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Lunch 2.0

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs, Webshite.

Lunch 2.0 – About

Well well well – with charming inevitability, we have (after Web 2.0, Marketing 2.0, eCommerce 2.0, Business 2.0)… “Lunch 2.0”.

This concept, according to the latest lunchors (those excellent folk at Meebo) is as follows:

Lunch 2.0, to give a bit of background, was a cool idea that a few folks from Plaxo had. They bring together people interested in new emerging technologies around the Bay area and have them chat during lunch.

[the ‘about’ page at lunch20.com still has the out of the box ‘about’ page].

You can read about the event on the Meebo blog.

It’s a pity that they didn’t take the opportunity to radically reassess the lunching paradigm, to denote the phase change from Lunch 1.0 (so yesterday, dahlings) to Lunch 2.0. There’s no historical nod to the sandwich houses of L2.1, nor the late-90s “soup craze” of L2.2, redifining, as it did, the notion of a ‘liquid lunch’ – reappropriating the term for vegetarian tee-totallers the world over.

I’d have liked to see some key components of Web 2.0 showing up in the lunching, to whit:
* modular, not monolithic. A pizza’s just too old school. Mezze, tapas or even sushi would have had a more component-oriented approach.
* API/service-oriented. While take-away certainly counts as Service 1.0, I think a more personal, one to one, and individual service approach should be encapsulated here. Maybe cooking at the table for the person next to you? chopping their food? Pre-mastication?

Seems like there’s plenty of room for people to build on this ‘modern lunching’ notion: that is, before we all tire of “me too” namings and/or Web3.0 necessitates Lunch3.0!

UPDATE:

Darn, an even more cunning take on the ‘nutrition/eating 2.0’ bandwagon: Cake 2.0 or ‘Cake on Rails’. Thanks to Chris Lake for this.

Helen of Troy’s beauty was such that it could launch a thousand ships. What is the quality therefore of Web2.0 that it can launch a thousand parodies??

MMS – a purpose at last!

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs, Technology, Webshite.

MMS to Combat London Grafitti at MobHappy

Yay – at last a sensible purpose for MMS (other than sending photos of the kids with mucky faces to all and sundry): calling in the White Knights of the local authority to clear up graffiti, fly-tipping and other antisocial behaviour.

While not quite as satisfying as calling up close air support (think choppers, “Ride of the Valkyries” and “Platoon”), I have visions of Rapid Response Units, armed with picture phones, awaiting our text…

It shows though the innovation happening in local authories in the UK, opening up services and responsiveness. With move mobile phones in the UK than people I reckon that we can’t even call them elitist 🙂

All I want now is a phone with sufficiently good resolution to scan in the barcodes of expired Road Fund Licences and/or the VIN number of cars without. A mobile crushing lorry could then render the car into a heap of diced metal and plastic, ready for recycling, while the camera then catches the look on the face of the tax dodging, insurance-free, polluting, congestion-charge-evading tossers when they get their just deserts.

You’ll see me in the picture cowering behind the Very Large Gentlemen – joy being balanced by fear, natch.

Three cheers for Lewisham. Not sure what it’ll do for the People’s Art of Graffiti, but hopefully we’ll now get a better view when the rubbish, fly-tipping and abandoned cars are removed 😉

Firefox: resource hog…

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

I’ve been using Firefox for, oh, ages and I’m a total, utter fan. Generally slick, usable and stable. Or at least, it was…

I recently (gloat mode on) acquired a 2ghz MacBookPro (end gloat) and was looking forward to screaming performance. My last laptop was a 1-ish Ghz Powerbook G4 and it was creaking at the seams for everything other than, erm, TextEdit or, well, that’s it.

Years of application abuse was to blame, I thought, and a clean, shiny MacBookPro should fly.

Well, fly it did for most things, but I was still getting the spinning coloured wheel of death – what on earth? I also noticed that Firefox was stalling and, infrequently, crashing. Hmmm. I decided to keep the activity monitor open and noticed regular 100% CPU usage (er – it’s a _browser_! 100% CPU? Regularly?).

It’s just crashed again and I’m a bit cross now.

I’d dump it, save only that Safari (while being small, light and quick) just sucks at anything that needs javascript or world-at-large compatibility. Web2.0 via Safari is a sad, cold and lonely world!

So, here’s hoping that some capable people fix my favourite browser: before I go mad, of before I’m the laughing stock of those I’ve harangued for a year about how fab Firefox is…

Ah – the tribulations of zealotary.

InformationWeek | Firefox 1.5 | Firefox 1.5: Not Ready For Prime Time? | December 8, 2005

A tale of two awards: Retail Week and Revolution Magazine

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in eCommerce, T'interwebs.

Photo_031706_001.jpg

Ah, it’s a tough life! Last week saw me in my black tie at the Grosvenor House hotel on Park Lane for two award dinners: that for Retail Week on the 16th of March, and the Revolution Magazine awards dinner (for which awards I’d played a small part as a judge).

I was a guest of Conchango at the Retail Week awards and Mike Altendorf and his team were hospitable, generous and highly convivial hosts. The table was just great, with people from M&S, Ann Summers, Comet and Currys, as well as the esteemed CIO at Littlewoods, Martin Wyke.

Our table was a small “digital enclave” and my overwhelming thought about the awards (the next day, as the headache cleared) was how traditional the retail industry is. The people I met all seemed to have worked in the industry for many years, often working through either M&S or GUS or both. These companies clearly provide the basis of training and networking for the industry and I’m sure that an award is due to them for that!

eCommerce is clearly making an impact, but it’s still “other” and “new”. Companies like Conchango (and also Javelin) are championing “integrated commerce”, building upon the tradition capabilities in buying and distribution, but it’s still a matter of turning oil tankers…

The Revolution awards could not have been more different. The gathering was younger, focused on digital marketing and ecommerce, and there was a confident, “up” feeling to the evening from the start.

At some point in my career I’d hope to have the buzz, talent, can-do creativity and digital sparkle from the Revolution evening meet fully the experience, merchandising and capability in the Retail Week camp. Then we’d know that the 21st Century eCommerce aspirations are becoming a reality!

Phil Buxton did really well on the podium and will shortly be tying the knot at his wedding: congrats to Phil – let us know which speech was the most nerve-wracking (my money’s on the wedding speech!).

My final resolution though is to go and see more live, stand-up comedy: The Pub Landlord (Revolution) and Dara o’Brien (RW) were both great: sharp, funny and clearly bemused by (aka not giving a toss about) the events – wonderful!

More shots from the CrapCam after the jump.

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The Logos of Web2.0

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs, Webshite.

The Logos of Web 2.0 | The FontShop FontFeed | Font blog, typography tips, and design news.

This is a great post, taking a ‘fontographer’s’ view (I think that’s the same as a typographic view, but I could be wrong…) at the logos of the ‘web2.0’ companies.

There’s certainly a distinctive “look” to any self-respecting W2 company’s website but it’s been difficult to characterise (other than saying “pastel colours, chunky san-serif fonts and lots of white”). This post gives a neat categorisation, examples, a guess at the font… Fun.

Most interesting though are the comments from the logo designers – that’s web community for you.

Now all we need is the parody site…

Dining out on Robbery

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

Just had the best email from a friend – just made my evening!

You will all have heard/read about the robbery… here is the challenge: how do you put that amount of cash back into the system without being caught?

I propose dinner, 4 March 2006, at our place (or somewhere else if majority prefers it so) and everybody comes prepared with a ‘plan’… only condition is your plan has to ‘reintroduce’ at least £5million in no longer than 5 years… the group will judge who devised the best plan… who’s up for it?

Excellent!

Sadly, we’re already committed to dinner next week and won’t be able to make it (darn) but it has rather got me thinking…

Ordinarily my fantasies to do with large amounts of cash relate to finding a stray, winning rollover ticket, or inheriting from an unknown (but now much loved) Argentinian Aunt, that sort of thing. I don’t normally worry about how to offload or legitimise lots of cash…

Lots of ideas (eg cash-rich, high margin businesses) sprang to mind, but there was the issue of setting up bank accounts, the hassle of pretending to buy £5k of veg each week (where do you dump that amount??). Then I thought of “lifestyle deli” businesses – the sort that pop up, get painted like a Farrow & Ball showroom, have sparse Vitsoe shelving with overpriced goods and then go tits-up in 4 months. These always looked like money-laundering fronts, but it’s actually quite hard to kit out a whole shop for cash without arousing suspicion.

Buying 50million £1 tickets would yield, in all probability a jackpot of £10m if done in one weekend (doh – alarm bells) and that’d seem to be a good recovery percentage. Oh, and if you were later caught you could plead mitigation in sentencing because of the money you’d contributed to “chariddee” via the National Lottery!

Skipping the country with bags of folding notes has to be high on the list – hopefully to a welcoming swiss bank account. I have no idea though how to open a swiss bank account. Any suggestions (with opening deposit, natch) gratefully received.

Whatever I came up with though ultimately founders on traceability to my “real” identity. It’s quite hard to continue to be “me” and launder the cash. Admittedly, were I a dastardly and successful criminal I’d not be too fussed about my “me-ness” (indeed, I’d have many identities) and this is where finally I have to lay my plans… I’d buy up lots of identities from ‘people in pubs’ and use those to create legitimate sources/repositories for cash: savings accounts, post-office accounts, NS&I childrens’ bonds – anything that’ll allow £1-4k at a time to pass though. These can then be accumulated/converted over time.

It’s all very complicated though and – looking over my shoulder as I type – my wife reckons this is a crap idea and ‘just like a bad film’. Ho hum.

What about turning into a grass, pocketing the cash and taking a new identity? 🙂

Seems that I’m not really cut out to be a master criminal…

Any suggestions or inside info, btw, on what the percentage of the gross take that a criminal would keep after fencing? I policeman I once knew reckoned it was 5%-10% of the gross amount stolen. Clearly, fencing/laundering is an involved and complex activity and there will therefore be costs. The comments form is anonymous other than IP address, btw… 🙂

“WriteToThem” stats

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

You’ve just got to admire and love this project, the successor to “FaxYourMP”. Tom Steinberg has really created a wonderful and epoch-changing service here and it’s great to see ‘openness in action’ and some performance stats on our MPs…

WriteToThem.com – WriteToThem.com Zeitgeist 2005

Odd that it’s taken motivated, self-organising individuals to arrange this – and not the performance-table-mad government… Odd that.

Tom’s press release notes:

Highlights
————–

* A remarkable 29 MPs have reported response rates of 100% (ie
everyone who answered the survey said they had got a response).
mySociety director Tom Steinberg said:

“These 29 MPs are doing a truly top notch job of responding to their
constituents. We hope that such large numbers of MPs
doing so well will finally put to rest the myth that it is impossible
to cope with the email workloads most MPs face, and so will motivate
improved response rates at the bottom end of the scale.”

* 44% of people writing to their MP via WriteToThem had never written
to an elected representative before, strongly challenging the claim
that political internet tools are only of use to the politically
engaged.

* Overall MPs have better response rates than any other kind of
elected representative, such as councillors or MEPs or MSPs.

* There are still 6 MPs who don’t accept messages from WriteToThem.com at all

Interesting that dear Mr Galloway, my MP, hasn’t been doing as badly on the response front as you’d expect given that he’s mainly touring the UK, Egypt or in The House… (of Big Brother, not of Commons).

Haves and have-nots of the blogging boom (article)

Written by Ian Jindal on . Posted in T'interwebs.

Blogs to Riches – The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom — New York Magazine

What an enjoyable and well-writted article by a blog-boom, journo insider. I link to it with humility and conscious of the irony (a c-lister reinforcing the status of an a-lister).

The article covers nicely the “power law” relationship between the big ticket blogs and the seething mess of sporadic, ignored and irrelevant personal projects, while also detailing neatly the success of clever, well-executed commercial blogging empires – just like micro-publishing or science/magazine publishing.

Interestingly though this article is not on a blog: it’s a sustained, well-written and well-subbed article for a print magazine. I’m sure that Mike Butcher would appreciate this, and take the opportunity to note once more that “blogging isn’t journalism” 😉

Just to give a taste of the writing style, here’s a lovely snippet when Clive Thompson illustrates the relationship between the A and C list bloggers…

Among bloggers, few things provoke more rancor than the subject of the A-list. Much as in high school, C-listers quickly suspect the deck is stacked against them, and the bitterness flows like cheap wine. No one knows this better than Elizabeth Spiers, the original Gawker girl. She is arguably the most famous professional blogger, since she invented its dominant mode: a titillating post delivered with a snarky kicker, casual profanity, and genuine fan-girl enthusiasm—sonnets made of dirt.

Great read.