Russell Davies

decoding huntington

He doesn't do it very often but when he posts it's always well worth reading. And Richard's done it again. Really sharp, really useful thinking.

And he wisely reminds us all about Decoding Advertising. I remember reading this when I first started in advertising (largely because it seemed to be the only academic book about advertising at the time, and I thought planning was supposed to be an academic thing) and I thought it was brilliant. But then 10 years of advertising 'training' banged it out of me, and I've not thought about it until I just read Richard's post. Must revisit it. Especially since I probably completely misunderstood it.

sleephacks

   

       

Since I've suggested you all get up at dawn I thought this fantastic round-up of sleep tips might be useful.

a year of listening

Camiel points us to this fantastic site. 365 bits of odd audio genius. You could spend forever listening to this. And it's from the old web 1.0 world of 2003. Before misplling and podcasts.

marktd well

Marktd is a great idea. It's like Digg for marketing stories. Piers built it to fill in for PSFK while he goes on holiday. Very smart. He offered a few people a chance to stick some banners up there and I have no clue how to do that so Stefan very kindly built me a couple, overnight. What a nice man. You can see them occasionally on the site.

I've agonised for several seconds about whether anything recent on here is worth submitting and then decided not to. I'm too English.

splendid crack

I enjoyed a splendid East London coffee with Iain Tate of crackunit on Friday. An excellent man who pointed me at two of the best sites I've seen for ages. Netvibes which you probably all know about but which is a fantastic way of drawing all your RSS stuff together and is my new home page, and We Feel Fine which Iain explains much better than I. I was also pleased to learn he's another East Midlander (Staffs). We E-Midlanders have to stick together. Maybe we should start an East Midlands blog ring. It'd be called eyupmiduck.

Peter Serafinowicz - the future of something or something

Peter Serafinowicz is a funny and clever man. He did Look Around You, was in Shaun Of The Dead and supplied the voice of Darth Maul. (And was regularly on the much-under-rated 99p challenge.)

What makes all this relevant for all you communications thinker types is that he's started bypassing all the traditional content channels. He's been making demos of stuff, mini-pilots really, and putting them on YouTube. They're parodies of E! news, about the Oscars and the Apple v Apple case. And they're very good. This won't make him a fortune or win him worldwide fame on its own; but it builds an audience, it gets him instant feedback and it makes TV channel owners slightly nervous, because it's the start of a shift in the balance of power.

another what the web is for

Through the serendipity of trackbacks and the gift economy of polite email I found this netsquared place - remixing the web for social change - what a fantastic idea. There are tons of interesting ideas in here and here. Have a look. Brilliant.

music for working

I know most of you have been pandora-ing for ages but for some reason I'd resisted. It never quite delivered the specificity I wanted. But the other day I just relaxed and tried to grow a station of good music for working. Quiet, slow, harmonic, no words. I rather like what they've come up with. If you want to listen too, scroll a long way down, on the right, and click on 'music for working'.

everything he knows

This is a lovely site, full of what seems like excellent advice. I especially like do something.

what the web is for

This blog is what the web is all about. Genius stuff about brilliant cartoons. Illustrated with great visuals, cunning commentary and actual clips from YouTube.

Look at this post in particular for an illustration of how a good post can work. This really makes me want to raise my game on here.