A Friday lunch inspired plea

Trying to arrange lunch with the wonderful @angusfarquhar today at short notice somehow managed to involve the use of Twitter, GTalk,  and our mobiles simultaneously in a great example of male geeks communicating in three mediums but still struggling to decide a location and time effectively.

But eventually we finally managed to make it to TheBreakfastClubSoho, which proved to be a good choice.

So microblogging, IM’ing, chatting on the phone, and talking in person, in the space of 20 minutes.

And that just emphasised the fact that the actual technology we were using was fairly irrelevant – being able to share links, locations and maps virtually made life slightly easier, but at the end of the day it all comes down to humans communicating to be able to achieve whatever task they require.

Please don’t forget that when new technology appears.

A compilation/best of/round-up/braindump…

Call it what you like, but for various reasons I’ve been blogging-lite, and have 100 things floating around my head which I need to expel in the blogging equivalent of an exorcism. And I’m sure you know all about Facebook’s new interface/look, and Google adding comments in Google Reader, so I’ll at least try and unearth some other stuff.

A great post by friend and former colleague Angus, which adds to the interesting and equally great original post on newspaper business models.

That somehow led to me thinking about ‘micro-careers’, and how the collapse of ‘a job for life’ and fears about security can somewhat be alleviated by the internet, and the fact you can form several careers by playing around and experimenting with different skills. E.g. writing, photography, video would have been entirely silo’d careers, but look at Christian.  It allows you to experiment for little or no cost, and then focus on the things that give you the most enjoyment, best results etc – and you’re able to still do a day job to pay the bills if the fun stuff doesn’t support you.

The most idiotic attempt to cash in on a ridiculous patent award goes to worlds.com, for claiming a patent on all virtual worlds (From Venturebeat).

The most interesting thing for me about Robert Scoble leaving Fast Company, and Jason Calacanis/Mahalo employing a now convicted hacker, isn’t the idea that the loss of Scoble’s sponsor means social media has failed, or the fact that in a 3-5 interview process, the Mahalo team failed to perform a quick Google search.

The interesting aspect is that both Scoble and Calacanis published their stories as soon as news broke, and that we expect it and accept it. Compare that to the hundreds of more traditional companies which are issuing redundancies at the moment.

If you’re wondering why politicians seem to be increasingly ridiculed and ineffectual, here’s a good example of the reasons why. The Conservative Party have wasted time and money that could have been used to benefit voters/constituents for a service to send a fake letter from Gordon Brown.

Compare that to the amount of brilliant apps coming from quick, effective and cheap hack days, like the Guardian Hack Day, for example.

I feel better after that! Incidentally, when I’m not writing a new post, I’m normally twittering: @badgergravling, sharing stuff via Google Reader,  or starting to get a handle on using Friendfeed effectively.

Which of the following would you purchase?

A lot of blogs are talking about the new advert for Cadbury, which comes from Fallon on the heels of their Gorilla and Airport adverts.

I’d agree it’s entertaining, but it happened to coincide with me witnessing the following video, shot with a Samsung Pixon phone.

Bike London – Shot entirely on a Samsung Pixon from Angus Farquhar on Vimeo.

The question is which one is more likely to make you part with some hard-earned cash – the professional advert, or the video shot by someone to test the product they’ve just paid for with their own money?

A case for Advocurrency?

After all, do you feel more affected by

Or by:

I’m not saying that advertising/marketing shouldn’t be entertaining, or professional shot and edited.

I do wish some of it was more informative, and was based around making my life suck a bit less – for instance, T-Mobile sorting out their customer support, or Cadbury‘s sticking more Dairy Milks in their Roses selection boxes.

How about alternating between one piece of pure entertainment for awareness, and one bit of making things better for people buying your products?

Interested in online video?

If so, I heartily recommend friend and former colleague Angus Farquhar’s new blog – after several years of suggesting he shared his knowledge and insight into the world of video, he’s finally started committing to doing it.

So check out Angus Farquhar’s Online Video Producer blog. And if you want to see what he’s up to now, check out his videos for Which? from CES

And I’m still amazed that he actually managed to make my attempts at presenting a video show good enough that I can just about watch them without cringing – I’m just thankful he didn’t put together the outakes.

I’m still working on using my voice to actually convey enthusiasm – hence why I haven’t embraced the likes of Seesmic and 12seconds.tv yet. But having predicted that the added conversation and interactivity coming to video would give it a huge boost this year, I might not be able to hold out much longer…