1. 
   VisitBritain OK. I give up trying to say something that doesn’t involve ‘snow’. 07 Jan 2010 from web
2. 
   chrisdeary I seriously wonder about people who allow Facebook to publicise the fact they’ve been playing Farmville and Mafia Wars all morning 08 Jan 2010 from TweetDeck
3. 
   Umpf_PR Great campaign idea to raise awareness of breast cancer – http://tinyurl.com/y8sb3or 08 Jan 2010 from web
4. 
   ben_cahoona Bad day at work? Not as bad as this. Absolute solid gold. Best ‘losing it’ vid I’ve ever seen. http://bit.ly/6lbyY0 (via @martinogden) 08 Jan 2010 from Tweetie
5. 
   JamesMorgen I’m so optimistic I’d go after Moby Dick in a row boat and take the tartar sauce with me. 08 Jan 2010 from API
6. 
   noxhanti Conversation Agent: 2010 Public Relations: Looking at the Past to Succeed in the Future http://ow.ly/UcXx 08 Jan 2010 from HootSuite
7. 
   JulieBodart Swimmers break ice for dip in the Serpentine http://tinyurl.com/ybc8o95 08 Jan 2010 from web
8. 
   panic_helper The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. 08 Jan 2010 from API
9. 
   benwfox ‘Transparency’ tops the list of banned words for 2010 http://ow.ly/U98b 08 Jan 2010 from HootSuite
10. 
    pramitjnathan God wisely designed the human body so that we can neither pat our own backs nor kick ourselves too easily. 08 Jan 2010 from Seesmic

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

Some tweets which either raised a smile or an eyebrow (or a smile-brow)…

[If you cannot view the embedded clip above, click here to go to YouTube directly]

As well as the realtime translate (see above), Google’s also added a new feature to help English speakers pronounce and read non-roman languages like Chinese and Japanese.

Google’s also added text-to-speech support for English translations to Google Translate. Click the speaker icon and you’ll hear the translation. Watch the video below for Google’s explanation of the new features in Google Translate.

Have fun…

or as we say in Chinese…

I uncovered a bit of a find whilst exploring the virtual test-tube racks (or should that be Rax?) of Google Labs last night.

Launched back in June, Google’s City Tours enables (in theory) you to create your own itineraries for city breaks and plots out a schedule on a map together with a proposed route.

According to the official description:

“Making holiday planning as easy as searching the web. City Tours helps you identify points of interest and plan multi-day trips to most major cities. You just specify the location of your hotel and the length of your trip and City Tours will map out an itinerary for you.”

London City Tour

Google proposes a time allocation to each landmark - the exact number of minutes makes the tour less relaxing and slighty more stressful but hey-ho!

It would be useful to show more details about sights from Wikipedia and from image hosting sites like Flickr or Panoramio. Google works on landmark recognition, a project that associates images from the web with landmarks, and City Tours is an obvious application.

You are able to select how many days you wish to spread the tour across

I agree with the Google Operating System blog which points out that for now, City Tours doesn’t offer too many interesting features: it only lists popular sights and it suggests when you should visit them. You can edit the information about a place and you can add new sights, but the options are very limited.

If/when this feature is made available in mobile format will be the true indicator of the success of City Tours. In the meantime, have a play around for yourself here.

I guess I never really thought about it before, but the BBC’s role as a public broadcaster means that it feels that its blog content is liable to the same strict guidelines that are imposed on its TV and radio channels.

This manifested itself by the temporarily freezing of comment submissions on its political blogs during today’s European Parliamentary elections in the UK:

The following section of the BBC’s 2009 European Election Broadcasting Guidelines focuses on all online content:

4.1 BBC Online

The same guidelines as those for programmes will apply to BBC Editorial content on all bbc.co.uk sites. These will apply to audio and video content as well as text content, e.g. blogs, podcasts and downloads.

With user generated content, we will not seek to achieve artificial balance by distorting the weight of opinion, but all sites prompting debate on the election will be actively hosted and properly moderated to encourage a wide range of views. Sites which do not usually engage in political issues should seek advice from the Chief Adviser, Politics, before doing so.

There is no certain solution to the problem of organised lobbying. However, all sites will be alert to the danger of distortion caused by organised campaigning and the bbc.co.uk escalation strategy will be activated immediately if necessary. For example, it may be necessary to put a board into premoderation or read-only mode.

There will be no online votes attempting to quantify support for a party, politician or policy issue during the election period.

Non news websites will direct users who want to discuss the election in forums, message boards and blog comments, to a handful of specific sites which will be premoderated or postmoderated within an hour of being published.

Journalists and moderators will have to make fine judgements between remarks that constitute robust debate and personal abuse. The general rule of thumb should be if we would not broadcast it on radio or TV, it should not be online. Filters for harm and offence and personal abuse will operate as usual, but they should not be relied on as a substitute for effective moderation.

BBC News Online and Regional sites will list links to all available party sites, provided that it does not give strong grounds for concern that this breaches the BBC harm and offence guidelines or the law e.g. defamation or incitement to racial hatred.

News Online will not link to the sites of individual candidates, unless there is a very strong editorial justification on news grounds and then only for a limited period (e.g. a big row because major player publishes policy on his/her website which contradicts manifesto on their party’s website).

Any speeches which are carried in full will be selected on news value, bearing in mind the need for balance between the parties.

Wow. That’s pretty tight, I’d say. Few could dispute that sites like Guardian.co.uk and Telegraph.co.uk are some of the Beeb’s biggest online rivals in the UK but as they have newspaper status, they are not bound by the same shackles as our Great British Broadcasting Corporation.

Surely one of the fundamental pillars of blogging is the empowerment of democracy (albeit moderated) through commenting?

What are your thoughts?

Love to hear ‘em….

Or just leave your X in the comments below.

1. 
   offgrid World Hunger is unacceptable. Let’s help. @HelpFightHunger http://bit.ly/vEGwn 28 May 2009 from web
2. 
   jackschofield 12 Alphabets made of Objects (food, trucks etc), at Oddee http://bit.ly/1zkyFM 28 May 2009 from web
3. 
   AlexGoodall I’ve found 4 tools that provide Click Tracking for Tweets. I’ve included them here http://cli.gs/37DLAg 29 May 2009 from web
4. 
   CDMcKinnon 93 of top 100 brands don’t control their Twitter name – http://tinyurl.com/7b3fft 29 May 2009 from TweetDeck
5. 
   saturngirl So just to recap. Am I the only person in the whole world who’s paid for all the music I own? 29 May 2009 from web
6. 
   RickM Smart companies seem to realize people don’t work for companies anymore. People now work for themselves & their families. 29 May 2009 from web
7. 
   mr_mcd Have come to the conclusion that most bus drivers are sociopaths, warped by the idiot minority & inflicting their hate on the rest of us 29 May 2009 from Twitterrific
8. 
   Turkish_Tornado …How marketers measure Social Media? Measure your content on SM sites like Del.icio.us bookmarks, how many people bookmarked your site? 29 May 2009 from web
9. 
   revbingo I’m loving mass live TV discussion, it’s what Twitter was made for #bgt 29 May 2009 from web
10. 
    lliswerryguy They wana team up paul potts with susan boyle it be like watching the potts boyle but then again a watched pott never boyles #BGT 29 May 2009 from TweetDeck

1. 
   MarkIsMusing If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again; it was probably worth it. 28 May 2009 from web
2. 
   petemarcus Why is PR the only industry where everyone is a “guru”? (Except Buddhism of course. Though not really an industry.) 28 May 2009 from web
3. 
   FreshPlastic First Mills & McCartney, then Madonna & Guy, now AOL & Time Warner! But they all seemed so happy together, who would’ve thought? 28 May 2009 from web
4. 
   golfforum Family see Jesus image in Marmite http://bit.ly/O4bM2
   Looks like a young George Best to me. 28 May 2009 from web
5. 
   paulcarr I fear hashtag memes are turning Twitter into a sea of #totalfuckingmorons 28 May 2009 from Seesmic Desktop
6. 
   Neilmajor Very interesting post. Gonna look at this tomorrow morning again. Shared media replaces social media as the buzzword? http://twurl.nl/ayewsc 28 May 2009 from twhirl
7. 
   DeclanLyons Big boo for man who says “vote UKIP”. Good to see the majority of people have sense #bbcqt. 28 May 2009 from TwitterBerry
8. 
   PederHanson 30 yr old “gives birth” to his own dead twin in a story line straight from the horror section – http://bit.ly/Hhhkk 28 May 2009 from bit.ly
9. 
   mklopez Have u ever had a day when you felt like a mouse in the labyrinth, and someone forgot to put the cheese at the end? 28 May 2009 from Ping.fm
10. 
    kodakCB awwww – a couple 4000 miles apart are always together in photos on their Flickr streams – http://bit.ly/jFUdt #photography 28 May 2009 from TweetDeck

Event Wax - the Web based event organisation lubrication (their words, not mine) has announced today that it will be shutting down the service down completely on Thursday 16th July.

Whilst I signed up for Event Wax a few months back, I’m a keen Google Calendar user and have never really had any reason to stray from the Big G’s offering. That said, I have had brief flirtations with Meetup.com and have been known to use Facebook to organise private events.

Taking a closer look at Event wax, it was actually a really solid tool offering:

• Customisable, hosted web site for your event
• Alternatively, hook up the registration pages with your own site
• Versatile ticket types allowing free, limited, early bird, bulk discounted, and numerous other options
• Accept payments through your PayPal account
• Quick, searchable, sortable access to attendee details
• Keep track of activity through RSS feeds
• Comprehensive help, accessible externally, or within your admin area
• Dynamic mailing lists that can be targeted at attendees, or groups of attendees
• Export data as spreadsheets or XML
• Send out invites and collect RSVPs

In addition to these features, Event Wax were planning to provide users with:

• Customizable registration forms
• Automatic addition and updating of your event on Upcoming.org
• Multiple themes for your event site
• Full integration into your own web site using a powerful API
• The ability to use your own payment gateway (via the API), PayPal, NoChex, or Google Checkout
• Sending out of invoices and track payments

Ho-hum.

What event tools have you used?

1. EventBrite

Eventbrite is a San-Fran based provider of online event management and ticketing services. I like the way that Eventbrite makes it easy for anyone to organise an event of any type and size. The service is free if your event is free. If you sell tickets to your event, Eventbrite collects a small fee per ticket.I recently used EventBrite to secure my tickets for the forthcoming SocialMediaCamp London 09 event.

2. Meetup

Commoncraft has made a great video which describes Meetup much better than I ever could, so click here to chck it out. I will say however that I am a big fan of this website – particularly as it acts as an effective event search engine as well as a logistical tool for event organisers. The legendary London Bloggers Meetup events are organised via this platform.

3. Facebook events

Most people on Facebook have at some point or other either organised a meeting/party via the native Events application or have attended an event via Facebook. It’s great because it taps into the Facebook newsfeed, giving your event maximum visibility within your social network.

4. Twtvite

Set up by Felipe Coimbra, Twtvites is part of the Twtapps portfolio which really simplifies organising Tweet-ups via Twitter. The Shortditch Twit events successfully use this mechanism to draw a decent crowd.

5. Google Calendar

Google Calendar has always been my calendar of choice – even when I was locked into Outlook when I worked at various agencies. I love the way Google makes it really easy to embed and share calendars, making them easily accessible within Gmail, iGoogle, etc. The invitation distribution is very cool – particularly as it enable automatic integration with Google Maps.

What about you? Have you anymore tools which you’ve used to manage an event? If you think of any similar platform that’s worthy of a mention – drop me a comment below.

1. 
   jemimakiss Journalists restrained with CS gas at Parliament after a Tory meeting last night. Classy. 31 Mar 2009 from twitterrific
2. 
   henweb Aussie bankers using twitter proves the value of keeping your customers happy online http://bit.ly/4A0yh 31 Mar 2009 from web
3. 
   guinnessdj GUMAMI 31 Mar 2009 from TwitterGadget
4. 
   Suw you know, all this automatic retweeting is really starting to piss me off. 31 Mar 2009 from twhirl
5. 
   kaigani yet another reason why Sainsbury’s Self Checkout is full of fail — been watching a junkie trying to buy two loaves of bread for 15 minutes 31 Mar 2009 from TweetDeck
6. 
   dominiccampbell Anyone fancy a game of “crowdsource my presentation for tomorrow morning that I haven’t started yet”? 31 Mar 2009 from web
7. 
   LloydDavis oh dear, I should keep away from twitter when tired, it always descends to pants and innuendo 31 Mar 2009 from web
8. 
   darenBBC Thinking of driving into Central London after 12am. Experience the quiet and calm of my city before tomorrow 31 Mar 2009 from TweetDeck
9. 
   bcultral Hundreds of French workers take bosses hostage http://ff.im/-1QiqM 31 Mar 2009 from FriendFeed
10. 
    melancholyfairy I neglected Twitter today. I blame the parents + the fantastic Bejeweled game on Facebook. I see triangles and stars when I close my eyes. 31 Mar 2009 from twhirl

Special mention to @guinnessdj who fell for my early April Fool… 

1. 
   raxlakhani @kaigani Have you tried the other Twitter eastereggs? Best one is when you type in GUMAMI into the box and hit return… 31 Mar 2009 from TweetDeck in reply to kaigani
2. 
   guinnessdj GUMAMI 31 Mar 2009 from TwitterGadget
3. 
   guinnessdj @raxlakhani twitter easter egg doesn’t work? or am I doing it wrong? 31 Mar 2009 from TwitterGadget in reply to raxlakhani
4. 
   raxlakhani @guinnessdj (read it backwards) 31 Mar 2009 from TweetDeck in reply to guinnessdj
5. 
   guinnessdj @raxlakhani I hate myself right now 31 Mar 2009 from TwitterGadget in reply to raxlakhani

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

Special shout out to @CharleyLHayes who features twice in today’s ToTD…

1. 
   stickycricket Afternoon everyone WicketKeeper here …check out the guns here! http://bit.ly/d8qO2 30 Mar 2009 from web
2. 
   CharleyLHayes What a Social Media Expert Should Be http://tinyurl.com/c8gwuc 30 Mar 2009 from web
3. 
   CharleyLHayes Media on Twitter http://tinyurl.com/cnvyp2 30 Mar 2009 from web
4. 
   AmberCadabra For those inquiring minds asking about quantifying the impact of community roles: http://tinyurl.com/cp83zs 30 Mar 2009 from TweetDeck
5. 
   joannatidball My cats have knocked over a full-length mirror and broken it. Do they get the 7yrs bad luck or do I? How does that work with their 9 lives? 30 Mar 2009 from TweetDeck
6. 
   LitmanLive Ok so I get the picture SMS delivery is for Vodafone people only.. Can I close the announcement now please? I’m on O2. No? Oh. 30 Mar 2009 from web
7. 
   JasonBradbury .. I have suggested a Gail v Suzi mud wrestling challenge 30 Mar 2009 from web
8. 
   jlcoassin Another business card idea this time for dentists – http://bit.ly/nAnd 30 Mar 2009 from TweetDeck
9. 
   geehall1 RT @PRsarahevans
   First comprehensive shareable database of media on Twitter unveiled (and win Kindle 2) http://pitch.pe/7448 #mediatweet 30 Mar 2009 from RetweetApp
10. 
    BuzzEdition Sydney Blackout Exposes Anti-terrorism Defense Flaws http://bit.ly/nUIJ8 #digg 30 Mar 2009 from TweetDeck

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

1. 
   Schofe OMG I’ve just wasted 2 hours on Google street view looking through the windows of my old houses!! it’s unbelievable 26 Mar 2009 from TweetDeck
2. 
   darenBBC Louis(8) ” Is the man that invented cigarettes in prison ?, because they kill you and if you kill people you have go to prison” 26 Mar 2009 from web
3. 
   JasonBradbury Remembering yesterday’s Kite-wing experience. Just awesome http://twitpic.com/2gyyh 26 Mar 2009 from Tweetie
4. 
   stejules Britains Most Trusted Brands http://ow.ly/1tXg 26 Mar 2009 from HootSuite
5. 
   brooksbayne we always have to pimp the bacon vodka: http://grf.me/Hr8j yes we can! 26 Mar 2009 from TweetDeck
6. 
   ElspethMurray RT: Cracking ideas for budding inventors and fans of Wallace and Gromit.
   http://www.teachers.tv/news/33125 (via @TeachersTVNews) 26 Mar 2009 from Tweetie
7. 
   Documentally Just found this strange device in the Debenhams toilets. Looks like it’s designed to administer a nerve agent. http://twitpic.com/2hsvi 27 Mar 2009 from Tweetie
8. 
   Dave_Gorman Passed Jonathan King in the street earlier. Thought he was familiar. Nearly said hello. Then realised I don’t know him… and, um, the rest 27 Mar 2009 from TweetDeck
9. 
   postsecret Easter Egg Alert: Roll your cursor over the 2nd postcard from the top at www.PostSecret.com (24 hours only). 27 Mar 2009 from web
10. 
    Foodimentary James Bond Prefers his Martinis “Shaken not Stirred” but, did you know his favorite Champagne is Dom Perignon? 27 Mar 2009 from web

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl