Monthly Archive for March, 2009

Spotify Etiquette

 

Spotify machine at nudge london

Spotify machine at nudge london

 

 

So we’re using the awesome Spotify music service here in the Nudge office and have come up with a few rules of use which I share here.

1. Only one person active at one time

You can either grab the keyboard of the spotify machine or move the mouse using WinVNC (a remote desktop tool) but only one person at a time.

2. Don’t queue thousands of tracks

Just stick to a couple of albums at a time, while Carpenters might be a nice album break from constant Linkin Park, no-one wants to hear every song they ever wrote - just because you could doesn’t mean you should.

3. Don’t delete the queue

Ok so you’ve got a song you must play - feel free to jump the queue but don’t delete the queue - hey it took me at least 30 seconds to get that play queue set up.

4. Don’t add to a playlist unless you’re sure

We have a few fave shared playlists - like the current Top 40, the Nudge HQ hot list and my own Wake Me Up which I use fairly  often in place or with caffeine. Our rule is keep emlean and clean.

5. Use Spotify Friends to expand your music taste

This neat little website holds some great playlists - why be a DJ when you can enjoy someone else’s taste…

Rockclix goes live


This month sees the launch of Rockclix, the social application giving you a great starting point to explore the U.K’s alternative music scene.  Nudge helped out in an advisory capacity last month.

The Rockclix app gives the user definitive event listings, photo gallery and videos of indie, rock and alternative music events across the U.K.

If you’re a gig goer and are keen to see what events are on near you then Rockclix will provide all the events and post pictures and videos of the event. Rockclix’s team of Photographers are currently capturing their initial events so watch out for your face on one of the Rockclix’s photo albums soon!

The app also provides great exposure and distribution for promoters in the alternative music scene who can add their events/flyers, pictures and upload videos.

Rockclix has also had support from Radio 1 DJ Fearne Cotton (http://tiny.cc/9Y1GM) spotted sporting a very cool Rockclix T-shirt (see photo).

For more info on this project please contact info@rockclix.com .

Your Own Skittles Site < 1 Minute

So, lots of industry furore over the way Skittles gave control to the masses and social-mediarized™ 90% of their website.

Now you can do it too in less than a minute - behold my own personalised version of the Skittles site, make yours at Skittlr.com. Include Twitter searches, Facebook, Flickr, anything you like really - who needs a social media agency?

New Facebook Home Page, Slideshare and Sky News

New Facebook Home Page

Well the new Facebook home page is a definite improvement - a few things I like - filtering the feed by type of friends (see how to set up your friend lists), the right hand side has more stuff on there - feels a bit more like the featured on the Bebo home page.

However I don’t like “What’s on your mind?” - a slightly creepy question - if I say “Cheeseburger” does that mean ads for Macdonalds vouchers are going to start popping up? Still it’s probably better than “What are you doing?” (thanks Dave Nattriss for remembering for me…)

Facebook's new home page

Facebook's new home page

You can filter by app which is interesting though you can’t quite control which apps you filter by - it gives me the chance to filter by movies but not by my friend’s super photos.

Also “updates” have gone from the home page. Great, now I don’t hear any marketing update messages at all from those 50 pages I’m a fan of… good for users - less good for marketers.

Overall, this is about monetising Facebook. With the addition of highlights there is now more home page real estate dedicated to ads. It will be interesting to see how it develops and what the options are for advertisers.

Filtering my home page thorugh the movies application lens

Filtering my home page through the movies application lens

Slideshare

Slideshare is now attracting more of my attention (not least because they put my slides from the social networking world forum last week on their home page). I’ve come across some really great slide shows that save me having to go to all these pesky conferences. For an example of a rule breaking 162 slide presentation (believe me - it’s so good you’ll watch it to then end) check out the brand gap.

Hey I made it to the slideshare home page

Hey I made it to the slideshare home page

Sky News

Check out my most recent appearance on Sky News on my site: http://www.tobyberesford.com - you can catch me again this Wednesday 18th at 7pm UK time. Any comments on how I can improve my style of presentation gladly received!

Profile photo style, best twitter client and skittles fun

Skittles

This week twitter took over the Skittles home page and anytime you wrote a tweet it went straight to the home page - suddenly messages like “Skittles shown to cause cancer” appeared on the home page - it takes a gutsy brand but once the fuss has died down it points to the end of the web and the rise and rise of the social web. The customer is once again king.

 

Skittles changed their web site to go 100% social

Skittles changed their web site to go 100% social

 

 

Twitter Clients

I have been experimenting with various twitter clients such as Twhirl, Twitter mobile and Twitter on Facebook - but it looks like the emerging winner is TweetDeck which sits very nicely on my second monitor. I love the quick URL crunching tool - which makes tweeting that bit easier.

screenhunter_01-mar-09-1052

Tweetdeck is the most usable twitter client

 

Profile waste of time

In the old days we used spend our downtime changing the screen colours on our Windows settings - this has been replaced by the ultimate vanity of changing the profile photos.  Read this enjoyable post from All Facebook to see all the different types of Photo styles people have come up with.

 

Number one of the profile photo styles

Number one of the profile photo styles

My Social Week: Event Sync and Funny For Money

Synching Facebook Events to my Google calendar

There’s a useful new button on your Facebook Events page called “Export Events” - it lets you save your Facebook events in a format so you can import them into Outlook or your Google Calendar. I tried following the instructions on Inside Facebook and it works really well, would be great if it was automated via Goosync but it’s a good start.

An event as it appears on Facebook

An event as it appears on Facebook

The same event now on Google Calendar

The same event now on Google Calendar

Funny for Money

The Comic Relief App is live- try it here and raise some money for COmic Relief. Try your joke telling skills out and impress your  friends.

Be Funny for Money for Comic Relief

Be Funny for Money for Comic Relief