Not anonymous

It looks like I might have to get a pro account to put statcounter on this blog .... pffft! While I work out my options I thought I'd put the little fella in here for safe keeping ;-)

Every office has one person who performs the crucial role of reining in the wild horses on the days when people get *a bit carried away*. That person stops things like this:

I can't be the only person thinking that Princess Diana + candle snuffer = an idea that would have been quickly extinguished (arp!) by the office 'sensible person' - who I'm guessing would have said something like "so Princess Diana is dead ... and Elton John did a special version of 'Candle in the Wind' to honour her memory ... let's just stop for one second and check if there's *any chance at all* that selling a *candle snuffer* of England's Rose could be considered to be in *very poor taste* ..."
... I'm still in a state of shock from the irony overload that this product has sparked off in my head. Let's hope that 'sensible person' sees the funny side when they get back from their extended leave ;-)

I've watched my first few videos on the TED website and I'm smitten - video quality is high and the quality of speakers is breathtaking. They've also just awarded a 'make a wish' prize to one of my favourite authors (Dave Eggers) so that can only be a good thing :-)

The first video I watched was of Blaise Aguera y Arcas giving a break-neck speed demo of Photosynth which is pretty mindblowing see for yourself:

The part about all the in-context views of Notre Dame got me thinking back to a talk I saw a couple of weeks ago at the Leeds Digital Shorts event. Ian Jindal (Editor in Chief, internetretailing.net) knocked my socks of with his demo of the image zoom function on the House of Fraser website (perhaps I'm just very easy to please but isn't it cool?!) Now I've seen the Photosynth demo my head is spinning with the possibilities of tapping into a site like flickr so would-be customers can see their object of desire out in the wild ... can you imagine the resulting mashup?!

Guy introduced me to TED a few days ago and I still can't believe I hadn't heard of it before. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an organisation that spreads original thought and good ideas through it's website and conferences. It's a veritable treasure trove of inspiration and mind-boggling possibilities. I'm planning to make watching TED talks part of my weekly routine from now on and I'll share what I find out here.

I'm fascinated by the fact that the pace of technological advances means that tomorrow's iphone is destined to become yesterday's walkman. This camera is a Sony Digital Mavica (MVC-FD85) which was being decomissioned at work ... it's a mighty 1.3 megapixel camera that stores images on a floppy disc that slots into the side ... oh how quickly things change :-) One of my favourite things about it is that you can take photos in negative ... how cool is that! The camera makes a phenomenal amount of noise every time you take a picture with it which makes me giggle - I'm looking forward to all the admiring glances when I use it out in public ;-)

... well I didn't exactly *walk* as such but I was walking on the inside while I drove to work, honest :-)

The topic of this year's Blog Action Day is the environment and nearly 20,000 bloggers have signed up to take part ... Clearly it's going to be difficult for the organisers to measure how much of an impact all those individual blogs entries will make but it feels good to be involved in positive action and anything that makes us stop and think has got to be a good thing. I was hoping to have a video clip of the eco-friendly trioBike being launched at the London Cycle Show but it's not quite ready so you'll have to use your fertile imaginations to dream of a future when we'll all be gliding along with the fresh air in our hair. I'm going to London for the next three days which always makes me feel a bit smog-ridden. In the spirit of Blog Action Day I'm going to pledge to walk or tube it rather than jump in a taxi ... unless it's *really* heavy rain ;-)

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UPDATE: The video has arrived at last! Check out the future of child transportation ... don't you just wish you could have a go in the front ;-)

Here at SimpleUsability we don't have favourite clients but if we did then one of them would be FunktionAlley ... tomorrow Guy joins the FunktionAlley team at Cycle Show 2007 in London where they're helping Sammy Hessburg-Eisinger launch the trioBike (mk 2.0). The first model of this 'carrierbike' (think bike/buggy/bikebuggy) won celeb fans along with a design award and is so cool and funky that you might find yourself considering parenthood (preferably twins) just so you can justify buying one. I can't wait to see what the new one looks like and I'll post a pic here as soon as I've stolen some shots off Guy's camera.
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UPDATE: Photos of the new trioBike (courtesy of Guy)

I've stolen one of the pics to give you a taster, click on it to go lust over the rest of them:

(c) Guy Redwood (who is probably wondering if he could fit two huskies in the front)

I am not anonymous, I am Helen Harrop