middledigit.net | jonathan hopkins | If technology doesn't seem like magic, it's probably obsolete.

Man and (music) machine(s)

By Jonathan | Published: December 17, 2008

Music. Technology. Geeking out. Bring it on.

Posted in love, music, technology | 2 Comments

Bush shoe throwing hijacks

By Jonathan | Published: December 16, 2008

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.

Posted in interesting, marketing, random, social objects, thoughts, viral | Leave a comment

Snuggie – the blanket with sleeves!

By Jonathan | Published: December 11, 2008

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.

Posted in advertising, love, random | 4 Comments

Bums and Gin

By Jonathan | Published: December 10, 2008

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?

Posted in human, interesting, meme, random | Leave a comment

Meme Non-Response Guilt (MNRG)

By Jonathan | Published: December 4, 2008

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.

Posted in meme, pr, random, thoughts | 6 Comments

It’s a wonderful internet

By Jonathan | Published: November 27, 2008

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!)]

Posted in interesting, love, marketing | 3 Comments

Video in video

By Jonathan | Published: November 27, 2008

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.

Posted in advertising, future, gaming, technology | 3 Comments

And don’t f*ck around

By Jonathan | Published: November 24, 2008

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!

Posted in human, interesting, random | Leave a comment

Steve Jobs flipping it to IBM

By Jonathan | Published: November 18, 2008

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]

Posted in geek, human, love, random | Leave a comment

Cats or Dogs: Which is the most popular on the web?

By Jonathan | Published: November 14, 2008

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)