Mando Group Ltd - social

Guide to Jan 08

We have put together a short video guide to the highlights of January 08 in Liverpool (great presenting Simone!). We hope this helps you start the Liverpool Capital of Culture Year well.

In January we can look forward to a host of fantastic events starting with 'Skate into 08', where St Georges Hall is being transformed into an ice rink, with hot chocolate and mulled wine available to keep you warm!

Other highlights include an open air extravaganza, the opening of the Arena and Convention Centre Liverpool, Visible Viruses and the Fresh Festival.

Take a look at the video guide on our homepage for the low down.

A new gift every day - Countdown 08

We’re nearly there! The official countdown to 2008 is on, and the crowning of our city as European Capital of Culture! To celebrate, we have just finished developing www.countdown08.co.uk.

This great new site gives you a chance to enjoy a host of benefits, including ticket giveaways, exclusive offers and competitions by featuring a new gift for you every day.

Simply visit the site to see what the gift of the day is and enter to win it. Gifts cover the whole spectrum of the 2008 programme, from pop to opera, sport to theatre, art to community events and much more. Just this week the site gave away 5 pairs of tickets for the Kaiser Chiefs gig, today Chemical Brothers tickets are up for grabs.

Each gift only last 24 hours, so be sure to check every day until the start of the opening weekend on Friday 11 January 2008 .

Say hello to Enu

My Enu is launched today. The Enu is the first of our funky little growers range. He's a self-watering biosphere ideal for growing herbs, find out more about the Enu at www.myenu.com

Mando Group are investment partners in this great new little product. It has taken 12 long months to develop the Enu from scratch, ensuring that he looks great, does his job well and is eco friendly.

We think Enu makes an ideal original Christmas present! You can buy the little grower online from the website now.

My mother is on broadband at last!

This really is the end of an era. Last weekend I installed my mum's new broadband router and hey presto; her dial up days are over.

Over the last 3 years nearly all of us have gone from dial up to broadband and there is significant evidence that now we have broadband, we are not getting bored with the internet, but instead our usage of the internet is growing beyond most predictions. So here are just a few facts that I hope you find interesting.

1 - It took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million users, 13 years for TV, 5 years for the Internet

2 - Facebook now has over 50 million users and is growing on average at 3% per week

3 - Facebook's user base is very loyal, approximately 50% login daily

4 - Over 88% of internet connections in the UK are now broadband

5 - In 2005 in the UK, online advertising spend exceeded radio advertising spend

6 - In Q3 of 2007 Google’s advertising revenue overtook those for ITV1

7 - In May 2007, Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the Internet Advertising Bureau said "I believe online [advertising] spend could overtake TV within the next three to four years"

8 - In March 2007 in the UK there were over 38 million internet users

9 - In January 2007 5.7 million people in the UK accessed the internet from a mobile device

10 - Google is by far the fastest growing brand name in the world top 100 brands. Its recent inclusion as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary confirms what Google's competitors feared: to web users, Google means search.

More about the rise of broadband usage.

Pandora's Music Box

No, this is not a box to contain all the musical evils of the world; Daniel O'Donnell and the like. Pandora is actually a personalised internet radio service that helps you find new music based on your favourites. It is based on the research from the Music Genome Project, where musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever. They produced hundreds of musical attributes that they call 'genes' into a very large Music Genome which helps to categorise preferences in music and therefore from understanding your preferences Pandora aims to predict what you would like to listen to.

With Pandora you start your new personalised radio station by defining an artist or song. From that first choice, when the track has ended Pandora provides the next track which it provides based on similar characteristics to the first track that you chose. If you really like a track or really dislike a track you can indicate the fact to help Pandora understand your preferences and become more accurate at predicting what you would like to hear. As its bank of music is much larger than any collection that you or I could have access to, it is a fantastic way of being opened up to new music similar to music that you already like.

For legal reasons Pandora does say it is currently for US listening only; and they ask for a US ZIP code on registration, but this is still an excellent idea and one that I hope will be able to be used legally for the rest of the world soon.

Also see Video killed the radio star.

Winter Lights: Liverpool Jackpot by Franck Scurti

Following the success of Animal, a previous Winter Lights project in 2006, internationally renowned French artist Franck Scurti was commissioned again by Liverpool Biennial to propose a second series of amazing new Winter Lights and has created a 'Liverpool Jackpot' working with local communities in Kirkdale, Kensington and Garston.

An eager crowd of people turned up at Metal, Liverpool and despite the the cold, gusting winds, waited on the side of a busy road to see a giant flashing jackpot turned on, illuminating nearly houses and passing cars with it's 'Power to the People' message, interspersed with giant noses and bright red apples.

The lights are each a unique jackpot to be seen in each neighbourhood and each sequence contains an image of food, a body part and a phrase, taken from British press in consultation with local residents. The effect of them was quite electrifying, and seemed to imbue the cold windy evening with the feeling of a sense of achievement and possibility of art really reaching out to people.

It's fabulous to see such a dynamic and visible arts project in these inner city areas. It certainly demonstrates that Liverpool Biennial strive to provide art that is inclusive and accessible to people throughout Liverpool .

You can see a simulation of all three Liverpool Jackpots for yourself here

Mando Group is the web development partner of Liverpool Biennial.

World Usability Day

Today is World Usability Day. This year’s theme is Healthcare. We’ve been having a think about what we could come up with. Ideas range from redesigning the stretcher-ambulance experience, through to inflatable instant slings (and even fake suns (sun-on-a-stick)) for the dark winter streets of the UK (to combat SAD).

However, one idea has stood out from the rest, and that’s something that’ll nicely slots into our Web Apps initiative: Hospital Breadcrumbs, or Healthcrumbs… we’re not entirely sure of the title yet, but the concept’s a good’n! Based squarely on the patient experience in a hospital, it will be a means to communicate a patient’s past and current situation clearly, by means of mobile technology, and even what to expect in the immediate future whilst at hospital. We’ll blog further once the idea starts to take more shape.

Our ideas aside, for anyone who’s spent enough time in hospitals or dealt with wider healthcare issues, the experience leaves a lot of room for improvement. It’ll be interesting to see what usability experts come up with as a result of today, and if in fact, something wide reaching comes as a result.

Announcing Mando Group Web Apps

So this week we launched Mando Group Web Apps dept. The venture is an entirely voluntary thing that will be done out-of-hours by people who just want to make some cool stuff.

While a few of us were away at the Future of Web Apps conference we realised that actually, we all had great ideas all the time but our individual skill set or free time meant it was an up-hill struggle to get something off the ground. We figured the other guys would probably all feel the same way or and so we wrote a bit of a plan on how we could make stuff happen in the company. When we got back we presented the plan to the rest of the staff to see if anyone else wanted to join in...

...our first meeting was this week and two thirds of the company turned up!!

We ended up brainstorming about 12 different ideas for web applications that we could develop and the ideas went from extra features for our intranet through to full blown Web 2.0 dotcoms.

As a group we settled on 4 projects to move forward and each one has a team leader and at least 3-4 other people working on it. This first month is all about designing and scoping and we’re all getting together again in a weeks to see how we’re getting on.

We’re all stoked by the ideas that we’ve had and can’t want to see what apps comes out of this new department

Watch this space to see how we get on!

Green ACC

We are really proud to have worked on the design of the website for the new Arena and Convention Centre Liverpool, which is a stunning new venue on the water front, due to be launched in 2008. ACC Liverpool is one of the ‘greenest’ arenas in Europe; the building has been designed to produce half the CO2 emissions of traditional builds and to use 20% less electricity. Yesterday it was also announced that ACC Liverpool have signed up with E.ON, Europe's biggest energy provider which has one of the largest green portfolios in the UK.

It is great to know that here in Liverpool we can develop something of significance nationally that others will look to for an example of best practice.

ACC has also recently announced that it will be hosting the MTV awards, which is fantastic for the city.

www.accliverpool.com

Katine, north-east Uganda

After arriving back safely from Africa last week I was fascinated to see the new project the Guardian has adopted. They have begun a three-year relationship with the people in and around a small African village in Uganda called Katine.

They are going to be working with two NGO’s Amref and Farm-Africa to help develop the village’s infrastructure and improve education and health standards. The paper will be following the project in detail over the next three years, you can find out more @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine.

Africa 4: Home bound

I have crossed the border into Uganda, which was an experience! The Natural resources of the Congo are staggering but with no road or infrastructure there is no easy way to get them out of the country.

It has been a humbling and incredible experience. I have seen some great projects we can get involved in and I’m sure I will be back again.

Africa 3: A forgotten land

Well, we have been here a few days now, I guess it’s starting to feel more normal, but the needs are overwhelming. Everywhere you look there are street kids, they are not hungry just very poor.

We met with three local organisations today who work with abused women, child soldiers and street kids, it was humbling to hear their stories. They were all using the social enterprise model to re-habilitate.

It is interesting, the UN are everywhere doing both peace keeping and humanitarian work, however we haven’t seen any NGOs working here. It is true to say that the Congo really is a forgotten land.

Only a few days left in Africa, crossing the border into Uganda today which should be interesting!

Africa 2: No roads, yet everyone has a mobile phone

We arrived in the Congo midday yesterday on a dirt track runway having flown for hours over dense rain forest. The town has no roads even though it has a population of over a million! Yet, it seems that everyone has a mobile phone. After just one day here I have so many questions. I’m off to visit three schools and a clean water project over the next few days.

Africa 1: Sitting on an airstrip in Uganda

After a very early start on Tuesday morning I arrived in Uganda yesterday. I have had a nights sleep under the amazingly dark sky and I'm now sitting on an airstrip in Uganda, it's 6am and pouring with rain. I'm waiting to fly to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to visit some charities and NGOs. As part of this trip I will be looking at projects that Mando Group can get involved in supporting as a company.

Hopefully I'll send an update from the Congo but I'm not sure how effective communication will be there.

The hand drying revolution

Whilst at the FOWA (Future of Web Apps) conference I have made an unexpected discovery; the Dyson Airblade hand drier.

At conferences hundreds of people leave a session at the break and many head for the toilets. Nobody likes queuing in toilets so here at the ExCel centre they have installed Dyson's revolutionary new design of hand drier to get people through quicker and obviously prevent queuing.

It is amazing!! It will do for hand drying what the original Dyson did for vaccum cleaning. Once you've tried it, you get frustrated with every other conventional hand drier.

All conventional driers are just like a wall mounted hairdrier, blowing hot air down on to your hands. I've generally found these fairly ineffective, and the only ones that seem to work are the ones that have a powerful motor and really blast your hands, taking about 30 seconds. Surely this is very inefficient. Dyson's approach is completely different but very obvious once you see it. Simply his system provides an open plastic box which you lower you hands into, which then blows hot air onto your hands from all directions, so that after less than 10 seconds your hands feel really dry. As well as the obvious consumer benefit, the premisis that installed the device will benefit from reduced enegy costs (Dyson say 83% less), and finally the environment benefits!

I expect that within 5 years nearly every new venue will have airblades or a similar copy installed in the toilets.

I love innovation, and I think this may be my favourite of the year so far. Dyson really understands that "Value innovation is about making the competition irrelevant by creating uncontested market space." -- W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy

The Winners in Barcelona

We have returned from a fun 24 hours in Barcelona celebrating our 10th Birthday. We experienced some of the sights, sampled the delicious food, queued for hours to get on the cable car (not highly recommended!) and held our annual staff awards. Big congratulations to the award winners. The categories reflect our core values and are as follows:

Creative - problem solving and out-of-the-box thinking
Martin Chapman Fromm

Open - transparent, honest and clear
Carl Dickinson

Responsive - pro-active, quick-thinking and customer-focused
Rushell Hall

Engaging - knowledgeable, good communicator and friendly
Ed Jones

Employee of the year
Carl Dickinson

Innovation of the year
W5. This is Mando Group's unique approach to usability, to ensure that the design and layout of the website meets the needs of all the user groups.
Martin Chapman Fromm

We would like to thank the team at Casa Camper Hotel who through their fabulous service and inspiring hotel made our short stay very memorable.

Mando Marauders

Sunday 15th July 2007, Liverpool held the 14^th Liverpool to Chester to Liverpool bike ride, and Mando, very bravely, decided to enter two teams.

Ian Snailham did most of the encouragement, motivating myself, Dan Prior, Adam Burcher, Simone Peter and Andrew Wishart to take part. I then persuaded my husband Reg to join us, and Ian did the same with his wife Beryl. So with two teams of four we were ready to go, we decided that we’d raise money for Barnardo’s the chosen charity for the event, Ian set up a Just Giving site http://www.justgiving.co.uk/mando and set our target at £500. Emails and texts were sent out to all family, friends and colleagues asking for support in the way of sponsorship and donations.

With a week to go the excuses started rolling in; Simone had booked a last minute holiday, a bargain she couldn’t refuse, so wouldn’t be able to ride. Andrew was snowed under with work and would have to work all day Saturday and Sunday to catch up, and then last but not least on the morning of the ride Dan pulled out with a knee infection.

So with only three hardcore Mando cyclists left plus spouses Ian pulled in the troops in way of his friend Terry. We all met in the Mando car park at 7.45 Sunday morning, with Ian, Beryl and Terry looking like true professionals in tight t-shirts and shorts, while Adam, Reg and I looked like we were just popping out to the shops. We donned our official Mando t-shirts even though they were a little on the large side and took the officially team photograph. We then set out to meet the other 2000 cyclists that were gathering at the mouth of the Birkenhead Tunnel. It was here that we split into our teams; Ian, Terry and Adam planning to do the full 54 miles to Chester and back again, and Beryl, Reg and I hoping our legs would last the 30 miles to Chester so we could catch the train back again.

We set off from the start line in batches, with Radio Merseyside’s Roger Phillips (I think) helping us on our way, to be one of a privileged few to ride through the Birkenhead tunnel while it was closed to traffic. Within seconds we’d lost sight of Ian, Adam and Terry. Reg and I decided we’d make it through the tunnel at our own pace and wait for each other on the far side. I managed to make it though first and it wasn’t long before we were both racing through the streets of Birkenhead heading for the county lanes of Thornton Hough and Willaston.

To our surprise and delight the route was fairly flat, which allowed us to pick up quite a pace. We went from sharing main roads with traffic, to quiet country lanes and even ended up on a dirt path at one point. The ride was exhilarating especially when getting caught up in the numerous herds of professional racers that sped past.

Before we knew it there was the sign saying we had made it to Chester, we pulled up outside the Countess of Chester Hospital in a field where we checked in, Reg and I collapsed on the grass along with our bikes and sat rejoicing in the fact that we had made it without any chaffing or cramps. In fact we were pleased to say it was easier then we had imagined.

After a quick rest and time to pick up our DIY (please insert participants name here) certificates we got back onto our bikes and rode to the station where we caught the next train home to Liverpool. We were so busy chatting about the highs and lows of the ride and how our legs were really going to feel it the next day, that we completely forgot about the monstrous hill that lay between the station and a nice warm bath. Brownlow Hill and Edge lane are pretty steep roads and by the time we got near home our legs were burning worse than at any other moment that day. We wobbled into the house and collapsed, needless to say we’d had a really enjoyable day.

P.S Adam, Ian and Terry all made it round the full 54-mile route so well done to them too.

Cultured companies

So, I've been feeling a fair bit of civic pride recently...

...and walking round our design studio, I keep seeing all this great work we're progressing for the city as it grows and develops in all areas. Examples include:

Arts and Culture: Liverpool Phil, Biennial, Hard Day's Night Hotel and the new Arena and Convention Centre.
Social Enterprise: the Merseyside Single Procurement Vision, Clean Slate, Ariel Trust
Private Sector: Mercia Partnership, Hill Dickinson, Brainboxes....

... to name just a very small number* - all people and companies committed to staying in Liverpool but attracting clients and investment from outside the region thereby making a difference to our city and it's future stability.

It's a good time to be here and there are a lot of great people doing extraordinary things.

*and sorry if I haven't included you in my 5 min braindump :-)

Is your team Johari aware?

Recently, as part of a leadership course, 3 of my colleagues, who are also good friends, had the opportunity to fill a flip chart page with a list of my strengths and weaknesses whilst I was out of the room. Then after 15 minutes I was brought back into the room with each of them given the opportunity to explain one of the strengths and one of the weaknesses on the list.

This was new ground for us, and as expected started with suggestions of strengths to avoid confrontation. But we did get on to weaknesses which seemed as uncomfortable for them to say as it was for me to hear.

An important character strength in life is the ability to take criticism and learn from it, without taking offence. It is also an important leadership strength to be able to tell someone about an area where they are weak with the main motivation being for their benefit and their personal growth. Both giving and receiving criticism well, are much easier said than done. I don't think many people enjoy taking criticism, but a mature individual looks to the long term benefit rather than the short term discomfort. I was fortunate, in that the criticism I received was definitely from a position of my colleagues wanting to help me grow rather than knock me down.

In the leadership course all this stuff was under the heading of the Johari Window. The Johari Window is a concept which was created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham (get it?), and it is all about interpersonal relationships. See the diagram below.

Put simply there are four boxes. Top left is the box of things that are known to you and known to others - obvious stuff. Bottom left is for things that are known to you but not to others; they call this 'facade' and indicates things that could be shared. Top right is for things that are known to others but not known by you - your blind spots. Your spouse or partner can probably real off a whole list of these, but in work often people never share these things, unless you are on a leadership course with a big flip chart! Lastly the bottom right is for things that you are not aware of about yourself and the people around you are not aware of. Often this could be that people can notice a behaviour that is unusual (top right) but don't know what causes it (bottom right).

What I found most interesting through this process was that we found out so much more about each other; what makes us tick, what causes us to get stressed and what motivates us. This has had a number of benefits including making us able to support each other more. It has also quite clearly improved our team performance. So is your team Johari aware?

Little Boxes

For this entire weekend and even today I've had the following song lines going round and round and round in my head:

'little boxes, on the hillside
Little boxes, made of ticky tacky
Little boxes, on the hill side
Little boxes all the same'

My understanding is that it is the first few lines from a protest song written in the 50's about all the new build housing estates that were going up all over the place.

The thing is I don't know how I know this or where I first heard the song. Has any one else heard of it?

..actually, I've just googled the first line - turns out there's almost 900 links to content surrounding the song so clearly it's known by a lot of people. It seems there is quite a story behind it! - check the lyrics - at least knowing some more words might help give my brain a rest from the permanent loop of the first verse!...

...I started singing it on saturday and by sunday my wife was giving me that 'seriously, I may have to kill you' look that I receive from time to time - heaven help me if it's still going round in my head tonight!

Does anyone else suffer from this-song-is-in-my-head-and-I-can't-get-it-out-itis??? Comment below with your tune-related tales of woe>>

Shortcuts to heaven

Have you ever been working on something with a colleague and noticed them hitting a key which does something immediately that would take you five mouse clicks and trawling through a number of menus? My usual response to this is "Wow - show me what you just pressed!", and once I am enlightened I have a secret mission to spread the word about this new short cut which will cut down on the dreaded mouse clicks and menu trawling that absorbs our working life. So here are some of my favourite short cuts.

- Windows M - hit the windows key and the 'M' key at the same time and all your windows that are open will be minimised leaving your desktop clear. This one also has the benefit of giving you the same feeling that you get when you've tidied your desk - but much quicker. If you want to undo the minimise just go for shift, windows, and M, all at the same time. This is very similar to Windows D - for more information on the difference see here.

- Windows L - hit the windows key and the 'L' key at the same time and your computer will be locked automatically until you enter your password to unlock it. Great to use when heading out to lunch.

- Windows E - hit the windows key and the 'E' key and Windows Explorer (to manage your folders and files) opens up.

- Windows F - to find files and folders.

- Word: Alt Shift U - do you use automatic table of contents in MS-Word? I do, and for large documents they are a life-saver automatically updating your table of contents without you having to work out page numbers etc... Anyway updating the table of contents normally takes 5 clicks, but once you've highlighted the table of contents a simple 'alt shift U' causes an update of the table of contents.

- Alt T S - whether you are in Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, or another Microsoft product spell checking is as easy as Alt T S.

- Control X and Control V - cut and paste. Very useful for moving text around documents.

- Control Z - undo - pure and simple. Wouldn't it be good if we could use this for things we've said.

- Powerpoint: B - you're running a presentation in an important meeting and your audience keep staring at your complex PowerPoint slides when you want to grab their attention. Simply hit the 'B' key and the screen is blanked, and they automatically (and almost subconsciously) adjust their focus on to you. At this point make sure you say an important line, and say it slowly with a good pause afterwards so that they don't miss!

- F2 - when in Windows Explorer and you want to rename a file or folder just highlight the file or folder name and hit F2.

- Windows R - finally for the aspiring-techies out there; get using Windows R to bring up the 'run' command.

Grand Re-opening of St George's Hall

One of Liverpool's most celebrated buildings re-opened yesterday after a multi-million pound refurbishment in good time for the 2008 Capital of Culture celebrations. You can read about the immediate festivities surrounding the new launch at the Liverpool 08 site.

I am happy to say I was there, although not as one of HRH Prince Charles' guests but as part of the Sense of Sound choir who performed the Song 'Gabriel' to an audience of dignitaries. It was great to be part of the historic occasion even if i didn't since HRH himself - he was sat directly behind our conductor and I didn't dare take my eyes off her on this, my first gig!

Office perceptions

This week we moved in to our new offices in Liverpool's vibrant city centre.

It won't take long for us to get used to new surroundings; within a matter of weeks what seems special now will become the norm. Therefore I wanted to capture staff perceptions of our new offices before we get too used to them.

Here are the main comments:

- Calm and peaceful.
- Very disorientating. Didn't realise how comfortable you get when stuck in the same place for a while. Overall though, a massive improvement.
- Nice meeting rooms; really light and spacious.
- Sophisticated, modern, stylish, spacious, more natural light.
- Superb location for lunch and town, well run, well lit, nice bathroom.
- Bright, clean and the best view in the house.
- I love the white chairs in reception (we might be one short by the end of the week!)
- Great location, need colour on the walls to create visual impact.
- Love the amount of space around the desks, like the sense of peace. I love the natural light. I love the view from all the rooms. The boardroom feels like it could be the creative epicentre of the company.
- I like having swipe access rather than a key.
- Good view, bright, clean, shiny, new corridors - I've been getting lost.
- I feel like there is life and culture all around us.

When is a leader at their best?

I've been reading a great book recently by a chap called Bill Hybels that posed the question 'When is a leader at their best?'. It is a good question and one that intrigues me.

Is it when the leader is performing the functions of leadership; when they are casting vision, building teams and planning? These must be essential because leaders need to have vision to know where they are going and also get others to follow.

Is it when the leader is demonstrating inner strength, character and integrity? These are also essential, because good leaders, I believe, must have some moral goodness as well as the ability perform the functions of leadership.

One example that comes in to my mind is Winston Churchill saying "We will fight them on the beaches."; a seminal moment in the leader's life when they say or demonstrate something that inspires other people and is not forgotten.

Bill Hybels' interesting conclusion is that a leader is at their best when they are raising up other leaders around them; and after some thinking, I tend to agree. Good leaders must be measured by what continues when they are not there as well as what they personally achieve. Leadership is about inspiring and training others so that they too can lead. This model of leadership means that the vision won't die; it may change and evolve, but it will always be carried by someone who believes in it.

Oh yes, I almost forgot, the book is called Courageous Leadership.

Change is here to stay

A good friend of mine often says 'One thing is certain; change is here to stay'. Like it or lump it, change happens and it affects us all.

As a technology organisation we are very aware that how we manage change is key to our business. There are new exciting things happening all the time that drastically change the environment in which we operate. Who would have thought 5 years ago that my mother in law, and possibly yours too, would spend hours every night auctioning the contents of her loft through the internet?

As the internet develops there are so many new things out there promising to change your life; so which of them may actually live up to this grand billing? Here are my suggestions. This isn't trying to be an exhaustive list, just one that may make the less adventurous internet user try something new.

Photobox. In 2006 Nikon announced that it would stop making the majority of its film cameras. Digital photography will soon be the only from of photography for the vast majority of people. Therefore we will all need companies that produce decent prints of our digital snaps. Photobox is one such company. You simply upload your photos, choose which you wish to purchase as prints, select sizes, quantities and pay on-line. Before you know it, your photos are delivered. Even more useful is the ability to publish your on-line photo album to friends and they too can order prints.
Blogging. Nearly every corporate website has news, which gets old very quickly. I think people are more interested in what you are thinking than what your company did a few months ago. Since putting this blog on our company website we have had a significant increase in comments from clients. In fact we spent the first 10 minutes of one client meeting discussing the merits of the 'Interrobang' from them reading about it on our blog.
The iTunes music store. It only takes a second of reminiscing to download one of your favourite songs from the 80s and pop it on your iPod. You can send iTunes vouchers as presents. I recently received a voucher and spent a very pleasant half an hour scouring for old singles that I listened to as a kid but never owned.

Some of my other favorites include:

MySpace. Information, pictures and music tracks from un-signed bands through to U2.
YouTube. Millions of random videos posted by members and ranked by viewers.
Digg. Articles submitted by users are ranked by how many people 'digg' the article. Once logged in you can click to say which articles you 'digg', therefore you should never have to read a boring article again.
eBay. No matter how strange the contents of your loft, the miracle of eBay is that someone somewhere will probably pay something for it.
Freecycle. Ever just wanted to give your old stuff away? Try Freecycle; which now has over 3 million members. It is a nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free locally.

Of course we can't forget Google, the undisputed king of search engines. Google has changed the way we live life by making billions of pages of information readily available to billions of people on a daily basis. They are also constantly innovating; bringing new products to our attention. Have you tried Google Maps, Google Earth or Google Desktop?

A new favourite punctuation mark!?

Indulge me for a moment: I realise that many people have probably never seen the need for a favourite punctuation mark in the first place, and here am I with a new favourite. If you’re interested, my old favourite was the much-maligned ellipsis.

The interrobang was devised in 1962. Typographically, it’s nothing more than an infant in a world of the venerable and ancient (not to mention much more universally accepted) punctuation marks like the full stop and semicolon. It allows you to use a single mark to express that combination of surprise and questioning which usually means writing and exclamation point and a question mark straight afterwards (!?).

Why am I writing this? Because, well, I think we should reinstate the interrobang. According to Wikipedia, it was a fad which never really gained any traction. I’m a fairly conservative punctuator, and I still see fit to use the combination of an exclamation and question mark at least once a month.

That’s definitely often enough to deserve its own mark.

(As a footnote, the interrobang is an accepted Unicode character, and there’s an HTML entity for it too: ‽ - so there’s really no excuse for tardiness in this respect)

What's Cooking?

Last night saw the return of Jamie Oliver to our screens in a new series where Jamie wants to help one of his previous graduates set up their own restaurant. One of our old Non Executives Liam Black makes his first TV appearance.

The Jamie’s Kitchen series was the catalyst for Mando Group developing our own entrepreneurs academy www.hotshotsacademy.com a few years ago.

Jamie's Chef http://www.channel4.com/jamie is on Channel 4 next Wednesday @ 9pm enjoy watching.

Is this whole social networking thing going just a bit mad?

Social networking sites seems to be going the way of voyeuristic reality TV and the endless celebrity game shows. I think they started out quite interesting but now some are just getting more and more desperate.

In the last few months of my web activity I have:

- 'digged' quite a few articles
- read countless blogs
- myspaced with the best of them
- shared my tunes with other like minded music fans
- linked in with my fellow business professionals

(all quite useful!)

- and found out who my celebrity look-a-likes are
(ok, maybe not so useful , but quite amusing)..

....but never have i found anything as pointless, ridiculous but as strangely fascinating as this www.clipboardsecrets.com a site which has people sharing what's in their computer's clipboard with the rest of humanity.

madness.

If anyone can find something more useless / odd than this or indeed has an opinion on this new generation of web sites then feel free to email me or comment below

High Fives!

...I love them!

No one else is with me in this office. They're all too kool for skool.

I just got publically mocked by a designer after high 5-ing an, admittedly, nervous-looking Project Manager in celebration of his superb sale!

After 6 months of leading the way I may have to give up championing the high 5 :-(

They say a leader without followers is just a man taking a walk...

..or, in my case, 'a man swinging his arm around in thin air going 'owww!' in a loud voice'..

Ah well...

Curse of the 'erm'

Eight of us spent two days learning presentation and public speaking skills last week from a couple of colourful ol' fella's who are masters of their art. Many many things came out of the session but two key points for me where:

1. to... slooow... down.... let the words.... be..... DRAMATIC!
It felt so forced at first but then when you saw yourself on video afterwards you were suddenly aware of how much you simply just babble away and a few simple key statements, clearly said, are all you need to get a point across...

2. avoid 'noise' particularly that most hateful of words 'erm'
Oh my goodness!... When it was pointed out to us how often we just made this useless noise during our natural speech it started becoming to me like that U-uuurrrh! siren on Family Fortunes everytime I or someone else said it – HORRIBLE!

It did get quite amusing though when one of us just got all stressed at one point and let out more erms than vowels in one sentence they were giving! : “erm, I,erm, just, erm, can’t, eeeeeerrrrrrmm, er, ahhh, can't do this! Argh!"....

...hehe, seriously, watch out for people doing it on TV – David 'erm', Beckham is the worst!

We, as human beings can't seem to help ourselves when it comes to 'erm' - it's crazy , so we’re now getting an 'erm' jar in the office – we must be rid of this cursed sound!

Video killed the radio star

Video killed the radio star but what is next?

Read this interesting article today. How will we watch TV in 10 years?

Leading figures from the television world have given their predictions for how TV will evolve in the coming years - and what it means for viewers. The way I use iTunes and You Tube now, I would have never imagined it even five years ago. Who knows what the future will hold, but I know I will be using Pandora for many years to come.