Similar to decapitation, defenestration and de-caff coffee, we’ve been de-Googled.

Our blog has been hacked, indeed I could be the hacker posing as Adam and copying his verbose nonsensical writing style.

This goes beyond the deluge of spam comments alluding to specialized genitalia enhancements. Some sort of evil bot hacks the site, slaps a lot of seemingly white space at the bottom of the page and fills it with links to all manner of filth.

I’m trying not to take this personally.

The result of all the spam links is that Google thinks we’re a link bait spam site and has de-listed us, meaning our beloved blog Read the rest of this entry »

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Not my words, but Y Combinator, general good guy Paul Graham’s in a great article about the Attention Crash:

‘Chesterfield described dirt as matter out of place. Distracting is, similarly, desirable at the wrong time. And technology is continually being refined to produce more and more desirable things. Which means that as we learn to avoid one class of distractions, new ones constantly appear, like drug-resistant bacteria.’

I thought Chesterfield was a type of gun or a cigarette I once smoked to look cool in front of topless ladies on a beach in Nice when I was an exchange student.

Steve ‘beige polo shirt’ Rubel has some greats posts about this modern malaise, which seems to be crippling most Gen Xers and empowering Millenials. As I consider myself a Post Xer/Pre-Millenial/Neo Despot, I am both afflicted by the Attention Crash but also carrying antibodies necessary to manufacture a vaccine.

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The only rule of Start-Up Club is that there are no rules. I paraphrase Fight Club and I have included a picture of a bra stuck on a wall, you’re going to have to bear with me on this post which contains a lot of mixed metaphors.

We’re 6 weeks from a beta version of Qajack, which is 6 weeks away from needing to raise necessary finance so that we can see it to the next level. But how do we find this fabled finance? Bootstrapping has gotten us this far; relatives, credit cards and organ donation have kept us in second hand laces, but now the boots are starting to fall apart.

What we need is a stranger in a suit to buy us a new pair of trainers and tell us why they’re good for our cardio workout.

An Angel Investor, a pre-VC, a new-VC, a rich dead Uncle prepared to die in 6 weeks time.

This picture is a good representation of the UK start-up post-bootstrapped dilemma.

The Start-Up is the whistling boy, the Investor is the large bra and the down pipe is the Blogosphere, the buzz that lies between them. Currently the boy has his back turned, not wanting to look too keen for fear of frightening away the bra, but whistling so as to attract just enough attention to himself. The bra has one cup lifted towards the down pipe, listening (let’s posit bra’s can hear in this scenario) for the whistle in the buzz, or trying to ignore the buzz and listen out for the clearest whistle with a view to helping it get some buzz.

I shall be seeking to propagate and regularly detail the Qajack buzz, be it inane pictorial stunts such as this one, or genuine traction with key influencer blogs.

Having the idea, and the really useful ‘video’ game is a great idea (it’s even got a business model!), is only a part of it, the early adopter crowd have to take to you and have to be courted, conferences and coffee mornings attended and a risk taking, high net worth tech investor uncovered.

But just like Qajack, you got to gamble with what you know…

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I met JR in a bar 3 years ago and he showed me a picture of Vincent Cassel milking a goat, now he’s getting his work pasted all over the Tate Modern, smart kid.

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… and so say all of us, but think about it for just a moment those of you who know and love Om, he’d make such a great Bond villain, ‘open source cloud computing Mr Bond?’.

Om has a great post about how Twitter might actually turn it’s hype into a scalable business, in short it’s a Scoble Tax, or so it shall be called hence forth. Essentially charge users with over 100 followers, charge people who send over 500 updates a week, charge them $10, go freemium or go for another major outage when your user base might be less forgiving.

‘This would also fit the Freemium business model that Twitter investor Fred Wilson so loves. And at the same time, it would help Twitter overcome its abhorrence for adding advertising to the messages. I think many of us have a lot to gain from the service: My alerts about my posts on the system are a form of advertising for my work, and generate enough attention that paying for the service makes lot of sense.’

Hey I’d pay $10 per month to keep Facebook clear of all the crapola that dogs the wannabee next new operating system, for more on how this won’t happen read the fragrant Kara Swisher, who I’m beginning to form some sort of ‘you write really well’ tech crush on.

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We’ve been officialized by a lady called Martha at Apple. We are iPhone developers, we are prohibited from developing anything porn/iPhone related, we are excited about the 3G iPhone with true GPS, we are touting our iPhone developer credentials to any enlightened brand who wants to get with the ‘kool kidz’ and sponsor applications that enhance the content crunching mobile lives of iPhone zealots. Myself included. We are touching screens a lot and saying ‘oooh’, such is life in the fattest interactive agency.

Brands are you listenning? I got some one line pitches I want to throw your way:

Burger King/Dominos Pizza etc - App that tells you where the nearest retail outlet is and provides you with a coupon to get money off, hell it could even encourage you to jog there!

Heineken/Guiness/Bud etc - App that tells you where to get a bottle of fizzy distilled hops and meet other App users to talk sport and Britney Spears.

Match.com - App that allows you to set a colour or mood reflective of how receptive you are to approaches from App using strangers who come into your area. (except iPhone users are mostly men who play Grand Theft in suit jackets and jeans)

So fine tune your Google Alerts ask the post boy to Twitter search your brand and let’s drink green tea in nice boardrooms where I can steal stationary from.

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Josh Catone adds succor to an idea I’ve been touting for a while about releasing a movie simultaneously via a BitTorrent client, on DVD and in the cinemas.

Current movie distribution divides movie watchers into two categories:

Cinema Goers

DVD Buyers/Renters

When in the fact there is a third, much maligned, much neglected but far larger audience mass:

The Digital User

Like the ex-Talent Agent Tech Zealot that I am, I’ve spent the past 4 years researching patterns and distribution volumes in online pirate movie distribution and the era of DVD-Rips.

This is a potential audience conservatively estimated at 80 million, give them an authorised film rather than a recorded cinema rip, give them additional content and charge them a nominal sum, say $5 per download and sit back and let them talk up your movie to their friends, the same friends who will be either Cinema Goers, DVDers, or Digital Users.

As Hulu and the BBC iPlayer record downloads north of 75 million so movie distribution must also face up to the fact ‘event users’ those who make a night of a trip to the cinema and look forward to a Nandos after the main feature, are a distinct user, not the totality.

UPDATE: Mininova will shortly record 5 billion downloads. That’s a big audience.

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A short lecture by Daniel Floyd replete with cartoon voice on sex in video games.

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I love tech conferences and I love soundbites, you know the ‘take home’ phrase that makes you glad your hefty entry fee was not squandered on cliche.

I wasn’t at Mediabistro in Toronto, but I do know where Canada is. So does Chris Anderson, he of the Long Tail and Wired fame.

Chris gave a talk about pyramids and DIY Drones and then unveiled this take down of all take homes:

“Be the tallest dwarf”, he recommends to anyone who wants to create their own niche network.

It seems take home’s have become oxymoronic riddles, further riddled with Erick Schonfeld’s comment about Chris’ comment:

“It’s not bad advice. But can old media survive in a land of dwarfs? They tend to be awfully hard to control.”

So on the back of that I’m starting a social network for people who love controlling dwarves.

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