January 2008
26 posts
6 tags
Bluefreeway; the bridge is out
Simon Chen has a nice (if you can call it nice) wrap-up of the day’s events. Richard Webb, founder and CEO of Bluefreeway is out, as is the CFO Ken McDonnell. The share price is currently at 39 cents, back up from a low today of 26 cents, but even the offering of 76 cents a week and a half ago seems a distant and far-fetched dream now. A person who works at Bluefreeway swung by today and...
10 tags
Twitter; the new talkback?
A good friend just asked me if I really thought Twitter was going to take off, and I guess around that are a host of questions on the value it offers to its users. Maki has some great thoughts on ways it adds value to its users (thanks to Jennifer Laycock for the link), but one thing that just occurred to me as my friend asked the question and I glanced at my laptop to see the conversations roll...
9 tags
Say "I love you" with...a pink iPod?
I receive Apple’s regular newsletters pointing me to all manner of wares available in their store pretty regularly. I haven’t unsubscribed, and I don’t really know why. I’m not big on impulse purchases and I read enough to be well aware when a new product has arrived or is at least about to. On top of that, while I’m completely trading in traditional notions of gender...
8 tags
Carts and Horses; Forrester's POST Methodology
The second anyone says the “M” word to me, my eyes roll back in my head and I’m out for the count; call it subjective narcolepsy, some things just cannot hold my attention, no matter how hard they try. With that in mind it comes as a great surprise that I find myself blogging about Forrester’s POST Methodology, a copy of which was sent to me by the equal parts affable and...
3 tags
Meatball Sundae: Coming through your stereo
If I thought I could construct a compelling blog just by repeating his name and linking to his blog I would. As that is likely not the case, instead let me inform some and remind others that Seth Godin is presenting tomorrow (2pm EST, 6am Melbourne time) on his latest book, Meatball Sundae. There is still time to register for the event; I’m looking forward to it so much I appeared at my...
9 tags
Checking your ego at the door
I try to avoid writing about games here as my involvement in the industry now is very much as an outsider. I still keep an eye on the conversations going on though and one that never fails to amaze me is the “code vs. art” debate and how people struggle to get teams talking to each other. You can liken it to “creatives vs. suits” in advertising or “sales vs. anyone...
3 tags
Path101: Helping those who don't know what to do
I wrote recently about passion, how important I think it is to have it in your life and how it has guided my actions over the years. It’s something I place a great deal of emphasis on and don’t think you can really over-state how important I feel it is to have something that gets you out of bed in the morning. So many people I know, regardless of age, have no idea what they want to do...
4 tags
Indexed; equal parts cute, compelling, unique, now...
One of my favourite blogs is Indexed, written drawn by Jessica Hagy. A collection of Venn diagrams (I didn’t know they were called that either), she announced today the Indexed book was now available for pre-order. If you’re not familiar with her work, Jessica maps humorous scenarios such as the correlation between alcohol and UFO sightings or the path to drunk dialing. It takes less...
7 tags
The Black Swan pt. 2
I pushed through the end of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan this week, and while I can say I really enjoyed it, by the end the disparaging tone he takes whenever talking about traders or economists wore a little thin. I have no stake in either of those professions, but once a point has been made and an opinion established (neither of which are crucial for the book’s central...
4 tags
Lucky you're with AAMI
Never thought I’d see the day when I blogged about car insurance. As opposed to my experience with Borders last week, this was thoroughly enjoyable, which is incredible considering they’re taking me for around $800 over the next 12 months as opposed to the $20 I wanted to spend on a book. Aside from the fact they were the cheapest providers I came across, their tele-sales staff were...
6 tags
Working 2.0
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about work life and how it has changed and continues to change. It occurred to me recently that, more than anything, I want a job that offers me genuine flexibility. I don’t mean able to come in at 9:30 some days, I mean if I want to work from Barcelona one week, San Francisco the next, I want a job that allows me to do that. Save for a few gigs outside...
5 tags
More on Bluefreeway
Before Hollywood heavyweights arrived at YouTube’s gates baying for blood we could have posted a dozen different clips from movies all with bridges out ahead and roads falling apart. Whether a picture is still worth a thousand words or not is one thing, but there is little else in this world like a line from Arnie that can make light of what is really a wholly unpleasant situation for a lot...
9 tags
Web 2.0 - The City
Came across this great image via Maki. The image itself is referenced in a great post on content development and the strategy behind it for your website. Maki’s blog Dosh Dosh may just be my find of the week!
6 tags
Old dogs and new tricks
Saturday night, after watching No Country For Old Men (great movie, very heavy though), my band of reprobates and I descended on Jimmy Watson’s to down a few bottles of Dry & Dry (dry vermouth, dry ginger ale). One of the crew is a good mate from England who spent many years working in traditional media, think newspapers, Sky TV, etc. We got into a debate around the future of advertising and...
2 tags
"It's just like a mini-mall"
Amazing. Don’t think, just click. (you can thank me later…)
4 tags
Without passion we are nothing
I try to keep this blog free of introspection, philosophising and general ponderance of things not related to marketing, digital strategy and the things that go on around those broad categories. Anything that falls outside of that either remains inside my head or (less frequently than I’d like) winds up on my MySpace blog, a page that for obvious reasons exists to promote my musical...
3 tags
Seth Godin - The Dip
Last night I bought Seth Godin’s book Dip, and I finished it at lunchtime today. I’m a slow reader, but even then it really only takes two hours to get through and has some really good sound advice that can be applied to almost anything. I was inspired to buy it after I read a blog post (that I now can’t find) in which the writer said the book had changed his life. Dip concerns itself with...
5 tags
Ten Rules for Web Startups
I never seem to close Firefox properly and as a result some pages I looked at ages ago keep cropping up. One of those is a post from November 2005 - I know, how could anything in this day and age still be relevant two years on. The post is situated on a blog run by Evan Williams, founder of Obvious Corp who are responsible for a little site you may have heard of. The post in question is titled...
8 tags
Detours on the Bluefreeway?
Simon Chen over at Eight Black has some interesting news regarding Australian digital media conglomerate Bluefreeway. ”Today, the ASX was advised that one of their Director’s was resigning…the Director in question who threw in the towel was David Smithers, an ex partner and previous Chairman of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a not too shabby accounting and professional services firm. He also...
4 tags
Strategies for success on Facebook
Came across a great post on Facebook applications and why they do or do not succeed. Rodney Rumford uses a recent campaign by Sony to draw attention to mistakes that are easily avoidable. The shameless plug for his own company is a bit much, but if I were in his shoes I would probably do the same! ”Rule Number One: Brands Need To Understand the Facebook Ecosystem & Why Applications Are...
3 tags
Borders to Amazon "Please take our customers, we...
I’ve just spent the last 10 minutes sitting on the phone, it ringing and recorded messages being played ad nauseum, some kind of old world punishment for wanting to do something as banal as actually enter a brick and mortar bookstore. If it was the mum and dad run place down the road that would be fine, but then again they would be closed by 6pm at the latest, so I should count by (mixed)...
4 tags
Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan
I had thought that when I got to the end of the afore-mentioned book I would review it and post my thoughts on it, however it seems every few pages there are a raft of new ideas, ones that suggest new trains of thought, undo previous ones, and generally beat you over the head should you be caught sleeping. The book itself is more essay than anything else, but I mean that in the best possible way....
3 tags
Is a picture still worth a thousand words?
Being back home for Christmas is always a great opportunity to look over old family photos and souvenirs, marvelling at days gone by. I did notice though that all the photos consist of people smiling sweetly, or posed shots of the family sent back to Australia from Hong Kong for my grandparents. The advent of the digital camera has obviously had a huge impact on news media and citizen journalism,...
5 tags
Australia's new government moves to censor the...
This has been heavily discussed over the blogosphere over the last few days, but it is worth making sure it receives a necessary amount if the right attention. In an alarming and disappointing move for a party that swept to power on the popular assessment that the incumbent government had “lost touch”, the Rudd Government has announced its intention to censor internet content available...
3 tags
Australia vs. India Test, live on Twitter!
Twitter.com/baggygreen Apparently social media is reaching deeper than I thought…
5 tags
Figuring out what is wrong (as opposed to what is...
I was quoted over at Chris Wilson’s Fresh Peel in response to a question he asked: what companies really listened in 2007? Facebook cropped up a few times, and while it can be argued they were forced to listen, the outcry against Beacon paled in comparison to the dissent that rose up against the news feed when it was first introduced. Back then Facebook hadn’t become the media darling...