Happy 15th Birthday Internet

It was 15 years ago today that the code for the world wide web was given free to the world. All thanks to Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau who managed to persuade CERN to give the code away so that anyone could use it and improve on it.

If you want to hear more about how it happened, here’s a film that Uncle Tim did to mark the 10th anniversary.

Even in marketing honesty is the best policy

Well marketers, you’ve only got another month or so to lie, cheat and deceive people online. After that you’ll actually be committing an offense you can get done for. Good! In my (occasionally) humble opinion, we have a duty as an industry to be responsible in our communications - and anyone that isn’t deserves everything they’ve got coming to them. So here’s what you can get done for as from May 26th:

• Seeding positive messages about a brand in a blog without making clear that the message comes from, or on behalf of, a brand.
• Lurking around forums and other online social spaces dropping messages without disclosing that you’re actually a brand ambassador.
• Seeding viral ads on the internet in a way that implies you’re just an everyday member of the public.

With any luck, this new legislation will protect the world from online disasters like WalMart’s campervan tour and Sony’s ‘I want a PSP for Christmas’ blog. I’m just wondering what the sentence will be for any transgressors that get caught. Maybe forcing them to use dial-up for six months would be painful enough to make them change their nefarious ways.

Face #79

I never knew you could do THAT on a Mac

I was trying to sort out an internet connection yesterday when I came across this peculiar panel in a Network Utility application. So, if you’re feeling fruity, you just need to give a Mac user your email address.

Show us your arts

I’ve blogged before about how I love the Jackson Pollock site because it gives you an experience of what it’s like to create one of his famous splatter paintings. I discovered another site today that gives you a bit of a Picasso experience. So this is a self-portrait I did in the Pablo-esque stylee. Not quite as good as the Jackson Pollock one - but it’s getting there.

Simply gorgeous

During my daily stumble across the web, I found the Gorgeous films site. I love their opening page. I know it’s a bit like a splash page but it made me chuckle. Sorry. And on the site was this beautiful ad for the Nissan QashQai. I haven’t seen this ad on TV (which isn’t surprising as I hardly watch any) but I thought it was lovely. Enjoy!

Get rid of junk mail by ordering some junk mail

I spotted this poster across the street from our office. Is it ironic or is it cleverly subverting the very media it’s attacking? Hmmm.

Combining stuff that I love to create something crap

I love music. I love playing it. I love listening to it. I love musical instruments. I have hundreds of the things. I love gadgets. I love lasers. So surely I should be happy with some new Buck Rogers-esque musical instrument that you play by breaking laser beams. Shit! I should be over the bleedin’ moon. But I’m not. And this video should show you why:

I’ll stick to my good old fashioned theramin, I think.

5 things I won’t miss about the internet

Following my post a couple of days ago about how crap the internet used to be, here’s a post about how crap it actually is now. In years to come, we’ll look back at our current crapness and laugh about how we used to put up with it. And how we actually used to think it was good. In the same way as many people thought ‘The Young Ones’ was good when it hit our screens in the 80s and when they see it now they’re slightly surprised at how shit it actually was and can’t believe they used to find it funny.

So these are things that I’m looking forward to going the way of the dial-up modem:

1. Banners
   It’s no secret that I don’t like banners. And, in the same way that pop-up blockers became popular, ad blocking plug-ins are already a hit for web browsers. I won’t be sorry to see those skinny branded rectangles disappear from our screens. However, I unfortunately know that wherever there’s an audience, there’s a client willing to pay money to shout their message at them. The truth is that if banners disappear they’ll be replaced by something even more intrusive and offensive. But just let me fantasise for a second.
2. Web 2.0
   Oooh! Shiny glass buttons that look as if they’ve fallen out of OSX. Made up words with too few vowels for URLs. Unnecessary use of community. Like the dotcom bust, I’m looking forward to the web 2.0 thing being a thing of the past. However, I shudder to think what web.3.0 will be like.
3. Facebook zombies
   I never understood this one. It’s the digital equivalent of shell suits and bling to me. All this crap has succeeded in putting me off Facebook. Every time I logged on I was inundated with zombies, pirates and invited to discover which Jedi I was. Not my scene, thanks.
4. Second Life
   I hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. I might think differently about it if I was a some kind of perverted, social misfit with terminal halitosis, a good broadband connection and too much time on my hands.
5. Passwords
   There’s got to be a better way of making sites secure. It actually makes me feel less secure because if anyone got access to the one password I use for just about everything, they’d be able to seriously bugger up my life.

What have I missed? Tell me what you’d like to see the back of.

Face #78

Is TV ready to be toppled?

I read in Campaign today that internet advertising revenue in the UK is about to eclipse TV advertising revenue in the next year. Interesting. But I’m not seeing this as a reason to stick two fingers up at traditional agencies and gloat that digital is the future. No siree. It seems that the figures they’re talking about are from online display ads - banners to you and me - and paid for search. Two things that I’m not a great fan of. And I think that this area of online is just as broken as the traditional linear TV model.

So you heard me right- I don’t like banner advertising. As an all-round advertising whore, I’ve done lots of work in DM where response rates are considered to be high if they’re 2%. Banner advertising is about 100th of that. In fact, I think I could count on one hand how many banners I’ve clicked on in my entire life. And with ad blocking browser plug-ins growing in popularity, I can’t help but wonder if they’ll go the way of the pop up.

I just don’t think this kind of self-interested approach to communications is using the internet at its best. It’s much better to give potential customers a positive brand experience that will get them talking or give them a good feeling or make their life easier. That’s what I want from a brand - that they care about me before they expect me to care about them.

Am I wrong here? Am I just a cynical old hack? Am I a Utopian idealist? Or am I a realist who would rather give a client something that has a positive impact in the lives of their customers?

What do you think?

5 things I don’t miss about the internet

Once upon a time, the internet used to suck. We didn’t really know how badly it sucked because we had nothing to compare it with. It was like eating Pot Noodle without ever having tasted a King Prawn Rogan Josh with pilau rice, saag aloo and a keema naan.

So here are the top 5 things I hated about the internet back in dial-up days.

1. Splash Pages
   Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean that you SHOULD. Introducing a site with a Flash animation always sucked. I couldn’t believe it when the American office of my last agency revamped their website with a Flash intro backed with pseudo-African music. Ugh! And that was last summer!
2. Flashing Text
   I’m so glad I wasn’t epileptic in the 90s. HTML used to have the tag <BLINK> that was grossly overused. But that’s because back then most sites were created by tasteless geeks rather than arty-farty designers. Thank goodness <BLINK> is no longer supported by modern browsers. Hallelujah!
3. Porno pop-ups
   What a nightmare. You’d be doing some ‘research’ on the dark underbelly of the internet when you heard someone approaching. You went to close the window and a pop-up appeared. And then another. And another. And another. And before you knew it, your monitor was filled with porno pop-ups. And there was so much happening on the screen that your computer couldn’t cope and ground to a halt, rendering it impossible to close all the windows in time. That’s what the reset button was invented for.
4. Bestiality emails
   Before netiquet and corporate crack-downs, the office ‘lads’ used to send images of men ‘enjoying’ goats, girls ‘having fun with’ dogs, grannies ‘pleasing’ horses. Your inbox was a minefield that you couldn’t open before breakfast. Thank goodness those days are over and we’re all enlightened enough to enjoy ‘two girls, one cup’ without forcing it on our unsuspecting colleagues.
5. Forums and chatrooms
   I know they’re still around but only the hard-liners seem to use them any more. I suppose, to be honest, what I’m glad about is that we don’t have right-wing fundamentalist scaremongers preaching about their evils any more. Praise be!

Virgin Media are evil bastards that want to kill our internet

OK. So Virgin Media fixed my phone. It only took 32 people to join the Facebook group before they responded. Not bad! But I’ve just found out about their plans to bugger up the internet for all their subscribers.

Their incoming CEO has said that internet neutrality is “bollocks” and that he plans to put companies that don’t pay Virgin a premium into the “bus lane”. And that includes the BBC iPlayer.

I can’t see how this would be legal. And I certainly can’t see it being successful if enough Virgin Media customers stood up to them. Do I really have to create another Facebook group here? I’m going to keep my eye on this one!

Read more about it here.

Virgin Media give me a surprise

I got a phone call from an unknown number on my mobile this morning. It was a Virgin Media engineer asking if he could come round in an hour. He actually arrived in just over half an hour, fixed my phone and sorted out my broadband so that it would be faster and more reliable. Isn’t it amazing what a Facebook group can do?

So far, the experiment has worked out OK. But it’s only over when they’ve made me truly happy and sorted things out for the other complainants on the Facebook group.

Power to the people!

Face #77

Guest Face #2

Another guest face-spotter. And another New Yorker. This one is from a copywriter know as Catcher in the Rye. You can read his blog here. Cheers Catcher!

The endless cycle of hope and disappointment from Virgin Media

The story continues.

I really want to cover it as a social experiment now. But I promise not to get totally bogged down in it. I’ll keep posting the usual crap as well.

So - here we go.

I got an email from a guy called John at the Chief Executive’s Office at Virgin Media yesterday afternoon.

It said this:

Hi Dave,

I have receiving information that your have not had a working Virgin media telephone service over the last 2 months. I would like to look into this matter for you with a view to resolving this issue.

Please can you provide the following information so that I can locate your account?

Let’s overlook his interesting use of the English language. That’s not what this is about. Wanting this debacle resolved, I furnished him with the information he wanted as soon as I read the email last night. And I told him that I would be delighted if he sorted it out.

I was expecting a call first thing this morning. Late morning would also have been OK. Lunchtime would have been acceptable. Early afternoon would have been bearable. But it’s now nearly the end of the day. No call. No email. No flowers.

But why would I expect anything more from Virgin Media?

In the meantime two more sufferers have added their issues to the Facebook group. Virgin need to sort them out as well. And we need to spread the word and get even more people onto the group.

Keep supporting me people. I want to see if this little experiment is going to work.

Watching the bee-bee-sii

A couple of days ago the BBC announced that they had developed their iPlayer so that you could watch it on your Wii. Not bad after their iPod announcement last month. So, I tried it out a couple of nights ago.

As you’d expect, it works just like the website - except it’s on your TV and you control it with your Wiimote. It would probably have been a bit more impressive for me if I had a more impressive TV. As it is, my TV is only fractionally larger than my laptop screen. I’m just not a 100 inch plasma kind of guy. The one drawback was that full screen didn’t seem to be available. But this is probably an issue with the Wii browser itself. However, on their blog, the iPlayer dudes say that they have plans to build an actual Wii app which would obviously give you a much better Wii-like experience.

But for now, this will do nicely. I just love it that the BBC are trying so hard to deliver technical innovation. That’s something I’m happy to pay my license fee for.

iTunes and Firefox had a baby

I have a little system going. I allow myself 5 Stumbles a day. No more, no less. And yesterday on the third time I hit the Stumble button I discovered Songbird.

If you imagine the bastard offspring of iTunes and Firefox, you’re pretty close. You see, it’s like iTunes with a web browser built in. You use it to visit music blogs or do a web search for mp3s. Alongside the webpage, it shows you a list of the linked mp3s and allows you to listen to them, download them or buy them. (Please steal your music responsibly, children.) It’s not even in beta stage yet - but you can download the slightly glitchy developers’ version from their site. I’m enjoying it - but I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll revert back to iTunes for most of my listening and just use it occasionally. But, for now, I’m hooked!

Show me your support

More than 2 months have gone by without Virgin Media managing to fix my phone. I’m now lost in an eternal loop with them where I need someone to call me back to get my phone fixed - but nobody ever calls me back. Maybe they will if I spread the message of their shiteness to enough people.

So please join my Facebook group. And please tell all your friends to do the same. When I have enough people they may notice and get back to me.