Brilliant viral ad for the Danish brand Quiksilver. Don’t try this at home or at a lake/river near you.
Crazy viral ad from Quiksilver
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Category Archives: Internet
How to be more interesting
Russel Davies writes about how to be more interesting:
The way to be interesting is to be interested. You´ve got to find what´s interesting in everything, you´ve got to be good at noticing things, you´ve got to be good at listening. If you find people (and things) interesting, they´ll find you interesting.
Interesting people are good at sharing. You can´t be interested in someone who won´t tell you anything. Being good at sharing is not the same as talking and talking and talking. It means you share your ideas, you let people play with them and you´re good at talking about them without having to talk about yourself.
He further lists 10 things you can do to be more interesting. I’ll definitely will try to take some on board:
1. Take at least one picture everyday. Post it to flickr.
That won’t be too difficult, although the pictures taken with my phonecam are not that great. We’ll see.
2. Start a blog. Write at least one sentence every week.
I’ve got a blog…sort of. One sentence a week, that won’t be easy. I guess I have to overcome my blogging-lazyness.
3. Keep a scrapbook
Does my PDA count as a scrapbook? Guess not. I think I’m way too digital for that.
4. Every week, read a magazine you´ve never read before
Again, can we replace “magazine” with “blog” please? But I agree, if you find yourself waiting at the doctor, next time pick up a magazine you’ve never read before. This can be really interesting.
5. Once a month interview someone for 20 minutes, work out how to make them interesting. Podcast it.
Ok, let’s skip that one.
6. Collect something
Interesting, but you have to be careful with that as Russel says: “Learn how to communicate that to other people without scaring them off.”
7. Once a week sit in a coffee-shop or cafe for an hour and listen to other people´s conversations. Take notes. Blog about it. (Carefully)
Problem: Not enough good coffee-shops and flat-whites here in Germany.
8. Every month write 50 words about one piece of visual art, one piece of writing, one piece of music and one piece of film or TV. Do other art forms if you can. Blog about it
That shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ll try.
9. Make something
With my hands? Sorry, but I’m too clumsy for that…
10. Read:
Understanding Comics – Scott McCloud
The Mezzanine – Nicholson Baker
The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information – Edward TufteAll these books are good for their own reasons but they´re also good examples of people who are really interested in stuff that others think of as banal and who explain it in a way that makes you share their passion. That’s good.
They sound quite interesting. I’ll add them to my list. Personally, I always try to read one novel and one business/work related book. So depending on my mood and energy I can always choose between something entertaining or the “heavy stuff”.
Don´t know what to blog about? Let Google help you
So you have finally decided to start a blog yourself but don´t know what to write about? You don´t have a funny cat or your life is too boring to fill posting after posting with it? If you have the same problem, here are a few tips on how to find the right blogging material for you, with a little help from Google.
Right know I wouldn´t consider my website a real blog, because it´s pretty random in terms of posting frequency as well as content. I simply don´t know on which topic I should focus. Just like a magazine or any other website, a blog needs focus on a certain topic. I´m interested in a lot of things, so I find it a bit difficult finding a topic I like to write about, but which also attracts a few readers.
So how can Google, or any other search engine, help you getting some inspiration for the right topic? It´s pretty simple and definitely not rocket science. All you need to do is follow these steps:
1. Get a good website statistics tool
Make sure you´ve got a good website statistics package installed on your website. Make sure it can log the keywords from search engines. We´re going to need this feature later. I recommend Google Analytics. It´s free and gives you all the stats you need.
2. Write random posts
Yes, that´s right. Write about everything that interests you. About that great movie you saw the other day, about something that annoys you, about this excellent restaurant you went to. Your hobbies, job or anything else that comes to your mind.
3. Keep blogging
Things take time, so just keep blogging and in a few weeks or sometimes months you should hopefully see some traffic from search engines coming in. If you blog is completely new, make sure you submit it to Google or use ping service like Ping-O-Matic.
4. Check your stats
In your website statistics check the keywords people typed in search engines and found your website. In Google Analytics for example your can find this information under “Overall Keyword Conversion”. When you check your stats you will probably find lots keywords and keyphrases that look pretty random. Maybe they don´t even have much to do with what you were writing about. So how do you find the ones which are right for you? Ok, here is an example: A very popular keyphrase from search engines on my website is “google+earth+conspiracy” because of this article. So what does that mean? Should I write about conspiracy theories? I´m not really interested in that, although I might attract a few readers with this topic. But maybe Google Earth is a good topic?
5. Write less random posts
I like Google Earth and I´m fascinated what you can find in there. So why not write about Google Earth? Now the next step would be to write more articles about this topic and see if you attract more visitors through that. I would categorize Google Earth as a software/internet topic. You could now check your stats for other keywords and keyphrases from search engines which fall into this category. Other keywords that you can find in my web statistics are “voip” (Voice of IP) and “free phone calls”. So this could be another topic which still falls into the software/internet category.
You´ve probably figured out by now where I´m going with all this. I´m not saying that your website statistics can tell you exactly what the best thing is you should blog about, but they can at least give you a hint or some inspiration. When I look at my stats I´m always surprised what keywords people type in and then end up on my website. So why don´t you give a try? If it´s a topic you like and know something about, just write about it and see what happens.
I hope this of some help if you need inspiration for your blog or are still fairly new to the whole blogging thing, like me. As always, comments or any other feedback are more than welcome.
Google Earth Conspiracy?
Probably everyone has heard of Google Earth by now. Yesterday they made huge data update with more higher resolution satellite/aerial photos yesterday. So the first thing I checked was my place here in Auckland, New Zealand. So far New Zealand had only a few high resolution areas and Auckland only on the North Shore. Now if you click on the image to the left you can see where I live. It’s probably not hard to see that Google has updated all the areas around my place, except beautiful Balmoral, Auckland. Is it a conspiracy? Or are they trying to hide the top secret research lab down the road? Who knows.
Speech Accent Archive
Ever wondered how English with a Nicaraguan accent sounds? The Speech Accent Archive has more than 500 audioclips of people from all over the world saying the same English text. After three years in New Zealand I’m still having problems sometimes telling an Australian accent from a New Zealand one. Maybe this website will help me with that.
Google Sets
Ok, this is not really new or exiting but I find it quite an interesting Google service. Google Sets automatically creates sets of items from a few examples. For example if you enter the names of two German soccer teams it would give you a list with more German soccer teams. Or type ‘orange’ and ‘banana’ and you get a list with other fruits. Great for playing city-country-river.