There have been some considered and thoughtful posts on the implications of social media recently (and some silliness too). I like these two viewpoints for inspiring intelligent discussion on some of the practical issues arising... Read More

Who let the human in the building? In a slightly mind bending move Linden Labs, who built and run Second Life, acquired the Swedish company behind Avatars United, an online community for avatars, or more precisely, a community for the... Read More

Want to see a whole microsite experience squeezed into a teeny tiny banner ad? The Mass Effect 2 launch campaign is now live at MSN UK Gaming. What's all this about? See the previous post. World's first interactive and expandable banner ad (we reckon)... Read More

Normally I'd shy away from ever claiming a 'world's first' - someone, somewhere must surely have got there first? But in this instance we think we are on solid ground. Working with the team at Mediacom we have been busy putting the finishing touches... Read More

Business Insider carries a great story explaining how easy-peasy blogging platform Tumblr is outperforming its rival Posterous. According to the article it comes down to the simplicity of the Tumblr UX which is even clearer than its rival's pages. Of... Read More

The price of not blogging for three months (blame it on the end of financial year; Christmas; snow on the keyboard, whatever) is to have to sit and delete 52 pages of spam comments. Still some of them are noble attempts at English as a foreign language.... Read More

The moment I got Foursquare? About midday on Saturday when I checked in at a department store in Cologne. I've been using the service for a month or so, checking in, looking at reviews, adding places. But I hadn't quite worked out the real commercial... Read More

With Christmas, or 'The Holidays' as we call it here in the US (strange for a Brit to get used to), fast approaching we wanted to make a WPF app to help celebrate.For all of you who love this time of year but possibly won't have a white Christmas where... Read More

It's good to see that in the run up to the season of goodwill, Google, The New York Times and The Washington Post have cosied up together in a Labs project called 'Living Stories'. According to Google, the site is "an experiment in presenting news, one... Read More

Anyone interested in the face-off between the old word of content and the new should be reading theUK Financial Times today.First off, a fabulous article on MySpace (the News Corp Years) and the demise of one of the hottest online properties ever. Whether... Read More

Following on from yesterday's post where the Sun newspaper poked fun at all things e-reader, here's the perfect riposte, this time from Sports Illustrated, published by Time Inc.What I like about this demo is that while hardware manufacturers remain remarkably... Read More

Hats off to the Sun newspaper. It's just started broadcasting the UK's cleverest and funniest media ad for many a month.The spot makes some great points about the convenience and versatility of print newspapers versus handheld devices, while taking a... Read More

Oh, another night out, another hunk of metal to put in our reception area. It’s a tough job but some of us are more suited to it than others.   Last night the Metia Influence team & our good friends at Logica rocked up at the B2B Marketing... Read More

You can always count on Harold Evans for a smart take on the current state of journalism and content. Currently doing the rounds promoting his autobiography, the former London Times editor was cautiously optimistic about the future of journalism when... Read More

What's the wow factor of Microsoft's Courier 'Tablet' prototype video? From a marketing and perceptions standpoint it speaks volumes, especially compared with the secrecy surrounding Apple's long-awaited Tablet. Courier is in line with the... Read More

There have been various pieces of analysis put forward to debunk the view that the web increases diversity, and to put forward the contrary view that it limits choice by fostering the herd instinct. Now, e-Marketer has a post - Twitter Power Users Solidify... Read More

Something else for marketers and especially designers to embrace - data driven design. James Governor has a great analysis of the drivers behind Adobe's Omniture acquisition - Adobe Omniture: Data meets design. Here comes Google! if you are a marketer... Read More

Looks like everyone needs a healthy developer ecosystem these days (except Skype). Yesterday, Vivek Kundra, CIO of the US Govt announced their very own AppStore for government cloud services, called Apps.gov. Coverage here in the New York Times,... Read More

GigaOm reports Skype has closed its developer program: Skype Kills Extras and its Developer Ecosystem. Strange indeed. We haven't needed to look closely at Skype's program but the comments with the story suggest it wasn't a happy place before this news.... Read More

Hey presto. I love the way that the Derren Brown lottery trick illustrates how a single event can generate fast flowing real-time information that slowly crystalises into hard fact. Here's how one of the biggest viral events of recent times has... Read More

On Wednesday the New York Times had a piece on the unlikely but multi-billion dollar market for purchasing virtual goods for real cash - Asian Social Networking Sites Profit from Virtual Money. Yesterday the Guardian's Victor Keegan had a post... Read More

Seems the only time I blog is to brag. Perhaps they should be called brag posts, better than blag posts I guess.   We’ve been nominated for another, yes another award. This time PRWeek has shortlisted the Metia PR team and our client, GlobeOp for... Read More

Venerable UK journalistic institution, John Humphrys caused a kerfuffle around making his first tweet today - here on the BBC web site. UK Govt got slammed (wrongly) for reportedly appointing a Twitter Tzar - here the story put to rights by Charles Arthur.... Read More

Whether or not it's got long term viability as a business model, you have to admire the vision of the New York Times for offering readers the chance to take a course hosted by a celebrity writer, as reported at the Nieman Journalism Lab. Courses cost... Read More

Great post from Jonny Bentwood here and again here on the allstar line up now gathered at Altimeter Group - love the description of the assembled luminaries as the Galacticos. Really hope that nickname sticks. They are Charlene Li, Ray Wang, Jeremiah... Read More