Hill+Knowlton Strategies

The increasingly irregular Web Curios returns after a week’s absence – in the unlikely event any of you are upset at the sporadic nature of these posts, feel free to contact Hill & Knowlton and tell them to stop giving me so much real work to do. Alternatively, why not donate to the “Let’s Ensure Matt Never Has To Work Again” fund? Every penny counts, kids!

So, The Octopus has spoken and Spain are going to win the World Cup on Sunday. This will make the purists happy, and will probably come as a massive relief to this woman (and a massive blow – *ahem* – to 86,000 (at the time of writing) men). The most shocking thing I’ve seen at this World Cup, though, is this team-by-team ranking of the best-looking footballers at the tournament – Cristiano Ronaldo as Portugal’s most attractive player? REALLY? Women and homosexuals of the world, I am disappointed in you. You think this mahogany narcissist is attractive? WHAT’S WRONG WITH SKINNY, PASTY WEBMONGS, YOU FREAKS???

*Composes self*

But! There is more to the world than football, hard as it may be to believe. There is a gun-toting killer on the loose, we are in the middle of a TROPICAL HEATWAVE – it’s like the Summer of Sam (it’s not like the Summer of Sam). There’s been loads of stuff on the internet, too, which is convenient as otherwise I’d have to pad out the rest of this blog with my inane witterings – thanks, internet!

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LOOK AT THE WEATHER! IT’S AMAZING! For the three of you who read this who aren’t in London, feel free to look at your own weather and marvel; everyone else, grab a Cornetto (or other iced treat of your choice – Web Curios does not represent any ice cream manufacturers as yet, but is happy to enter into sponsorship negotiations with anyone who’s interested. Haagen Dazs, for preference) and settle in for this week’s roundup of good stuff made by people far more talented than me (and in all probablity you too – stop looking smug).

It’s been a bit of a truncated week, this one, what with the Bank Holiday and then being in Geneva all day Tuesday (they’re still advertising this watch at the airport, by the way – who in the name of Christ actually buys this crap?), so this Web Curios is going to be pretty light on anything related to my actual job. Like you care. Frankly I couldn’t really care less either – I’m going on holiday next week (to New York, seeing as none of you asked – anyone with tips of anything to see or do feel free to tweet them to me or leave them in the comments below), and am basically just killing time and pretending to look busy til then (NOTE TO MY PAYMASTERS – THIS IS OBVIOUSLY NOT TRUE, I AM DISPLAYING MY USUAL STAKHANOVITE DEDICATION). Which means that Web Curios will be absent for a week or so. Deal with it, and enjoy this week’s fix.

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Webmongs! In a show of MASSIVE DEFIANCE I am today saying XXXX XXX (use your nous and creativity to establish exactly which expletive I am masking behind those cunning Xs) to my workload and instead channeling all my energies into bringing you some stuff off the web. You hear that, The Man? YOU HEAR THAT???? Eh? Oh.

It appears that The Man couldn’t give a flying one about my defiance, knowing as he does that the battle may be mine but the war is almost certainly set to be his.  I hate you, The Man.

Strangely enough, The Man’s ambivalence to my defiance is pretty analogue to my feelings about the new toy for grown-ups which has been launched today (as an aside, may I just quote the ever-wonderful Saul Williams here and reference the conspiracy-theorists’ anti-Apple belief…”no one seems to recognize the symbols come to life / The bitten apple on the screen, and Jesus had a wife…”…JUST SAYING, is all) – for a full, unexpurgated viewpoint click here (WARNING – BAD WORDS).

For those of you, though, who are fully intending to line Steve Jobs’ pockets even further and sit about stroking your new i-pets to the appreciative breathy moans of your i-onanist colleagues, can I suggest that you all get the Scrabble app, which is the best thing I’ve yet seen on the iPad. Apart, actually, from a demo of the Telegraph’s forthcoming app, which looks very shiny indeed (it won’t actually make reading the news any better, but it will make it prettier – and that’s what counts, eh? I despair, I really do).

Anyway, enough bitter misanthropy. Or maybe not; we’ll see how we go.

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Webmongs! Hello! Look! It’s a brand new political dawn in which the strong are just, the weak secure and the peace preserved – oh, no, actually it’s a hung parliament, a few days of uncertainty and the horrible, ugly prospect of having to go through this bloody circus all over again before the year’s out. You don’t need me for analysis of the situation (for which let’s be thankful; if you did need me for this, it would be a poor lookout for the country as a whole) – get it here instead. If you’re feeling depressed about the outcome, though, why not console yourself by spilling your guts to a bunch of random strangers on the internet? I’m going to leave the last word (for now, at least) on our much vaunted ‘digital election’ to the fine folk from B3ta – the web didn’t change the course of the election or the outcome of the vote (really, it didn’t – IT WAS THE TELLY WOT HUNG IT), but it made me laugh lots. So that’s ok then (warning – audio track contains swears) :

Right, enough of the important stuff. Let’s get back to the frivolous internet rubbish.

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Take an insightful 5 minute spin through today’s top trends effecting communication with H&K’s Kati Sulin. (There has never been a more exciting time to be in PR imho.) For Finnish speakers, there’s lots more from Demystifying Digital on the Helsinki office blog.

Hello. I’m Matt – I am a Digital Consultant here at Hill & Knowlton. No, I don’t really know what that job title means either – let’s just ignore it for now.

Each week I am going to chuck together a collection of (hopefully) interesting things that I have found online, all neatly collected into one blog post for your amusement and edification. I hope you feel as thrilled about this as you ought to.

I’m always on the lookout for recommendations as to places I can find more of this stuff, so drop me a line and let me know if you have any content motherlodes out there that you think I should be aware of. Anyway, without further ado, onto this week’s selection:

Choosing An Email Subject Line - I know, I know, it doesn’t sound interesting, but I promise that it is (well, if you do online comms, at least). A simple, step by step look at how to choose a subject line for an email that people might actually want to open. Lessons which can be applied to optimising web content in general, frankly.

The Code Organ – Far less filthy than it might initially sound, this is a very cool little tool put together by the folk at advertising agency DLKW (also the home of minor Twitter celebrity (sorry Dan) @adlandsuit). It basically takes the code of any webpage and parses it through an engine that turns that very code into MUSIC. Not only a very nifty bit of coding and a nice creative, but a great piece of PR for the agency – this went EVERYWHERE on Twitter on Thursday. FYI, this blog sounds like this, apparently.

WWF Advert – Just a great creative, simply executed.

Augmented Reality Maps by Microsoft - The ever-amazing TED (Technology Entertainment Design -  they run talks by interesting people on interesting topics, basically) showcasing a presentation by Microsoft’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas on some frankly jaw-dropping augmented reality mapping software. This is the future.

Twitter Users Are Getting Younger – good stats on internet usage trends amongst 18-24 year olds from Brand Republic.

Chatroulette – if you haven’t heard about this yet, you will shortly. Coded by a 17 year-old Russian boy in his bedroom, this site basically allows pairs strangers to videochat with each other. The caveat, of course, being that the selection of who you get paired with is entirely random. It’s worth checking out at least once – just incredibly compelling, if only from a curiosity point of view – but NOT AT WORK. I was on there for 10 minutes on Monday night and saw a lot of penises. Not metaphorical penises, but real ones. That might be your cup of tea, but it’s probably not your boss’s. You can get a flavour for the weirdness here (NSFW due to occasional, slightly grainy nudity).

A REAL LIFE DRAGON!!!!! – courtesy of the fascinating Science Punk Blog

DRAGON!!!!!

And finally, my song of the week – She Said by Plan B