[via Kottke]

[F]or every brilliantly thought out and well executed mashup of art and data, there now seems to be an influx of mundane and formulaic counterparts infesting the very internet that we hold so near and dear.

Infographics are turning into one of those things that’s in danger of losing its effectiveness because it’s used unthinkingly by too many people who don’t actually know what they’re doing. See also ’cloud’, ‘social media’, ‘content strategy’.

I think Red Frog is more productive by giving unlimited vacation days. Here’s why.

My intuition agrees with this. I wonder, though, if it came to the crunch and I were running my own business, I’d have the courage to do this.

The Observer:

A small group of people will meet in Washington later this year for what they hope will be a lunch to change the world. The meal should consist of fried chicken and nothing else, but while it may look like chicken, have the texture of chicken and even taste like chicken, it will never have lived or breathed.

Should someone succeed in ‘growing’ artificial meat, it’s going to lead to some interesting philosophical discussions, particularly around whether it would be ok for vegetarians to eat it. If it’s grown from stem cells, then surely it still counts as something that’s come from an animal? In which case, whether it’s ok to eat it would depend on why you’re a vegetarian.

The Telegraph:

[R]ecent research has shown that there are “big differences” across age groups in New York, where older speaker have the classic New York accent – “fuhgeddaboutit” – but younger speakers did not replicate it.

This is a shame. I spent a short break in New Yoik a few years back taking delight in asking for ‘cawfee’ with my breakfast¹. There was a time, not that long ago, where I was able to work out approximately which part of London someone had grown up in by their accent but I suspect there’s a more homogenous accent across London nowadays.

1. which I don’t normally do but tea in the US is horrific [↩]

The Kernel:

Yet Arianna Huffington seemed to be under the impression that the launch of HuffPo UK would be greeted as a revolutionary marvel by the British – as if she were the first person to bring fire to these isles.

I was never that fussed by the Huffington Post’s US incarnation. I checked out the UK version a few times and was even less impressed. It just looked like a lazy transfer of US culture with a token attempt at a sprinkling of UK news. Looking at today’s front page, it’s almost as if they produced it just for the purposes of backing me up.

Seriously, a big splash about US Republican pre-election nonsense? On a ‘UK edition’? Really?!

The other day, I asked this on Twitter: “Straw poll: faced with this after clicking ‘unsubscribe’ in an email, what’s your next action?”

In case that’s a bit too small to read, the text is (incorrect spelling ‘unsubscibe’ and visible p tags are as per the original):

Selected Subscription

Please confirm which service you want to unsubscibe for the email address [redacted]:

Weekly Film Times email <p>Don’t miss out on the latest releases at Cineworld Cinemas, tick this box to receive the Weekly Film Times email. You will get the film times for your favourite Cineworld sent to your inbox every week so you can plan your next outing to the cinema.</p>

Button text: Remove

The responses:

@logorrhoea Very poor! But I am assuming lax attention to usability and would check it and click ‘remove’.

— Myf Nixon (@mockduck) January 11, 2012

 

@logorrhoea Loud, vituperative swearing, possibly followed by murder.

— Roger Hart (@RMH40) January 11, 2012

 

@logorrhoea unsubscribe, if I’ve clicked that far thats what I want to do. BUT if I had more than one sub with them I may only want to do 1.

— Chris Comben (@chriscomben) January 11, 2012

 

@logorrhoea Report the email as spam.

— Cennydd Bowles (@Cennydd) January 11, 2012

 

@logorrhoea Fire bomb my nearest Cineworld.

— Chris Harding (@The_Kraken) January 11, 2012

 

@logorrhoea shout GRRRR so loudly that next door’s dog starts barking

— Ali Turnbull (@fit_to_print) January 11, 2012

If I could marry a Twitter account, it would be @guardianstyle.

Two examples why:

The fact is that a capital I in internet, like a hyphen in e-mail, is as quaint as Television or wire-less (as they originally were spelt).

— Guardian style guide (@guardianstyle) January 19, 2012

In old-fashioned poetry, perhaps. RT @nickbano: @guardianstyle Is “whilst” ever acceptable, tolerable or correct?

— Guardian style guide (@guardianstyle) January 18, 2012

Rocky Agrawal on Venturebeat:

But what concerns me most is that Google is touting these meaningless statistics in the hopes that journalists will misunderstand them and report that Google+ is seeing rapid growth. The bottom line is, those 60 percents, 80 percents and 90 million registered users are just there to mask the fact that Google doesn’t want to tell us how many people are actually using Google+.

I’ve yet to see anyone other than people working in social media talk about Google+ in a positive way. And even then, the social media experts’ exhortations that you or your brand must be on Google+ looks to me to be based on the fear of missing out on an undefinable something based on Google’s spurious figures rather than any positive feeling about the service.¹

1. Also see QR codes. [↩]

The Guardian on the rather undemocratic scuppering of a private member’s bill that wanted to look at moving British time on by one hour (basically aligning with central European time):

A core group of 10 MPs combined to scupper the bill, complaining that, while the Northern Ireland administration had the power to veto any UK change, neither the Scottish parliament and Welsh Assembly nor the leaders of the Scottish and Welsh governments would have comparable rights.

I’m not dismissing the (cliché?) Scottish farmers’ argument against darker mornings, but is there any reason why the Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish absolutely have to move their clocks along with the English? It would be an inconvenience, for sure, not being aligned within the United Kingdom but – and perhaps I’m betraying how much I work with people in Europe in saying this – not any more of a pain than it is for England being out of step with the continent.

[via @jane_copland]

On the safe assumption that Tom Harris wasn’t forced to resign for flogging a dead meme, surely by creating his Downfall parody of Alex Salmond he demonstrated how well qualified he was for his role as Labour’s ‘social media tsar’?

Suzanne Moore in The Guardian, writing about the ‘growing culture of outrage‘:

If one’s default setting is now to be part of some anonymous but offended mob, somehow the hierarchy of outrage implodes into meaninglessness.

This reminded me of the response from Starbucks to being ‘slammed by customers angry about losing out on benefits under the new loyalty scheme My Rewards‘ last week:

“We appreciate that a small number of customers on social media are being very vocal, in our stores we’re seeing a positive movement towards the My Rewards scheme and record traffic on our site for people registering cards and opting in to offers.”¹

From that Starbucks quote I glean two things:

1. A maturing response to social media outrage. Not that long ago, brands would panic at a few negative tweets. Nowadays, they’re placing the whinging in context and assessing if it’s a storm in a teacup instead of responding in a knee-jerk fashion.²
2. Social media outrage is defeating itself. When there is no reasonable scale of outrage, simply either ‘not offended’ or ‘apoplectic’, how do you discern what really needs sorting out? “The hierarchy of outrage implodes into meaninglessness.”

1. Comma splice and awful corporate newspeak are as reported by Marketing Week. [↩]
2. I’m not saying by any stretch of the imagination that brands have got this right yet but they’re getting there. [↩]

Some sensible perspective on that ‘Met spent £35,000 on calling the speaking clock’ story, from James Ball in The Guardian:

Some examples: assuming everyone in the Met drinks two cups of tea per shift, the force’s annual bill on teabags alone will top £65,000. Allowing a modest four toilet rolls per year per officer gives a yearly bill of £34,000+. I’d keep going, but we may need to save some of these for a boost on a slow news day.

A nice victory in the war against mumbo jumbo.