A Donkey on the Edge

More fantastic visualisation voodoo from Dion Hinchcliffe. This one is from an article in SOA Web Services Journal

The company has the balls to invite bloggers into its press and analyst program, to ask tough questions of executives at a time when industry analysts and journalists increasingly ask only softball questions in public.

I can't tell you how many conversations I've had the last two months about blogger relations programmes. Impressed to a player as large as SAP doing the right thing:-)

James Governor's MonkChips: Blogger Relations at Adobe, Oracle and SAP (and a bit of IBM, Microsoft, Sun)

On Vodaphone's total lack of co-creative thinking.

The future for mobile operators is all about charging for real value and ditching the evil charges which--given the nature of the new digital marketplace--will continue to be outed by angry consummers such as Mr De Waele.

So gentlemen, start your dialogue + access + transparency engines:-)

(thanks m-trends)

Those nice folk at TMW have started to blog. It's a brave step for a traditional agency and one I hope that will energise their collaborative media activities. Getting into the spirit of the thing, they have started debating in public and are asking questions about some of the thornier issues of the day

Disclosure: I helped set up the blog and occasionally post to it.

Also, while I'm doing the link love thing, (on the topic of social and collaborative media) you could do worse than visit The Lecture List you'll be surprised to hear it's a list of lectures:-)

Anyone can post their events to the site regardless of size or funding. The service is free and entirely self-service. It's a completely open system but the content is moderated so please keep the evil horrid stuff to a minimum.

Vaguely live map of trains in the United Kingdom

Follow the link, switch the station to "London Paddington" and the train speed to "move trains 10x normal speed" and woooo...

And while you're at it, enjoy a satelite picture of the area you're interested in...

via geekdinner

But the photo is geotagged so if you follow the map to the store you can let me know what it's all about?

While you're there, scroll over to Battersea power station--the satellite photographs are amazing and there are almost 200 shots taken from in front of the building.

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

Very impressed by Slide.com

• I made a whole slideshow without having to upload a photograph--it grabbed my public Flickr photos
• I didn't have to log in or register until I had a fully functioning slideshow
• The integration with most social software apps is great

Thankyou Stowe

“But isn’t another coffee place in Portland like bringing coal to Newcastle?� asked an editor at the Oregonian, to which a reasonable response might be, yes, and at how many of these places does the coffee indeed taste like charcoal?

I've got no idea if Ristretto Roasters is any good or indeed if their coffee isn't burnt to shit like Starbucks' but featured prominently on their website is this "free wifi" graphic. So next time I'm in town I'll definitely drop in...

I still can't beleive that we have to pay for public wifi. I mean when you eat in a restaurant you don't pay for tap water or oxigen and even if in some extreme case you do, it's included in the exhorbitant markup you pay on your panini.

Next time someone approaches you with a business model involving walled gardens and in-store portal pages please do thwack 'em over the head with a base-station:-)

I'll be happy if we create a single cheer chain," said Brad Stevens, VP-marketing for Starbucks. He said he's more interested in the qualitative response, as the effort has no traditional marketing metrics tied to it.

A lot of the folk I've been working with this last year are really hung up on metrics. Now, in this age of controlled procurement and tighter budgets I can sympathise with the need for clear ROI but it's nice to see businesses experimenting with engagement.

I'm sure we will eventually figure it all out, but in the meantime, advertisers could be getting a move on. If I have to go to another meeting that concludes with the client asking "could I see one you've done before" I'm gonna scream...

Advertising Age - Starbucks' Holiday Viral Effort Doubles as Social Experiment

Gosh, the word "Starbucks" appears twenty-three times on this Lonelygirl15 comments page...

A Tribute to Lonelygirl15 - Blog Archive - Fleeing The Watcher

Damn, Tuesday morning and Gmail is still on the fritz. Problems started around Sunday lunchtime and the service has been intermittent since then.

Gmail down | Google Groups

Great morning, was up til all hours looking for missing passport, sorting IT (or should be IS) bollocks and just generally not managing to get to sleep. Then up at 04:30 and into the shower where with a head full of Pantene's finest (I think it was), the boiler decided to stop making hot water. Enjoyed military standard ice-cold shower (note to self: write to Pantene product development types about ability to rinse out product in sub-zero temp. water) and finally escaped the house's gravity at 5:30.

So here I am on the Eurostar, I think une sieste is in order:-)

(photograph of breakfast to follow)

This time it's Google calendar. Cross your fingers and try again? Gosh, they're getting creative...

What next, cats that look like Hitler?

Trying to score Nicki some perfume in the Galleries Lafayette yesterday and came across this chap. Great poster next to him with a guy reclining in a bulge-accentuating pose. I figured I should definitely get myself a full-body see-through outfit and then the mental image had me running for the escalator:-)