Online Insights on FIVEaa Sunday May 01 2011
This month in Online Insights we see what locals think about the alcohol issues in Alice Springs that are making headlines around the country, rethink how humans are living right now, spare a thought for mum, and finish off with a dash of light relief.
Tell ‘Em That’s Enough
The Children - Tell 'Em That's Enough campaign
I spend a lot of each year up in the Northern Territory running marketing workshops for small business, particularly focussed on how to exploit the various social networking and social media tools available today, and as such it is easy to see the Territory as a place full of go-getters.
However, to be fair, it is also easy to see evidence of alcohol-related problems too, especially involving aborigines because the drinking and resultant anti-social behaviour often takes place in public view (not like alcohol-related issues involving higher socio-economic Australians, which takes place behind closed doors). Continue reading
Online Insights on FIVEaa Sunday May 30 2010
This fortnight in online insights, we help you converse better, help you get on better with your kids, shine the spotlight on some dangerous journalism and then finish with some dangerous album covers. Enjoy
Can you improve your conversation skills? Certainly.
The Positivity Blog is quite a gold mine of timeless articles focussed on helping you tweak important areas of your life. The blog post I have focussed on for this show is one on common conversation mistakes.
It is a worthy read and I encourage you to look at it. Therefore, all I will do for this report is share some choice food for thought.
1 – Not listening. This is the most obvious conversation mistake and the post quotes Ernest Hemingway who once said: “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” The way to deal with this mistake is to check your ego at the door and actually not planning what you will say next but instead doing your utmost to be present and to get inside the story the other person is sharing.
2 – Asking too many questions. This is not as obvious but the point is that asking too many questions can feel like an interrogation. So their solution is to mix questions with statements. This means you actually invest in the conversation while keeping it going. Continue reading
Online Insights on FIVEaa Sunday March 7 2010
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 Continue reading
Online Insights on FIVEaa Sunday February 21 2010
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. Continue reading
Online Insights on FIVEaa Sunday November 29 2009
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. Continue reading
Online Insights with Steve Davis on FIVEaa, Sunday, May 31, 2009
Steal Our Ideas
Here’s a novel way for two advertising types, Adam and Jon, to make an impact in their industry. It is a great blog/website. The pair behind this site offer up ideas for advertising campaigns and quirky products for people to freely steal. It is a superb flow of creativity. Here are my favourites:
- The safe fridge magnet – with so many people struggling with weight, they have drawn up a safe fridge magnet that you can stick on your fridge as a reminder that you are breaking in to a treasury of calories that you should think twice about. I like their thought that weight watchers could take the idea and brand up some magnets to give away.
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Great idea that needs stealing
Love the alternative warning messages on cigarettes – unkissable, this will make me look creative, and no will power. How true!
- They’ve posted a message for Greenpeace to target the 60% of Americans who carry guns – “the more wildlife you save, the more wildlife you can kill”.
- An idea created for careerbuilder.com gives people the chance to Continue reading
Online Insights with Steve Davis on FIVEaa, Sunday, February 22, 2009
Good ideas for websites
Sean and I have had some good ideas for businesses and websites during our radio show, so it is only fitting that we share a source for similarly stellar ideas from online – Good website ideas by Simon the Web Genius.
Simon is the alter-ego of David Thorne, the man we talked about in 2008 for trying to pay a bill with a picture of a spider.
I have had a number of his other online pranks float through my inbox in recent weeks, so he is clearly tickling the funny bones of people in my friends network.
David’s site is 27bslash6.com, and it is not for the kiddies. It is for people wanting some silliness and amusement.
You can find the spider story there along with Simon’s web ideas. Here are a few:
- everything.com – This would be a website where instead of having to look all over the internet for what you want, it would all be in the one place. This would effectively end the need for search engines so I would have to be careful that google representatives do not kill me in my sleep.
- whereaboutsami.com – This would be a website where users can write the name of the city and street they are on and I would tell them where they are.
- whatkindofcoughisthat.com – A website that contains sound files of different coughs. Each cough would have a description to allow the user to sound match and determine the kind of cough they have before going to the chemist and buying either dry or wet cough medicine.
- screensavingpage.com – A website that is a black page so that people can go there instead of buying a screensaver.
- amihavingaheartattack.com – A website for people having a heart attack.
For more site ideas, some laughs and a healthy dash of black humour, visit Good Ideas for Websites.
Adelaide Fringe
It is Fringe time in Adelaide again, so it is worth checking out the Fringe website. Lots of information is available about every show and my favourite part is the part that lets you see YouTube clips of the shows and performers who will be appearing. Follow this link to watch Fringe 2009 YouTube Clips – click on the show of iterest and then, in the show’s profile page, click on the television icon and the video clip will pop up.
Passport Photos for Free
I needed to attach two passport-sized photos to some papers through the week and my Google search brought me to ePassportPhoto.com. It describes itself as “the Internet passport photo booth, empowering people around the world to make free and valid passport photos.” The site claims to, “put an end to the passport photo rip-off,” and I must say I have always thought the passport shoot was a money-for-jam job for photo labs and photographers. My Fringe media pass photo was snapped by a friend on a cheap digital camera, trimmed to size in photo editing software and emailed in. However, this website makes it even easier – as long as you have photo paper and a colour printer. You simply choose your country and the service sets the size your picture needs to be, upload your picture, you move your picture around so your forehead and chin are in the right place, choose how many images you want printed per sheet, then hit print.
The site is free but move through it carefully – it is set up to make it easy for you to simply send your image to Snapfish for printing for money (which is the site owner’s right, of course).
You can create images for your fake Ids, whoops, no, I didn’t say that, I meant, for a range of legitimate reasons at ePassport Photo.
Sweet Cron
There are many social networking sites out there today and many of us find we have our virtual selves spread across numerous sites. There are some aggregation solutions available – places or tools for tying your many profiles into one place – and FriendFeed springs to mind as a popular option in this category. However, some programmers led by Yong Fook in Tokyo have come up with a free, open source tool that you load onto your own website to gather your various manifestations into one place. If you comment on Facebook, upload a picture to Flickr, or do many other similar things, those fragments will all be displayed and archived on your own site in what the makers call a Lifestream.
The name, SweetCron, is, I imagine, a play on the word “sweetcorn” because a cob of corn holds many kernels into one place and a “cron” is a “time-based scheduling service in Unix-like computer operating systems”. At least, that is my guess and I might be reading too much into it!
As of February 2009, you can join the public beta by registering your email address at Sweetcron.
Online Insights on fiveAA, Sunday, January 25, 2009
Ants, ants, ants
Through the week we battled an ant invasion. I mentioned it on Facebook and got told how wonderful ants are (in other people’s houses).
In particular, there were two great links. One is actually for a software company that has based some software on the way ants search for food and lay trails for the rest of the nest to find the food. The site is http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/howAnts.shtml. The insight this site gives, as pointed out to me by Liz, is that using boiling water on your benches and wherever you see scouting ants will cut the scout off from the nest and leave you in peace. It is quite involved and includes diagrams. In particular, it shows how ants are not very efficient because when one ant crosses another ant’s path, it cannot tell which direction is the home direction and which is the food direction. It means there are many wasted trips.
The other site is dedicated to ants and in particular the “diet” section is eye opening. Did you know they can eat small insects (some nests in the UK go through 100,000 insects per day), the bodies of insects and animals left behind by other insects and animals, fruit, vegetables, and sugary substances. They sometimes eat their own dead and even ant eggs.
But the most amazing thing is that some ants keep “herds” of aphids just like we keep cows. They place the aphids onto stems of roses and similar plants and allow them to feed on the sap. Hungry ants then stroke the aphid on the back, producing a drop of “honeydew”. In return, the ants protect aphids from predators and even create shelter for them in the nest.
You can read more about this at Ant Nest.
Pixenate
I have found the perfect online photo editing tool for people who are not tech-heads or savvy photo software users already. It is pixenate and it has come to the web with a very simple interface for playing with your photos online.
You can crop, change exposure, and all the usual things, plus you have access to some fun tools that are very popular these days, such as rounded corners, polaroid effect, and even the “lomo” effect which is part of a fad at the moment of shooting shots on film with a “lomo” camera – they are like cheap cameras with “toy” lenses that do lend a sense of fun to photography.
You can see it for yourself at Pixenate.
Baby Gamer
Well, it had to happen. Children are starting with computers at a younger age and now there is babygamer.com – a site dedicated to online games for babies. You might go crazy after hearing “boing” for the 2,000th time but you might also have enjoyed a distracted child for five minutes.
Fisher-Price is behind a number of these games along with Crayola and many of the big baby names. But the site is not made by a corporation. In fact, it has been put together by some parents who wanted to pool all the good, free, online games for babies into one place.
Along with the boing-boing games, Crayola’s fireworks show is fun, as you plan a fireworks display – probably not for the really little babies because it has a small degree of complexity as you set fireworks to go off on a timeline, but it is in the “infants” category so maybe I am reading more into it than there is!
My favourite is Pom Pom’s Shell Game – a bright, colourful version of the pea in the cup game.
On the whole, these games are simple and delightful and worth a visit by parents. You can find them at Baby Gamer.
Adelaide Now’s Viral Images
Every now and then, you find an interesting list or gallery of material that makes you think or is entertaining. This one is both. It is a collection of 100 images collected from viral emails.
There are plenty of classics here and I am sure there will be many you have not seen. My favourites include:
- The “dogs allowed” photo
- The film crew standing in the path of a rally car that has lost control
- The sheepdog leapfrogging over sheep
- The baby monkey hugging a dove
- The two window cleaners dressed as spiderman
- The classic is the battery powered battery charger from NaiveTek J
You can see all the pics at Adelaide Now Viral Image Gallery.
Online Insights on fiveAA, Sunday, October 05, 2008
Can a giant leech be art?
I have been running some marketing workshops in the Adelaide Hills recently and met a colourful and somewhat zany character, Janet Campbell. Janet is working on ways to promote local artists, particularly from the Hills region, on the wider stage.
What she doesn’t know is that I have stumbled upon her arts blog and one of her posts caught my attention: Can a giant plastic leech be art?
You’ve got to see the photo of the leech in question. It is one Janet helped the kids of Macclesfield make during the 2008 Fringe. Just seeing it makes you want to burst out laughing – it must have been excellent fun. And the fun would have been exacerbated by the fact that on the day the leech was paraded through the main street, it was hot and windy, meaning at any time there was the risk of a giant leech taking off and flying through the streets of an otherwise quiet country town.
But is it art? Not sure I have an answer either. I guess they have replicated or represented nature, which is an artistic device. It also prompts one to wonder what life would be like if the insects were our size and we were their size, and whether or not that would change the way we relate to them, ie, would we respect them more?
I would love to know your thoughts on this too!
(NB I was just called upon by my wife to kill a spider lurking in Alexandra’s jolly jumper device – how ironic given what I was just writing!).
Twitter Moms
This is a mini site for micro-blogging. Make sense? Well, micro-blogging is a subset of the blogging phenomenon in which bloggers restrict themselves to SMS-length posts and use services such as Twitter to facilitate quick posting. Twitter Moms is a group within the micro-blogosphere where mums who use Twitter can actually find one another and take part in discussions in the one place.
There are forums on “being moms” and special forums for mums of “twins”. All in all, the latest figures show about 5,000 mums use the site daily.
Here are some of the thoughtful topics that must be quite fun for mums to take part in as they snatch a few minutes from their chaotic days to bond with other women:
- What did you want to be when you grew up and what are you now?
- Do You Cook On Saturdays?
- What are your kids going to be for halloween
- Story behind your Twitter name?
- Work from home ideas?
You can visit the site to sign up at twittermoms.com.
It’s A Wonderful Internet
This is a little flash presentation that is cheesy in parts but does underline how ubiquitous the internet has become.
It is done in the version of “Twas the night before Christmas” and Dr Suess, and tells the story of a man who wishes the internet would disappear, and then suffers the consequences.
Firstly, he loses contact with his large pool of online friends, he goes out for some entertainment but has no idea how to navigate around town because that all happened with online maps before, he even gets evicted because he had become so use to paying his bills online!
You can listen to the story – and interact with it – at www.itsawonderfulinternet.com.
Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers
This site is an oldy but a goody. It is a collection of photos of men you think look like Kenny Rogers. As far as website ideas go, they don’t get much simpler than this (apart from cats that look like Hitler, but that’s a site for another day). I thought I would dig this one out because the silver haired country star is in Adelaide on October 26, 2008.
On this site there are photo galleries, hall of fame, Kenny of the month, corn muffin recipe, look like Kenny tips, and Kenny spotting tips.
- Look like Kenny tips: grow hair longer than is fashionable, if it is not white or grey make it so, sweep it back like there is a constant breeze, make sure it grows longer at the back over the collar, trim your beard severely and keep it white, drape a jumper over your shoulders or go the whole hog with a black leather vest over a white shirt, and cultivate a “country cool” attitude that says “I’d rather be fishing”.
- Kenny spotting tips: state fairs, airports, construction sites, drag races, secondhand shops, bars with sawdust floors, and church.
- Corn muffin recipe: The cornbread recipe (or muffins) is supposedly the secret recipe used in Kenny’s own chain of fire-roasted chicken restaurants. Having tasted “down south” corn bread in restaurants before, this sounds worth a try!
You can find the recipe and photo gallery at http://www.menwholooklikekennyrogers.com/. I am looking forward to some Adelaide additions after the concert!
Online Insights on fiveAA, Sunday, August 31, 2008
Road Kill Cook Book
I was in the Riverland at Berri, South Australia, this past week, running workshops on online marketing, eBay and the various web2.0 technologies applicable to small business, and met Cathy from Emaroo Cottages. They run some holiday accommodation in Broken Hill and Mildura. She mentioned that their website boasted a Road Kill Cook Book, so I had to find out more. Sure enough, this free eBook is available from the website and contains these highlights:
Tender Pot Roast Rump of Emu: This recipe includes an interesting fact that an emu’s eyeball is bigger than its brain, making them high speed, clueless feather dusters on legs. It also includes such immortal recipe directions as – Take the selected rump of emu, remove imbedded bitumen, feathers, and any unwanted additives. Allow to stand for a few days while you search for a pot large enough to cater for the rump. And, rounds off with the unusual, serves 50-60.
Ribbon of Rabbit: The recipe notes that most large truck tyres will have already pulverized the piece into a nice flat ribbon. Soak rabbit overnight to help remove fur, tyre tread patterns and remnants of rubber. Moisten rabbit with garlic, olive oil and oregano and place over hot coals.
Silver City Snake Slithers in Batter: Great advice in this recipe – Ensure the creature is actually deceased, there’s no greater surprise than delivering this little trophy to She of the Kitchen than finding it mostly alive and more than a little grumpy with its ill treatment.
Goat au Gratin: Simply can’t go past this advice – clip its horns and wipe its ass, goat is best served rare.
You can find this book at http://www.emaroocottages.com.au/.
Zamzar
I cannot speak more highly of any online tool available. Zamzar is an absolute godsend. This handy utitlity can convert files from one format to another, and even grab YouTube videos for you to download and watch later.
I find it particularly handy for converting Microsoft’s ridiculous .***x extensions to .***. Of particular note, is the ability to convert these new extensions not only into the old Microsoft extension format but also into the Open Office format.
A variety of other formats are also supported, enabling you to convert your pptx files into whatever format is most useful for the program that you happen to be working in. The full list of supported formats is below:
- html – Hypertext Markup Language
- odp – OpenDocument presentation
- pdf – Portable Document Format
- png – Portable Network Graphic
- ppt – Microsoft Powerpoint Presentation
- ps – Postscript document
- swf – Macromedia Flash Format File
One of my favourite aspects is the saving of YouTube videos. I often find material I want to share with others when we are not online. So saving videos to share offline is a great advantage of this tool.
The whole service is free for basic conversions, with a variable turnaround time. If you want faster conversions and online storage, then you can pay between US$7 and US$49 per month. Visit www.zamzar.com.
Sendables – JibJab
This is an hilarious site from the US, where you can access sendable ecards and fun clips.
There is a focus on the upcoming US election with a fun rendition of The Times They Are A-Changin’, morphed into Time For Some Campaignin’. There are some classic lines that pull no punches in satirising all the main players, eg, Hilary Clinton sings about failing to quell Obama’s rising star, to which Bill Clinton says, alas you got close, but no cigar. You can see the video here: http://sendables.jibjab.com/sendables/1191/time_for_some_campaignin.
However, one of my favourite videos on the site (by the way, you find the videos under the JibJab Originals tab/button) is What We Call The News. This is biting satire on the state of mass media news coverage. It highlights the shift from real news coverage to the crap news channels need to concoct or scrape out of the barrel to fill their voracious content demands and maintain titillation for extended periods. You can see this video here: http://www.jibjab.com/originals/what_we_call_the_news.
Kids Around Town
Found an interesting website about a book that is being launched this month (September 2008) called Kids Around Town. It is for parents in Adelaide and unlike other voucher books, is totally family-friendly.
The book will have around 230 vouchers offering freebies, 2 for 1 offers, and 10%-25% off offers. They add up to about $5,000 in savings and there are some competitions in the book too.
Interestingly, the book is not just vouchers. It also contains articles from Mem Fox and Dorinda Haffner, along with listings of favourite playgrounds, markets, parenting rooms and local libraries.
The lady behind this is Sheree Hyde, who created the business so she can work from home, and also so she could raise money for her daughter’s school.
Kids Around Town has been divided into seven sections including BUMPS & BUBS; HEALTHY & HAPPY; EATS & TREATS; WATCH, LEARN & PLAY; GIFTS, TOYS & MORE; LET’S PARTY!; and GETAWAYS.
From mid to late September 2008, the book can be purchased online and at selected retailers for only $28. It will also be available through many schools. Visit http://www.kidsaroundtown.com.au.
Listen to Steve
- stevedavis: The #socadl Daily is out! http://t.co/vLwzsWJH ▸ Top stories today via @hayleyconolly February 6, 2012
- stevedavis: “@_adriankh: Open til midnight! #FTW (@ Coles) http://t.co/HI4gOLQ7” Yes, rub in #Adelaide's archaic trading hours :-P February 6, 2012
- stevedavis: After years of reviewing the #adelaide fringe I might do standup this year. Tonight's audience is peeing themselv http://t.co/30Hj5SCI February 6, 2012
- stevedavis: @Belle_Baker @galafreywines Not near them atm but I recall Facebook rates were consistent city/country approx 50% of pop, others dipped February 6, 2012
- stevedavis: @FakeSeanPerry I hope that's not a challenge young man! February 6, 2012