Hello and Happy New Year. I am now back online after a nice refreshing break from the interwebz. Well almost, kind of in an iPhone kind of way. Anyway, like everyone else, I have a gazillion of things that I’d love to do this year, lots of thoughts on what might be in store for us netizens, loads of ideas about the future of the web and how it’s all about being human, lots of questions to ask and people to talk to.

But for the time being, whilst I play catch up and get my head back into everything after playing way too much Guitar Hero and spending too much money on geeky stuff, here’s a simply awesome data visualisation of a year’s worth of edits on OpenStreetMap.org.

OSM 2008: A Year of Edits from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

Data is the future. Of advertising, of the web, of everything. (Yes, I watched the Kevin Kelly 5000 days TED talk again recently!)

Music. Technology. Geeking out. Bring it on.

UPDATE: the meme has gone really big, as kind of expected. Sock and Awe has had over 46 million shoes thrown too . . .

After watching the news report of a journalist throwing his shoes at George Bush this morning, I waited for the inevitable response from the web. Usually it’s from individuals able to move quicker and smarter than your average brand which most likely wouldn’t be up for doing anything Bush related and therefore politcal/risky in the first place or would just take days if not weeks to sign something off. However, today I’ve seen three Bush/Shoe related things pop up in my Twitter stream from PopJam, Lewis PR and Zappos.

First up we have my favourite and by far the best – Sock and Awe from PopJam founder Alew Tew (he of milliondollarhomepage fame).

This feels completely right, has an awesome name/domain and does a nice job of subtly bringing in a link back to Popjam and a fairly discreet email entry box.

Nicely done. I certainly had a few goes and signed up for more info on PopJam. Job done.

Secondly, we have the Bash a Bush ‘viral’ from Lewis PR.

To be honest, the fact it was referred to as a viral in the URL string automatically put me off it. It’s digital content that is hoped to go viral, blah blah blah . . . Anyway, having got over the ‘viral’ thing the gameplay is itself pretty straightforward and pretty slickly done, as much as can be for a tried and tested (and therefore more tired ) basic ‘bash the rat’ type of format. But, again – at least they did it and moved petty quickly.

Finally, we have a video from the guys at Zappos. Very quickly turned around, but all in all not that funny or posted on their blog. Still, top marks for trying and having the balls to just put it out. Oh and for tagging it with Bush, Irag etc !

So, yet again another reminder that brands (and agencies) need to move at lightning speed these days in order to ride on the waves of excitement that follow an event like a journalist throwing a shoe at George Bush, a BNP list going astray or something else that’s just around the corner. And – that competition really is fierce for people’s attention. You’re quite literally up against the world.

More here and here.

I don’t know if it’s a bad thing that I’d actually quite like one of these and everyone that I show it to seems to feel the same way. I could then ‘use my laptop without being cold’. Maybe they should have been given out at Le Web?!

UPDATE – I’ve removed the video as it autostarts and I’m sick of it. Visit the site to check it out.

Jokes aside, I think Loic’s response was great today. A perfect demonstration of confronting a problem and saying it as it is, quickly, honestly and from the heart.

Take a photo of a bum and a bottle of gin, upload it with Twitpic and tag it with #bumsandgin and hey presto, you’ve joined the rather specialist bums and gin meme currently being fueled by Infobunny (aka lo-fi librarian). Crazy interwebz hey?

I’m feeling guilty because I haven’t taken part in a meme thingy that Ged started – listing out the top not-very-technical things that every PR person should know. Then the other Jed has retagged me and reminded me in his follow up – expanding the list out to 50 things! Oh and in the meantime, Becky has delivered the goods too and I feel bad, but OK for the time being because Jonny, Stephen, Paul, Stuart and Wadds are yet to get involved.

There’s some really good thinking here that I reckon could be repurposed into a more use friendly format and used for lots of things. A bit of a cop-out maybe, but how about a wiki? That feels more suited to the task at hand which is essentially creating a big list of useful stuff. And then by taking part you’ve already ticked off ‘editing a wiki’ too.

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]