middledigit.net | jonathan hopkins

I like this. Nice piece of social commentary. Well executed and a nice throwback to those pop-up books I read as a kid. Plus there’s some very strange bonus sounds if you poke around a bit. The internet is indeed a wonderful thing.

[via Tom (who needs to get a website/blog!)]

Wow. This is a little crazy. Those clever Stanford types have created some software that enables video to be embedded within another video. Like in-game advertising but for real world video that (from the video below) looks as though it blends pretty seamlessly with the original content. Question is though - do we want our content blended with adverts? Or are there other uses for this? Whatever, it looks pretty cool to me.

We went to Amsterdam at the weekend for the first time. We stayed at the Bellevue hotel right in the centre for one night (highly recommended if you need a really central half-decent place to stay) and picked one of the worst weekends weather-wise to go there. We had a good weekend, staying in Amsterdam on the Friday night and then heading on over to Alkmaar to surprise our friend Joe for his 30th birthday on the Saturday.

On our travels walking around the streets of Amsterdam, we saw this sign and loved its brutal honesty. Being 2008, I was able to find a great pic of it super quick when we got back. Oh and the tenuous link back to something? Well I think that brands are going to start being a little bit more honest with people and a little less nice. There’s too much ‘innocence’ going on these days and brands are becoming more ‘human’ all the time.

Oh and for the record, no I didn’t indulge in anything other than chips and mayonnaise from the wonderfully named Chipsy Kings and a few cheeky beers while I was over there!

Sorry, couldn’t resist posting this for a number of reasons. Here’s Steve Jobs flipping it to IBM, teaching us that invaluable lesson that anything you do offline (past, present and especially future) is more than likely to make it online - especially if you’re a world-famous CEO. And on the internet, it’s there forever. No harm done though. It’s just Steve, being human.

[Via Edible Apple]

After Jemima Kiss pointed us in the direction of some live puppies yesterday, so began a quick conversation about cats and dogs and their respective popularity on the web.

Bobbie Johnson quickly stepped in proclaiming that cats are for nerds and making sure we’d seen i has a HOTDOG and FailDogs. Robin reminded us of Upside Down Dogs too and Jimbob was quick to defend the dog faith and come up with a cunning theory that somehow Cats = Mac and Dogs = PC, after my claim that there was a direct correlation between a love of cats and a love of technology.

Katy even went on to question the relative ’social media worth’ of other animals like parrots and Iguanas, then Grant threw a random one in the mix reminding us of Oolong the rabbit - a former internet phenomenon that’s now in a heaven-like hutch looking down on all this nonsense.

Anyway, I suggested that the ultimate Cats V Dogs Web-Off should take place to settle this once and for all and have spent a bit of downtime this evening listening to this rather good Kitsune mix (Nice one Phil) and deploying some crude research tactics to get the ball rolling - What’s the most popular on the web? Dogs or Cats?

Well in all honesty I thought cats would win it hands down, given the HUGE popularity of things like LOLcats, ICHC, StuffOnMyCat etc. But I was wrong. After checking Google, Flickr, Twitter, Delicious and Technorati - it looks like in terms of sheer volume of mentions - the dogs have it with 6 to 1 wins.

Or do they? Every time dogs seem to beat cats, apart from when you get to the ultimate test of all - pure unfiltered Google results. As this is surely a measure of the whole web and everything on it (sort of) - I’m declaring cats as being the winners. Not that I’m *cough* biased or anything.

Here are the results, blow by blow.

(Oh and today there’s even been some anti-cat propaganda being floated around the web, in a bid to skew the real results)

Google Trends (Search Volume, all years): Dogs 1 : Cats 0

Twitter (Twist, last 30 days): Dogs 2: Cats 0

Technorati (Any authority, all mentions): Dogs 3 : Cats 0

Flickr Results (Keyword search): Dogs 4 : Cats 0

YouTube Results (Keyword search): Dogs 5 : Cats 0

Delicious Results (Tag search): Dogs 6 : Cats 0

Google Results (Total hits): Dogs 6 : Cats 1

Blimey. Been super busy over the past week week doing all sorts of work-related stuff like launching Facebook applications with the guys over at GetThemIn, engaging with Gadget Show fans using Twitter on behalf of simplifyDigital and talking to my builder about the blog/website I’m setting up for him in return for half a concrete floor!

Also, I’ve dealt with man-flu, ripped out my old kitchen and set up a temporary new kitchen, learnt a bit about how to use my new Roland SH101, remotely prevented my dad from getting hit with a virus on his computer and also caught up with the inbox nightmare that awaited me after just a few days off.

So, there-in lies the reason for the fact that I’ve just listed out stuff that’s prevented me from blogging about something super interesting for a bit, rather than write something about something super-interesting. You could of course just follow me on Friendfeed or subscribe to my delicious feed or follow me on Twitter. I’m pretty active over there all the time, every day. It’s the blog that suffers first when things get busy. Same for everyone else?

Yes. (Big smiles)

Is McCain president? No. (Big smiles)

But until Obama, his family and the puppy get into the Whitehouse, it kind of feels like this . . .

Change . . . Bring. It. On.