Well you don’t see that everyday:

At 9:31am Google.co.uk went down – at 9:32am it came back up again.

http://www.48hourcanvas.co.uk has been setup with a bit of help from Talentshare.

People can upload their photos and 48hourcanvas will print them on large scale, high quality canvas to put up in your house. The photos can be off anything – your friends, family, pets, a holiday image or simply to show off your creativity.

If you click the link at the top of this post and use this code (FF0101) when ordering you can get a 20% on us…

This is the second time I have tried to use the external keyword tool and it’s not been working. Even when I log into my adwords account it still comes up with the same problem (see) below.

There isn’t any information on Google about this and I do think it needs sorting because I can’t do my job properly without it. There used to be a whole heap of SEO tools online but Google has stopped these from working properly. If you are going to do this Google then please make sure that your internal tools are up to scratch.

Hi Guys,

Just a quick note to say that a new blog I have been working on has just launched:

Talentshare – Share your art, design, music and photography. It’s a blog for people to showcase their creative talents and exchange talents with other people in the hope of getting projects completed. For example if you are a band and you are looking for someone to make you a music video then you can use Talentshare. Or if you are a writer looked for an illustrator then you can also use Talentshare.

I think you will like it – please check it out…

I’ve just been IM’ed from a friend from university saying #username# Hey check out the pics from the crazy party!! they are nuts LOL! go here to see   http://#myusername#.hahthatsgood.com. The thing was that my friend wasn’t online at the time and the link takes you to a scam website:

scam

On this website they ask you to sign in with your username and password – giving the website complete access to your email and IM account. At this point they message all the people in your address book the same message I just received.

With them being able to access your account they can send emails from you and check you personal messages.

WON’T ENTER YOUR USERNAME AND PASSWORD THIS IS A SCAM WEBSITE!!!

Linkedin is back up again but as yet no word from them on what the problem was.

1 hour and 10 minutes!!!

Linkedin is down in the UK – and has been for some time.

Linkedin is Down

Will follow with more info.

Walking through the streets at 11 O’Clock this morning, a lot of the rubbish might have been piled up and the cleanup operation might be in full throngs, but the blood will remain on the floor of the city centre for a long time to come.

Blame is being placed on the council and the police after last night’s UEFA Cup Final between Glasgow Rangers and Zenit St. Petersburg but why not take a minute to blame the clowns responsible for the violence, their behaviour was selfish and immoral.

This morning I found a keyring on the floor that had been broken off someone’s key chain. It was a picture of a child. The people injured are someone’s loved ones – and the injury count isn’t limited the football fans is it the police as well. The police who were remarkable to walk into the crowd last night and do the best they could when they were clearly outnumbered.

It is all well and good to say the council and the police should have been better prepared in hindsight. But really could any of us have predicted what erupted last night? Between 100 to 150 thousand Rangers supporters turned up in Manchester yesterday – by lunchtime the streets were a wash of blue and the atmosphere was, in no way, a party in progress. My friend said she drove into the city centre and then straight back out again because of the fear that trouble would erupt. There was alcohol everywhere – children were walking down one of the main streets that join Salford and Manchester carrying crates of beers and adults were stopped on the street corners pouring out water from bottles only to replace it with alco-pops.

My favourite sound bite on the news was when a man from Glasgow gave an analogy about it being like if the groom didn’t show for the wedding; I certainly hope if my other half doesn’t show up on the day that I will not then beat the hell out of all my guests. He went on to sympathise with the angry Rangers fans to say they were bound not to be ‘best pleased’. If that’s not best pleased what the hell is angry like.

I would like to say that even after seeing a mountain of blue shirts involved in some of the disturbing scenes from last night, I have no doubt there are a mountain more that are thoroughly ashamed of those responsible for the carnage.

As for Manchester last night the seams were bursting on the city, but they didn’t rip. I have seen masses of people today of all ages involved in the clean up and I take my hat off to them because it is people like that, that do and will continue to keep this city a great place to be.

Social Drama is the next evolution in the medium of Video Content. Over the last couple of years we have seen some of the fastest technological advancements ever. With these technological advancements come social change. In today’s society, technology grows better and faster everyday and society and culture seem to be in a constant catch up. For video, 2006 was the year of youTube, self broadcasting and, though unaware at the time, it was the first glimpse into the personal brand. Guerrilla minded content creation with individuals creating Terabytes and Terabytes of information on themselves and their friends. Most of this content was terrible, amateur, and sometimes self indulgent time wasting, but a small amount turned out to be good quality interesting insights into something new and original. In essence the learning and the craft were being developed before our eyes – it became such a success that dedicated marketing specialism’s where developed to embrace this platform (the Viral Video was born).

Now we are in 2008 and again as the technology has progressed and so has the content. Better streaming encoding and faster download speeds mean about more ‘stylish’ videos. During the last year the traditional TV world woke up and realised they could embrace this technology, so on-demand websites were created, transposing video from one medium to another became the standard for these companies. But no-one was doing anything different. An example of this is that the separation between BBC 1 and BBC iPlayer was limited to the name and the device you watch it on. Eastenders is Eastenders is Eastenders – why should I get into a stir about whether I watch in on my computer or on a TV screen.

As technology advances society and culture seem to be in a constant state of catch up. Enter the next evolution in video – Social Drama. Use the internet platform, embrace technologies that are web 2.0 and that, at its very heart, embody the ideologies of Social Media. Otherwise it is just the same stuff with a different front cover.

To start to define a Social Drama I have to say what it is not. It is not the same TV shows on a different stage, it is not traditional one way ‘audience’ communication on a different platform as in the case of Kate Modern and Lonely Girl 15 and it is not corporate marketing through clipping videos to enhance pre and post roll advertisements.

I would like to delve a little further into the second thing I said it wasn’t – Kate Modern and Lonely Girl 15. In essence these are the things that came before. My issue with these series being labelled Social Drama is that they come from the mindset of traditional TV show producers who create video for a viewer and for an audience – an audience is, by definition, singularly receptive, there is only one way communication they cannot directly communicate back, they can only receive messages. Creating a Social Drama starts from before the filming, from even before the script is written and the crew is cast. It starts from the mind of the creator; it starts with embedding two way communications before anything else has even been born.

My understanding of a Social Drama is limited at the moment to thought and hyperbole so in the great tradition of people like Rohit Bhargava I have put my thoughts down into a list:

1. Embed two way communication at the heart of the mechansim
2. Platform specific – a Social Drama has to be available within the standard grasp of all other Social Media’s. Social Drama is limited to manipulating an ‘old’ form of entertainment i.e. video production, filtering it, reforming it and offering it up to a different user-base on the web 2.0 platform
3. The line between fake and reality can, and should be blended to a point there they can’t be distinguished
4. Engagement of other forms of Social Media should be included for the user’s entertainment
5. Offer user’s the tools to Mashup the content to build their own creations
6. Guerrilla based concepts aimed at leveraging Social talent to grow product marketing
7. Any traditional drama can become a Social Drama as long as it changes to embrace the previous rules – it cannot be the same thing on a different stage

I am very interested in the Internet and Social Media – things like Social Networks, video publishing and user generated content. Through a lot of research I have come to the conclusion that the internet and Social Media is killing the audience. There are so many niche groups on the internet and such a vast and endless amount of information that you never need to see anything you don’t want to again. I feel this breeds self-righteousness. Why wouldn’t you believe yourself to be good and true and right if every day you where receiving positive re-enforcement from the friends you speak to or the news you look at.

I want to start a campaign (A Campaign to Exchange Ideas – fancy title, I know) for every user on the Internet to read and post one thing they think is wrong every day – not bad, wrong. For example I don’t like George W. Bush so I am going to find a piece of news today listing his good points of why he has been good for the world – I reckon I’ve made a bit of a rod for my own back with that one, but anyway here goes…