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Friday means Fish & Chips. A great British lunch if ever there was one (it’s no doubt one of the few). We enjoy our team lunches at neoco. Some of us eat faster and more than others, which has lead to several conversations about an eating content… I think the unofficial record is set at 10 McDonalds cheese burgers. Is it immature or wasteful to eat like this? Maybe. Or we could stuff a load of food, then undertake physical activity until we puke, and then make an online TV show/ website about it… is that more immature and wasteful?

I’ve just stumbled across a really interesting article on the BBC News Technology site, which looks at how mobile technology is touching almost every aspect of the non-profit world in developing countries. Mobile phones and mobile services are facilitating human health care, nature and wildlife conservation, research and education.

The article really shows how developments in mobile technology are making a real difference to a lot of people’s lives in developing countries. And it’s really impressive to discover that the mobile phones which are being used to facilitate all of these new improvements are in fact around 7 years old - with text messaging being the only real way that people can communicate with each other - there are no data services of any kind.

Although many of us would have not considered it before, people in developing countries (even those living off just a couple of dollars or so a day) now have access to a mobile phone. Today, in Sub-Saharan Africa for example, 30% of the population own a mobile, equating to in excess of 300 million people and many more have access via the phones of their family and friends, shared phones or village phones.

This huge growth has mainly been a result of the successful recycling market and the development of cheap ‘$20′ phones. It is also part due to the efforts of forward-thinking mobile manufacturers, who have spent an increasing amount of time to understand what people living in these areas might want from a phone. The example given in the article to have emerged from this user-centric design focus are mobiles with flashlights, which assist people whose electricity supplies may not be very reliable.

Local entrepreneurs who have learnt how to fix mobile phones have set up their own services doing so, and have created a mini industry devoted to prolonging the lives of mobile phones.

All of these factors together have resulted in more phones being owned by more and more people, and working for longer. Which has meant that certain mobile services have been able to be put into place, making people’s lives easier and transforming development work.

Mobile phones are today providing a direct line of communication to farmers, doctors, patients, nurses, teachers and youth, and anyone else the non-profit community might seek to engage. Patients are being sent reminders to take their medicine, market prices are being sent to farmers, citizens are helped to help monitor elections, and activists are enabled to report human rights abuses.

A lesson to be learned for all of us lot then - when you inevitably upgrade your phone for the new iPhone GPS (or another latest smart phone) - don’t throw your old one away, recycle it. For the full article, visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7502474.stm

A collaboration of artists and scientists have created robots which have been designed to love punk music, and show their appreciation of it through dance.

One of the creators, Professor McOwan, from Queen Mary University, said he built the machines because of his fascination with human-computer interaction. They made their dance debut at a 3 day event called Neurotic at the ICA.

The robots use neural networks which are a collection of computer processors that function in a similar way to a simple animal brain. They are popular in the field of artificial intelligence because of their ability to recognise patterns from a sensory input such as visual or auditory information. McOwan said that “the robot brain, for want of a better word, was played lots of punk, reggae, disco and classical and over a period of time the robot has learned to recognise and appreciate the patterns of sound in punk music.” The neural network understands the music in a similar way to a human brain, breaking down the sound into a series of frequency bands.

So during Neurotic, when the robots listened to the live music, in very basic terms, they matched the patterns of the music against the statistics from other types of music they has listened to before. And, if it was punk music, they would rock out…

See the robots in action at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7489030.stm

Really, really clever stuff, but is it just me or does anyone else think they could have programmed the robots to do something useful? I mean, I know it’s all in the name of research and development etc, but dancing robots don’t really have much use to anyone do they? Nevertheless, it looks like we might see more of these clever robots soon…and maybe some useful ones.

Read the full article on the creation of the robots at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7487645.stm

After a week spent counting down the days and annoying everyone in the office in the process, Dave (aka ‘G’) our Head of Development (and serial neoco blogger) set off for Glastonbury with his specially crafted flag in tow.

Despite us all knowing and abiding by the magnet rule, G claims that there were no magnets within the vicinity of the festival and failed to return with one. But we did receive this postcard instead…so I guess it will have to do for our infamous fridge.

On Wednesday I went down to Online Marketing & Media 08 at the Business Design Centre. As the workshops were free to attend, I wasn’t expecting much to be honest, but the selection I went to in the morning were interesting and provided some good tips and case studies (although there were some rubbish workshops too…but I’m not going to name names!)

Anyway, the first workshop I visited provided a recap on viral marketing and outlined some of the viral video success stories of the past few years. Over 200,000 video clips are uploaded to the internet every day, so it’s becoming harder and harder for brands to stand out. It can be done though! And the following couple of clips show how. Because they did so well, you’ve probably already seen them, like I had, but they give a good reminder of how brands have got viral campaigns right.

1. Quicksilver’s dynamite surfing viral - 20 million unique views.

2. Agent Provocateur’s Kylie viral - created as a cinema advert but quickly became viral online with 360 million unique views!

I was also reminded of some non-branded virals that had huge success (mainly because they are so funny) so I’ve thrown a couple of them in too…

The Star Wars Kid

The Hoff drunk

Many of you know that we collect fridge magnets here at Neoco. A few less of you actually contribute to our growing collection whenever you get out of this land of Eng. Recently, it seems Sian of Brando has been bitten by the bug and is storming up the chart of ‘magnets sent in to Neoco’. Her latest entry comes from Romania and (legend has it) is carved in the likeness of the original Count Dracula.

Not sure if he would quite send me running but hey, each to their own. I’ve always like the Count from Sesame Street:

“Vun… Doo… Tree… Mwahahaha”

Keep those magnets coming in people!

George Carlin stamped his one way ticket today and now has a chance to explain his views on religion to the big guy up there, no doubt with a cigarette in hand and a raised voice.Known as the guy who took black humour and beat the crap out of it, then introduced it to drugs and porn, and then took it around the world for a series of unbelievably insulting stand up shows, Carlin certainly had his fans and also left a footprint on the media. The two combined on YouTube where thousands of kids were delighted to hear the dirty old man telling it like it is. Personally, I’ve always felt that he never really came into his own until the great Bill Hicks moved on, as then George became a little more edgier but still only took the audience close to the line (whereas Bill actually started most of his stuff at the line and carried on from there!) Here’s a short selection (from Mashable) of George Carlin’s best YouTube flicks. If you’re a fan, I know you’ll enjoy them; if you’re one of the uninitiated, well, better late than never.

5. Voting - why do we always feel like there’s a lack of real choice on the ballot? George explains the habits of an average voter, where politicians come from and why the country is screwed.

4. Ten Commandments You know those stupid top 10 lists, that always seem like they were inflated up to a round number (any similarity to any persons or blogs living or dead is a coincidence)? Well, it goes all the way back to Moses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses .

3. Airline Announcements Ever wondered why all announcements on an airplane sound like they’re spoken in some weird language from a parallel universe?

2. Saving The Planet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planet - Saving endangered species http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_species is just one more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature. It’s what got us in trouble in the first place.

1. Religion Is Bullshit If he was wrong about this one, it might get George into a lot of trouble right about now.

RIP mate, thanks for the show.

[image credit: starpulse.com]

The University of Washington’s World Information Access report (WIA) has shown that since 2003, at least 64 people have been arrested for blogging about political issues - for exposing corruption in goverment, the abuse of human rights or for just generally criticising governments. In 2008, it is likely that more bloggers than ever will face arrest as a result of the growing political importance of blogging. 

More than half of all the arrests have been made in China, Egypt and Iran with prison sentences given to many. The average prison sentence for blogging was 15 months and the longest sentence found by the WIA was eight years!

Its not just the Middle East bloggers though - in the last four years, British, French, Canadian and American bloggers have also been arrested.  Arrests tend to increase during times of political uncertainty - so with upcoming elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the US, arrests are predicted to high an all time high.

For more details about the report visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7456357.stm

So it’s almost time for Glastonbury, and it even looks like it might not rain for five days like it did last year.  The key accessory for any Glastonbury trip – except for wellies and maybe fancy dress outfit – has to be a flag.  So the cast and crew of Neoco were set a challenge to design a flag for me to use for this year’s festival.

The brief was simple – it needs to be bright, and it needs to be easy to make (only one week left now).  I’m still wondering why all the entries are very camp.

The winner – chosen mainly due to simplicity to make – is LBs entry, with a slight tweak to the background colour:

Second place was Benn’s inspired effort - although perhaps slightly too effeminate for my liking:  

The other entries are shown below:

Viacom are suing YouTube’s video sharing service for its inability to keep copyrighted material off its site. They have identified 150,000 unauthorised television and movie clips on the site, including South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants and MTV Unplugged, which have been viewed tens of thousands of times.

YouTube’s owner Google says that the lawsuit threatens Internet freedom and the millions of people that legitimately exchange information over the web. They maintain that they are faithful to the requirements of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and they respond properly to all claims of infrigement, claiming that they go “far beyond its legal obligation in assisting content owners to protect their works”.

However, Viacom disagree and believe they do not live up to standards and have done “little or nothing” to stop infringement. They do not believe they should “tolerate any form of piracy by anyone, including YouTube…they cannot get away with stealing our products”.

The battle is set to head to court…