This is my bright shiny new wordpress.com blog.  Ain't it luvverly?

As if my face weren’t lovely and soft enough, I have to go and slap some moisturizer all over it.  The G-Room moisturizer, number 5 in the range, promises to restore, protect and defend, pretty strong stuff from a squirt of white goo.  You’ll have to watch the video to find out just how restored, protected and defended I feel by the end of it.

Bonus(ish) scene: you get to see a half-hearted attempt at my impersonation of Marlon Brando in the Godfather. 

Only one left now, those of you who have been watching from the start will know that we reach the G-Room videoblog climax with Hair Wax tomorrow.  Mmmmm…  Hair Wax. 

technorati tags: g-room, videoblog, moisturizer, my face, grooming

At the NMK User Generated Content event last week Anthony Lilley from FourDocs and Helen Copnall from MSN appear to have had differing views on the size of something.  Answers on a postcard or in the comments please to:
1. What were they comparing the size of?
2. Which of them do you believe?

[btw I’m writing this using Flock – and I like it]

technorati tags: nmk, london, events, user generated content

This is the second of three podcasts I’ve produced associated with The Policy Unplugged event at Channel 4 last week, The E Word. Fifty or so thinkers in education – without many of the usual Whitehall suspects gathered to talk about the state of education policy in the UK, to see where there was common ground and explore their differences. I was there as a host with special responsibility to help record the day and capture the essence of the conversations.

After introducing themselves to each other and discussing their passions about education, the guests gathered around subjects that had emerged in the discussion. I joined a table hosted by Victoria Marks to talk about Lifelong Learning. In this section you hear from Pat Kane, Tom Bewick, Dave Harris, Marion Seguret, Victoria and err… Lloyd Davis.

During The E Word (19:03 mins – 8.7MB)

Photos for the event are in this photoset

tags: education & education policy & Policy Unplugged & Channel 4

Podcasting & Commercial Radio
Head of New media strategy at Virgin Radio

wearing a firefox t-shirt so obviously one of us!

four stations in the brand portfolio: Virgin Radio, Xtreme, Groove, Classic Rock.

Thinks that ‘amateur’ is the wrong word for podcasting.

One station, one platform => one station many platforms.

Right now 26 differnet platforms, all sorts of internet ones plus cable tv & fm & am etc

Nothing new in portable audio distribution – 1958 transistor radio – the difference is that we can now get things that we want, when we want them. Virgin first to create a daily podcast in March.

Chop out the music, partly because of rights, but also because the personailities are what people want to hear (sounds like a lame excuse to me – do people really want this stuff?) but it’s still full of timechecks. 85,000 downloads a month?! who?

Announcing today for October ‘best of the guests’ and unsigned bands on Xtreme…and possibly Vic Reeves – Big Night in on Wednesday – going to wait and see how that one might turn out..

limited advertising within each podcast eg Special Constables, Orange, Mastercard and Expedia. Trying to be intelligent and place carefully and relevantly (still bloody advertising though).

Shows Top Subscribed Podcasts with Pete & Geoff at No 1 before they’d actually released one.

itunes effect – before itunes 2278 over three weeks, but with iTunes 3644 in one week.

Threats: Nokia 8310, a portable music device. 77% use it to listen to FM radio. Nokia 6610 83% listening. Says this isn’t a threat to them (yeah right). Live TV and DAB stations.

41% of 6300 Virgin website users had a portable media player of which 32% had an iPod and 68% had other types.

Plays out with Pete & Geoff on Mummy, am I ugly? as example of how to raise revenue through linking in to your website (and a way of taking the piss out of your audience)

http://james.cridland.net

Q: I don’t think you get it. It’s about control. Don’t think about it simply as distribution – it’s about control of what you get, when you want it but we’re all struggling to understand what it means.

Q: Matt Gibbs, any plans for charging for podcasts or is it all ad sales. We never have charged for anything. Issues – eg can’t get round iPod DRM. We’ll be interested when we can do it.

Q: any research on when people are actually hearing them? No. Isn’t that the most important thing for advertisers though? Nearly everyone in the room listens both on computer and on a portable music player. Everyone assumes that people only listen in mobile scenario.

Q: You’re in a great position to make the point on rights to the music industry. We’re waiting for DRM.

Q: Podlisteners are expecting something else. I don’t agree. People want to hear stuff that they’re familiar with.

A rainy start to this morning as I make my way through puddles with a damp left arm.

Talking about umbrella loss and other irrelevant minutiae, an update on Public Service Conversations and my decision to move it over to Movable Type and start to tell you about my syndication idea but leave you hanging as I have to sprint to leap aboard the 08:22 to Waterloo.

Update: ooops just found my umbrella at the bottom of my bag sorry family for defaming you.

That’s what Thomas believes and I think it’s certainly worth a try. But then as one of the early contributors, I would wouldn’t I?

Meet the sushradio gang – they’re German, Geeky (in a Good way) and errr… they’re…. a Gang (and they’re all so good looking). I’m really looking forward to hearing something from bicyclemark there but it’s really easy to make something suitable, it just has to be 3-6 minutes long and have interesting information about someplace anywhere in the world – how hard can that be? Go on, have a go yourself – you can send links to your 3 minute tidbits for the ears to sushiradiomail@gmail.com.

I’ve resolved to make my next contribution shorter and louder (well my voice, anyway) but no less informative. I’ll let you know when it’s done.

After the most frustrating will they? won’t they? since the Gold Blend couple, Helen Keegan talks with me (behind Franklin D Roosevelt’s back) about how she got where she is today and what’s up in the world of mobile marketing including what she’s doing to make sure it’s more about the user experience than the size of your server. Features an excellent example of Helen’s outstanding CV and client-list recitation skills and a snatch of the theme tune to Bod.

tags: mobile marketing

Thanks to Sam Curtis Coutin on the yahoo podcasters list for this not very permalink which leads to this

and lets us know that one of the finest minds of the 21st Century is about to start podcasting, no doubt fired up by the success of her previous forays into decentralized media. Turns out it’s part of the promo for her new movie “House of Wax”. As Eric Weaver followed up on the same list, “Podcasting just got very UNCOOL :(”

You still have time to head for the hills, it’s not officially starting until April 29th but till then there’s a teaser on the House of Wax site.

Pass the sick bag.

tags: podcasting & Paris Hilton

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.