Today, Monday, is my mom’s birthday. I’m a rubbish daughter and didn’t send her a card. So instead I decided to make a video, giving excuses as to why I didn’t send one. Hopefully it’ll amuse her enough to make her forget about the missing card…
I’m so going to regret posting this publicly!
For the French-impaired, read more for the summary… 😉
Certain things just shouldn’t be said with a printed greeting card…
Apparently they can. Aaron Stanton started writing and posting videos on CanGoogleHearMe.com less than two weeks ago, yet he’s an overnight celebrity at the Googleplex.
Aaron had a business proposal, but his attempts to contact Google via phone or email did not work. So he decided to fly to Google, sit outside Google for several days, until someone at Google would agree to meet with him. He reportedly got that meeting and is running high right now.
He flew out on the 11th February, and had his first appointment with Google on the 14th, with some generally positive feedback leading to future meetings and NDA’s. Details of his Big Idea aren’t publicly available but Digg rumours* point to “a powerful tool for writers. By analyzing published novels and breaking them down into detailed statistics, then graphing those statistics scene-by-scene, we allow authors to better understand their craft in a way never before possible.”
Now, we have no idea whether his idea is any good, and whether it’s anything to do with the above, but Scoble deemed Aaron important enough to take his 13 year old son Patrick to meet him. He and I both love this guy’s attitude – He followed his dream, even if it took a few little online self-publicity stunts to get there.
Some have compared his overnight success to the Red Paperclip guy, Kyle MacDonald. But even if Aaron’s success compares to Kyle’s, and it doesn’t turn him into a multimillionaire for an idea he sells to Google, he’s an inspiration to all young people with an idea. Don’t sit around, and most of all, don’t use typical channels like the Google idea submission form, but instead, make noise, get yourself heard, make a video, talk to the right people to create a buzz, and then, maybe you’ll get through!
[* No, I don’t take Digg seriously, not even as a source of rumours, but thought interesting to include what some people appear to have dug up]
If you don’t work in media/marketing: Enjoy this video, which probably reinforces what you think of marketers.
If you work in the industry: Can you honestly tell me this doesn’t remind you of at least a few current or past colleagues/clients/companies who came in to pitch to you?
[Via Seth Godin]
The “Summary” feature of OS X really is like a work of voodoo. To use it, highlight some text in your favourite Cocoa app, like Mail, Safari or Camino, then go into the application’s Services menu and choose a level of summarisation (between 1 and 100% of original text length). In a few cases, the summarisation was eerily accurate and I don’t think I would’ve done any better.
This service receives little fanfare and is certainly one I’ll use more when I come across very long articles where I need to get the gist of it but haven’t got time to read it all at that very moment (where it makes its way into my del.icio.us bookmarks… and probably never gets read completely, hrmm)
So that’s my tip for the day!
It may be a month late, but here’s my yearly new look. This morning, Andrew offered to create a new WordPress template for me and I simply couldn’t refuse such an offer. I knew exactly what style I was looking for and chuwy provided the image the template was built upon. If my memory serves me right, which it rarely does, I believe we’re now on to version 5 or 6 for this blog.
We’ve now put to rest the green template some lovingly called the “Did you get your inspiration from the Windows XP default background?” and others the “wow you’re so web 2.0” design.
After the jump, I’ve put up one last screenshot of the green tree template for posterity’s sake.
I absolutely love the weather today – It’s a crisp 10 degrees Celcius, but the sun is shining bright, and there are few clouds. Nature is slightly confused that we haven’t really had anything resembling a winter, with the exception of the two days of light snow earlier this week, and the tree outside our house has bloomed, frozen and defrosted a number of times, yet the little pink flowers seem to have toughed it out.
Looking out the patio doors, for a moment, I got a glimpse of summer and the BBQs we’ll be having again as soon as the weather is suitable. Really can’t wait to sit outside again, especially as we didn’t take advantage of the garden enough last summer.
For those interested, this picture was taken with Andrew’s Sony Ericsson K800. Not bad quality for a phone camera!
The well-publicised campaigns by Apple to promote the Mac as an enjoyable platform to use at home was recently crowned off by a dig at Vista’s security system.
I’m a Mac fangirl through and through. You can’t get your first Mac at the age of something like five, and not be a natural Mac user all your life. However, the past couple of days, some anti-Mac comments have really tickled me and made me laugh. One was a genuine, gotta-love-these-videos kind of laughter: Videos made in the Mac vs PC style but turning the tables around. “Are you high?”
The other giggle was provided by an article by Charlie Brooker of the Guardian’s Comment Is Free, subtly titled “I Hate Macs”, which tickled me in a different kind of way. I’m not sure whether Charlie is dense, close-minded or just looking for a quick traffic spike to his blog. What do you think? Either way, I’m not terribly impressed by his argument, and I feel that one can happily use both Mac and Windows on a daily basis without the need to cause a widespread online crisis.
Why do people have such an urge to stick to one camp or the other? I feel they each have their value (for example, I’ll openly admit that Office on Mac is lacking in certain areas… Like Excel translating date fields incorrectly and telling me we’re in 2011, forcing me to put together some reports on Windows. Or Entourage feeling like I’m dragging a dead elephant along, yet Mail.app not being robust enough for the purposes of 10 squillion subfolders)
It doesn’t matter which OS you use, computers will never be faultless. As long as they get me through the day and there’s some new shiny things to look at, I’m happy enough.
Since Christmas, we’ve had little time to play Wii, but one game we’ve had for about a week has definitely got Andrew excited again. Wario Ware: Smooth Moves is even nuttier and more unbelievably fast-paced than Rayman was.
Those who owns the game will understand this: THE best bit has to be the intro on how to make each move. The tone and pace of the voice is just such a classic!
Turn the Form Baton sideways and grasp the ends firmly in both hands. Like riding a bicyle, perfecting this stance requires grace, steadiness, and tight shorts.
For those who don’t own it yet, I strongly encourage you to get it. However, don’t expect slow-learners and mothers to get to grips with it without significant frustration. It hasn’t quite got the learning curve of Wii Sports.
[tags]Wii, Nintendo, Wario Ware, Smooth Moves, videogames, Rayman, fun stuff[/tags]
Mmmmkay, that was lame, I know.
But it’s that time of the year again: Red Nose Day happens in March and the noses are on sale at Sainsbury’s. How about you decorate that nose and send me a picture?
I’ll do it too, but at the moment, my clever husband has stuck them on the coffee table at the moment…
Any local fundraisers happening you want to promote?
[tags]Red nose day, fundraising, charity[/tags]
that canadian girl 
