While doing some much needed catching up on my feed reader this past week I discovered I had missed the boat on the blog action day on 15.10. Apparently on this day every blogger was meant to write about something to do with the environment. Well, I missed it. So here’s my thing 16 days late.

I walk when I can, we wash at 30 not 40 (except towels because otherwise that’s just gross), we shower not bath, I used the train on my commute to town (but have to drive to the station otherwise it would take me 3 weeks using public transport) and we recycle: bottles, paper, cardboard and even veg peelings which we give to either Jude’s brother or my mum for their composters. We buy fair trade. I do my bit. Skip back a couple of posts and you’ll see I even bought one got one tree.

I also filled in this little quiz. I seem to be a sucker for them these days. My blog personality is below.

Sky News report into paedophilia in Second Life. Unfortunately I guess it was bound to happen but so very wrong and disturbing. While many people enjoy Second Life and have a lot of fun and even conduct business, this should never have a place in the real or virtual world. Causes you to consider where your brand is represented. Linden Labs take an overly liberal stance in the interview. Sure there’s some filth that goes on in there but they surely have the power to stop this?

The iPod accessory to end all accessories? Just be careful which tunes you play on the ohmibod.

Be your own fashion editor and comment on other peoples look. Or upload your own and wait for the bitch slap. There are some scary ones - like this:

GrandOpening is a store.
GrandOpening isn’t afraid to change its face.
GrandOpening will have many “Grand Openings”.
GrandOpening will engage and entertain the community.
GrandOpening could be yours for a month, or two, or three.
GrandOpening might be different the next time you come by. At present it’s Manhattan’s only drive-in. Prior to that it was a ping pong parlour.

An interesting artist

Interesting graphic design

Street bikes in London

Source for all: Toni & Guy Autumn/Winter 2007 magazine.

Buy an innocent smoothie, input your code and get a tree. The tree will provide local communities in India and Africa with an income for 10 years for looking after the tree. They will also receive training on sustainable agriculture. Learn more about this great brand experience and buy one get one tree today.

Some nice web 2.0 touches on the site including a virtual forest where you can find your and your friends trees, donate your tree to a friend, a dynamic tree-o-meter and get a badge to detach and display on your blog/space etc.

Toyota meets World of Warcraft. 7 million play that every day FYI. Thanks to Matt Dickman. Check out his new project too.

Over at his blog, Vincent Thome has written a paper on experimentation. I think he has some great ideas here. I even felt compelled to write a serious comment rather than the usual guff I leave. What do you think?

Some decks from a recent web 2.0 summit in Californ-i-a

Earlier this week there was a conference for girl geeks interested in technology, web 2.0 etc and it’s brilliantly called she’s geeky. (Found following Charlene Li from Forrester on Twitter). (Image source)

OK, last one… till the next time I have a backlog of videos to share

Even more!

The action starts a minute into this one…

Does what it says on the tin

Are you Britain’s brainiest family? This week (half-term), up and down the land families have been battling it out in regional heats to get to the final in London. The winning family will win University fees for their kids which is bang on for the brand and audience. I stumbled across this yesterday when in Southampton where the live event was taking place.

There were loads of people watching and wanting to take part and it was a great visual demonstration of the Brain Training game, Nintendo DS & Nintendo Wii; which if you’ve never played it is quite a hard concept to grasp. Personally I thought it was a little bit for kids until I played my nephew, Josh at Wii sports. He kicked my ass. And it’s so addictive. I’m even tempted to get one considering Lego Star Wars is coming out soon and that’s kept me amused on my PS2 for yonks. And just wait for this to come out next year.

Anyway, I digress. A great way of activating the brand in a live environment and tapping into the self improvement and gaming trends. There was even a nice radio spot on local station Ocean FM on the way home that connected the channel dots and had a playful air of a Mancunian slagging off Southampton people as thickos and challenging you to prove them wrong by getting down to West Quay.

I got an email today from the good people at Diageo. Just tell us a few things and you could win a load of our drinks and related paraphernalia. Interestingly, I was part of the team that created the first “portfolio” campaign for them back in the day when I worked on the account (so I also know they do deliver goodies to the winners!). So nostalgia drew me in. I clicked. And waited. And waited some more. Approx 3 mins went by. Refresh. Refresh. Site down page eventually pops up.

I suddenly realised that this experience hasn’t happened to me in a while. You used to grudgingly accept that sometimes stuff wouldn’t work because the web was all new fangled ‘n’ that. But not today. I click, something shows up. It works.

My take out from this shows how the expectation level has been raised higher and higher in terms of response times and receiving the right content. Page not found and site down are not tolerated anymore. I guess I won’t be winning as I won’t be trying again later. I also wonder if they’re watching the social media space to get any reactions to this?

BTW, the title wasn’t intended to be a pun but I guess it kind of works.