Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

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

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 »

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 »

Flickr Vision

Regular listeners will know I am a fan of Flickr – the online photo sharing site. Well now I have found a new way to enjoy it. It is called Flickr Vision and it is such a simple but mesmerising concept.

When you visit the site, your screen is filled by a map of the world and right before your eyes, every few seconds, a photo pops up over a country, as a Flickr member uploads another new photo. You basically get to watch photos being loaded to Flickr from a geographical perspective.

It is simply fascinating. Not much else to say, other than, enjoy.

However, if you are more voyeuristic, you can switch Read the rest of this entry »

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!