Telly writers think we’re all geeks

I love it when writers of mass media refer to new technologies on their programmes. These embarrassing attempts usually happen when they feel they have to keep the programme current or of the time. Sadly these excursions into the real world are almost always highly embarrassing, mainly illustrating how far most TV writers are behind the rest of us technopeople - the folks who use the internet, ipods and gasp, mobile phones.

British Soaps are usually fairly good at it, dropping in a telltale beep beep accompanied by someone fumbling in a pocket for a mobile. Then comes the inevitable very still and overly long extreme close up of a four year old phone showing a text message. Where they tend to really fall down is that usually the message is in awful text speak with lots of GR8, CU 2Nite action. It doesn’t matter who sends the text, whether they are fourteen or forty, that’s how the technopeople talk when using Short Message Service technology.

The Archers radio soap (now available as a podcast) does this a lot as well, but someone I’m more forgiving of this, maybe I'm just more forgiving of The Archers in general. Several years ago there were the Ambridge website storylines, which still crop up now an again. 'We’re avin a plowin competition and we’d like to put a story up on the website'. It's endearing, but we all know that putting anything on that site is pointless, it must get minimal traffic.

Just recently an older couple (Phil and Jill I think) are going on a trip to Hong Kong and their granddaughter Pip has been setting up an email address for them. At one point a blog was mentioned but thankfully the idea was poo pooed.

Which brings us round to a recent attempt on CSI. It’s all going fairly well, nice and brief screen shots of Twitter, hey we’re cool with Twitter, IM, blogging, we don’t need to make a big deal about this. But then woops, the writers slip up and reveal what they really think of us technopeople. See if you can spot it:



Yip, 'they don't expect privacy, they value openness'. Pause. I'm not sure where to even begin with this. I do like the other chap's response though.

The writers then run out of words and make a schoolboy error, throwing in the word ‘virtual’. Nobody uses that word anymore, not even my Aunt Hilda who just got email and broadband. And nobody would ever ever use it in the phrase “looks like a virtual love triangle to me.”

Yip telly writers thing we’re all geeks, although we do value openness.

Guess Where?

Well it's pretty easy to guess I know.

Horniman Jellyfish

Click to Play

Some jellyfish swimming around at the Horniman museum in South East London. Just trialing the blip.tv cross posting.

Facebook Pages - Now RSS enabled

As mentioned previously the new Facebook pages seemed initially a little, well crap. They allowed you to create a profile and put a poor quality header at the top and that was about it.

I have to admit though they've come on leaps and bounds by making an RSS application (Simply RSS) available. This allows the page creator to pull in lots of content from their main site or anywhere else they choose and start making it available through Facebook. Now that starts to get interesting.

I've added in RSS feeds to Camping Spots on Facebook and as expected, feeding in some content makes a huge difference.


Of all the Facebook Sponsored Pages I've seen it's worth taking a look at the New York Times version with a variety of feeds, quizzes and content available.

Facebook Pages - just a bit crap?

Just over a week ago Facebook launched Facebook Pages and Facebook Ads which allow organisations to create their own profiles which Facebook users can become fans of. The ads then allow you to promote your Fan page (or other external website) by creating and paying for Facebook ads.

There was definitely a need for something like these fan pages. Organisations, commercial or otherwise, have been creating fake profiles to generate interest around their products for a while. I have heard of several profiles being closed down recently because theye represented businesses. Organisations could always create a group but these are fairly limited in what apps you can add to the group profile, making a very limited experience.


I’ve just created a Fan page for Camping Spots and so far it’s been a frustrating experience. The image options for adding your company logo are very poor and the range of applications you can add to the profile is bizarre. You’re fine if you want to add a ‘Which celeb am I most like’ application, but if you want to feed content into the page using RSS then you quickly come unstuck. Whether this is a purposeful Facebook move to stop them recreating the Yellow Pages or just an oversight, I’m not sure.

While Facebook Fan Pages are a bit crap, Facebook Ads most certainly are not. These allow any Joe Bloggs to tap into the Facebook advertising market, promoting fan pages or external URLs.

They allow very terrifyingly specific targeting of ads - want only liberal UK students living in Nottingham who are fans of the Star Wars Movies to see your ads, no problem!


And the crunch - they let you specify what budget you want to spend per day on advertising.

Which is all a bit scary.

Are you odd?

A 'friend' of mine has just sent me this link in regard to looking for possible vacancies. According to BBC News, a new Star Trek movie is being made and the production are looking for people with a "unique" appearance.

Specifically:

* extremely large heads and foreheads
* wide or close-set eyes
* over or undersized ears and/or nose
* facial deformities
* pronounced cheekbones
* ultra perfect or ultra plain-looking people

Application forms can be picked up at your local job centre.

Thanks Ros.

Gun for hire

Well the good ship Interesource has sailed, collided at full speed with a financial iceberg and is currently plummeting towards the bottom of the Ocean of Administration. It was an amazing 6 months and everyone at IR was great and the clients we had were fantastic. I've certainly learned an awful lot since leaving the Big Black Cauldron.

So now I am looking for new and exciting challenges. I have years of interactive experience, piles of video content creation knowledge and now know a thing or two about the whole social and marketing world.

So if that matches the knowledge or experience you are looking for, please get in touch.

My contact details are:
Nairn Robertson
07779081179
nairnski [at] gmail [dot] com (trying to avoid the nasty spam bots)

Get a copy of Nairn's CV (pdf)