Live in Watford. Work in London. These are my thoughts.
“Cash in on Content and Social Media Marketing in 2012″ screams Forbes. “It has been predicted that 2012 will be the year of content.”
Hang on a minute. Wasn’t this predicted for 2011?
What about 2010?
2009?
Yep.
Good content attracts visitors. Nothing new. I think people know this by now.
Oh great, now my browser has advertising.
Creating a new tab in Chrome this morning resulted in me seeing this:
Previously I would see something like the below, a useful screen providing one click access to the websites I visit most regularly and the last few tabs I had closed.
It looks to me as if this new “new tab” screen has been rushed out to promote Angry Birds without much thought given to its usability.
This page now has three tabs. The central tab branded “Apps”- set as the default – contains the not particularly well branded Angry Birds advert on the “App” tab. The the “Most visited” tab features now significantly more blurry screenshots of webpages I regularly visit – with access to recently closed tabs now a step further away, hidden behind an expandable menu rather than the previous one-click access. And the third “Bookmarks” tab? Well the Google Gods haven’t even made that yet “Bookmarks coming soon…” it reads.
So now without warning I get adverts in my browser, slower access to recently accessed tabs and an incomplete non-functioning “bookmarks” page. Thanks Google.
Selly Oak, the area immediately south of the University of Birmingham campus, was trending on Twitter on Sunday evening. Not globally or even nationally as that would be rather hard unless there a really horrible disaster had occurred, but in the considerably smaller “Birmingham” region.
The cause was an arson attack on a big pile of tyres which led to quite spectacular plumes of smoke rising from waste land adjacent to the Worcester – Birmingham canal.
The tyres, which were presumably due to be used to support embankments around the Selly Oak Relief Road, were ablaze for quite some time and judging from the number of tweets could be seen from miles around.
High population density, many of them students aware with social media led to a flurry of messages, photos and videos being posted online as the story developed.
From my parents house 100 miles away I was able to follow the tweets of those who had spotted the smoke, read as they tried to pinpoint its source and read updates from people going to see what was happening. I saw a video of fire engines trying to access the site and lots of photos uploaded to twitpic and yfrog.
Here are some of the best photos I have permission to post here [click any to view full sized]:
Just a small case study as to how news can quickly spread through social media… Apparently our house in Selly Oak stank of rubber, so glad I wasn’t there!
How did Queen Ethelburga’s, a UK private boarding school, get a .edu domain? The eligibility criteria for .edu domain state that they are only available in the USA.
A few months back I bought a HTC Desire
The size of the transaction was obviously flagged as an unusual spend by NatWest as it triggered a fraud alert. The fraud system is automated and I had to confirm the last 5 transactions made with my card. The computer voice (which said my name in an incredibly bored sounding tone) listed the most recent transactions with suitable vagueness. For example one of transactions could have been something like “£30 at a supermarket in Birmingham” (a Sainsbury’s shop).
The Amazon transaction came up as ”£350 at a bookshop in Luxembourg”.
