Asian Olympic Enthusiasm

It does look like Japan is struggling to be excited with the Beijing Olympics. I think the diminished enthusiasm is for historical reasons although the Hong Kong figures have surprised me a little too. I'm guessing that Australia will be on a par with other occidental countries. Via Thomas Crampton

Radiohead

There's a reasonable amount of evidence to assume I'm a data junky and full-on information whore. I can often hold a conversation and listen to another one at the same time and I guess this habit arose from not getting enough information from just the one.

It's not the first time of late that I've been rebuked by friends for reading RSS feeds on my mobile in nightclubs while chatting and listening to the music and only last weekend in Mexico I popped out of a nightclub to pick up my Macbook Air and do a little light blogging from a club that wasn't quite distracting me enough. I'm like that when the mood takes me.

It's not really a good thing I guess because I only know my way round Beijing, through my electric bike. If it was just down to taxi passenger experience my geography wouldn't exist as taxi rides were invented for digesting RSS on a mobile phone - It took me months to even find my way home or to the office without assistance. Traffic jams come second to data and once I'm sucked in I rarely look up again.

Google Mobile Reader is possibly the most powerful digital-fix-teat. It's way more data intensive than Twitter although considerably less contextual because I don't know most of the posters. Knowing the people who create content is the highest context for receiving it. It sounds obvious but isn't if you're thinking of taking up blogging.

Anyhow, one of the drawbacks of this is that I often come across stuff on-the-move that I want to come back to and without de.licio.us or Google Shared Items or starred items or whatever reminder 'du jour' I'm playing with, I sometimes fail and that's why I'm a bit late in reposting this amazing video by James Houston who entered the Radiohead Nude track remix invitation. You can read about it all over here but the pudding is below. (He's looking for work now he's graduated, in either London or San Francisco - I'd snap him up if I were a digital agency)

Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Then there's Robert's Visualisation for Radiohead's music video competion that is also completely brilliant.

Weird Fishes: Arpeggi from flight404 on Vimeo.

Which all leads nicely on to Iain's post about why Radiohead are way ahead of the pack when it comes to embracing Web 2.0 which is a term that some dislike but I don't because I do think that if you're using or thinking of the internet in much the same way as you did ten years ago it's possible you've missed out on a conceptual leap that is having a profound impact on the way that people can get involved with brands or communities. Here's Iain's video presentation and I've finally just discovered that his blog name comes from a reference to the A Team (Team Awesome?)

My Online Marketing Presentation About Radiohead from iaintait on Vimeo.

888

Ed's gone and made the unofficial Olympic T Shirt which brings to life the international flavour of the event in a positive way that will definitely not be seen in China. I know because I've scoured the entire Olympic merchandise/official sponsor merchandise/advertising and I have one complaint; it's all about China and nothing to do with the international multi cultural dimensions of the event (as I hinted at in this post over here and continued the discussion in the comments over here). Anyway, Ed has single handedly cracked the problem with this brilliant design that has all the names of the competing countries. Neat 'n sweet eh?

 

There are only 888 of them which as you may know represents the 8th day of the 8th month of the 8th year - which is when the Olympics start next month. 8 is also considered a lucky number in Chinese culture. These are a hip buy and you can buy one over here.