A very good collection of innovative advertising from various companies in including Nike and Universal Studios. Definitely worth a look.

If you live in the UK then you may be familiar with the BBC’ television program Dragon’s Den – one of the best things on the box at the moment.

One of the Dragon’s I have always enjoyed hearing about has been Duncan Bannatyne. He’s quite the character, and only hearing tidbits about his success I decided I wanted to learn more. So, last weekend I purchased the audio version of his autobiography from iTunes.

I found his story not only informative but entertaining. Within the book you learn how he managed to turn around business’ in a relatively short period of time, how he got into his charity work (for which he earned an OBE) and some of his personal traits that make him so successful.

If you have a bit of spare cash, or iTunes credit then I highly recommend you either pick up the book or download a copy from iTunes. It makes a highly enjoyable read.

Lewis Hamilton Becomes F1 World Champion –

McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton became the youngest world champion in Formula One history by the skin of his teeth after a thrilling Brazilian Grand Prix. The 23-year-old Englishman’s title rival Felipe Massa won the race in his Ferrari but Hamilton grabbed the fifth place he needed at the last corner.

Yesterday was one of those days when you just feel proud to be British. It was a bit touch and go at the end but Lewis managed to pull through and get those extra points. I feel terrible for Massa, he did everything that was asked of him. In the end I think it was his car that let him down.

Congratulations Lewis, I know how hard you’ve worked for that title – you deserve it!

When you think of Microsoft you pretty much always picture a global conglomerate, a company with many diverse aspects – unable to say what “business” they are actually in. Why is this a bad thing? I think it’s because customers don’t know who they’re talking to. They’re got this idea of a big not caring company in their head; and frankly Microsoft aren’t really helping themselves drop this image.

It’s sad that people think this way because, believe it or not, Microsoft, actually make some very cool products. The Xbox 360 for instance – at the end of the day a success, and is still my choice for gaming consoles.

It certainly isn’t an easy thing to change your public image and by no means will it happen over night, but I believe that there are a few things that Microsoft can do that can be at least stepping stones to having the general public have more of an understanding for what Microsoft are here to do, and how it can help you – the user.

The Solutions

Feedback is one of those things that is easily taken but given very little, that is why it is so important – because if you get a feature request, they probably, really, really want it! Microsoft have a history of not using the feedback from users that they get.

What better way is there to get people to use your product then putting in everything they want to see?

Microsoft is a very large company, and they’re making an absolute fortune. I think it may be best for them to pull out a few weeds and drop some of their smaller, less successful projects and focus on what is actually working for them and bringing in money. So, drop Surface and MSN TV and start putting more resources into Windows, Live and Xbox.

From there it will be a lot easier to see what Microsoft are all about. I would try having a different colour scheme for each sector of the industry Microsoft are in. Maybe red for Live, green for Xbox and blue for Windows and so on.

My next point really leads off well from what I just covered. I want integration, no, seamless integration between all that Microsoft does. This is key because if a user can buy a game for their 360 that they saw while using Microsoft Search, then walk over to the Xbox and play it. They’ve got a winner. People don’t want to care.

If that worked perfectly, nothing less, I would start using MS search today. It doesn’t take a couple more innovations like that to make me switch back to Windows.

I think that for the past two years the words ‘Windows Vista‘ have meant nothing but problems. With Windows 7 Microsoft are solving half the problem – but I think that it’s time to retire the Windows name and move on to something totally new.

What do they gain from this? Well, to start off with, no preconceptions about that they will produce. They can think completely out of the box. There’s no need for legacy support; one of the things that has been holding Windows up for the past few years is that they feel they need to support older software, hardware and users. So the back end of Windows is old and crumbling.

In the end, it’s less about dropping the Windows name, but more an excuse to move on completely from what people expect from their OS. Obviously there are some marketing advantages to this as well, this really encapsulates what I have been talking about – this is Microsoft’s big chance at recapturing the essence of what Microsoft and their OS is about.

Finally, I think Microsoft should get a bit more excited up in front of people. For better or worst they’re changing the way people think and work – not many people have that sort of opportunity. Embrace it and I think you’ll find you’re working a lot better and producing better products on the whole. If a coder can be excited about getting up and writing a log-in script – so can a user be excited about using it.

Chris Thomson And Michael Mistretta Launch Fusion Ads –

Fusion aims to provide advertisers with a targeted and effective platform to distribute their messages to an influential audience at an affordable price. We invite advertisers to make well-designed ads that are attractive to our readers.

I thought of The Deck as soon as I saw the site, very simple and very select, interestingly enough, I read all the blogs that are part of the advertisers network.

However, I do have a couple of questions that the site doesn’t answer. For one, if the amount of sites on the network goes up – does the price of advertising also increase? And even though Fusion is invite only so they don’t need to specify on the site; I would be interested to know what cut of the revenue Fusion makes.

And finally, how did Chris and Michael come up with ‘The Plank’ as the code-name? I can only guess that it’s a pun on ‘The Deck’.

Christopher Nolan On Three Movie Franchises –

On a more superficial level, I have to ask the question: How many good third movies in a franchise can people name? [Laughs.] At the same time, in taking on the second one, we had the challenge of trying to make a great second movie, and there haven’t been too many of those either. It’s all about the story really. If the story is there, everything is possible. I hope that was a suitably slippery answer.

That said, I hope he tries to break the trend.

[Via Kyle Baxter]

Ars Technica on the new Call of Duty 5 Multiplayer –

Each player now has a fourth vehicle perk which privileges sitting in a certain part of the jeeps or tanks (say, faster turret turning). Of course, given the infantry-focused action of the previous game and its subsequent tight balance, the vehicles in World at War feel somewhat out of place.

I wish that was the only negative thing they had to say about the game. I’m kind of disappointed that they don’t think it’s up to scratch, Call of Duty 4 was such a great game – especially on the multiplayer side of things.

This just strengthens my belief that Infinity Ward still make the best Call of Duty games.

Chris Bowler Interviews Michael Mistretta -

If you’ve got a lot of free time (enough to read about 7000 words) then check out this fantastic interview, they cover such topics of education, GTD and of course; blogging.

Being the nosy sod I am, I was very interested in seeing how Michael manages to allocated his free time – of course it then turned out he had a lot more than most due to his homeschooling. I just wish I had the commitment to be able to sit down and get school related work done without being threatened.

Of course check out Michael’s blog if you haven’t, that’s sure not to disappoint (I owe him a link anyways as I got rid of my blogroll with the design change).

Today Revision3 announced that they were cutting their losses and canceling some of their programming and also (more importantly) laying off some of their staff. For me this really shows the global economic crisis has reached the tech industry. I’m aware the Mahalo had to a couple of weeks ago, but for me – it’s only just hit home.

We’ve had a number of great successes here at Revision3, including Diggnation, Tekzilla and The Totally Rad Show. But not everything pans out. Just as in the past, when we ended shows that just weren’t building audiences or driving revenue, we had to make changes. As you may have heard, today we had to make some tough staffing decisions as we ended the run of a few of our shows.

I didn’t expect the economic downturn to hit the tech industry until 2009 at the earliest, it really shows how unpredictable these things are.

Sadly, this is just the start, I’m not looking forward to seeing the inevitable changes throughout the internet as more and more companies are affected by the changes in the economy. It’s quite shocking to see people who I thought held such a solid role within Revision3 loosing their jobs.

But how does this effect us? What are we going to be seeing from tech companies when they begin to start laying people off? Well, apart from a very vibrant discussions of Twitter I guess that there is going to be less changes over a longer period time. All those brand new releases that you were expecting probably won’t come as soon as you’d like – but when do they ever? On the Rev3 side of things, a few shows got cancelled, including one of my favorites; PixelPerfect.

This show I think might have a bit of hope, it was originally produced by the Pixel Corps for Revision3 – I could quite easily see Alex and his team picking it up again. It’s so sad to see so many people from Revision3 leaving the company, I wish them the best of luck in finding a new job.

The Best MacBook Pro Review –

So far out of all the new MacBook Pro reviews, the best has been from ArsTechnica. It’s actually posted in two parts and covers, in a lot of detail, the gaming performance – something that I was especially interested in.

If you’re still undecided if you want to purchase one; check out this review.