wake up and smell the copy
Posted in technology on Aug 3rd, 2008
Ah nuts. My mobile, which has been hanging on gamely since an unfortunate incident last October, looks to be finally shuffling off this mortal coil. It’s still working, but the screen isn’t, so I’ve no idea who’s calling me, or who’s texting me and about what.
I was pondering this, and what a pain in the […]
Posted in blog, digression on Jul 29th, 2008
When you’ve had a hard day and you doze off in front of the telly, you can tell how long you’ve been asleep by the calibre of the adverts greeting you when you wake up. If the internet was TV, Facebook’s ads would mean it was 4.30am and you’d been asleep leaning on the ‘channel […]
Posted in internet, journalism, writing on May 1st, 2008
Hi, it’s 2008.
Just wanted to remind you, because BBC News thinks it’s discovered a security flaw in Facebook applications. Yes, apparently they can gain access to your and your friends’ profile information, so a malicious application could pose as a legitimate one and harvest profile details, even if they’re not public.
I had to double-check the […]
Posted in internet, journalism, marketing on Apr 27th, 2008
I’m used to celebrity endorsements, or even celebrity beauty journalist endorsements, but I’d normally expect recommendations from my friends to come up in conversation. Tooling around on Facebook, then, I had a bit of a double-take at this advert, which recommends a range of health supplements on a friend’s behalf.
Anyone else had one of these […]
Posted in internet on Apr 23rd, 2008
Facebook has rolled out its integrated chat client, which is nice if you like that sort of thing.
Adam quickly spotted that it tells the people you’re chatting to what else you’re up to, which provides almost as much scope for hilarity as the default ‘reply all’ behaviour on group messages.
Fortunately, it turns out you can […]
Posted in internet, technology on Apr 16th, 2008
Thanks to Adam for this. It comes from Facebook Lexicon, a new trend-tracking tool for the social network that can tell you how often certain terms appear in wall posts.
The blue line is “party tonight”, the beige is “hungover”. The big fat spike is New Year’s eve. Click on the pic to see it full-size.
Posted in digression on Mar 12th, 2008
Take the users out of Facebook and what’s left? Book, I’d say.
The site’s the epitome of 2.0; a framework on which to hang user-generated content, and nothing without it. So, in common with other user-populated sites like Flickr, you’d expect them to have a pretty enlightened view of users’ importance, no?
No. Consider this extract from […]
Posted in marketing on Mar 12th, 2008
Oooh, yes please.
Posted in digression on Jan 17th, 2008
This is serious. Hasbro and Mattel, who make the Scrabble board game, have asked Facebook to remove Scrabulous.
I must admit that I was puzzled by the legal status of the game when Charlie and I first descended into addiction. I wondered if the copyright had expired, or whether the Scrabulous coders had come to some […]
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