Archive for the ‘Online Insights’ Category

This fortnight in Online Insights, we hear about a stoush between an airline and a big man from Hollywood, access some of the world’s greatest minds as well as the world’s worst clients, and learn about whose house to burgle NOW. As always, remember to email me with website suggestions – sd@stevedavis.com.au.

A tale of two plane seats

Kevin's photo sent to Twitter

Movie director, Kevin Smith, is at the centre of a little online storm he created after being ejected off a plane because he was too fat to squeeze into one seat safely. The airline in question is Southwest Airlines in the USA and the story goes that Kevin had bought two tickets for his flight (as he usually does and as the airline policy requires for passenger safety and comfort) but decided to transfer to an earlier flight. Unfortunately, there was only one seat left on the flight and because he could not squeeze into his seat safely, he was asked to leave. So far, one has to say that when they learned there was only one seat available, the airline should have declined to allow him to board, and he should have known that unless he had taken a miracle wonder diet between booking his two seats and electing to try for an earlier flight, he should have stuck with his original flight. However, he decided to try his luck.

Now, I must say, it must be embarrassing to be asked to leave a flight because of your size, and might even trigger some anger as self esteem issues surface and along with feelings of being dealt a bad hand in life. But adding further fuel to this fire, Kevin is one of those minor celebrities from Hollywood who mostly makes the kind of films that are to the world of movies what whoopee cushions are to the world of toys – simply, base, novel, and quickly grown out of. But be that as it may, this thing called Minor Celebrity Syndrome is at play in this story, I believe. MCS works like this. Major celebrities generally have an air of entitlement about them and most people they interact with recognise them and happily kowtow to their needs because they relish sharing stories of having been in so-and-so’s company. They can get stroppy from time to time but it is temporary because the world generally loves them. Minor celebrities, on the other hand, are hardly recognised by anyone at all and so their air of entitlement is often dashed, making them nasty, spiteful and arrogant. Kevin is one of these minor celebs Read the rest of this entry »

In this edition of Online Insights we find a meeting calculator that pulls no punches, get inside information on Fringe events, go where few angels dare to drive, and get all avatar-like.

Avatarise yourself

Steve as Avatar

Every year it seems a new design style enters popular culture. The most recent example was the Obama Hope poster design which spawned the Obama Icon Me website, which we profiled last year on Online Insights. The most recent design craze is related to the movie Avatar. I have seen Avatar-like people and designs popping up all over the place and the latest manifestation to cross my social path is avatarise yourself.

This French website allows you to upload your photo and turn yourself in to one of the avatar characters.

It is easy to use and does a pretty good job. One of the best things about this type of custom image promotional site, is that it actually allows you to download the image and do it all without registering. Read the rest of this entry »

This fortnight in Online Insights we discover a territorial wine lover (is there any other kind), a twitter event that should raise a titter or two, a bit of nostalgia from shopping centres of yesteryear, check in for the disease of the week.

Twandup10, huh?

Firstly, I won’t be reviewing the Adelaide Fringe for the first time in a decade because I will be busy travelling about with my Web 2.0 workshops for small business. So, I am a little out of the loop this year on what’s hot and what’s not, however, my replacement, George Inglis will be the man to follow. If he gets his fingers to a keyboard, we have even agreed to cross post his reviews on my site where most of my past reviews are published.

But one show that has caught my attention is a social media experiment called Twandup10. Interpreted, that means Stand Up Comedy on Twitter in 2010. The deal is simple, from 8pm til 8.30pm on Monday, February 22, 2010, (Central Australian Summer Time) a number of twingetwits (Fringe Twits) will perform standup style tweet comedy. It will be a free, online event, perfectly timed to fill the quietest night on the Fringe calendar, Monday night.

Read the rest of this entry »

In this fortnight’s Online Insights we discover food the old fashioned way, consider the look and feel of our homes, explore the world and our city with new service and capture timeless wisdom for the next generation.

79 Degrees

If you are a foodie, you will probably love this new site created by two, Adelaide-based food fanatics who are on a mission to rescue us from eating bland, worthless food!

But unlike the plethora of cooking and food sites out there, 79 degrees is “less about food and more about food as a culture, the centerpiece of society, the centre of the home.”

As the guys say on the website, “We will talk about good food from first principles. We are not chefs, we are not cooks, we do this out of love for good food and what it does to our lives and our families. We will take the mystery out of good food; promoting the fun and stimulating aspects of cooking – not just eating!”

Who are these guys? They’re Nathan and George. During the day, they both work for the Property Council but by night and by weekend, they can be found in their kitchens, making food, trying new things, and sharing it with their families. Oh, yes, food used to be like that!!!

Read the rest of this entry »

In this fortnight’s edition of Online Insights we listen in to the audio tour for the Great Pandas at Adelaide Zoo (yes, I made them which means one of my online ventures finally qualifies for Online Insights), look at a strange but intriguing clock, learn the truth about restaurants and what your waiter really thinks of you, and have some fun venting about a web2.0 removal tool called the suicide machine. Remember, your suggestions are always welcome via sd@steveedavis.com.au.

Giant panda audio tour

Well, after months of development and scriptwriting, we can finally share with you the audio tour for your visit to the pandas at Adelaide Zoo. Here is the introduction (you can download the full audio tour on the giant panda website)

In the process of developing and voicing these scripts, I gained a deep insight into the amazing work done by the Interpretation Unit at Zoos SA. These people have deep love for their work and the animals and have to tread a difficult line between honouring the zoological integrity of the work of the keepers and the latest scientific understandings of animals and conservation with our needs as ordinary visitors who don’t want the mumbo jumbo of latin names and fussy detail. Read the rest of this entry »

In this edition of Online Insights we get a stern talking to about our dietary habits, snoop through Social Media tools being used to fight crime, marvel at the joys of data, and relive some high resolution film memories of yesteryear. Remember, your suggestions are always welcome.

Go small and save the world yourself

Chips - the supermarket chains wash their hands and say "health food aisle"

A regular contributor to Online Insights, Kay Walker, left a stirring reply to last show’s links about Palm Oil and it focussed on a snack for children that we have talked about called Kidscare Potato Stix. As it turns out, Kay is a health blogger with a blog called Health for Humans. There is a full volume post there that I want to highlight in a moment but first, her comment is worth highlighting. She investigated these potato stix because she thought “the plain version (with rice)might be a good nibbly for me as I’m allergic to wheat, corn, and egg, plus react badly to lots of MSG (and lurvvvve potatoes)”. But as she investigated further, she was infuriated that such a concoction could be firstly marketed as food, secondly marketed to children and thirdly marketed as healthy. Here is why: “There’s  less fat- but the fat is BAD and it’s PALM OIL. Grrrr. There are also zillions of other ingredients, including wheat, which make this snack a very bad choice for parents of allergic kids.” So what does she recommend: “This product needs to be taken off the market as it is just a pile of fillers with a label that suggests health. I wish our food regulators would keep environmentally doubtful stuff out of the food chain and make sure food sold is actually full of stuff humans can metabolise safely.”

She then makes a suggestion that most adults would agree with, that food advertising needs to be kept out of sight of kids because they “haven’t learnt enough about life to be given the privilege of choosing.” Mind you, she doesn’t think that is enough and argues that “we should try to get rid of the things that are no good and bugger freedom of choice- we’re just dumb animals and always choose the soothing, greasy, carby, tasty warm stuff- and then we give it to our kids!”

Now that we are warmed up, her own blog post called Go small and save the world yourself, sees her ramp up her rhetoric to greater volumes. Here is an edited taste:

Read the rest of this entry »

This fortnight on Online Insights we discussed Palm Oil (it will make you gasp and stop eating Tim Tams), Sesame Street’s new site, Morning Glory (not what you think), and a wonderfully quirky site for lifting your mood. Enjoy.

Palm Oil

A selection of products from producers who have certified that they DO contain palm oil or a derivative

So many products we use day to day contain palm oil and most of that palm oil has been obtained by destroying the rainforests of Sumatra and other areas where orang-utans are clinging on for dear life. I have been working with Adelaide Zoo recently and when I heard about this I thought I was doing okay because I couldn’t recall seeing palm oil on ingredient lists for anything I bought. But in fact, for many products that use palm oil – such as well known dish washing liquids and soaps – they do not need to list palm oil, only the “active” ingredients.

There is a double bind with soaps because most producers use either palm oil or beef tallow from slaughter houses. This causes concern for vegetarians trying to live in harmony with their beliefs. For me, it would be hypocritical to object to the beef tallow base because I do eat meat and am glad that very little (if any) of the animals, whose lives we take to sustain our own, go to waste.

So, using products from animals who are already a food source is one thing. Felling trees to make dish washing liquid easy on your hands is another. At the rate things are going, we, as a human race, would have notched up another species kill within ten years or less. Goodnight orang-utans.

But it doesn’t have to end in tears. The Australian Orangutan project has a Facebook group that contains basic information about this situation and, importantly, a discussion board where members update visitors with lists of products that are FREE from palm oil. And we’re not just talking soaps, but biscuits, cosmetics, and a whole range of products use palm oil, most of it plundered from rainforests. It is as absolute disgrace that well loved household names are destroying our closest neighbours in the animal kingdom while smiling at the camera and making supermarket shelves bright and cheery. Every executive at these large soap making and food making conglomerates is living with blood on their hands and they deserve to have their homes and support systems ripped away from them to give them a taste of what they are inflicting on orang-utans, all in a vain chase for some extra lousy bucks. Read the rest of this entry »

Stop blocking

This website has been created by a stalwart of the international PR community, Shel Holtz, to help battered, progressive managers argue and lobby for offering or maintaining employee access to social networking sites during office hours. He has said the site became necessary when self-serving companies who make money out of blocking access discovered the key to getting headlines. They simply do bad mathematics to exaggerate the cost of employee time spent on social network (usually a big number around the multi-billion-dollar mark) and the lazy, uncritical media swallow it whole and run with bold headlines designed to foment wowserism and neo-ludditism on talk shows and in boardrooms. You can see the latest stories on his site but tonight I want to share his main arguments in favour of granting access to employees, namely:

• Well-communicated and consistently enforced policies will deal with most issues. The number of companies blocking access to social media sites is roughly on par with the number of companies without social media policies. Isn’t it possible that employees who knew what the rules were might actually follow them? Especially if they knew there were real and serious consequences for failing to do so? Read the rest of this entry »

Security Essentials

Since our last segment, Microsoft has launched Security Essentials which is their free anti-virus software. Apart from OneNote, which I love, I am always hesitant about throwing my lot in with Microsoft but I have been convinced by Adelaide Tech Guru, Richard Pascoe, who wrote on his blog recently: “This is free software which I have been running ( a beta copy ) on one of my systems for a while now and during that time have not had an issue and been extremely impressed … if you run one of the alternative free software antivirus ( AVG , Comodo ) you should look at swapping because this solution should fit well within the Windows environment because let’s be honest here , nobody knows Windows better than Microsoft. Virus’s are written to exploit holes in the Windows Operating system and that is why you need to update and patch your system. Logic would then dictate that the Security Essentials Software would fit ” hand in glove ” with the operating system.” Read the rest of this entry »

Akaroy Films

I ran a small business workshop in Port Adelaide last week and met a man called Derek who runs AKA Roy Films. While I am sure he is a movie producer/director/camera guy for hire, his company produces scores of short films on characters around the Port that make the sort of compelling viewing that most television fails to deliver. Derek’s background Video was print media, until he started out on this video path in 2008. Like he says, “little films have a big future”, which is exactly what I preach in my workshops.

There are a few films worth noting: Read the rest of this entry »