aspire to enquire

News Ahoy!

I seem to remember being suspicious of facebook at first but once I actually got an account being pretty much sold on it from day one, and using it pretty much ever since. 

I saw some murmurings on mini-feeds last week about a 'pirate' setting, and thought it was just another one of many apps that people keep inviting you to join.

It turns out that you can, actually, officially change your language setting to 'pirate' for the whole site!

It's the little changes that are the most amusing to me, for example the 'arrrcount' settings on the bottom right-hand corner, the 'bewitched portraits', the 'abandon ship' log out link. It'll be interesting to see if I get bored of it, perhaps by then there'll be a jedi setting or something else to keep me occupied.

But I like how facebook have managed to bring humour into the interface, brightening it up without taking away any of its functionality. Rum all round!

Why not take a plunge and give it a go yourself!

Current TV

... it's good, isn't it?

We make the news, they put it on television. It sounds like some crazy Lily Allen and Friends 24 hour nightmare, but it actually works out ok. I sat down yesterday and watched some genuinely interesting programming (I think those in the know call them 'pods') on subjects that I would never hear about on other channels.

So as long as it can build audience share somehow (I think it's only on Sky in the UK?) this could be a medium worth keeping an eye on. Not just for left-leaning creative twentysomethings, who seem to make all the shows as well as be the main audience, but it could be really interesting for PR and advertising. 

Most commercial spots are already custom-made for the channel - think guy with video camera talking about how much he loves his toyota prius - but in the future I would have thought that it wouldn't be inconceivable for someone to develop the right story about their client and report on it for Current. Selection for 'traditional' broadcast is based on user votes, so it could be a really effective means of reaching quite a discerning demographic.

is blog honesty the best policy?

 

Personally, I prefer the blogs that I can read more often, I seem to get a lot more out of them, even if the posts are a little shorter. 

It's just they way I like 'em.

I'm currently nowhere near a computer, somewhere in North Devon. I wrote this post a few days ago and set it to publish now so that I would have a little update on my site, so hopefully people will keep checking back.

Apart from this post being completely useless, I'm starting to wonder about 'timed posts' - are they entirely truthful? Luckily I have a load of stuff from a study trip last week to post up, but is it a bit odd to be 'posting' when I'm having a few days away somewhere? 

What do you think?

as an aside, look at that old Guardian!! 

InDesign vs Quark

I know this is massively travelled ground but I overheard something the other day and it got me thinking again. This was the quote:

"why are we learning about Quark? when we leave no one's going to be using it."

Well, I disagree. I don't want to get involved in whether it's on it's way out or not, what do I know. All I do know is that when I did work experience last year they were using Quark 5. At a London magazine. If I hadn't known what I was doing with it I would have looked like a chump.

That's pretty much all I have to say there.