Web 2.0

Thinking about myspace again today, as I looked at it yesterday, there was some piece in the guardian today about how Q Magazine "hilariously" made up a band and generated a buzz about them using myspace. I am a bit out of touch with modern pop music, but I do still share an office with people who work in the music industry, and no-one I know had heard any of this buzz. Seems like it was just a buzz on myspace, which doesn't really count for much - people who use myspace and link themselves to other peoples pages don't care if you're a real friend or a good band or a real person or anything, they just want to see their name and picture on as many people as possible. This is rubbish, the internet has eaten itself, can I get out now? If I had any skills at all that didn't relate to the web I'd like to turn my back on it all I think, I'm getting slightly concerned that the less the effect I have on the real world, the more I try to compensate on the internets, by writing about it on my weblog and things...

* contemplative silence *

As I said, I don't really have any real world skills, so I'll carry on as I am, I posted this on the popbitch board today, and felt some gratification at the comments there. Also I'm taking comfort in the fact people have been viewing and commenting on more of my pictures recently, though that's only because I've been whoring them by posting them to groups and things and things, it's all pretty sad.

Flickr and myspace are not the worst web communities of the day though, I'm saving that honour for www.youtube.com. I saw this great video yesterday:



Really well made, it's some kind of satirical spoof technology though isn't it? None of the 300 odd responses to the video seem to recognise this, so I could be wrong, but far too many of those comments are really primitive spams, and the rest are all annoying children, it's even worse than digg.com.

The internet is really annoying me today. Possibly it's just frustration at being unable to get any of my current ideas a) done, or b) noticed. What can I retrain in in the next six months?

2006 :: Comment / reply

Other people's blogs

It's time for a roundup of things I've lazily ripped off www.casino-avenue.co.uk before heading home, first this piece about metblogs, interesting. I am trying REALLY HARD to read something rude into "soliciting... advertising" but I can't quite make it. Also New Cross, the new Hoxton seems to be a massive work of crap, though I longed for articles like that when I was living there. There's been some interest at last in Folkestone from the Guardian, all about the creative scene there. It's probably similarly unrecognisable to the drinkers and shavers of Folkestone, but HEY, I'm proper invested in there now, so bring this sort of thing on! Though the leading light of the piece - Roger De Haan - does make a point of saying they don't want Folkestone Creative Quarter to become a new Hoxton:

De Haan has looked at Hoxton in London and Temple Bar in Dublin and is determined that Folkestone's development won't follow the same trajectory. "There have been a lot of regeneration projects elsewhere that have been very successful in using artists to kick-start projects, but then as the places are regenerated, the rents rise and the artists are forced out." To counter this, De Haan's Creative Foundation has acquired about 90,000 sq ft of property in the area so it is in a position to control rents over the long term, protecting artists from the downside of economic recovery.

2004 :: Comment / reply

Weak roundup

Aargh, had loads of things I wanted to write, and I can't remember a word of it now. It was going to be a big eloquent post today, proper blogging, but now it's just going to be a scattering of mostly unrelated paragraphs.

Joined the Amazon rental scheme in the end, and we've had our first delivery, the first two disks of Angel season 2... it's 65.59 at the time of writing, which was a bit steep for us, so we're getting the series for under a tenner. Off to Folkestone this weekend and we'll be able to watch it all on our smart new DVD player.

Enjoying Desperate Housewives though they have an odd Sex and the City thing going on with their posters, which are everywhere... all the women look a bit odd and rough in the pics, why would they do that? What's going on with Teri Hatcher in this picture? Actually they all look good there, but blown up to billboard size, blee...

Doing some recoding of my message board / blog software, and this is my testing ground before releasing it live on www.popex.com and our intranet and things, so apologies if this breaks. Speaking of apologies, I have sent letters today to the other flat owners in our block, saying there's scaffolding going up soon... I hope they're OK with it and don't try and stop the work going ahead! They wouldn't, would they?

Speaking of work, DERRR! Unless you're completely anonymous (and most bloggers are far too vain) you can't afford to write unpleasant things about the people in a position to cause you problems.

The royals, don't you just love 'em? Hmm the Currant bun's cover image isn't being duplicated online right now...

2005 :: Comment / reply