nuzzaci - an online journal

My intention was to start this years blogging with a review of 2006… but then this ‘I Tagged You’ thing came along, which also seems like a good start (and I haven’t even started to reflect over 2006, never the less start writing a review post) - so here we go.

The ‘I Tagged You’ thing is basically a blog-chain letter; you write 5 things about yourself and then pass it on to five mates (with blogs), who then do the same. Tom Hostler was the first one to tag me, and then Iain Tait.

1. I have extremely small ears

   Yeah, they are the size of a 3-4 year old. I think it’s a defect caused by the fact that i was born blue; had my umbilical cord around my neck strangling me… that’s probably also why I can’t eat fish and find it hard to spell (good to have something to blame all these things on).

2. I regularly shave my balls

   I am a hairy man - legs, head, beard, ass, arms, thankfully not back!. Like everything you have a lot of - you wished you had less of it.

   I once took this ‘anti-hair’ a bit to far. Being tired of always have to shave my head I once tried to wax the hair of it, thinking; this way I don’t need to do it that often. After 2 hours (and 1/3 of my head) we (myself and my waxing assistants) came to the conclusion that it wasn’t working that well. That the wax just isn’t strong enough to deal with hair on the head. Two hours was enough. The result was that I needed to shave my head with a razor every morning for about 8 month.

   So, if you have any plans on waxing your head - don’t. If you even thought about shaving your balls - please do. It makes you feel special.

3. Just like Adam Duritz, the singer in Counting Crows, I have a Mr Jones

   When I’m on-stage with a guitar resting on my shoulder, I take on a different personality. Some people say I just behave retarded, other say that I’m a Rock God.

4. I have a huge tattoo.

   … or I have two - one large and one huge.

5. Belly Button Fuff

   I seem to be able to extract (or even produce) enormous amounts of belly button fluff.

So, now I will pass it on to:

1. Joakim Jansson, (who just moved from 2006)
2. Willow Tyrer
3. Jonaz Vaneryd
4. Henrik Engdahl and Isak Wikstrom on mananabanana

Globalrichlist.com is an award winning website that POKE did back in 2002, 2003 (or something), that has this week (again) made it into the spotlight.

Iain mentioned the webs ‘coming back to life’ phenomena a few days ago in his post titled Tea for 2.0, where he talks about another POKE project, Teabuddy.

That’s one of the things I love about online. Things can just live on forever, getting discovered by new audiences up to years after they originally launched.

This monday (13th november), Global Rich List made it to the top of Digg.com, with the post ‘I am the 447,241,380 richest person in the world!, and later on in the week it’s number two on the ‘biggest diggs of the week list‘.

What is Digg?
Digg is a user driven social content website. Ok, so what the heck does that mean? Well, everything on digg is submitted by the digg user community (that would be you). After you submit content, other digg users read your submission and digg what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of digg visitors to see.

What’s interesting is not the fact that Global Rich List is a good, simple and interesting webpage.
What’s interesting is not the fact that if you get high up on Digg you get loads of traffic.
What’s interesting is how a good, simple and interesting page such as Global Rich List get used by the users of Digg.

Thousands and thousands of Digg users have visited Global Rich List during the last few days, and none (so far) have donated money.

above photo of Willow and me was talken by Iain Tait, and stolen from his flickr page

Last night we (POKE) held another Clubpub party. This time the theme was ‘back to basics (again)’, and held at a pub called ‘At the Horse and Groom’ in east London.

As always, it was a brilliant night.

Judging from the photo below, Willow, Gustav and I probably left the party a bit to soon.

From left to right, Johan Blid, Igor Clark (with tape hat), Kate Theakston (head banging), Cookie (sweaty guy with an impressive mustache) (photo by Dominic Goodrum)

About a week a ago (or so) this email:

I’ve got 2 x 4th generation ipods at home, both with knackered hard drives. My inner environmentalist says that I can’t throw them away. But getting them fixed will cost £150 quid each. Which just isn’t worth it considering they’re old and scratched up. Is there anything you can do with them? Or like mobile phones is there a charity that can do something with them?

turned a mailing list into a temporarily war zone about capitalism, corporal responsibilities, old mechanics vs new. A lot of good thinks got said;

…in a way it’s our own fault for supporting it and propagating the apple-is-best mythology simply because ipods are so much nicer-looking, more nicely designed and more ergonomic than e.g. creative or any of the other dog-ugly pc-like clones. i guess we’re victims of our own taste, or something? personally i don’t think it’s too much to ask that we should have nicely-designed and ergonomic technology that doesn’t cost the earth and lasts longer than a mayfly, but it seems the man doesn’t agree with me, because that would interfere with unfettered economic growth.

i’ll get my coat.

good point were made:

so that they can make more money from extended guarantees, a relatively recent bit of sharp practice. from what I understand of older times, this was not previously the case.

and a lot of good links got send around:

• Slavoj Zizek: Nobody has to be vile
  An article including both good and bad things. So maybe not all good - but definitely an interesting read.
• Apple battery replacement
  Apple’s batteries scheme, that was, according to some sources, set up as a response to all the complains coming in.
• Apple and the environment
  “Apple has long been an advocate of product stewardship, and we believe that this concept extends to the proper disposal of electronic equipment at the end of its life.”

So all that (and a lot more) came out of a email about two knackered iPods in combination with some brilliant people and their thoughts (and will to share them). I actually didn’t contribute to the discussion at all, I just agreed towards the end. So well done everyone and thanks for once again proving that TV is a bad choice of entertainment (and that the world is fucked up and we all gonna die and burn in Hell).

So thanks Iain Tait for fucking up two iPods. Thank you Andrew Knott for winding up Igor Clark to produce some absolute top quality rants.

Got this emailed to me yesterday.

I still haven’t read a book by Seth, but this reminded me… and It’s now high up on my “book’s to read list”.

Marketing pothole (#1 of 3): I’ll know it when I see it

Here is the first of three common pitfalls that wreck your marketing efforts: Lots of marketers (and most of their bosses) like to say, “I’ll know it when I see it.”

That’s why they want to see three or five or twenty executions of an ad. Or ten or fifteen mockups of a car or a facade. That’s why marketers put their staff and their freelancers and their agencies through an infinite loop of versioning.

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

Actually, you won’t.

You didn’t know it when you saw the first iPod or the first iteration of Google. You didn’t know it when first exposed to email or JetBlue or the Macarena or Britney Spears. No, in fact, you hardly ever “know it.” If you did, you’d be a lot smarter than the rest of us, and we’d all be eagerly watching for your next product.

What is true is that we often know success when it smashes us in the face. We didn’t “know it” when Google went public at $85 a share (did you buy shares with your house as collateral?) but we sure knew it when it hit $300.

Perhaps Clive Davis knows a hit song when he hears one, and certainly Giorgio Armani has the magic eye. But, just speaking for myself, I don’t have Clive’s ears or Giorgio’s eyes.

Marketing campaigns are frequently crippled by managers who are sure that they know “it” when they see it–and this isn’t it. Some of my favorite stories are the ones about all the naysayers who tried to kill the stuff that ends up being great. They just didn’t know what it was.

What’s he’s saying here isn’t rocket science. But it’s good. It’s simple. And I beilive it’s true 9 times of out of 10.

I would simply say:

By knowing that you don’t know makes you know better then the people who knows.

Related links

• Seth Godin’s blog
• Seth Godin’s webpage
• Seth Godin at Amazon
• Iain Tait’s blog