Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

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My Google Glasses Rules

In Digital,Lessons,Life,Media,Social Media,Technology,Work on February 28, 2013 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , ,

When I woke this morning my feed was full of chatter about Google Glasses. Google’s big man Sergey Brin while talking at TED said that smartphones are emasculating and forcing us all to look down – as a man I look down occasionally in a needed way which got me thinking about what would happen when you wear the glasses and the rules that will need to be enforced.

1. Don’t wear your Google Glasses at dinner/lunch/breakfast if you are sitting with other people. If you think people checking their phone is annoying just wait till people simply stare up to read their latest text.

2. Bathroom etiquette is going to be massive with this one. Don’t wear them at the urinal if you are a bloke. That could end up in fights if people think you are filming their cocks. And for everyone it’s gonna be rude to just record any and all bathroom chatter.

3. No google glasses in the cinema. I don’t want to see little lights in the top corner lighting up around me. SWITCH THEM OFF.

4. I realise that being a citizen journalist is gonna be awesome with these things but I also want you to think about what you upload. Don’t use them for evil.

5. Sex. No. Unless you feel like being kinky and watching that stuff later on…but let’s be honest what if your partner wears them and she puts the video on and all you see is yourself having sex. That’s gonna be weird right? Nobody wants to see the faces they make during sex.

6. In meetings at work. May seem like a good idea but no one will say anything because everyone will be paranoid it will come bite them in the ass.

7. Shower rooms. Hopefully the glasses are waterproof. This does not mean it’s ok to wear them in the gym shower room.

8. Surgeons. Leave my insides inside not outside on the web.

9. Don’t watch porn on them on the way to work. That’s freakin’ weird.

That’s pretty much the main ones for now but I have a feeling I’ll be adding a lot more to the list as time goes on.

Do you have any suggestions where you shouldn’t wear your Google Glasses?

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My Facebook Rules

In Lessons,Life,Marketing,Media,Social Media,Technology on February 11, 2013 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , ,

Following on from My Twitter Rules here are my Facebook rules. Now where Twitter is about conversations with anyone about everything Facebook is slightly different. It’s where people from your past and your present all get together and update their lives, interact and chat but in a more reserved way.

I have a love and hate relationship with Facebook. I enjoy seeing what my friends are up to and it’s nice to get snapshots of home and lives that I’m no longer fully part of but on the other hand there are a lot of people who use it as if it was their personal diary and that just isn’t for me.

The rules aren’t for everyone and I totally get that every person uses their Facebook differently but these are my rules that I generally stick to when using it.

1. Spam. I hate it. You hate it. We all hate it. You remember those days when you would get chain letters sent by email? We all thought we had got rid of them but we forgot one single thing – some people are dumb and are now using Facebook and failing to do basic checks before diving in and commenting on dumb images and stories which are usually a total piece of shit and full of lies. I never comment on them unless it’s to point them to Snopes however I have since realised that by even getting involved other people who follow me may now see it and, well, stuff that. So now I ignore.

2. I try and post between three to five times a week. On the odd occasion I post maybe once or twice in a day and on a rare occasion three time. I don’t believe you should fill up other people’s feeds with constant up to the minute running feeds of your life. I ain’t that important and neither are you so let’s not annoy too many people.

3. When it comes to pics of my friends I have a really simply rule. I never ever tag a friend in a picture if I think it is unflattering. If you tag it it appears on their wall and if ain’t a good pic then I don’t want to make them look bad. They are my friends and they always look good to me so I don’t see why other shouldn’t see them in any other light than when they are at their most awesome.

4. If you want to play games on Facebook that’s just great but I don’t. And therefore you will never get a game invite from me and I’d really appreciate if you didn’t ever send me a damned invite for a game. Please don’t. I’m sick of them. I’m a gamer and I have an Xbox and a Wii U and a PC and an iPad all for gaming but Facebook is not a gaming platform for me and I simply don’t give a rat’s arse about any of them.

5. Hashtags in Facebook. Leave them over on Twitter please. Thanks. Appreciate it.

6. I do believe that Facebook is a place for long updates as opposed to Twitter 140 characters. I have no problem with that. Write away. I usually do. Sometimes people even have to click the little blue button to read all of my update.

7. Baby pics. I am delighted when my friends have babies. It’s wonderful. Especially my friends Alan and Lesley who have gorgeous triplets but you don’t need to share 8000 pictures each and every day. Next time you want to take a spree of pics and post them why not pick up your kid and give them a hug. I have to admit I’m really lucky that the majority of my friends with kids at the moment do a great job of limiting the pics but I have seen overkill in the past.

8. It’s called Facebook not Facesbook. Leave your profile pic as just you and don’t have you AND your other half. C’mon we don’t need to be reminded how much you both love each other every single day. And if you really have to use a pic like that please don’t make it one where you are expressing your tonguitude into them.

9. I never upload funny pics and tag my friends. Personally I think it’s rude to do that. There really is no need for it.

10. Ultimately I try to be considerate. I don’t really post anything inflammatory. I don’t flood people’s timeline with funny images. I don’t pester people and I do like things that I genuinely like. I don’t click on something for no reason.

11. Comment. Getting involved in your friend’s lives is important. If someone has put up a good status update that I’ve enjoyed then I’m not afraid to get involved in a chat or discussion about whatever the post is about.

12. I try and be funny when I post. If I can make one of my friend’s smile then it’s all worth while.

13. I’m happy to unfriend someone if they are being horribly racist, sexist, vile or downright intolerable. I’m also happy to add new people who I’ve met online who I believe will add a little bit of colour to my life.

Looking at this list some are rules and some are things I avoid doing but I think you kinda get the gist of where I’m coming from. Similar to My Twitter Rules I believe that you should always hover before posting to think about what you are saying and if you are happy with it slamming into 200+ people’s feeds.

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My Twitter Rules

In Lessons,Life,Marketing,Media,Social Media,Technology on February 6, 2013 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , ,

Rules.

We all all live by them. We all have our own code.

Twitter.

It’s the second love of my life. It’s the communications platform I always dreamed of. It gives anyone the ability to talk to anyone else in this world as long as they have a Twitter account. Not once in the history of the world has this been possible. Yet here we are exchanging words across the globe with anyone and everyone.

I’ve been using Twitter for nearly five years. I don’t cheat the system. I don’t play the follow me and I’ll follow you game. But I do reply to nearly everyone who speaks to me – its only polite – and I do hunt out fun and interesting people to talk to because its what makes life interesting.

But you got to have rules and that’s where My Twitter Rules come in to play.

1. If I follow you and you send me an auto-DM then I’ll unfollow. It’s rude to think that because I’ve chosen to engage with you that you suddenly have the right to barge into my life and try to sell me something or direct me to your blog or your website. If it’s in your profile chances are I’ve already looked.

2. If you tweet more than five times in my timeline in less than a minute and it’s not a scream for help because you are in a dire situation the I’ll unfollow you. I follow you because I’m interested in you. I didn’t follow you to know the exact contents of your mind one a second by second basis.

3. I don’t read celebrity gossip. I don’t wait patiently every week to find out which celebrity has been knocked up, divorced, having an affair or simply put on some extra pounds. You know what? I simply don’t care. Everyone deserves their privacy and I’m not a fan of peering into people’s lives through an 800mm lens.

4. Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton. Retweet them and I unfollow. I have no desire to know anything about either of those two. Basically I suggest thinking about your followers before you retweet certain things. I always hover for a second and think about my followers before I retweet.

5. Quotes. If you think continually tweeting quotations is cool well that’s just swell however if I want to read quotes the I’ll head on over to one of the million quote pages on the web and read some.

6. Every week I try and find a few people I’ve not engaged with in a while or at all and see what they have to say and try to chat to them. Find something they have said I have found interesting and let them know.

7. If you have connected your account to a site that is sending DMs to me telling me ‘people are saying this about you and has a link’ I’ll DM you back and let you know. You may not know the account is sending on your behalf so it’s only right I let you know.

8. If I have just followed you and we haven’t interacted and you send me a DM asking me to subscribe to your YouTube channel or your blog you can be assured I won’t be visiting your site and I certainly won’t be following you any more.

9. I will block you if you are a troll. I have been abused a few times on Twitter (this one comes to mind!) and I simply won’t put up with you being an asshole. I’ll accept it a few times as you may be having a bad day but if you keep at it it’s block city

I guess they are my standard rules. I’ll probably come back and update when I think of others I use. If you have any rules I’d love to hear them.

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Apple Focus

In Digital,Lessons,Marketing,Media,Technology on October 10, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , ,

I have spent a lot of time recently thinking about Apple since the death of Steve Jobs. He got me thinking about the meteoric rise of the company from it being months from collapse to where it sits today – a technological marvel and marketing maestro that seems to be ahead of the game against their competition.

It seems like many others have also been thinking about the company recently but one person’s comments really stood out to me – William Gibson.

Now there are obviously many people who have helped influence my life but both Steve Jobs and William Gibson are up there pretty much close to the top along with my parents, my Uncle Kenny and my best mates who I grew up with.

And I’ve spoken about Steve Jobs recently in my blog and what he meant to me.

William Gibson’s Neuromancer took me to a new world and made me see the future was cyberspace. I talked about it in school. I talked about it to everyone but no-one really understood what I was saying – this was late 80s remember and technology wasn’t as big as it is now.

And he recently spoke about Apple and why he has used their devices.

In an interview he said:

“I was never interested in getting any more intimate with whatever made my computer work. I wanted the most transparent interface possible; that is, that least required my personal attention. I wanted my personal attention to be elsewhere, focused on other things other than my computer. Design at that level kept me at Apple…”

And that sums up my relationship with Apple.

I love their equipment because it allows me to quickly pass through the fact I’m using a device and simply allows me to do what I need to do.

I have a number of friends who love to tinker with things, they want to know how things work and the majority of them are all Android users or PC users. They want to find out more about their devices and really dive deep into their software and what is possible with them – which is great but for me I want a device that lets me do my job as quickly and efficiently as possible without reminding me I’m using it.

Many Microsoft products drive me barmy because they have a habit of taking my attention away from what I’m doing (and I can be easily distracted at the best of times) and cause me to focus on the program and not what I’m using it for. I always felt that way with PC running Windows – and still do to be honest.

To me Apple computers remind me of my body (work with me here). I don’t stop to think about how I breathe I simply do. I don’t stop to think about how my muscles work and allow me to type it just simply happens. So my relationship with my body is the same as the one I have with my Apple – it exists and allows me to do what I need to do without thinking about all the stuff going on inside it.

And it was Jobs attention on getting the user-experience right that makes them so damn useful to me.

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Selling out your national team

In Lessons,Life,Marketing,Media,Social Media on October 9, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , ,

I am full of rage right now. Pure unadulterated rage.

I was watching the Australia v South Africa rugby match in this year’s Rugby World Cup. I glanced at Twitter and saw a few people in my stream tweeting to the @qantaswallabies account.

This rage has been building up inside me for all my time living in Australia but I feel that I should put down in words what I’ve been thinking.

HOW DARE YOU SELL OUT YOUR OWN COUNTRIES NATIONAL TEAM BY FLOGGING IT WITH A BRAND!!?!?!

If the Scottish Football Association even attempted to brand the Scottish football team and tie it in with say the Royal Bank of Scotland or British Airways or anything … even Irn Bru there would be a war in the country with people storming the HQ of both the SFA and whichever company decided to try and take over the team.

A national football team is just that. It’s a team associated with the country. It has nothing to do with a brand.

Yes brands can sponsor. Yes they can even have their names on the tops but they should never have the right to re-brand the name of the country from Australia to the Qantas Wallabies. The Twitter account, the Facebook account etc should all be named after the country and code or the Association – it should NEVER be linked intrinsically with a brand.

Forgive my writing today. I’m just so angry that people in Australia seem to take this for granted. It’s wrong. It’s really fucking wrong. The people who came up with the idea should be flogged in the main streets.

They have taken the identity of their country and sold it.

Imagine that.

Imagine selling your country…to a brand.

Total and utter disgrace.

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The love of celebrity

In Lessons,Life,Media on April 17, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , ,

There are many things I don’t understand and and I’m happy to admit this but something I really don’t get is the obsession with celebrity that has taken over the world in the last x number of years.

Maybe many people have always been obsessed but with the proliferation of modern forms of media this, for me, has become seriously unhealthy.

But what freaks me out the most is the fact that people continue to follow and like people they know full well have done bad things.

Take Chris Brown for instance. Now before he beat up some singer called Rhianna I hadn’t heard of him. Then he beat her up showed little sign of remorse and moved on with his his life. I just saw an advert on television saying he is playing shows in Australia.

Yup, people are paying to go see someone who beat up a defenseless woman.

What should happen, in a sane world, is that he would turn up on stage and the only people in the crowd are victims of spousal abuse who throw eggs and rotten fruit at him. What actually happens is that thousands of teenagers and younger all head along and watch him sing and dance and look up to him.

What kind of an example is that for youngsters today that men who beat up women are still idolized simply because they can sing or dance or play sports or something.

These people should be vilified.

They should be hounded out of their industry.

But they don’t they continue to make money and keep doing what they are doing. Why, as a species, do we not all turn our back on these people? Until they actually feel remorse for what they have done.

It’s weird I feel like the examples being set by a lot of adults these days are sending some crazy messages to the next generation. Even looking at Lady Gaga’s shows and many others. They are highly sexualised but filled with kids under 10.

Anyone under the public eye needs to realize that kids look up to them and that the things they do will get reported and be seen my millions.

It’s a sad state of affairs when those in positions of power don’t realize the power they wield.

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Check your Twitter facts

In Digital,Media,Social Media on March 14, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , ,

You know what? It only takes one minute out of your life to check some facts before you click ‘enter’.
A long time ago in another period of my life I felt like the last bastion of truth and honesty when it came to fighting against the evil curse of the ‘forwarded email’ which contained alleged facts like ‘did you know you eat 8 spiders while you sleep through your lifetime’. Total and utter rubbish.
I spent a small piece of my time linking people to Snopes.com and telling them to check facts before sending useless and pointless emails filling people with untruths.
And now with the advent of social media we have the tweet and retweet. Over the past few days since the terrible tragedy in Japan people have been tweeting about the deaths of Pokemon creator Satoshi Tajiri and Hello Kitty creator Yuko Yamaguchi in the tsunami. Only they aren’t dead.
Neither is Maria Ozawa. Who is allegedly some adult film actress…
Over the past few months Twitter has been aflame with the alleged deaths of Justin Bieber, Jim Carrey and Charlie Sheen. Hell, a guy on the forum I use made a fake story about Jeff Goldblum as a joke to a friend which went way out of control and had a presenter on the national news talk about the story as if it was true!! Mental
Can we all just stop.
Can we not just retweet every single thing we read on Twitter.
It makes you the equivalent of the idiot who spammed me by email with those idiotic untruths years ago.
Take one minute out of your life and research something before you decide to retweet it.
Take one minute out of your life and research something before you decide to Facebook it.
Take one minute out of your life and research something before you decide to forward it in a goddam email.
C’mon let’s get the truth out there more often.

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The tragedy around us

In Media on February 23, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , ,

On each side of the Atlantic two tragedies act out before our eyes and a large number of us are part of the problem and part of the solution.

I’m guilty. You have no idea just how guilty I am.

I’m complicit in crimes against humanity and everyday I further compound my guilt.

I fuel media outrage. I fuel media gossip. I fuel the downward spiral of mankind and yet I feel compelled to do so because I enjoy the discussion around it – what I don’t enjoy is knowing the pain that those people must be going through.

In Australia there is a girl. A girl not even 18-years old who sits at the eye of a gossip and media whirlwind. Miss Z tweets, she video blogs, she talks to the press. She is on a one-woman vendetta against the St Kilda football club (AFL).

What worries me the most about this whole situation is that the media, her followers on twitter and YouTube, even her parents seem to have walked away from their humanity. I haven’t heard of one person reaching out a hand to say ‘can I help?’.

I could write for hours on this subject but instead I will link you through to Virginia Trioli’s article that covers this with far more compassion and depth that I am able to http://www.theweeklyreview.com.au/article-display/Little-Girl-Lost/3642

A few thousand miles away the self-destructive (or is he?) @charliesheen has joined Twitter. Within six hours of sending out his first tweet he has amassed nearly 550,000 followers – bear in mind it took Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk and no I don’t follow him) three months to get to the one million follower mark.

He has cemented the hashtag #winner as his rallying call to his fans. But with each tweet, with every interview and with every quote the man seems to be on some kind of head-on collision with either reality or his death.

He seems to be surrounded by people wanting something from him whether it be drugs, money, fame, sex (I’m guessing?!), connections or who knows what. But at the centre of it all is a man with five kids.

Five kids who get to see their dad plastered across the news just like the mother and father of Miss Z have to watch their daughter get slammed by the media as the feed themselves on the tragedies occurring.

I never forget being in Australia and hearing the news about the murder of my uncle. How three teenagers left him in a pile of blood of seven hours before he was found. How they taunted him laughing about the damage they did to him.

Then I remember reading the news stories surrounding the case – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4513896.stm

I felt helpess.

I felt lonely.

I felt angry

I feel the same way when I see Charlie Sheen and Miss Z.

I want to reach out and tell them that they don’t have to do what they are doing – just like I would tell those kids who attacked my uncle that they didn’t have to do it.

I want to tell Charlie Sheen and Miss Z that at some point their lives will get better and they will regret what they are doing. I’d love the media to pull away and find different stories to write. To tell them to just walk away and stop using it to fill gaps in the news cycle. I want to tell everyone I know to stop mentioning it, stop talking about it and to stop keeping the story going.

But I don’t and I’m as guilty as all the others who tweet about it and who write about it. I don’t do anything…and that, like the loss of my uncle, is the tragedy.

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