rhetoric and start thinking about how we can truly become self-sufficient.With that I say good-bye and good luck.
All the best,
Andrew Lahde
More on the story here.
Sage thoughts on magazine design
A Question of Balance – The Atlantic (November 2008)
For a graphic designer, few jobs are as challenging as designing a magazine. Unlike a logo or a poster, the design of which can rely on blunt simplicity, a magazine is a complex organism, the result of an intricate interplay of words and pictures. Any single issue represents thousands of minute decisions about typography, layout, photography, and illustration. And these decisions are made within an accepted system of conventions—preconceptions we all share about how a magazine is read—and more practical and mundane limitations like budgets and schedules.
When I used to work on magazines, I found the design to be the hardest thing. That paragraph encapsulates why – and also counts doubly for websites, which not only have to incorporate all those elements but have to transform “interaction” from something as simple as turning a page to a rich, multi-possibility thing.
- How can DRM be good?
- Web publishing: now officially ridiculously easy
- Messing about with local information
- Leaving the BBC
- 50 users v 1 editor
- Shifting to Tumblr
- Aberdeen Angus: the review is in
- Germany: why they beat us
- What makes you think I hate the British?
- It is a lovely book
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IMR: heh heh character reference for Mr Gove!...
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nathan1980: Sunset picture is looking very beautiful.Thanks fo...
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Marty: Impressive stuff. Slightly envious too. Hope all w...
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Stephen Taylor: I'm impressed, proud and envious of your talen...
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Jenny from JuJu.cc: Lloyd, I'm Jennifer and helping to do research...
