Digital Prolixity
"There is no real life; you're either online, or AFK"- Ramzi Yakob
Geek Porn v2.0
Sep 5th
Just over 2 years ago I posted about some Geek Porn that was coming my way. I’m sad to say that computer has struggled over the last 2 years, with several returns to Overclockers to get it fixed. The hard drive kept failing, the case window came back cracked after 1 repair visit, and the CPU heatsink came back physically bent out of shape after the second visit. However after that it was stable, and worked, and Overclockers made it crystal clear I wasn’t getting my money back.
I’ll put it down to bad luck as Overclockers generally have very high recommendations from most people, including my best friend who’s never had a problem with their computers.
I started thinking about getting a new pr0n box because my current one (specs viewable on the link above) is failing @ quite a lot of common tasks these days – alt tabbing out of a game and trying to open a web browser taking up to a couple of minutes to complete. Despite my belief that my problems with Overclockers being a 1 off, somewhere in the back of mind it hurt too much to fork out any more money to them on a new pre-built computer so I started looking at Dell again.
Above is my new Geek Porn… the specs are insane – my wallet is screaming with hurt – but I reckon its going to be a stunning machine. Full spec below.
I’ll let you know how I get on with it.
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| Studio XPS™ 435-(D00SX403) Intel® Core™ i7 processor 950 (3.06Ghz, 8MB L2 cache, 4.8GT/sec), Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 (64 BIT) – English |
| Item |
Description |
| Base |
Intel® Core™ i7 processor 950 (3.06Ghz, 8MB L2 cache, 4.8GT/sec) |
| Memory |
9216MB 1067MHz Tri Channel DDR3 SDRAM [3x2048 + 3x1024] |
| Keyboard |
Dell™ USB Entry Keyboard – UK/Irish (QWERTY) |
| Monitor |
Display Not Included |
| Video Card |
1GB DDR3 ATI® Radeon™ HD 4870 graphics card |
| Hard Drive |
1TB (7200rpm) Serial ATA/100 Hard Drive |
| Microsoft Operating System |
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 (64 BIT) – English |
| Mouse |
Dell Optical Scroll USB (2 buttons scroll) DUAL TONE Mouse |
| Optical Devices |
16X DVD+/-RW Drive |
| Sound Cards |
Integrated HDA 7.1 Dolby Digital Audio |
| Speakers |
No Speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system) |
| Wireless Networking |
Internal Enhanced Wireless 802.11n PCIe Card – EUR |
| Shipping Documents |
English – Documentation with UK Power Cord |
| Gedis Bundle Reference |
D09SX403 |
| Standard Warranty |
1 Year Premium Warranty Support |
| Enhanced Service Packs |
1Yr Premium Warranty Support |
| Order Information |
Studio XPS 435 DT Order – UK |
| Dell System Media Kit |
XPS 435T Resource DVD (Diagnostic & Drivers) |
| Accidental Damage Support |
No Accidental Damage Support |
| Protect your Data |
DataSafe Online Backup 2GB 1 year |
| DataSafe |
Datasafe Local 2.0 Basic |
| Microsoft Application Software |
Microsoft® Works 9 – English |
| Protect your new PC |
No Security/Anti-Virus Protection – English |
Its our fault that Video Games usually suck
Jul 24th
Anthony Burch passionately explains why the gaming industry is churning out high-budget shitty games which aren’t actually fun or creative. Its all our fault. He’s got a point. Maybe I should cancel my World of Crackcraft subscription.
Watch it. Tell me if you disagree. Or agree.
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We want to be known
Jun 15th
I remember being pointed to Post Secret a little while ago and then re-found it more recently. Its a service run by a guy called Frank who invites people to post in their deepest secrets anonymously using postcards as a medium of choice. He then scans a selection of them and puts them on the blog linked above.
Many are funny, many are sad, and many are heart breaking. The video above explains in a lovely way what motivates people to take part and send in their secrets to Frank. Ultimately.. we want to be known and we want to know that we aren’t alone in facing the problems that life throws at us. What isn’t mentioned is that many of the people who take part are desperately lonely. Not necessarily meaning that they have no friends or family, but much of the time that they feel disconnected from those around them and desperately want to change their situation and either learn how to connect to those around them, or find people who provide them with a stability and peace of mind that they’re able to function as ‘normal’ people and accept that life is how it is.
Its a lovely video – have a watch – the up-front bit is quite eloquent about our new media landscape and how it affects our behaviour (within this context) and be sure to check out the blog about once/week.
Also sorry for the lack of blogging recently – work has been crazy busy. I need to have down time at work to be able to spend enough time looking around for good shit on the Internet (bizarre considering my occupation I know).
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Faking ‘Viral’
May 18th
A while ago I was having a chat with someone from FlashTalking who are a company which like making online banner ads a bit exciting and sexy when at all possible as well as charging advertisers reasonable bandwidth costs for the pleasure of using their internet pipes to make the banners come to life in vivo. With glazed eyes, I spoke at length about how funny it would be if we could make an online banner ad that actually pulls in a YouTube video dynamically, so when people click on the ad/hover over it, it begins to play.
“So whut? I seen videos in banners before” - The key thing isn’t the video. Its the +1 count on YouTube that’s good – and also the fact that you don’t pay for Rich Media adserving as the bandwidth being used is YouTube’s (Snootch)
The trends on YouTube are subject to many factors ranging from genuine WOM generated by things like Britain’s Got Talent, to the ‘featured videos’ to simply watching what other people are watching. The ‘most viewed’ list being a bit of a holy grail for advertisers in the knowledge that if you manage to hit the top results on ‘most viewed’, that you’ve achieved the video equivalent of reaching positions 1 to 3 in Google (a.k.a you’re going to increase your site traffic/views a lot for the time that you can hold that position).
The effect of popular stuff getting more popular by being popular in the first place (concise no?) has been named by someone else more cleverer than me. It is called ‘Cumulative advantage’ and you can read more about it here (thanks Faris for the tip).
This type of ad format will no doubt only work a couple of times (if at all) as YouTube/Google reserve the right to cease certain services/charge for bandwidth costs if people send high amounts of traffic to their services for commercial reasons.
As video ads need to be rollover/click to initiate – we’re subject to digital banner interaction rates (approx 5%) for the success of the campaign. However if you buy a Yahoo! and MSN homepage takeover – you should get about 1 million video views (in a day) which should see your video firmly in the ‘most viewed’ list on YouTube for about a month which should in turn generate another couple of million ‘natural’ views. I’m not saying you should go out and buy homepage takeovers just to try this out – but if you ARE going to be buying them anyway, why not maximise your ROI in this age of ‘where the money at?’ by using this type of ad format?
This isn’t a replacement for creating genuinely good content which may in turn spread virally across the internets – its just a cheeky way of making bog standard video go nuts on YouTube for a while.
I Made This™
Help Needed: What’s the point of Wired UK?
Apr 1st
In my mind, Wired Magazine has always had a global appeal. Perhaps this is the route of the problem..’in my mind’ doesn’t count for much. I did ask Google to see if they knew the answer, but they didn’t. So ‘in my mind’ is all I have to go with at the minute.
So if we assume that Wired had a global appeal – what additional value is created through the localisation of this publication in the UK? Wired Italia I understand because of the language barrier – but Wired UK?
To me, one of the best things about Wired is that it does an amazing job of capturing interesting stuff from around the world and bringing it to my attention. Not just any interesting stuff, but interesting stuff with history, context and substance above and beyond the rules of the ‘Natural Selection of Interesting‘. These rules of selection which govern how content in the digital broth rise to the top of our attentionsphere are tailored to the environment of online where long form written content often doesn’t win. For this reason I still rely on Wired (and occasionally the Discovery Channel) to fulfill my deeper curiosities which need those things I mentioned above like history, context and substance.
So! If in a globally connected and already mainly English speaking context – what benefit can be had from localising a magazine which draws on trends from around the world and already has a global appeal?
Am I supposed to have a subscription to both magazines? If I just get the UK magazine will I miss out on all the exciting stuff in the US magazine which isn’t being covered in the UK edition?
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Grown Up Digital
Mar 31st
Back in November ’08, a lovely lady from Edinburgh Business School asked me to write a book review for the International Journal of Advertising. It was for a book called “Grown Up Digital”, written by Don Tapscott who also authored Growing Up Digital and Wikinomics amongst other nice books.
Having grown up digital myself, I thought it sounded like a good thing to do so I said yes. This month the review was published in the IJA – you can read it here. I hope you like it.
p.s. I wrote it before it became apparent that people who work at Google in fact don’t really like it all that much unless they are amongst the chosen few who work in the Mountain View paradise in California. Shame really – but something you learn to live with when you grow up digital… anything you write tends to become irrelevant, or simply bettered in a very short space of time.
p.p.s the p.s. won’t make sense unless you read the book review. So here it is again, just incase.
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F**k my life
Feb 10th
I found this little gem of a site through Twitter not long ago. Essentialy its a sounding board for anyone and everyone who’s having a really really bad day to share whats happened that has caused them to think “F**k my life”.
Here’s a nice example or 2.
“Today, I ran out of underwear and so I went into my mom’s drawer to borrow a pair from her. It was then that I found out my mom uses the same vibrator as I do. FML“
and
“Today, we had some family over. A nasty need to wank seized me when I saw her : my 17 year old cousin. I went to my unoccupied parents’ bedroom. My sister’s baby walkie talkie was on and the whole family heard me. FML“
All hilarious stuff. Today I tried to post my own FML.
One of my bosses called me by my brother’s name – and didn’t realise his mistake for a good few minutes. My brother has never worked here and I’ve worked here for 6 months. FML etc.
Unfortunately – FML rejected my submission. FML
Geekmented Reality
Feb 6th
Faris talks quite a bit about augmented reality over on his blog. Its pretty interesting stuff really – overlaying digital invormation over the real world through some handy display or even an eyeball implant (yum..), and in doing so making the real world a more connected place where the infinite information available on the internet can enrich peoples’ lives in new and unexpected ways. If and when it becomes a commonplace reality, I have no doubt that the endless applications it will have will mimic the growth and development of the Internet, both surprising us and changing our lives forever.
Some really smart people at MIT (those guys are always up to some clever stuff) – have “developed a wearable computing system that turns any surface into an interactive display screen. The wearer can summon virtual gadgets and internet data at will, then dispel them like smoke when they’re done.”
Have a look at this pretty cool video which they’ve made, demonstrating the life hacking ability of their gizmo.
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