Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

I am not turning into the person I had planned for myself, that’s a fact. The person people see is not, in fact, even the person I think they should be seeing. I know I’m not alone – at 18-19 anything was possible … then kids!

Lucy Thorpe, an old colleague, nailed the excuse for me when I was lamenting my existential crisis over on Twitter. I was feeling sorry for myself and she offered me someone to blame. It’s the children’s fault. Without them I’d be a jazz poeting traveller with houses and women around the world.

So let this come as a warning to you all! Yes, that includes you Charlotte and Dean …

TechTags Plugin [ business | career | children | Education | England | Existential crisis | life | parenting | Twitter ]

A couple of days ago I tweeted on Twitter:

I feel so dirty – my genius sidebar on iTunes has just suggested Jedward … I feel judged, wrongly

I still feel that same – especially as the next day it suggested Van Halen! Please bear in mind, I’ve been buying stuff by The XX, African Soul Corporation and Elbow … I’m cool. But the iTunes Genius Bar had a different view of me … it clearly viewed me as a loser and, I admit, my self esteem has taken a knock.

The Tweet made it over to Facebook and, bless my supportive group of friends, I was roundly mocked. Then, the very witty Emma Molyneux, mocked up a letter from Apple explaining the sidebar’s decision … my feeling is, she’s working on the inside. Are Apple working to erode the cool and artistic integrity of our nation – we must be told!

“Dear Mr Johnson,

I am so sorry to hear you are not entirely satisfied with the services of your Itunes Genius sidebar.
You seem to think, based on your previous downloads that we are not suggesting the correct genre of music for you.

Unfortunately most of the recommendations are not infact based on previous downloads but simply on Apple’s newly developed Cool sensor.

It has not had much publicity so far but you will be reading about it soon I’m sure.

It’s quite complicated technology to go into here but basically it just knows what you really want to listen to but are maybe just not able to admit it …. even to your self….. Yet.

We just know what you really want and one day We know you will thank us.

Hope this clears up your queries.

Have a nice day.”

TechTags Plugin [ App Store | Apple | Facebook | Farnham | iPhone | ITunes | Macintosh | satire | Technology | Twitter ]

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It took me 25 minutes to get a coffee this morning. I’d be cool with that if there were hundreds of people in the queue – but there weren’t. There were four.

Coffee shops like Starbucks have simply offered too much choice to people who can’t deal with it.

I could smell the fear in the short queue as the poor people in front of me had to move the X Factor result to one side of their brain to focus on some challenging questions. In or out, wet or not, milk or soy … large, larger or bucket. Not one of them could cope with the choice. And the choice of names, surely, is provocative. I didn’t see anyone skinny ordering a skinny latte – but I guess someone in head office though asking people to request an ‘I want to be skinny’ latte was a little cruel?

It led me to the graph below – I’m convinced you were over-indulged as a child if your coffee order takes you over a minute:

We also have a guess graph today from a lecturer at an esteemed UK university. So driven to act was James (found here on Twitter) by our Facebook graph here that he not only penned one of his own – but made it considerably more pertinent that The Plooptionary had!

I have a theory that has nothing to do with today’s graph and it goes like this:  the stories you see in the papers from scientists are all commissioned by the papers themselved.  There isn’t a scientist in the world who focusses on anything that is ‘newsworthy’.  All scientists working on such important work as “How far can you shoot Noel Edmonds from a cannon”, “How long can Simon Cowell be held under water”, “Can christmas tree lights be made from butter” and “Can you feed Harrogate on smarties for one month” … they’re all being worked on by former journalists.

Journalism has become too hard – there’s stuff to write, stories to find and PR people to moan about.  At the last count 19.4% of national journalists and 80% of trade journalists (most trade journals are now written by the companies covered themselves – so little’s changed) had entered academia.  There they churn out reseach with the sole aim of making it onto page 7 of the Telegraph, it has no use to the wider world.  Once page 7 has been achieved they apply for grants for more newsworthy research and get specific commission from the papers for research they want to write about.

I was speaking to someone from the Times the other day and I know, for a fact, they have 3 journo-scientists working on groundbreaking studies for page 9.  In January you will see articles on “Should fertilizer be made out of Daley Thompson”, “Why the UK should lobby for a sport based purely on Davina for the Olympics” and “Why all computer games should, somehow, teach children grammar”.

Is the plooptionary on Twitter?  Hell yeah … you can follow here