Category: digital knowledge


The Imperial State Crown of Great Britain

Royal Wedding

It would have been Bertie’s worse nightmare 70 odd years ago when all King George VI of Britain had to contend with were newsreels and the ‘wireless’. However everyone loves a wedding and regardless of whether you are an ardent Monarchist or Republican, who knew the Royal Wedding would be so bloody entertaining.

It was the ideal example of a high profile event effectively channelling digital mass media and in doing so adding an extra somewhat rebellious layer of connection and experience.

Simultaenously watching it unfold on my TV screen, retweeting commentary using the PC and texting family using my third screen, the mobile.

What I found intriguing were the generation divides of who used which media. Older family were purely glued to the telly and promising to send me special edition newspapers (a more sentimental souvenir perhaps in 30 years time then saying “Hey kids look Ma saved you a Quicktime movie of King Williams wedding”). My gen were mainly tweeting and watching it on the web.The even younger ones were busy building facebook pages dedicated to Pippa’s derriere.

The 5 funnest and funniest parts of Friday night for me on were:

1. The run up to the big reveal of The Dress and The Kiss on the balcony, a million women worldwide waited with baited breath.

 

2. Filling in the boring bits of the ceremony with the global bitchfest that was everyone tweeting about every fashion faux pas with global agreement that Princess Bea’s headpiece was a little abstract to say the least.

 

3. Watching the myriad crazies that the BBC vox-popped particularly the man with a hat that apparently included Prince Williams old childhood toothbrush.

 

4. The pomp and pageantry was impressive but perhaps not as popular as Pippa Middleton’s Fan Page currently at over 100k fans!

 

5. Singing along loudly to Jerusalem while hastagging #proudtobebritish :-)
By the time Prince William becomes King, his coronation is likely to be a 3D holographic experience….let’s hope the fashion is just as bad.
Germaine Greer would not approve but sometimes when I’m on the verge of a mid-week crisis I clean the bathroom.  Amongst the soap suds I have discovered the answer to many a thorny problem.
Bucket and Mop Photo

Creative Commons image courtesy of Husond and Wikipedia

According to Wikipedia, ‘Kaizen’ in Japanese means  “change for the better” and is a business philosophy centred on the continual improvement of processes through alignment of the business in small steps. To improve my digital kaizen, I’m trialling the Problogger 31 day challenge to makeover my blog which is long overdue. A problem that needs more than rubber gloves and Pine-O-Cleen.

Can you say it in 30 seconds?

One of the very first exercises is looking at defining my tagline and to describe what I write about succinctly. But where to start?

‘Adventures in Digital’ really described what I was feeling at the time of starting my blog two years ago at the beginning of the GFC as a freelancer and not really knowing in what direction my writing or my work for that matter would take. Although on the odd occasion I still like to channel Indiana Jones, Adventures in Digital needs a bit of tweaking.

 

Many suggest thinking of it as an elevator pitch, a short sharp description that describes the blog in one sentence. That is easier said than done. To kick off the process I brainstormed the following points and asked friends and family what they thought my blog was about.

 

Thought starters
  • Who are my target audience?
  • What am I trying to say? Whay do I write about?
  • Is there a problem that my blog could help with?
  • How would family & friends describe it?

Is anybody out there?

Originally when this blog was set up, it was just to aid my finding a job! So back then I was more interested in targeting potential employers as well as peers in digital media and marketing. What I would love to do however is be able to share my experience and knowledge with an audience (outside of my family and friends) who aren’t neccessarily in the industry already. There is still an air of bamboozle and snake oil that surrounds digital media and marketing for people outside of it, if I can cut through the waffle and provide useful and interesting content from my producers point of view perhaps it will help someone out there among the pixels.

From Art to Z-index

Subjects that interest me include  digital campaigns, interactive art, opinions on topics that range from social media to wireframing with a few random musings on people that inspire me.

My new blog tagline should reflect that and act as a signpost so that readers know what to expect.

Ideas Please

There are some excellent taglines out there, if you are looking for inspiration check out the list on this Daily Blog Tips article on some of the best ones online.

I don’t want a description that is too straightforward or boring, there’s a million or more great blogs that focus on digital marketing and digital media, what would make mine so different?

Family very kindly described my blog as “social commentary on digital stuff” which has been rolled into my welcome message as more of an elevator pitch. For my tagline,  I’m going to test out Where Life Meets Pixels. It’s probably still a tad abstract but Ms. Greer may approve.

Should your baby really be on Facebook?

In ten years time I predict we will all be part of The Truman Show world of Facebook and it’s descendents regardless of whether we choose to be there or not.

Recent research posted by Chris Voss poses some uncomfortable social and ethical dilemmas for parents and parents to be when documenting their children.

Let me just throw a disclaimer in here to say that I don’t even upload photos of my pets on Facebook let alone a small related human.

Facebook brings out the best in people but often the worse too.  As the veritable ‘mirror on the wall’, it highlights our shallow musings, desires and inconsequential babble. It is what we want it to be.

Over the years, I have seen, watched and read the status updates, posts and photos of a number of distant relatives and friends as they embark on the adventures of parenthood. It started with perhaps a post of one or two first day at school photos. Increasingly, it has started even earlier with an update  at the confirmation of a pregnancy test before the first scan has been complete. Of course, I have the option of hiding updates, deleting connections and ignoring these unfolding young lives.

What option do babies and children have? Should we really be using Facebook as a virtual baby book? Should our children not be allowed the choice or the right to decide at some stage if they even want to have a digital footprint from conception and throughout their lives?

Your Face Here!

For our first content incubator weekend, we were split into teams and had to respond back to specific real world briefs. Our proposal involved the idea of giving people the ability to upload their own faces into a video scenario.

There’s some really entertaining examples of this concept using different technologies but with the same novelty of seeing yourself either as a character or as part of a scene.

The Eco Dance

A strange hooded man performs his own unique dance, at the end of which he removes his face! – bizarrely it’s all related to some organic eggs….but the cool part of it is that you can upload your own face and watch your creation dance away. The results are funny but freaky.

The Lost Valentinos

Sydney based band produces an innovative augmented reality project, this is a really cute idea – how many fans would love to have a hologram of their fave lead singer ;-)

i heart bit.ly.tv

Always being behind the eight ball, I have just come across bitly.tv and have completely fallen for the simple interface that uses a slider bar to filter video clip thumbnails so you can view what the ’world’ has been watching and is currently watching while also providing the ability to view a specific video and see associated tweets. Feels like I will be using this a lot…….

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