Robin Brown

The following BBC sub-sites and directories are due to close as part of Erik Huggers review:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/almonds

http://www.bbc.co.uk/anal-play

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archers-goon

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc-fucking-three

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc-radio-vatican

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bingo

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bobby-george

http://www.bbc.co.uk/carpet-tiles

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cleopatra-comin-atcha

http://www.bbc.co.uk/crumbs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/davros

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dance-the-fandango

http://www.bbc.co.uk/Deoxyribonucleic-acid

http://www.bbc.co.uk/desktop-anneka-rice

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dry-cleaners-liverpool

http://www.bbc.co.uk/douglas-adams-letters-to-richard-dawkins

http://www.bbc.co.uk/election-1974-the-second-one

http://www.bbc.co.uk/erectile-dysfunction

http://www.bbc.co.uk/fiona-bruce-holiday-snaps

http://www.bbc.co.uk/jean-jacques-burnel

http://www.bbc.co.uk/jenna-jameson

http://www.bbc.co.uk/lol-badgers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/murray-gold-organ

http://www.bbc.co.uk/negro-spirituals

http://www.bbc.co.uk/oh-for-fucks-sake-whats-this-one-for?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/penguins-(biscuits)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/penguins-(bird-things)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/probic-vent

http://www.bbc.co.uk/silurians

http://www.bbc.co.uk/taint-what-you-do-its-the-way-that-you-do-it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/that-dick-off-606

http://www.bbc.co.uk/toxteth-tabernacle

http://www.bbc.co.uk/volkswagen-golf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/x-ray

http://www.bbc.co.uk/zzzzzzzzzz

While this may seem rather silly and come across as fairly scathing of the BBC, I think the broadcaster does a remarkable job and wish it a long and healthy life.

But the list of BBC websites to be closed makes it clear that there’s a bizarre lack of direction to a lot of the BBC’s online resources and overall strategy.

Why else would there be top-level directories for /thesummerofbritishfilm, whatever that is, or /abolition?

What are /tvmoments? Was a season on what it’s like to be white in Britain worth the url bbc.co.uk/white?

And there are some peculiar wide-ranging sub-directories like /chinesefoodmadeeasy and /zombies and /britain that smack of the land-grab instincts of the BBC’s digital empire.

In fairness, any self-respecting web ed would have been packing a traffic-heavy site like bbc.co.uk – that can wield enormous Page Rank – with top-level directories to hoover up traffic everywhere.

But that’s exactly what the BBC cannot afford to do – with hungry, worried commercial rivals looking jealously at the Beeb’s enormous online clout and crying foul.

While it’s sensible to rationalise these sprawling empires into a more straightforward navigational – and organisational – structure, the plans for BBC Online do not seem to recognise the value of some areas, and how they help fulfil the BBC remit, rather than detract from it.

Why, for example, should 6Music or Radio7 not have their own websites? And what’s wrong with the BBC having pages and sections for programmes it makes? Certainly they need to be correctly classified, but why give up web traffic for queries on BBC programmes to commercial rivals?

Why shouldn’t local sites use non-news content? Who else does (apart from SevenStreets in Liverpool, obv) beyond the piecemeal press-release based local newspapers? Why should the BBC generate 22 million external referrals a year? The BBC doesn’t advertise what’s on on ITV or Sky1 on its schedules.

Beyond the that, disposing of the Douglas Adams memorial h2g2 is sad. Certainly, it’s hard to see why the BBC should own it. But the BBC is a fairly bonkers organisation, why shouldn’t it? Little details like that are what makes the BBC the BBC – a (de facto) state organisation that engenders enormous trust and fondness among Brits.

The BBC certainly seems to have its problems, and it needs to be very careful of expanding into areas where it will clash directly with commercial rivals (that’s you, Lonely Planet). Then again, austerity and cuts for their own sake seem to be de rigeur these days.

Maybe the Beeb needs to look up bbc.co.uk/hairshirt.

So Delicious is off to the land of defunct social networks. This annoys me as it’s the best pure bookmarking site on the web; frankly I find Stumble Upon too gimmicky – and curiously hard to use – while the likes of Reddit and Digg are just popularity contests these days.

On every computer I work from, there’s a Delicious applet that automatically populates my Delicious account with the meta data from whatever page I’m bookmarking. I add a couple of tags and I’m off again, safe in the knowledge that I can easily find the page again when I need it.

For reasons best known to itself – at a guess something like Delicious is pretty hard to monetise – parent company Yahoo! is set to wave off the bookmarking site into the sunset, according to a leaked screenshot detailing strategies for the company’s sprawling, fragmented, declining empire.

Yahoo! has form with simply trashing stuff it fails to make anything of, with its complete binning of Geocities, and I fear a similar fate for Delicious, rather than let it continue under someone else or release it to open source.

Frankly, I just don’t know what Yahoo! is for any more. Ten years ago, in the era of homepages and mail and search engines, when people like MSN and AOL built up massive online footprints – cars, celebrities, news services, videos – and started acquiring start-ups like Delicious and Flickr, Yahoo! at least made sense within that landscape.

But five years ago everyone realised that, no matter how many news channels you opened, people just weren’t using the web in the same way any more. Google put paid to the other search engines, then slowly took over email, and people began to realise that you might as well get your news from a newspaper than a portal.

Facebook has started its cannibalisation of the web and is well on its way to becoming a true portal – the only page anyone needs to visit on the interweb. Another death knell for the horrifyingly busy, crowded, redundant Yahoo! and MSN homepages.

In this context, satellite services like Flickr and Delicious seem to make even more sense to me. Data is valuable; everyone takes photos; professionals and geeks like to share information; niche services become important in their own right.

The real value of Delicious, to me, was in a massive peer-reviewed repository of the valuable stuff on the web. In amongst all the self-serving newsletters, Twitter feeds and artificially-inflated search-engne rankings – Delicious offered the best of the web filtered by people who worked within the same industries that you did and could be trusted to share the really good stuff. Those delicious web bites that can get lost on the cess pool that is the modern internet.

Whenever I need to research something in journalism, social media, marketing, PR or anything else in the technical realm I turn to Delicious. I dare say coders, techies and a variety of other professionals do too. In this way Delicious was almost an uber search engine; no-one tried to game it like they do Google, Digg or Reddit so only the really good stuff was in there.

I doubt many people used Delicious in the grand scheme of things, but that made it all the more valuable (and I can’t understand how it could possibly cost much to run); and Yahoo! should have been able to make something of that, particularly when they own so much other ancillary real estate.

I never saw, for example, a way to integrate Delicious with my Yahoo! email account. Sure, there’s probably a way to do it, but it was never offered to me. Similarly, why not cross-reference Flickr and Delicious? Or introduce a nominal annual fee and stick some bells and whistles on it?

That Yahoo! doesn’t see the value in retaining Delicious just says, to me, that the company doesn’t really understand what it’s there for any more, that it’s lost sight of how to leverage what it has and make sense of those who continue to use their services.

There’s an online campaign pinging around the other social networks at the moment to save delicious, which indicates the depth of feeling among users. Will it work? I hope so, because Delicious may just be one of the more valuable online repositories of peer-reviewed knowledge in existence. If no-one sees the value of that I despair.

Is there anything remotely fascinating about other peoples’ status updates? Probably not, but the ability to track your own life story using Facebook’s pithy snippets, like a personal dot-to-dot connecting different moments in time, is an interesting one to my mind.

Looking back over my own, I remembered some things that happened this year that I’d completely forgotten about, and a few that amused me due to the responses they elicited or events they concerned.

It’s curious that we all leave a personal data trail across the web these days. Via Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Youtube, Flickr and blogs, you’d probably be able to determine where I was and what I was doing on any given day this year.

There’s a train of thought that maintains that this is a horrifying release of personal data, but I’m quite amused by the idea that Russian internet mobsters are trying to make sense of the numerous pop-culture references, puzzling over pictures of my cat or exchanging bemused hypotheses over my infatuation with something named the ‘Baltic Fleet’.

Anyway, here’s my life in status updates. It’s not Shakespeare, but it all means something to me, and perhaps quite a few friends. In the absence of a diary, it should keep me amused or remind me of cool things I did in a few decades’ time too – assuming the ants haven’t taken over.

I don’t want to go (David Tennant relinquished the keys to the TARDSI)

cat’s turning his nose up at roast beef, the little bollocks!

Milk was a bad choice (Ron Burgundy reference)

It’s not too late to be reinstated (Shack reference)

Frost on beard (January was horribly cold, leading to chaos in Liverpool)

“Much more fortunate than the millions who’ll wander sightless through the smouldering aftermath. We’ll be spared the horror of survival.” They don’t make kids’ films like they used to (from War Games, one of my favourite films)

WHY HAS MY HEAD GONE NUMB? (Withnail and I reference)

Actual headline: Man with genitals in pipe cut free (He ‘gave no explanation’

Ian McNiece and Robbie Coltrane is the same scene? Why it’s fat English character actor heaven! (In From Hell)

Has never seen anyone as upset over a game of Connect Four as Iwan (I beat my housemate at online Connect Four, having listened to him extolling his abilities. I promptly retired from the game forever)

Where’s the white going? WHERE’S THE WHITE GOING? (ref. John Virgo)

Alien Cat People versus America in Space was excellent (Avatar)

Distraught at losing darts, Iwan has logged on to get a Connect 4 win under his belt to end the day on a victorious note – and been hammered three times (January was a bad month for Iwan’s games ability. I crashed out of the darts at the quarter final stage but returned to voice Sir Roger Moore in a pre-match vid))

Back from monster trip. Huskies, igloos, barn owls, ice driving lunacy, five airports in three days, Hitler’s holiday home and a blazing row with a Sun journalist (went on the adventure holiday of a lifetime, courtesy of Volvo)

Me: Yeah, QED – Quite Easily Done. Bowser: [Beat] Is that what QED means? (This conversation actually happened)

Midnight rockers, city slickers, gunmen and maniacs (ref. Massive Attack)

God, it would be awful if Ricky somehow got hold of this videotape… (ref. Eastenders – Bianca’s loose tongue causes problems)

Though your world is changing I will be the same (ref. Bryan Ferry)

Should I buy Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on DVD? (I didn’t)

is watching reruns of Babylon 5 (ref. Spaced – but also true)

goes ding when there’s stuff (ref. Doctor Who)

Javagal Srinath (Indian cricketer, possibly the best name ever)

Clone Stamp and Smudge Tool (twatting about on Photoshop, probably on Creature Features

Is the guy on Masterchef who’s a pediatrician being referred to as a ‘children’s doctor’ in case people think he’s a paedophile? I like Masterchef, especially the facial expressions

Yo Yo Ma! (ref. Curb Your Enthusiasm)

I had part of a slinky… but I straightened it (ref. Ghostbusters)

I am the dog that ate your birthday cake (Mark Linkous killed himself)

What a day. The Citroen DS3 is good. The C3… not so good. Huddersfield, mainly depressing (some driving stuff)

DJ Falcon (returned to Chibuku for the first time in five years, felt old)

One of your friends became a fan of Seeing The Shape Of A Girls Ass Through Her Leggings (baffling Facebook stuff)

Society’s a weak excuse for a man (ref. Slick Rick)

Parting Shots: Michael Winner, Chris Rea, Peter Davison, Diana Rigg, Felicity Kendall, John Cleese, Ben Kinglsey, Trevor Baxter, Olly Reid, Gareth Hunt, Nicola Bryant in a bra. Quite the worst film ever (terrible, terrible, terrible)

Along you came, and right away I’m stung. Sweet words I long to whisper, but you paralyzed my tongue (ref. Simpsons)

You’ve Been Framed=Idiot Painful Comeuppance Half Hour (I like You’ve Been Framed, especially the ones where people deserve it)

I’m poppa large, big shot on the east coast (ref. Ultramagnetic MCs)

I couldn’t fuck a gorilla… (ref. The Man With Two Brains)

Ooh, try a little harder, You’re moving in circles, won’t you dilate, Baby try (ref. Kajagoogoo)

Funniest Ever You’ve Been Framed followed by Best Ever TV Burp. Is it my birthday already? (Two shows I love)

Beloved ****? (ref. Curb)

Bought an organ, a bike and a Terrahawks DVD (birthday presents to self – see my huge organ here)

Hopelessly Panglossian (ref. The Duckworth Lewis method)

Became a fan of STOP FALLING FOR STUPID ‘BECOME A FAN TO WATCH VIDEO’ SCAMS (Facebook idiocy)

Had a mouse for dinner, and a mole for dessert (ref. Paul Barman)

Ohh, Eggheads, what hilariously irrelevant banter will you come up with next? (I dislike Eggheads)

Mazda MX-5 on a sunny day in the countryside (driving the little roadster on a sunny day was great fun; excellent car)

Watching people do ‘Meow Meow’ (it didn’t look good)

I’ll tell you what’s worse than going back to work after two weeks off, you sodding part-timers, not having two sodding weeks off in the first sodding place! (whinging public service staff)

Morny Stannit (ref. Morecambe and Wise)

When this baby hits 88mph, you’re going to see some serious shit (ref. Back to the Future)

Saw a heron and two swans making a nest in Sefton Park. And a moorhen moodying a swan. And a rat. (the varies fauna of Sefton Park)

I live among the creatures of the night (ref. Laura Brannigan)

Tennant and Izzard telling us Britain is good? This is also BROKEN BRITAIN PEOPLE (the 2009 election broadcasts)

Coming soon to a newspaper near you: LFC fans give warm welcome to Russian oil oligarch (the 2009 LFC soap opera

Venison fillet, red wine jus, crushed new potatoes with with garlic flowers. Excellent (I picked the garlic flowers from a wood in Masham)

Adrian Chiles ordered to shave bear (for some reason the title cut off here in WordPress stats for the Adrian Chiles ordered to shave beard story)

Most troubling opening line in pop? ‘I was 37, you were 17′ (ref. Heaven 17)

Leveraged the shit out of some synergies today (spent a lot of time at work devising strategies for several content channels)

‘A woman from Devon has begun speaking with a Chinese accent after suffering severe migraines’

Gordon Brown! (ref. Adam and Joe)

Managed a run-out in a Rover 623 SLi today – great fun. It actually crossed my mind to buy it. (I didn’t, but I thought about it – photos)

KLAAAAK!

I can see you got a solar report (ref. The Charlatans)

There’s a lot of produce here (Gordon Brown’s comment on a supermarket during the election campaign)

I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old. (ref. Neil Kinnock)

Kelvin MacKenzie has promised to leave the UK on a one-way trip to Belize if there is a hung parliament. Do I need to say anything else? (I loathe Kelvin MacKenzie)

Overheard: Greggs minion to builder: ‘How many sugars love?’ Builder: ‘Five please’ BROKEN BRITAIN (I loathe the Broken Britain meme)

Randomly bumped onto half a dozen people I know whilst wandering around town. I love Liverpool for that (on one my infrequent Sunday gallery tours)

Two games of cricket, two knackered fingers. By July I’ll be typing with my nose at this rate (I developed two new cricket injuries this summer)

Doctor Baker phoned me in the morning (ref. The Beta Band)

On balance I prefer the Jaguar XJ to the Kia Rio (two cars I drove in quick succession, I preferred the Jag)

Someone on this bus is absolutely blasting the acid tweaking funk mix of higher state of consciousness. And a fat dooby. (the two so often seem to go together)

Bored of zombies now. Can we have a zombie amnesty? (2010 was the year of zombie overload)

I have a bacon sandwich in my pocket (must have been a good day)

Overheard outside: (Girl answers phone – shrilly) WHA-? What’s the matter? Proper shit meself there, I thought something was the matter…”

Don’t get this thing of asking how much people ‘want’ something in reality shows: ‘How much do you want this?” “I really, really want it” (ref. Masterchef, X-Factor etc)

Jests at scars (ref. Shakespeare)

Blow in her face and she’ll follow you anywhere (old-skool cigarette ad)

Mein Fuhrer… I can walk! (ref. Dr Strangelove)

Time is an illusion; lunchtime, doubly so (ref. Douglas Adams)

Could have sworn I just heard a bird tweeting Higher State of Consciousness (somewhere on Saddleworth Moor)

‘He got his finger out, but didn’t put it up’ (ref. cricket)

My actual instinctive reaction to news of Gary Coleman’s death: ‘Aw, poor little fella’. Even in death he’s patronised (poor little fella)

A routine malaise (ref. Grizzly Bear)

To the break of dawn (ref. Bad Lieutenant)

Hmm, was Sex and the City ever any good? I mainly remember a lot of muff jokes and bitching about men (The new SatC film got bad reviews)

Do you respect wood? (ref. Curb)

Sevenstreets (SevenStreets finally launched)

Just saw a chicken escorted off the premises at old Trafford. At least he had his dignity (at the Old Trafford Test against Bangladesh)

I hate Ian Wright (for things like this advert)

Wrath of the Math (ref. Jeru the Damaja)

If there’s nothing missing in my life, then why do these tears come at night? (ref. Britney Spears)

ladies and gents watches, a toastie machine a microwave oven, a pine dresser and upright turbo cleaner have just been gambled on bullseye. They didn’t look overly delighted by the holiday to Thailand though (shit telly)

Vworp Vworp (ref. Doctor Who, specifically Target)

I have to return some video tapes (ref. American Psycho)

Michael Douglas’s mirrored sunglasses (ref Neon Neon)

Is playing the part of a real trouble-maker (ref. The Passions)

Dismayed by my pudgy face on Granada Reports. Disgracefully, Iwan’s shit wicket was broadcast across the north-west (at the brilliant Sefton Park Solstice Cup match)

Just remembered extraordinary sight from yesterday AM: Huge vortex of thousands of seagulls swarming around Africa Oye site (feasting on curried goat, no doubt)

Liverpool abolished as part of Budget (austerity budget announced)

Pretty disappointed by Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (not one of the Everymans best, in what’s been another great year for the Liverpool theatre – review here)

I’m a cop, you idiot! (ref. Schwarzenegger)

Tesla girls, Tesla girls, I’m in love with Tesla girls (ref. OMD)

Radiates like it’s ’88 (ref. Paul Barman)

Today I will mostly be creating robust strategies, identifying key influencers, working with cross-organisational stakeholders, creating brand outposts, plan distribution strategies and increasing brand equity. And to think I dreamed of being an investigative journalist. (spent a lot of time researching social media in business)

‘Question of the Week: Which web/marketing analytics tools can’t you live without when measuring your inbound marketing programs?’ In what sort of crazy world is this ‘question of the week’? (Someone replied: ‘In your world, Brown’)

Explosive water pipe failure in living room. Cue ten minutes of frantic slapstick (Paul, the most useless plumber in the world showed up on time for once)

Fig rolls (I like fig rolls)

When I see your eyes arrive, they explode like two bugs on glass (ref. Mercury Rev)

Jam Up and Jelly Tight (ref. Tommy Rowe)

Enjoying the high bombardment of positive ions in the atmosphere (ref. The FIve Doctors)

The quest is the quest (ref. Doctor Who)

I see Channel 4 is doing another boobs and cocks programme and passing it off as educayshun (Channel 5 will always win in this battle)

Recommended Pages: Sleeping Many who like Drinking like this <

Raincloud of Doom is my new favourite insult (insult directed at shouty twat Shabby, from the last ever Big Brother)

Staff cuts have socked up the overage (ref. REM)

Marmite – Many who like Tony Hart like this

Just had flashback to the two ultimate fighter nicknames I once saw on a poster in the Penny Farthing: 'Beasteron' and 'I Will Destroy You' (wish I'd taken a photo)

I guarantee this place has no Foursquare Mayor (in the Stoke Mandeville Stadium Olympic Lodge hotel during a work trip, having spent the previous night at the brilliant Aviator Hotel, courtesy of Saab)

Ah, Fucking You Tonight – Biggie Smalls’ irresistible exploration of the quid pro quo of courtship in the modern age (ref. Biggie Smalls)

What would Avon off Blake’s 7 do? (ref. Blake’s 7)

l33t supa h4x0r (ref. leetspeak)

Northumbria Uber Alles (ref. Dead Kennedys)

there’s only two ways you can injure your neck (ref. Curb – a car accident and oral sex)

Peking Homonculus (ref. Talons of Weng Chiang)

Imagine a world where shoes are not your friends (can’t remember where this comes from)

KBO (ref. Churchill)

‘Every girl’s given someone a blower’ – Big Brother enhances all of us (lovely, uncomplicated Josie)

Let’s get this straight iPhone, if I want to say ‘twat’ in a text I’m damn well going to say it. Not ‘teat’, not ‘test’. Twat (amusing site here)

Dear neighbour, your folky summer jamming session is very nice, but shut the fuck up you fucking hippies (they moved shortly after)

I didn’t make it sugar, playing by the rules (ref. Marvin Gaye)

Been eatin’ pineapple (ref. Scarface censorship)

I’m with Morse. I don’t drink because I enjoy it, I drink so I can think. Though I also enjoy drinking (I like Inspector Morse and drinking)

Everybody spread the word. I live in my sister’s basement! (ref. The Wedding Singer)

dab of oppo (ref. Sniff Petrol)

‘Cake is sexy bread’ reveals the great bake off. Now got to religious persecution of cake. Utterly futile programme (a silly show that also saw Mel Or Sue refer to eggs, flour, butter and sugar as ‘the Fab Four’)

That time of the week when I allow myself a solitary draught of laudanum

I wish they all could be double-barreled… (ref. Top Secret!)

You would make a fantastic booby (ref. John McCririck)

Give me convenience or give me death (ref. Dead Kennedys)

If there’s one thing on my mind it’s gettin downstate (ref. Aim)

I could make you cry in three minutes (drunken threat to best friend)

No diggity (ref. Blackstreet)

I hate Sebastian Coe! (ref. Brass Eye, though I do hate Sebastian Coe)

Vanessa Felch (nickname given to a barmaid I used to know)

Baking a pie. I’ve been away too long (it was steak and kidney)

Cafe au lait… pour vous (ref. Shaun of the Dead)

Nice and sleazy does it (ref. The Stranglers)

Tweedle Twat (ref, Science, Big Brother)

Right, off on holiday to the Dales. There will be sausages (there were, in Masham)

Carwash cunt (ref. Curb)

Picking out a thermos for you… (ref. The Jerk)

Worst Goal of the Month music ever. Bring back Life of Riley (ref. Match of the Day)

Stop saying things are ‘cheeky’ (eg cheeky Volvic)

What’s that brain? You’re feeling creative? Well fuck you, you’ve had all day, I’m off to bed (bloggers curse)

Watching a game of park footy in Preston. Precocious dribbler rounds three men on his way towards goal. A shout rings out: “bring him down Legolas!” (livened up a day of driving Vauxhalls)

Here hare here (I cooked a hare casserole, it was tough but tasty)

17,000 more sleeps til I’m dead (according to some online generator thing)

Mmm nice marmot (ref. The Big Lebowski)

Just heard a classic ‘Eee! Are you messin’?’ in the office (classic Liverpool)

Nothing makes me more pleased to be European than seeing some of the frat-boy dicks in the crowd at the Ryder Cup #getintheholeball (the goodies won)

**** your ****ing ***** off you ****! (ref. The Inbetweeners)

Young, gifted and Brown

Dear Mr Hicks, please will you fuck off and leave LFC alone so I don’t have to listen to whining Reds bleating on about it all the time. Cheers, Robin (tiresome LFC soap opera rumbles on)

Some guy on twitter is trying to get me to listen to his mixtape, which includes a song called Damn It Feels Good To Be A Scouser (I didn’t listen)

‘scenes of animal mating’? (since when did viewers have to be warned about animal mating?)

What’s wrong with being childish? I like being childish (ref. Doctor Who)

Right. Your help please. Is it ‘briefcase wanker’ or ‘briefcase mong’? (both, apparently)

People searching for ‘blackman and robin’ on the culture blog always makes me nervous (see why for yourself – Blackman and Robin

Last night I dreamed had a scouse accent (a nightmare)

Maybe you’re my puppet (ref. Solaris)

This is definitely Laphroaig weather (I like Laphraoig)

Suddenly forgotten a keyboard shortcut I use 100 times a day. Another ‘is this the inevitable onset of senility?’ pang of fear (senility and arthritis, great mix)

Good God, George Osborne has a grotesque little face (I hate George Osborne

It’s not the way you look, it’s not the way that you smile (ref. A Flock of Seagulls)

Noticed the ‘Safe Zone’ in Brunswick station is now called ‘Safer Zone’. Perhaps an acknowledgement that painting a yellow line around something does not make it inherently safe (probably now called ‘slightly safer zone)

Because I once commented on an article called ‘video games are no better than pornography’, my Guardian profile now lists ‘pornography’ as one of my key interests (now changed to ‘commented on’)

House****ing (the C word – I didn’t enjoy looking for a house)

Would you call your first-born Citroen Berlingo Multispace for a million quid? (I had recently driven said car)

Wage rates in Peru, James Burke, Finnegans Wake, all the bloody irish, the dog in Blue Peter, Brian Clough, and especially James Henry and Clive and Australian barmen, ecologists, semiologists…the Guardian Women’s Page, the Bible, Reader’s Digest Special Price Draw… (all the things Philip Marlow finds boring)

The cat tolerated my over-enthusiastic, drunken greeting, but I could tell he was secretly irritated (he’s usually irritated)

That old ‘is it a powercut or have the fuses gone?’ chestnut. Spose I’d best dig out a torch. Hope they’re not my last words. (power cut, though this led to the fuses blowing and detouring to the missus’ house for a shower for two weeks)

Halloween, perhaps the best horror film ever made, coming up on BBC4 (I like horror films)

You don’t know how to play the game/You cheat/You lie/You make me wanna cry (ref. Godley and Creme)

So very close to referring to a sliding car as an ‘ungainly fuck on a frozen pond’ in an article (Volvo XC60 I think)

Aksidenz Grotesk (I like fonts)

You’re just going to have to turn this opportunity YES (ref. Sexy Beast)

wore a suit for nothing. pfft. (for a meeting with GM that didn’t happen)

Kazakhstan is the greatest exporter of potassium, all other countries have inferior potassium (ref. Borat)

Savaged by a turbot (ref. Blackadder)

A translation error at a UK prison labelled an exercise yard as an “execution yard” in the draft of an information booklet for Russian inmates (genuine BBC story)

Ten per cent of robins will die at the hands of another robin (chilling birdlife fact)

A merciless thunderbolt (no idea)

Finding it hard to escape the feeling that the world would be a slightly better place if Dappy from NDubz was dead (I hate Dappy from NDubz)

Shane Warne: My mates are great – thanks for that Shane, you pudgy Aussie twat (I dislike Sky’s cricket commentary)

Nice beaver (ref. Naked Gun, Leslie Neilsen died)

Mention the Lord of the Rings just once more and I’ll more than likely kill you (ref. Half Man Half Biscuit)

what a great start to the day. Aussies 0-2 (Aussies totally outclassed in Ashes 2010

Overheard, coming from direction of workmen: ‘there’s Brownie, the SHITBAG!’ (not sure if this was directed at me, I didn’t look back)

The fact that you don’t understand, casts a shadow over this land (ref. Billy Bragg/Dubstar)

…a twist in the fabric of space in which time becomes a loop (ref. The Orb/Star Trek)

However, the culture secretary’s patience was tested further just after 9.30am when Marr hosted a discussion about the Freudian slip as a follow-up to his colleague’s mistake. “We’re not going to repeat in quite the terms it happened,” Marr promised, before repeating exactly the same mistake Naughtie had made. Marr quickly corrected himself and apologised, saying: “It’s very hard to talk about it without saying it.” (hilarious ‘cunt’ antics at the BBC)

Sacked chimney sweep pumps boss full of mayonnaise (Day Today reference)

• If you want to know how to harvest your status updates from Facebook, I recommend an app called Status Statistics as it lets you do whatever you want with them, rather than the crap My Year in Status, which doesn’t even let you have access to your own status updates

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton was just one of the Tories at the Conservative Party conference asked about controversial cuts to child benefit today, and hit upon a novel, and some may say wizard, wheeze to avoid answering any of the questions the millions of people affected by the cuts may have had for him.

Toeing a furious ‘tough but fair’ party line, Loughton decided that the best way to head off any awkward questions was simply to say ‘end of’ repeatedly; like a youth announcing that further discussion is unlikely to bear fruit, after stating his intention to avoid cleaning up his room.

Quite what Dave Cameron, trying his best to put an end to the public image of Tories as arrogant – nay ‘nasty’ – politicians, makes of it is anyone’s guess.

It’s a little more imaginative – not to say rather more out-of-place – than John Nott’s response to Robin Day’s assertion that he was a ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ sort of politician, which was to walk out of a live interview, but not much more.

Unfortunately Twitter wasn’t around 30 years ago, so we’ll never know what the Twitterati would have made of that historial broadcasting spat.

Luckily for us, the response of dozens of voters on Twitter to Loughton’s bizarre performance, can be enjoyed again and again.

Here’s the video, scroll down for Twitter judgement.

 

 

ColRichardKemp: Tim Loughton, Children’s Minister, to BBC on child benefit: “End of, end of, end of.” Astonishing arrogance from one who is paid to serve us

Raziashah
That was “street” innit !RT @ColRichardKemp Tim Loughton, Children’s Minister, to BBC on child http://tl.gd/6bmfpv

alastairharding
Tory Minister Tim Loughton – most entertaining piece on @BBCNewsnight for some time “end of, end of, end of” – what a twat #toryfail

mhughesuk
Tim Loughton MP… You completely arrogant prick… “end of…end of…” we’re paying this guy to be a Minister? #Timloughton

sueihaworth
*End of, End of, End of* – Tim Loughton says. Just what Ive been thinking about you. Sorry but you’ve never been an asset #ukpolitics

Whitbyminer
#tim loughton#newsnight….end of, end of, should have been a cue for a cameraman to banjo him

SooThomas
Tory Tim Loughton MP, Children’s Minister needs to widen his vocabulary and get a bit of media training! #ChildBenefit @Newsnight

Watski
Convenient that Tim Loughton is Childrens Minister. His ‘Thick of it’ style interview on #newsnight was reminiscent of a small child

LaurenREdwards
Tim Loughton sounds like such a knob bleating ‘end of’ on #newsnight

kenningtonkitty
tim loughton got a scratch? #endof

2MuchApplePie
Children’s Minister Tim Loughton, defending Osborne child benefit cuts, says “end of” 3 times, Bizarre. Like a yoof saying “fiddlesticks!”.

onlyintheuk
Conservative Tim Loughton MP. His view of fairness as a tradition of the party END OF.

b3ta_links
Tim Loughton MP thinks he is on The Jeremy Kyle Show. End of.

MrsJundi
Tim Loughton is an arrogant prick. “End of”.

ediemullen
I can’t believe Tim Loughton just used “end of.” – repeatedly on the news. What a smug little cockdribble

Chris_1966
Rt Hon. Tim ‘end of’ Loughton says Child Benefit ‘sorted, nuff said alrite geez’

There was something quite affecting about the end of Big Brother, which came to end last night after ten years of often-engrossing TV.

Chief among these oddly affecting moments was the Big Brother funeral, which saw the final Ultimate Big Brother housemates saying their farewells to the show in a staged funeral administered by narrator Marcus Bentley.

Whatever you thought of Big Brother, there’s not that many programmes that would have the freedom, the wit or the sheer po-mo profile to stage a funeral for itself on that very programme.

And then there’s the retrospectives, with all the former housemates on. People you’d forgotten you’d ever known, like friends you are no longer friends with for one reason or another.

And, later, a video of a load of ex-housemates in a tableau while The Craig and Josie mimed along to Time To Say Goodbye.

It was a moment that made explicit what a unique television programme Big Brother was, and how much of a new niche it created on British TV. Because BB made normal people we’d never met our friends, and also gave them a weird kind of volatile fame that I suspect has finished many of them, where a few prospered.

In that degree it’s fair to say it did continue as some sort of social experiment, highlighted by the return of a lot of ex-housemates in the last few weeks. What has happened, and will happen in the future, to those people? What kid of life must it be to experience that flash of overwhelming fame, followed by years of trying to readjust to normal life?

I watched most of the series, from the first through to the sixth, at which point it was clearly on the wane with a lot of WAG-type tit-flashing girls and empty vessels of either sex. And the out-and-out freaks.

I didn’t watch seven, eight or nine; but enjoyed the tenth when I watched it and all of the celebratory stuff. Perhaps it wasn’t such exciting TV as it had been in the past, but it was able to keep going on reputation and nostalgia alone.

And I think this is why I felt rather sad last night, because when a TV landmark shuffled off our screens it reminds us of times past; not just on the show, but in our lives too.

I watched the programme in a number of different houses, with different partners and housemates and family. And discussed it with dozens. I watched it live during Nick’s Waterloo in season one, sat around my Mac at work with my mate Walton.

A few years later I was texting my mate Ben while working very late one night, speculating as to exactly what was going on during FIght Night.

It was extremely addictive, engaging television – and I’ve never been that impressed by the cultural snobbery often directed at it. It’s fascinating, because it’s other people – and other people are always interesting.

There was a lot of rubbish in there, and a lot of horrible stuff. But the fact that gay, black and transsexual people won Big Brother is pleasing. And there’s a lot of wit to the show, the Tree of Temptation an amusing case in point.

So, I’ll miss Big Brother. I’ll miss the housemates, I’ll miss Marcus Bentley’s absurd narration, I’ll even miss Davina McCall. I’ll miss the excitment of glimpsing the BB eye in ad breaks in the weeks preceding a new one, I’ll miss the first look at the new housemates, the daft interviews and the silly ritual of it all.

A great bit of television, and a real slice of TV history, has come to an end – having covered a good proportion of my adult life.

And as the final echoey voiceovers of the old houses played at the end of the show, it was hard not to think back across my own ten years of life, loves and evictions.

In the grand scheme of things, what Twitter client you use on your mobile device is small beer by anyone’s standards, but it’s recently become a big deal to me.

Having taken the plunge with the iPhone, the search was on for a decent Twitter client so I could enjoy sitting in pubs, ignoring my friends and e-wanking away on my shiny new Apple thing (shamefully, one of five products I now have from the company).

Hootsuite, which I use on my computers, was discarded as being rather too clunky and busy: Echofon, used previously, didn’t do it for me either. Having asked on Twitter – where else? – someone suggested I use Twitterrific.

It was by far the simplest and most user-friendly of all the applications. It looked nice; it was simple; you could change the font sizes and themes; you could have multiple accounts; it made a tweeting noise when it updated. I particularly noticed that.

There were problems. The Twitter API seemed to be at lunch half the time, and this became more and more of a problem as Twitter began cutting back on third-party app API use.

Then, without warning, Twitterrific just stopped working completely. It said my login details were incorrect, but I re-entered them several times to no avail. I noticed an update, but that didn’t help either.

So I went to Twitter – where else? – to see what was wrong and learned there was a new version. They’d simply switched the old one off. Pretty poor, I thought to myself, but hey ho.

I downloaded the new version. But it looked confusing: I couldn’t change the font size; I couldn’t add more than one account; and I couldn’t work out how to do anything. It still made the tweeting noise, but that wasn’t quite enough to swing it.

I browsed the reviews on the new application to see a column of one-star reviews. And what made it so frustrating was that everyone, like me, loved the previous version.

The new version costs £2.99 but that doesn’t bother me in itself. If it was as good as the previous version, with a few more bells and whistles, I’d have gladly swallowed the expense.

But the way the previous version was simply turned off annoys me, and I’m not the only one. Have a look at some of these reviews from iTunes.

People who used V2 of Twitterrific loved it. They were classic brand evangelists; people who would recommend an app to someone else simply because they really liked it.

With its cack-handed upgrade and attempts to monetise the new version, Twitterrific has gone from a social media success story to a villain almost overnight. Those evangelists have lost their faith, and they’ll be more than happy to tell you about it.

So let me get this straight. To access that money – my own money – that’s hanging around collecting dust in this Paypal account, I have to:

• Print off the form, input all my bank details
• Find out the amounts of cash Paypal have deposited in my account
• Photocopy my driving licence
• Locate a fax machine – a method of communication virtually no-one uses any more
• Fax all highly sensitive information drivel to a fax number in the US

How am I supposed to know where all this sensitive information is going? Why can’t I use this bank account in the first place? Where can I find a fax machine? What if I don’t have a printer? What if I don’t do internet banking?

To do this I may conceivably go to a friend’s house to use their printer; locate a shop with a photocopier; go to my bank to discover these two amounts; and locate a friendly office worker whose fax machine I can use. This is an internet business.

All this. Just to access my own cash.

I’m not sure at the moment whether I think this is more stupid than NatWest’s determination that every single customer of theirs have their own portable car reader in order to move their own money around or not.

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, not ten times harder.

I’ve spent quite a few months pondering the value of social media for businesses recently, in work and outside of it.

In work I’ve been looking into whether social media, when paired with strong content and multimedia, can work for automotive businesses. Yes and no is the predictable answer I came to.

And, outside, I’ve been ruminating on how social media can help launch SevenStreets, a website about Liverpool I co-edit and is a couple of months old.

Facebook and Twitter are incredibly useful in the latter case, and I expect I can find similar uses for LinkenIn and Foursquare. Flickr and Youtube haven’t really developed beyond simple platforms, so I don’t really take them into account.

I think Twitter is useful for any company of any size. It’s the new email, the new phone number, the new business card. It can be wielded professionally in a way that Facebook cannot, and LinkedIn does not, because not enough people use it.

So I like Twitter for business. And at first I dismissed Facebook for business. But I was wrong.

Facebook will be the ultimate website for business in a few years, in my humble one. I have no stats to call on to back this up. No charts, no graphs, no expert opinions. It’s just obvious to me, as someone who uses the internet every day, that this is the case.

Why? Because Facebook is taking over the internet, conquering everything in its path. I thought of a few naff metaphors for Facebook’s assault on the web. Something about evolution, something about conquest, or maybe some kind of medical simile. I even thought about calling this piece ‘Why Facebook are the Daleks of the internet,’ but I was nearly sick in my mouth.

Pick your own. Either way, Facebook is muscling in on every other piece of web real estate you can think of. Flickr? Photos. Digg or Reddit? That Facebook Share button, rolling out across the web. Blogging? Notes. Twitter? Status updates. Youtube? Facebook video. Email? Facebook Messages.

Facebook apps can cover just about anything, including games – one of the biggest uses of the internet globally. Apps also make Facebook a big favourite of PR companies and virals.

Facebook is revamping Pages for business. So that’s business listings and personal websites ticked as well.

Facebook users can follow all their favourite topics and organisations within the site. Why use an RSS reader when you can follow every conceivable topic on the web through Facebook pages, including pages for your favourite media?

I’ve noticed a few pages ranking organically that seem to be for Wiki-like entries on generic topics. The Facebook Encyclopedia. No need for Wikipedia.

Why join a specialist forum, or several fora with all their fiddly login details when you can join a community on Facebook?

Why visit any external sites when you can access it all through Facebook?

Facebook is advancing on all fronts. It’s a frightening, stupefying land grab of the internet in just about every conceivable way, and it’s all prefacing the very reason I was wrong to write off Facebook for business.

Why use different accounts and websites to upload pictures, check-in your location, update your status, read an article, interact online with friends, join a discussion, watch a video, research a topic or play a game when you can do it on Facebook?

Come to think of it, why buy something from a dozen different merchants when you can do it all on Facebook? Just stick your bank details in once and Facebook will do the rest. One-click buying. There’s Amazon and Ebay conquered too.

All that data Facebook is harvesting about its users will make it one of the biggest exporters of CRM data going. Maybe that data could be used to make a new kind of tailored, intelligent search. Sayonara, Google.

I don’t feel comfortable with the idea of using something like Facebook to make significant purchases, and the idea of buying big-ticket items like cars certainly doesn’t appeal. Which is why I initially dismissed Facebook for business.

But the next generation of computer users, the ones coming of age right now, won’t bat an eyelid about buying cars – or anything else – through Facebook, or similar social networks.

Right now, I don’t see a huge ROI – if any, in cash terms – for small-to-medium businesses on Facebook. For larger brands that people can identify, certainly. But is there any point in whacking your used-car inventory on Facebook at present?

Maybe if you do it properly. But it’s worth doing anyway, because pretty soon everyone will be on Facebook. Not to be on Facebook in a decade will be like not having a mobile phone or using the internet now.

Any buying a car, ordering your shopping, booking flight and setting up direct debits will be as prosaic as updating your status. That’s not just conquering the rest of the internet, its making the rest of the internet like Facebook.

Facebook is not a conqueror, it’s an assimilator; cannibalising the best bits of the web and adapting them for use within itself.

Absorbing other bits of the web in this way means Facebook ends up as the default choice for casual WILFers, who may otherwise visit half a dozen sites on their daily trawl around the internet.

And that list of services will only grow as Facebook expands, to the point where pretty much anything that can be done online can be done through Facebook.

Maybe Daleks are a bad comparison. I should have said The Borg.

NB. If you’re English, you may prefer Cybermen.

Just a quickie, to promote a site I find amusing – and to flag up something even more amusing resulting from it.

The News Grind is a satire site that I contribute the occasional bit of writing to if something catches my imagination.

Today the news that Kay Burley was descending on Newcastle to broadcast her appalling live reports from the vicinity of a freshly-dead corpse spoke to me, so I dashed something off in my lunch hour, emailed it to the ed and thought nothing more of it

Until a text arrived, telling me it had been picked up as a serious news report by AOL News on something called the Surge Desk, with a header pretty similar to the one I wrote.

Fairly astonishing, in that mine is not an especially subtle satire at the best of times. But it would never occur to me that the header ‘Nation ‘can’t wait’ for Moat shoot-out’ might be taken for real.

Or that the suggestion that schools and businesses were closing so Brits could enjoy the rolling news coverage and resulting bloodbath together as a family could possibly be true.

Here’s how AOL saw it:

Forget the World Cup action between Uruguay and the Netherlands — people all across the United Kingdom are tuning their tellies to the news today in hopes of catching a glimpse of what promises to be a far bloodier confrontation between a fugitive and the officers he has promised to kill.

As officers and dogs move in, citizens from around the isle are anticipating a swift and gruesome conclusion to the national drama. Some are even clamoring for it, calling it the best live entertainment they’ve seen in some time.

News Grind paints a vivid picture of the mood:

“I can scarcely wait for the climax,” confirmed Elsie White, 77, as she raced back to her house after picking up some toffees and copies of today’s paper from a local newsagent featuring the blood-soaked face of a police officer allegedly shot by Moat.

“We haven’t had a live event like this to enjoy for quite some time and there’s only old ‘Doctors’ episodes on at this time of day.”

Families have been collecting children from schools and nurseries throughout the day so they could watch together, as expectations reached fever pitch that a violent firearms confrontation was imminent.

Over 800 schools have closed across the country as a result.

Even if that story didn’t ring any alarm bells, what about related news such as ‘Trainee builders must have PhD in Postmodernism’; ‘Heart attack ‘link’ with sheer unadulterated terror’ and ‘“Look at me, I’m a fat bastard,” says proud local man’?

A mistake anyone could have made? Perhaps, in these days of rolling news and slapping on content and the rush to be first with a report – the news grind, if you will.

But even that old chestnut about Americans and irony doesn’t wash – the US is the home of The Onion, the finest satire site in the world, after all.

Maybe it’s just a sign that, in these information-saturated days, even the news is beyond satire?

EDIT: This literally never worked on any of my blogs. Neat idea, poor execution.

The Guardian has launched a new WordPress plugin that allows self-hosted bloggers to reprint content from newspaper’s website.

The Guardian News Feed plugin is surely designed to act as a direct counterpoint to talk of paywalls and charging for newspaper content and is an extension of the Grauniad’s Open Platform system, which allows people who sign up to access the paper’s massive databanks and develops apps based on it via an API.

There are over 1m articles available published as far back as 1999 available through the plugin, which theoretically looks quite simple, and users can do pretty much anything they want with the articles, so long as they leave the actual content and code alone.

This is pretty much an ultimate expression of the idea of content as online currency – exchanging content, apps or services for traffic, leads and revenue.

In this case, the Guardian content is exchanged for increased traffic, backlinks, harvested data and ad revenues, leading to more exposure, brand equity, SEO juice and cash.

It’s hard to see a downside for The Guardian. By signing up and republishing articles from the site I had to enter more data about myself and every Guardian article reprinted on my blog gets more backlinks, domain authority and ad clicks for the paper’s website.

Depending on what they do with anchor text and ads, they can probably pull off targeted SEO campaigns and ad campaigns too. Now multiply that by potentially hundreds of thousands of blogs around the world.

In return I get a nifty new toy to play with, potentially higher traffic and – arguably – a little more authority. If I’m clever and use the articles well I could even get a boost in search engines and ad revenues too, if I displayed ads on my blogs.

The exchange is complete, both parties have something of value. It sounds like a win-win situation, and it’s a great way to further leverage the latent value in the Guardian’s article bank, by doing virtually nothing on an ongoing basis.

Already some on Twitter have started to voice their scorn about the plugin. And, really, what we have here is a very clever form of inbound marketing, using the Grauniad’s massive and powerful archive of content – it’s simply leveraging that content to make money in the same way that Murdoch is trying to leverage The Times’ content via a paywall.

Whereas The Times uses content for more explicit transaction – using content as a currency to generate cash directly, the Guardian’s more elegant approach delivers all sorts of other benefits, besides revenues – brand equity, SEO authority, increased engagement – albeit somewhat nebulous and of indeterminate cash value.

But it’s a smart bit of PR too – while everyone was talking about News International’s attempts to place more value on its content by charging for access, The Guardian is throwing its content out to whomever wants to use it; it can be sold as a direct, and opposite, move to that of Murdoch.

Finally, I’d hoped to include an article using the news feed below, but I can’t get it to work – probably something to do with my host I suspect. Which just goes to show that even the simplest, most elegant, ideas can be undermined by a lack of technical nous or user error.

• Go here for instructions and more deetails