Spoofing

In our Interactive Media Strategies seminar this week, we were talking about how internet culture is used as an influence to advertising and as a result spoof adverts are made. We have all seen these, some a clever, some are obvious, but most raise at least a smile.

Anyways we were asked to come up with our own version. He is one I put together last night. Excuse the poor photoshopping, but I hope you can understand the message.

The original:




And here is my version:




Hope you like! Please comment!!

The BlackBerry and iPhone: Keeping Twitter alive.

Ah, yes I have had a change of name. I am now www.jamieadamwatson.blogspot.com. I've decided to drop that Jammy stuff, my Twitter username is now JamieWatson_ incase you would like to know.

Speaking of Twitter, I shall write a blog about it.

We all know that Twitter is the success story of the year (see below).



Whether you are a fan of Twitter or not, you have to give it some credit. In one year, it has grown from 3 million to 23 million users still tiny compared to Facebook's 200m users, but give it a chance). It has refused to turn commercial by selling its pricey space to advertising, unlike almost every business in the world. Despite being value from $60-$150 million, it refuses to be sold.
And more than anything, it is simple. Like Google it hasn't need to advertise itself, it has no gimmicks such as games, music or videos, its very simple. This beast has grown more or less by itself, admittedly it may have had some nurturing from the likes of Stephen Fry and Ashton Kutcher.

However in my opinion, Twitter has worked because of phones such as the Blackberry and the iPhone. It's not like these were the first mobiles phones to have the internet or 3G, but they were the first that people really used. People expect to receive emails on the move and do not have to wait until they get home and fire up their PC to surf the web. People are now online all the time. Whether it is on the train, in the lift or in bed, people can Tweet whatever they want, whenever they want and where-ever they want.

This has played right into Twitter's little birdy feet. Twitter is not a site that you generally spend hours on, not in the same way as you might on Youtube or eBay, but you dip in and out of during your entire day. You tweet a little something here, read a tweet there and re-tweet a couple of things. In the same way that texting has becoming a normality, Tweeting has. It takes 30 seconds, does not require vast amounts of attention and is something you can do through-out the day whilst carry on your everyday life.

I believe that this has only become such a social norm now because of the use of 3G mobile technology made popular by the iPhone and Blackberry. Without these two smartphone heros, Twitter would have never caught on to the masses in the way that it has.

Twitters owes them big-time. Maybe some free ad-space... I doubt it.

Few new songs I've picked up this week.

I feel almost as though I cannot write out a full blog as I really should be dissertating. Although spending hours on Facebook and Twitter seems slightly more acceptable. There I am just spending a couple of minutes at a time, rather than 20 minutes or so writing a blog post. I won't add up those "couple(s) of minutes" for you.

But whilst I've been 'working' I've been listening to a whole host of new songs which is nice. Here they are:

Plan B - Stay Too Long


Fall Out Boy - From Now On We Are Enemies


DL Incognito ft. Dallas Green - Fight This


The Maccabees Feat. Roots Manuva - Empty Vessels
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/zanelowe/2009/11/hottest_record_the_maccabees_f.html


Think that's about it. They're all well worth a listen in my opinion.

The effect of Last.fm

I have been a member of Last.fm for just over a year now (http://www.last.fm/user/JammyJamster). I have started to look at my profile every couple of days now just to see what I've been listening to, because apparently I can neither remember or look at my iTunes Recently Played. I really do like Lasf.fm, whether its just checking my own play count, listening to a band's radio station to find similar artists or my friends' radio stations to see what they've been listening to: There are many great features of Last.fm, however one aspect of Last.fm that you might not consider when signing up is the guilt factor that it brings to your musical life.

There appear to be two types of guilt: The Guilty Pleasure Guilt and the Play Count Guilt.

Its a shame that I havent had Last.fm for more than a year, then it would provide me with a more accurate play count. However this means that artists that I may have just like for a couple of weeks and listened to loads during that period, appear very high, like high HIGH up my most played list. Although I probably still like this artist, its a little cringing to see them all over my play count (see FrankMusik and Enter Shikari).

The second is the slightly more annoying guilt, although it really shouldn't be. For example. I have liked Alexisonfire for literally years now, and having only recently seen them live for the first time a few weeks ago, I have been listening to them a lot, both before and after the gig. It makes sense. Alexisonfire have the pleasure of being my most played artist, and now I feel guilty to listen to them. Its hard to explain, I want to listen to them, but I don't want to keep building my playcount up. Not because I'm embarrassed, but because I feel it is unfair on my other artists. I feel I should listen to Fall Out Boy, Enter Shikari or The Maccabees some more to level out my play count. And that's strange.

As much as Last.fm simply tracks what I want to listen to, it also makes me consider what I listen to a bit more carefully, which is stupid I know, and I try to ignore it. But sometimes I cant.

Songs of the week:

Not anything that different I suppose, but its a very nice tune. Indie/electro/dance/pop a sweet combination:


And a dirty bit of dubstep I found this week, real good tune and some dirty, dirty beats in there:

There are somethings only black people can pull off...

I know racism is very on trend at the moment, with Adolf Griffin getting his ass kicked on QuestionTime (not that he really had a fair chance, but like fuck did he deserve one). But something struck me today, black guys can pull off cool handshakes, white guys really REALLY cant. All you do it make yourself look every more white.

I was walking out from the library at uni today and was going up the narrow stairs next to the Allesbrook lecture theatre, and I saw a couple of black guys pulling off mental handshakes. They had hand clapping, shoulder bumping, click, the whole works, and I was about to ruin it. I was like shit, I'm gonna walk through right in the middle of handshake, get caught in a meale of hands and THEY WOULD NOT BE HAPPY. No man wants his handshake interrupted, especially a carefully crafted piece of art that I was witnessing. I got closer, saw a gap as one man moved to another and went for it. I stepped closer and another handshake had started. SHIT. I was beyond the point of no return, so I just went for it and ruined it.

I apologised. They said "don't worry mate". I know, what drama! I've already started drawing up a script for the movie. (It probably would be better than our radio script advert we worked on today. Actually no, that's a lie, it's brilliant. Fact.)


Tip of the blog: Ricky Gervais Podcasts. I know, I know, I'm well behind. But if you havnt listen to them, seriously get a torrent download or go to Pilkipedia and get them on the download. Karl Pilkington fucking mental ramblings, Gervais' laugh and Stephen Merchant's cheeky jokes are a work of art.