Showing posts with label tokyohanna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tokyohanna. Show all posts

Wednesday 23 April 2008

Adult Swim

As Rob is off on a nostalgia trip of lycra pants, long hair and sneaky trips away from HHCL where we used to work in London to read Kerrang I thought I'd share something that came my way in RSS feeds last night from Tokyohanna, that immediately stood out from the usual music tip offs.




I really like this ability to embed and share music with people through blogs and widgets. It's a terrific recommendation/distribution model, and means that Adult Swim make it into my awareness and/or consideration set quickly easily and effectively.

I guess their next task is to find a way to get a few Euros out of me. I believe they can do this outside of the traditional revenue model and despite David's startling assertion in a brilliant post he just wrote that content production as we know it may be dead, or even the nature of content itself.

I'm guessing it depends a lot on the context but make sure to follow his thought leadership blog for more on the future of media and take time to check out David's seminal 'Where are the Joneses', for a glimpse I believe into the future of mobile content.

The other talent that caught my attention recently off the Radio One site are Crystal Castles. This video is for Rob because its all about the noise right?




Sunday 6 January 2008

Beijing Strategy


The fifth to seventh floors at the Xie Dan shopping complex called Beijing Stategy are as good a place as any to check out where the hip kids are at, in the same way as say Harajuku would be the place to trend-watch emerging fashion changes in Tokyo. Its interesting to see what these young folk are wearing, what they are into and how they behave with each other. Although its mainly a 'teen +' fashion hangout, if you dig a little deeper into the boutique end on other floors you'll get to see a slightly older female customer looking for more sophisticated outfits. They're of the type that like to dress impressively but don't have the budget of hitting say The Place or The Peninsula Arcade at The Peninsula for top end luxury brands. Some of them are just smarter too! Beijing is a great place for buying clothes that look terrific but aren't necessarily designed to last forever. I guess this is somewhat indicative of the disposable society the West created I'd point out. More on that later because I've got some thoughts emerging on that one. I can't wait for oil to hit 200 bucks a barrel.

Anyway, while walking around Xie Dan which is one of at least three locations in Beijing that has a whole shop dedicated to Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas, I then stumbled across a shop called Boing Boing. I wondered at the time if they knew about one of the worlds top blogs and took a quick snap. So I was a bit bloody surprised to discover shortly afterwards I had been linked to by Boing Boing and saw my traffic stats go through the roof. Wanna take a peek?

Anyway, those peeps rushing over here to check out the crumpled porcelain beer cans will be unlikely to pay more visits and if truth be known I'm not looking for traffic, I'm looking for comrades as I mentioned to Johnnie, Damiano, Jamie and John last year at the Endurance in Soho. But it was quite a learning experience to check out the oodles of data that Google Analytics provides such as who came, where they came from, their ISP, what they clicked on, how long they stayed, where they went to next and all that stuff which very few bloggers ever talk about but is for me one of the reasons why I can 'head held up high' say I like a bit of quant now and again, as I said in one of my tweets that I've just discovered has been fed into a site I've never come across before. Once again I'm compelled to reminds folks that McLuhan said the third world war would be an information war with no division between civilian and military which sounds like fun doesn't it? (Churchill also said something similar and prescient).

Sunday 4 November 2007

More out and about - London: Swinging Sixties?


Spotted this sign on the way back from the creative geeks drinks at The Endurance, and thought it was a must have addition to the blog. I'm still having trouble remembering if it's the Endurance or the Endeavour but there's only one pub on Berwick street market isn't there? Going back a day or two I saw this while out and about with Charlie the other week.


You can't beat a bit of complex pipeworkery can you? Yahoo Pipes should sponsor this immediately. Is anyone using this yet on a regular basis.


And looking upwards a bit, The Gherkin is definitely the 21st century archictectural landmark of London. You can see it all the way from Brixton, and features in that brilliant 'We live in Financial times' poster which is so so true.


More Creative Geeks action down The Endurance. Curiously we were talking about Tunng during the day as a friend is touring with them around the States.


Dead insect came along which is great because Anthony is just brilliant, a creative and digital planner bursting with ideas and now working freelance around London after a few years at Glue.


And Fiona tipped up with her boyfriend Richard of Creative Apes. I heard she has started blogging again which is always good news to hear. Fiona is half Indonesian and half Scottish. Quite an exotic creature, and a really nice young lady too. Keep up with the Blogging Fiona!


And no get together is a proper one if Sam the man from Adlads and Adgrads doesn't turn up. Check his Ali G impression for off the cuff grown men knicker wetting. Me like very much....Don't say I didn't tip you off about the headphone look Sam :)


And not many days later there was that Octopus twitter from Johanna and Amber. Later that day Richard and I came across this at an art gallery exhibition opening in Shoreditch.


Proving some trends are Global, but the piece that looked most provocative was this


Then we popped into The Owl & The Pussy Cat confirming my suspicion that I think is about to burst on a wider stage, which is a sixties revival in London. There was even a Beatles mop top haircut in this pub. Don't say I didn't tip you off about that swinging sixties revival first, although my friends tell me that Beijing is closer to the real thing for atmosphere; now that drugs and sex are quite common over there. I'll be clutching my Gideon Bible close to me at all times then :)


The next day Richard and I took a stroll around Lewisham where we noticed this incongruous couple from the bridge crossing the river.


I have no idea what the scooter and the pineapple were doing there but it felt like the start to a great novel or the middle part of a Morse episode. I should at this point include a clip of Richard playing in his band The Rank Deluxe from the night before. They play 'sewage music' according to their site. Gulp!

This clip is on the N95 again (as indeed is all this photography/video) and I think its quite good for the conditions although the sound recording is terrible. Not bad for a phone though.




I've always been fond of markets. All around the world if you want to get a feel for the people and skip the tourist hot spots, just get down to the market and you'll figure out quickly enough if the natives are good or not. I really like these old carts which still serve their purpose in the 21st century and have loads of character. Here's my local one packing up that saturday night.


I'm slowly but surely catching up with the media files on my camera and I expect very shortly to be blogging pictures and video that are almost real time. Which should make my posts a bit more interesting than this one.