In the interests of research, I thought I’d go down to the T-mobile flashmob singalong in Bournemouth square, to test drive the Flip Mino.

Anyone involved in marketing needs to be attending this kind of event, to see what motivates a crowd to turn up and participate with a brand in this way.

My camera work is pretty poor, but I’m sure it’ll improve as I get used to using the flip.

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I’ve noticed that the amount I post on the blog has declined with time, most of the information I share to my network, is now done via twitter and delicious… as a short message or a link with a comment.

It would be easy to forget that most people, probably don’t use all of those platforms. So, especially for those of you who don’t use twitter, or haven’t had a good butchers through my delicious bookmarks… I present: “9 nifty net nuggets”.

The top 9 (slightly random) website tools or articles that I highly recommend you check out.

Happiness as Your Business Model – so true. Hat tip to Neil Moodley for pointing me to this one, I love it. (It’s not as happy clappy as it sounds either)

50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive – absolutely inspired marketing stuff – go read it.

Local Government Association – banned words – full list – words to avoid (mostly) when writing content. The world would be a better place if some of these words/phrases ceased to exist!

Domai.nr – domain name search engine – a simply genius way of choosing the web domain name for your next project.

10 Youtube URL Tricks You Should Know About – don’t want recommendations at the end? How about if the clip you posted started 30secs in? You need these!

115 Marketing Strategies For Small Business – simply great. What it says on the tin.

The theory of reasoned action applied to social networking – behavioural psychology behind status updates – a must read for all!

960 Grid System – one for the designers/developers – a simple system to speed up and tidy up your web design.

Most Web Companies FAIL – great success/fail picture of “2.0” companies, really made me think.

Take 20 minutes and go visit the ones that interest you.
I promise you won’t regret it.

…and as a bonus (always promise something and then over deliver)

What’s the day? – just, because.

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I’ve wanted to do a skydive for a while now… so when my friend Dylan (1000+ jumps) offered to throw me out of a plane… who was I to say no?

As I’m already donating some of my time working with Julia’s House, I thought it made sense to try and raise some cash for them as well.

There are hundreds of children across Dorset who are suffering from life-limiting illnesses. Julia’s House is dedicated to providing love, support and help to both them, and their families ensuring they make the most of the time they have together. Read more about Julia’s house here.

PLEASE NOTE: I’ve paid for the jump – ALL FUNDS raised go to Julia’s House
(big thanks to Dylan for giving me his time and expertise for free too)

I’d like to raise £250, so anything you can give is appreciated.

SPONSOR ME PLEASE

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It’s been a busy few weeks here, with lots of training courses we’ve run on and off site and a visit to London for Internet World ’09.

I’ve also found that I’m using twitter more as a micro-blog and using this less, so if you wan’t to keep up to date with articles I think are worth sharing and other useful stuff, make sure you’re following me on twitter.

There are 2 things from all of this travelling and time away from the office I do want to write about:

1) I was asked during one of my sessions if twitter was “just the current thing”. Yes, Twitter may be a fad, micro-blogging / the real-time web / status updating is not.  For this reason, I make sure that any training is focussed on use of the tool and less on the tool itself.  Understanding why the way we use the internet is changing and how to utilise that, is far more valuable than a how-to twitter session.

2) Please remember that presentations are visual. I sat through a couple of talks at Internet World 09 and I have to say I was mostly dis-appointed (only one, on an exhibitor stand was the exception) – One session seemed to be behind the times, mentioning a technology that will “probably become available in the next year or so”… that I already use and in another the presenter just read off his slides (and people left during the talk). I won’t write an essay here on good presentation, but this is a basic point – DON’T READ OFF SLIDES! Slides should be used to re-inforce what you’re talking about, to offer visual interpretation of a concept or to entertain… not to mirror your speech, people read faster than they speak so your audience will finish before you’ve explained it.

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I’m still getting quite a lot of traffic on my me2everyone post, I was curious to see where it appeared in google (top of 2nd page) when I spotted this interesting piece – read comment #12

“…say you have earned yourself a million of these £0.001-valued shares, and a week later me2everyone goes into debt. As the shares are not paid up, you will be asked to pay for the shares you are holding (it’s one of the first things debtors will go for to reclaim their losses)…”

Hmmm.

But its ok, a quote from me2everyone (#21) says:

“…When the shares are made available to you, they will be fully paid up. If me2everyone PLC creates any debt, you are not responsible for that debt. me2everyone PLC (when formed) will be run by honest business people with decades of experience and a desire to build a fantastic business for all concerned…”

Decades of experience, thats ok then… had it been years, well forget it… 🙂

Jury is still out for me, I’d still advise people avoid it.

“If it sounds too good to be true…”

Personally, when I want to share things for free with the world, I just donate to charity. (Speaking of which, I’m jumping out of an aeroplane soon – more to follow!)

UPDATE: Following a comment, I checked and can still login. I did notice this worrying item in the news:

Ripple members may remember that in February our payment processor PayPal pulled the plug on me2everyone as the volume of transactions went beyond the level they were comfortable with. For six weeks we provided them with all the information they requested in respect of the business, but unfortunately they decided that they did not want to be involved in me2everyone.

Paypal will no longer work with me2everyone, interesting…

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