As part of the London Bloggers Meetup ‘bean themed’ meme that’s doing the rounds, here’s my attempt to win a luxury beanbag from Ambient Lounge.  Ambient Lounge’s designer bean bags are hopefully worth the effort that went into compiling this list of bloggers and their ‘bean’ equivalents. Random…

If London Bloggers were beans… what would they be?

TikiChris would be a Polynesian Green Bean

Because ‘Tiki’ refers to large wood and stone carvings of humanoid forms in Central Eastern Polynesian cultures of the Pacific Ocean. The term is also used as it relates to M?ori mythology where Tiki is the first man. If you know Chris (and you’d have to have been blogging in an isolation tank not to know him), Chris is definitely the First Man of the London blog scene, which is why I’ve made him the first in this list. For those of you interested in finding out how to make a tasty Polynesian Green Bean Salad, look no further than here. Warning: Yum Factor 10.

You can find Chris’ blogs here: http://tikichris.wordpress.com/

Epicurienne would be a Mexican Jumping Bean

Putting aside the fact that the last time I saw Epic was over dinner at a fab Mexican eatery (the name escapes me) where we shared a few frozen Margherita cocktails with our new spouses… Epicurienne is always fun, full of energy and relentless in her bounciness – much like a Mexican jumping bean or Jairo jumping bean which is a seed pod through which the larva of a small flea has chewed. The seed does not actually jump so much as wiggle because when it gets in a hot place the larva snaps its body hoping to roll to a cooler place. Spend an evening with Epic and you’ll see her wiggle as the temperature rises and she’ll be the one to follow on for a cool after-partaaaay.

Read Epicuriennes’s delicious blog here: http://epicurienne.wordpress.com/

Niamh from Eatlikeagirl would be an aromatic dish of Irish Beans

Healthy, honest, rustic, homely and unspoiled. That’s Niamh in a nutshell – unpretentiously delicious. Her love for all things food have won her many-an accolade including her recent listing on The Times Newspaper’s 40 Blogs That Really Count.

Irish beans are essentially baked beans but usually with less added sugar compared to traditional American and British baked beans. You see, she’s naturally sweet enough!

Naturally sweetFor those that know Niamh, you’ll testify to her all round oveliness and passion for blogging. Thanks Ireland – we’ll be keeping her in London forever.

Read eatlikeagirl’s  gastronomical adventured here: http://eatlikeagirl.com/

Lolly from BlogTillYouDrop would be French Beans

Too obvious? Perhaps. But hear me out… Varieties of les haricots verts have been bred especially for the flavour, or sweetness of their pods (and yes, like her name… Lolly too is a big sweetie!). And mirroring Lolly’s blog, French beans have a universal distribution – consumed by cultures all around the world and appreciated by all.

Discover Ooh La La Lolly here: http://www.laurenceborel.com/ or read the London Bloggers’ interview here: http://www.londonbloggers.net/422/the-blogger-interviews-laurence-borel/

The MyChemicalToilet blog’s author Stuart Waterman would be a humble tin of Rijoles Beans

The UK’s best known music event blog, whilst seasonal in much of its content focus is the Daddy of the festivals. So too is the tin of rijoles beans according to the Dry Bean Festival which takes place in the US of A every year in the town of Tracy, California. Now that’s one festival I’m sure Stuart would love to let his loyal readers know about. Although I think he’ll have to provide his own music for this get-together (beans-induced-bum-trumpet=flatulence anybody?)!

For the best, most up-to-date, from-the-horse’s-mouth festival news, read Stuart’s musings here: http://www.mychemicaltoilet.com/

Tom from the Ridiculant would have to be a laughing bean

What’s a laughing bean? Well if you’ve ever read the excellent Ridiculant column (nay, PAGE) in the morning Metro newspaper then this is the kind of shizzle that the talented Mr Phillips writes about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daWKQI29gpU

For more web-sized delights, visit the Ridiculant online: http://theridiculant.metro.co.uk/

The Sluttilicious Sian Meades from Sianyland and Domestic Sluttery fame would have to be a portion of Jimmy Beans Gourmet Coffee Beans covered in luxurious chocolate

http://www.jimmybean-online.com/

OK, so not as high end as fashionista Sian’s Jimmy Choos, but Jimmy’s Gourmet Coffee Beans are every bit as delectably scrumptious as the designer yumminess that she usually writes and tweets about.  The philosophy is simple: take something special, coat it in something even nicer – and there you have it – the embodiment of lushness. The same goes for Siany!

Follow her devilish exploits here: http://www.sianyland.com/ and http://www.domesticsluttery.com/

Ged Caroll the Renaissance Chambara Man would have to be an Edamamme Bean

Firstly, I’ve yet to meet anybody in London who is so up to speed on Japanese culture. Edamamme has affectionately become known as the Hoxton Peanut – as sushi bars around London stock up on the morish snack. You can have it with salt or with dried chilli – just pop the pods and munch. Like Ged’s daily link summaries (you must subscribe to these), a bowl of Edamamme can be a satisfying meal in itself and once you sample the goods, it’s difficult not to crave more.

If you haven’t read Ged’s blog – stop reading mine straight away and go and see how a pro does it: http://renaissancechambara.jp/

Malcom Eggs from The London Review of Breakfasts can only be baked beans (what else!?)

Immortalised by the Johnny Cash song Beans for Breakfast, no full-English would be complete without a portion of baked beans (Heinz or any other brand).

“Wish you’d come back and wash the dishes, I’m a hungry nasty lonesome man
Caught a cold with the window open, crow droppings o my window sill
Probably got histoplasmosis, got no gun or I would kill them crows
Beans for breakfast once again, hard to eat ‘em from the can.”

Now that’s proof that the late Mr Cash certainly had a way with words, but if you want to meet a modern day wordsmith who knows a thing or two about where to have the most important meal of the day, you just need to visit this site: http://londonreviewofbreakfasts.blogspot.com/

The clever fella behind the Londoneer Blog would have to be a Pearl Bean

Never heard of pearl beans? Put away your Oyster Card, the reason I chose the pearl bean for the Londoneer is a reference to the Pearly Kings and Queens of the old East End. Pearly Kings and Queens, known as pearlies, are an organised charitable tradition of working class culture in our great capital.

The Londoneer also mentions the Hackney Pearl cafe in a recent blog post about Urban Picnicing (http://thelondoneer.blogspot.com/2010/08/urban-picnic-hackney-wick.html), so I thought I’d be all clever and assign him the pearl as a bean.

Anyway, if you want to discover London from the point of view of someone who lives and breathes it, go here: http://thelondoneer.blogspot.com/

Annie Mole would be a Castor Bean

The castor bean is sometimes called mole plant from the practice of placing castor bean seeds in mole runs where the rodents will hopefully eat the seeds and perish. When you spot a castor bean growing in the middle of someone’s lawn, you can bet that the moles missed one. Now I have to declare that I am not advocating the poisoning of moles here – and in particular, if anyone even suggests being horrible to the wonderful Ms Annie Mole then I’ll confiscate your iPhone Tube Map for a whole year.

Annie Mole’s London Underground blog is so famous that if you google it, it often appears above the official TfL London Underground website! The blog has been going since 2003 and it reveals a wickedly funny look at all things Tube based.

Submerge yourselves here: http://london-underground.blogspot.com (don’t forget to Mind The Gap).

Steve Waddington would be a Runner Bean

Apart from the fact that Steve is one of the co-managing director of Speed, the London based PR agency launched in March 2009 he also joined Admiral PR & Marketing as non-executive chairman in January 2010. The guy’s got insight that even Gandhi would bow down before, and his Speed and agility earns him the title of chief Runner Bean.

http://wadds.co.uk/ and http://www.speedcommunications.com/blogs/wadds/

Will Corden couldn’t really be anything other than a Splendid Espresso Caramba Bean

(given the fact that he works at my old agency Splendid Communications)

Sadly our paths never crossed as I had moved on before will began his time at Splendid but judgng by his blog, the coffee bean is an apt moniker as his content is full of energy and provides mental stimulation with every read.

Discover Will’s World for yourself here: http://willcorden.wordpress.com/

David J Lowe is definitely a Locust Bean

He’s fast becoming one of my favourite Londonites – a seriously intelligent guy with a lot of creative business ideas which make you want to shake him in hope that some of his knowledge will accidentally spill out of his big brain and hit you on the way out. Why the Locust Bean? Well having had the pleasure of having dinner with David on a couple of occasions and hearing him talk about the future of tech marketing, it’s clear that this guy’s gonna clean up the market. Not just clean up, but create a powerful swarm of creative consciousness that will be visible from afar.

Also, Locust Bean Gum can induce sneezing fits which is lucky as David’s blog is called Sneezy Head: http://sneezyhead.wordpress.com

Chris Reed (a.k.a. The Ginger Monkey) is a plate of Talsani (Green Beans with Ginger)

OK, so you see what I did there? I Googled “Ginger”+”Bean” and came up with Talsini (http://www.aayisrecipes.com/2009/11/05/green-beans-with-ginger-beans-talasani/). Big whoop. But wait… upon closer inspection, there lies a hidden depth to my bean selection process…

Chris Reed – PR by day. Web evangelist by night. Music fan at the weekend. Full time ginger and dad. In short, Chris is a man of complexities rivalled only by an exotic Bangladeshi dish like Talsani. Fiery chilli, fresh green beans, finely dissected onions, soothing ginger… look no further than his brilliant blog and you’ll see where these layers of flavour manifest themselves: http://thegingermonkey.blogspot.com/

Mauricio Samayoa is the undisputed King of the Green Coffee Bean

The time that Mauricio spent working in El Salvadore (yes, LinkedIn is wonderful) is part of the inspiration for this bean selection, which is a native crop in that part of the world. But aside from the geography, Mauricio is well suited to the smooth, suave, richness of character that is associated with the Salvadorian green coffee bean.

If you want somebody who is extremely knowledgeable about word of mouth PR, he’s your man. There’s nothing green about this seasoned comms guru. As well as being one of We Are Social’s busiest bees, Mauricio is also a new dad, which means that the coffee sure comes in handy after those sleepless nights!

Read Mauricio’s blogs here: http://www.mauriciosamayoa.com and http://www.theguanaco.com

Michelle Lyons is a Castanospermum australe (Austrailian Black Bean)

This Antipodean beauty is a wonderfully complex bean which was used extensively as a cabinet timber.  Cabinet? How apt, considering Michelle’s impressive experience in Government comms – most recently within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The castanospernum austral has a beautiful exotic flower which sums up Michelle to a tee.

Read her work here: http://michlyons.wordpress.com/

Rachel Clarke would have to be a Stringless Bean

No, not as in silent violin… as in she ‘aint no puppet on a string! Rachel’s vast background in comms means that she is the go to person for excellent strategic advice. She is vocally eloquent in her writing style and her posts do pack a punch. That said, she’s also bloody nice. Really nice. So much so that I always tend to hover around her like a mosquito with personal boundary issues at the London Bloggers Meetups. Great conversation guaranteed.

As well as catching her regular appearances as a news reviewer on Sky News, you can see what she’s all about here: www.digitalstuffing com and www.blog.bibrik.com

Godwyns Onwuchekwa is undeniably a Velvet Bean Extract (Mucuna Pruriens)

His skill for penning Erotic fantasies in poetic form makes him Mr. Velvet in my book. The Mucuna Pruriens is also a well known aphrodisiac – useful after reading some of his steamy posts!

Read his work for the Justice for Gay Africans Society here (really great site): http://jfga.org.uk/blog/

Tom from tiredoflondontiredoflife.com is a Guarana Bean

For those of you who tend to steer well away from energy drinks, Guarana is a bean found mostly in Brazil and it has 3x the amount of caffeine as coffee. Chemically it is very similar to coffee beans but much more potent. Which is why, if you’re tired of life in London, Tom’s blog will definitely provide an instant pick-me-up with lots of great ideas of things to do and see in this great capital of ours.

http://www.tiredoflondontiredoflife.com/

Zoe Bran would be a handful of Mescal Beans

Mescal whaaaaat? Mescal Beans are also called sophora secundiflora beans, Colorines, Frijoles, Red Beans or Texas Mountain Laurel. Mescal Beans grow as a shrub that has violet flowers and these bright red highly toxic seeds or beans which have been used in jewellery and crafts for centuries. In addition to this they have also been used for hallucinogenic purposes by tribe shamans. It is said that one bean can cause a death of an adult individual. Not that Zoe would advocate that on her blog. She focuses on the healing aspect of Shamanism.

Prepare to be wowed here: http://www.shaman.uk.net/

Julie Bodart wins the much coveted title of Cocoa Bean

Coming from Belgium, she has the claim to the bean from which chocolate is made. Mmmm…. Yum. Apart from being Belgian Julie blogs about all things digital comms.

Read her views here (they’re very good): http://www.juliebodart.com/#f55/wordpress

Lewis Webb would have to be Java Decaff Smooth Roast Coffee Beans

If there were an election tomorrow to vote for the King of suave, Lewis would win hands down. As well as being one of the main organisers of Shoreditch Twit, Lewis also spends his days at Ketchum, coming up with creative digital PR campaigns for some amazing brands. You can’t get smoother than Lewis. FACT. He’s decaff too, because the guy’s unflappable. He’s just cool… personified.

Learn more about the Webb master here: http://www.lewiswebb.com/

The wonderful RadioKate would be a six bean casserole

The fact that Kate was campaigning hard to save BBC Radio 6 from closing down, makes her a good contender for this feast of a meal (http://www.bigoven.com/recipe/165075/six-bean-casserole). Just like the dish, RadioKate’s blog always provides wholesome views which are at times extremely inspirational. Read her recent post on all the Good Things she’s done this year: http://radiokate.com/2010/07/27/good-things/

http://www.RadioKate.com

Ben Matthews is a Bright Bean Salad

As the founder of BrightOne Communications, nobody could doubt Ben’s ‘Bright’ credentials (he is very, very, very smart). This Bright Bean Salad recipe is very easy to follow and can be put together in no time. http://www.ifood.tv/recipe/bright_bean_salad

You can reach Ben at BrightOne Communications: http://brightone.org.uk/

Abul Hussein is going to have to go down in this list as Greek fassolia gigantes beans

No, I’m not making it up – there are actually beand called fassolia gigantes… and yes, they do come from Greece. But why pick these for mobile blogger Abul? Well he goes by the name of Adonis in blogging circles and those of you with some classical knowledge will be aware that Adonis is a Greek God  (the young lover of Aphrodite, no less) so what could be more fitting than humungous Greek beans!?

Abul is also a GIANT of the blogging world. Read his work here: www.adonisdemon.com and www.adonismobile.com

The delectable Liz Ayan is a bean-counter. No two ways about it

I don’t mean that in a boring Accountant way, but more as an accolade and testament to her blogging work within local government. In times when every penny counts and budgets are stretched tighter than a gnat’s chuff, Liz seems to cut through the red-tape and put things into some framework that makes sense. It just does.

Read Liz’s insights here: http://www.lgeoresearch.com

Melinda Seckington is a Geeky Bean

End of. She just is: http://geekybean.com/

See why, here: http://missgeeky.com/

Cristiano Betta is a Kopi luwak bean

As a new cat owner, Cristiano may be aware of the infamous civet coffee which is affectively known as ‘cat poop’ coffee where the coffee bean is ingested by a civet cat and then pooped out to make apparently superior blend of coffee. Sounds lovely.

As a developer, Cristiano must already be used to burning the candle at both ends and as such would know a thing or two about the importance of good quality java.

Read his blog here: http://blog.cristianobetta.com/

Melanie Seasons has to be a Red Noodle Bean

Firstly, I have to say that Melanie is one of my new favourite bloggers of all time. Ever. She’s fab. Her blog fakeplasticnoodles is part of the inspiration for this choice of bean. Secondly, Melanie describes herself as a ‘red’ person: http://www.my-homebased-business.com/personality-type-color-red.html

If you want to know why I rate her work, just read some of her blogs: http://fakeplasticnoodles.com/ and http://omnomlondon.com/

Mex Ibrahim is a hiccup inducing portion of Spicy Beans

How else would you make Tex-Mex platter? http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/spicy-beans-tex-mex-recipe.htm

Mex (and yes, three letter names ending in ‘X’ are all the rage, I hear) is a major force in community management blogs. What Mex doesn’t know about social media quite frankly isn’t worth bothering with.

If you want to be kept up to date with latest online trends, sign up to her bits and pieces here: http://meccaibrahim.co.uk/

She also blogs elsewhere…

Gillian Edwards is definitely a Jelly Bean

Writing under the Minxology title, Gill is fun, fruity and very sweet. Having worked with Gill many moons ago, I can safely say that if you’re looking for someone with a diverse skill-set and lots of creativity – Gill’s your gal.

Explore her Minx-like exploits here: http://minxology.blogspot.com/

Ruthy Isadore is a chick pea

Yup, it’s a bean – not a pea! Ruthy is a real gem of a blogger. She’s so full of life and is a refreshingly bubbly member of the London blogging set who is guaranteed to have you smiling within the first few seconds of meeting her. She’s a fun, chick with a wonderful sense of hummous(!)…

Find out more about Ruthy here: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/ruthisadore

Matt Churchill is a (Seldom Seen) KidneyBean

The man behind the Seldom Seen Kid is a purist in his approach to working digitally. As a blogger, and generally subversive type, being honest, transparent and holistic in what he does both personally and professionally, is very important to Matt.

As well as writing about digital campaigns, Matt is also a keen music aficionado, and his blog often contains some great insights into the musician’s mind (e.g. http://geetarchurchy.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/inside-the-mind-of-a-music-blogger/).

Seldom Seen but Often Read: http://geetarchurchy.wordpress.com

Kai is a Fava Bean kinda guy

Because he’s so reliable that you can always depend on him to help out as a fava (favour). Tenuous bean naming? Perhaps. But the truth remains that Kai is a real gent and has a solid reputation within the London blogging circuit as a bit of a party animal. He’s the guy who looks seemingly sober when you meet him at the end of the night but looks can sometimes be extremely deceptive!

Kai is a kickass product designer, focused on user experience. Take a look at his work here: http://kaigani.com/

Matt Brown is a Soy Bean

For those of us who regularly read theLondonist.com, you will be familiar with Matt’s scientific knowledge.  Here’s a  scientific fact for Matt : In 1932-33 the Ford Motor Company spent approximately $1,250,000 on soybean research. By 1935 every Ford car had soy involved in its manufacture. For example, soybean oil was used to paint the automobiles as well as being used as fluid for shock absorbers. Ford’s involvement with the soybean opened many doors for agriculture and industry to be linked more strongly than it ever had before.

If you want a less nerdy read on scientific matters, read Matt’s work at: http://londonist.com/

Peter Marshall is a Camera Bean Bag

When I met Peter Marshall at one of the London Bloggers Meetups a while ago, I was impressed with his immense passion for photography. I shouldn’t have been surprised, as Peter is one of London’s best photography bloggers. Which is why he deserves a camera bean bag (http://www.camerabeanbags.co.uk/).

Plus – he’s a really genuine guy with a lot of interesting stories up his sleeve. If you see him at the next LBM, buy him a pint.

Read his blog here: http://re-photo.co.uk

Andy and Katie Bargery are a pair of Black Eyed Peas

London’s blogging equivalent of Posh and Becks, Katie and Andy are the founders of the amazing London Bloggers Meetup and are the unsung heros of many a great blogger party.

Yes, they’re both as cute as a pair of baby panda bears, but that’s not the logic behind the Black Eyed Pea reference. They’re both Black Eyed Peas because when the next LBM comes along, we’ll all be singing…

This song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA

Read their blogs here:

Me

Oh… and finally, If I were a bean I could only be this guy:

See you next week at the London Bloggers Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/blog-395/calendar/14537348/ on September 8th.

[It's Bean Emotional]

These are my links for September 1st from 11:28 to 13:26:

• ‘Dancing at the Movies’ mash-up keeps YouTube users guessing – Have you ever imagined what it might be like to see nearly forty different films with dance scenes cut together to the dulcet tones of Kenny Loggins’ Footlooes?
• LinkedIn the preferred social media platform for channel partners – Marketing has long been a challenge for many channel partners, especially for the smaller solution providers and resellers lacking extensive marketing resources. Social networking tools are changing that though, allowing partners to cost-effectively connect with potential clients and get the word out about their offerings.
• How to Manage Your Company’s Brand – Your brand is your mark of distinction. Here's how to construct a brand management strategy that will inspire trust in your company.
• Google Launches Blog Finder for Any Topic – Google has quietly launched a new feature: search for blogs on any topic. The company announced the new type of search in a weekly round-up of search updates last week, and respected SEO blogger Bill Slawski argues that the launch may be related to a new Google patent.
• How To: Quickly Enable Social Logins with JanRain Engage – JanRain Engage provides a convenient way to enable social logins on a site via a single API. This includes support for Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and over a dozen additional services.
• A New Generation Of Bloggers – kid blogs – The Independent noticed a recent trend of very young kids taking to blogging and sharing their views on a wide range of topics. Be it reviews of new toys, gadgets or even politics, these pre-teens are not shy to air their views on their blogs and have attracted readers from all over the world. The newspaper adds that while the blogs may help improve their literacy skills, it also spoke with a few parents who were concerned about the privacy of their kids and what they share on the web.
• Nic Peters on “Cookies should be a staple of the digital diet” – Recent research by Connect Insight shows that only 17 percent of internet users think that online advertising is appealing and has impact.  General opinion is that ads are intrusive, repetitive, unappealing and cheap.
• Getting Mainstream Users To Check In – PSFK – With Facebook joining the bandwagon of location-based services, it may seem that these networks are taking off and heavily used by people. But the reality is quite different, as the New York Times finds out. According to Forrester Research, only 4 percent of Americans have ever tried any of the location-based services and only 1 percent use them on a weekly basis.  To entice more people into using their services, companies have initiated several added benefits such as reward coupons for users who “check-in” using their apps.
• 5 Resources for Migrating to the Cloud Securely – A recent poll found that most enterprises that have already become infrastructure-as-a-service customers worry much less about cloud security than companies that are only thinking about making the leap.
• Starting a degree in PR? Read this first – You’ve gained good A levels and achieved a university place in a difficult year with more students with higher grades chasing fewer university places.
• Channel 4 to air Trinny and Susannah web show – Channel 4 has snapped up fashion experts Trinny and Susannah’s web-TV series after it aired exclusively on women’s portal iVillage earlier this year.
• Facebook Amends Its Monthly Active User Algorithm – Until recently, Facebook’s algorithm would incorporate user likes and comments, inflating the number of monthly active users of an app, even if they weren’t actively using it.
• Social media is for people, not brands –
• Why data is important three times over in our multichannel world: a #JUMPchallenge post | Econsultancy – Data and tracking has become more important to web developers and digital marketers as online business has become increasingly competitive. However, as companies start to look at their performance across multiple channels, i.e. incorporating mobile and social media, as well as search engine optimisation, onsite usability and offline techniques, intriguing developments have been made into collecting and using data seamlessly across channels.
• Amazon to introduce unlimited movie streaming service? – Online retailer Amazon is reportedly readying a mass expansion of its on-demand streaming service in the US adding an ‘all-you-can-eat’ style movie and TV content for subscribers.
• Twitter transgression almost claims another job in journalism – There is no shortage in opinion that journalists using social media such as Twitter are armed with an invaluable tool for staying connected to their patch and enabling communication with an extensive community of sources and readers.
• ASA to regulate web marketing by ad bombing offenders | News | PC Pro – The Advertising Standards Authority is being handed new powers to regulate marketing across the web and plans to tackle offenders by ad bombing them on Google.
• Twitter topples Facebook as UK firms’ favourite – Twitter is more popular than Facebook amongst UK businesses, a survey from Virgin Media Business has claimed.

These are my links for August 31st from 14:35 to 17:26:

• Diaspora, the ‘anti-Facebook’, is doomed – Telegraph – It's too late to start a Facebook rival, argues Milo Yiannopoulos
• Foursquare and MTV Team up for First-Ever Cause-Related Badge: STD Testing – “STD testing center” seems like number three on a list of “Embarrassing Places to Check in on Foursquare,” but this September, MTV and the geo-location service are aiming to quash that stigma by offering a badge to all those who get tested as part of MTV’s GYT: Get Yourself Tested campaign.
• Google Maps Mania: New York’s Worst Landlords Mapped – New York's Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has launched a campaign, called Watchlist, to identify, track, and hold accountable New York City’s most irresponsible landlords. The campaign includes a searchable database and a Google Map of landlords' outstanding housing code violations identified by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
• Buy Together, Donate Together: Startup Combines Social Shopping & Charitable Donations – Endorse for a Cause is a platform where individuals can donate money to their favorite charities. EFAC allows users to shop online for their favorite products and push brand recommendations out to their social graph. When your friends make purchases based on your recommendations, EFAC gets a portion of that sale and your favorite charity gets paid.
• The strange virtual world of 4chan – listen to the interview: –

These are my links for August 31st from 09:08 to 12:50:

• Ask a Curator Day on Twitter on Spoonfed – Things to do in London – Wednesday 1st September is international Ask a Curator Day, and it's all taking place on good old Twitter. Loads of museums and galleries across the world are taking part to give you the opportunity to ask their experienced and respected curators those long-burning questions.
• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange questioned by police | Media | guardian.co.uk – Police question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on suspicion of molestation after complaints by women
• Digg Users Swamp Revamped Site with Reddit Links – Last week everyone was discussing and trying out the newly-redesigned Digg site which went live on 25 August. With changes like a new focus on social interaction and incorporating friends from Facebook, Twitter, and Google and an upgraded link submission, Kevin Rose, Digg’s co-founder and the rest of the Digg crew waited in anticipation to see our reaction. Unfortunately for some, it was like throwing gasoline on a fire.
• 10,000 Words: It helps to remember the ‘person’ in ‘personal branding’ | Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog – Building up a personal brand is not all about having a presence on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn – it is also about being a ‘person’ Mark Luckie reminds readers of his 10,000 Words blog in a post detailing the lessons he has learnt.
• Managing social media risks – Common social media strategies include maintaining a Facebook page or Twitter feed, or monitoring blog conversations; but in this age of social media proliferation, organizations are often exposed to significant cyber and reputational risks.
• The Lowdown on LinkedIn | Jonathan MacDonald –
• Gmail Priority Inbox Launches: Your E-mail Will Never Be the Same – Today, Google will begin rolling out Priority Inbox for Gmail, a new feature for managing massive amounts of e-mail. Your inbox will never be the same again.

These are my links for August 30th from 22:49 to 23:42:

• Facebook Goes Back to School with New Universities Page – As millions of students are trudging back to the classrooms this August, Facebook is returning to its roots: colleges and universities.
• 10 ways data is changing how we live – Telegraph – The availability of new sets of data has changed the way we live our lives: here are 10 examples of data which have changed everything from how we assess wars to how companies deliver milk.
• Google Translate gets better definition with new interface – Google has given Google Translate a face lift that it plans to roll out worldwide over the next few days (it’s live for us now).
• Judge removes Facebook juror – Scotsman.com News – A JUDGE has removed a juror from a trial in Detroit after the young woman wrote on Facebook that the defendant was guilty before the trial was over.
• German employers set for new Facebook snooping law – A new law banning companies from using social networking sites like Facebook to vet potential new employees is being mulled over by the German Government, reigniting the debate on whether or not employers should snoop on employees' private lives.
• iPhone ‘jailbreaking’ fuels app piracy – Channel 4 News – In a similar way to the illegal bootlegging of music and films, pirated mini-software for mobile phones is causing developers growing concern. Benjamin Cohen reports for Channel 4 News.

These are my links for August 30th from 20:00 to 21:45:

• 3 Ways Google Will Invade Your Enterprise – The end of Google Wave and rumors that the company is building a Facebook competitor has a lot of people talking about Google's need to get better at social. Fortune's article on Google's future growth last month, apart from highlighting absurdity a company becoming "too successful," speculates as to what Google will need to do in order to continue growing in the future.
• How CEOs Will Use Social Media in the Future – Today’s CEO is not social. So says Forrester Research’s CEO George Colony. Very few of the CEOs at top companies in the U.S. and the rest of the world have any material presence on the popular social media sites. Colony believes they should be social though, and all signs are pointing to a future filed with CEOs who can speak the language of the people — social media.
• Finding Humanity In The Machine – PSFK – Writer and artist Jonathan Harris laments about the lack of humanness on the internet, blaming online tools and social networks for offering the same kind of bland user-experiences across platforms. He also says that while communication has become shorter and faster, there will be a time when we will crave more in-depth, emotional interactions with people, but it would be difficult to move back from a digital world to the past.
• HOW TO: Respond when Social Media Attacks Your Brand –
• Should a Blog be Part of Your Corporate Website or Stand on Its Own? | Webbiquity | B2B Marketing Blog – Okay, so you understand the benefits of business blogs, and you’re ready to make the commitment to developing and maintaining a blog for the long haul. The next question is: where should I put the blog?
• What Do You Think the Future of the Workplace Will Look Like? –
• Are You Creating Social Media Scorched Earth? | davefleet.com – “In too many cases, the “best practices” espoused by digital agencies are less about “serving the community” and more about driving a rush of new fans, without much thought re: how to keep those fans engaged on a LONG-TERM basis.” — Todd Defren
• Chart.io – See Your Data – Chart.io gives you a simple, universal tool to create charts and dashboards from all of your data. Explore and present not just your web analytics, but also the important data that you store in your database systems.

These are my links for August 30th from 04:00 to 16:52:

• Google Realtime search a powerful business tool – Companies can use information gleaned from Google Realtime to "read the minds" of consumers. Conducting searches related to current or planned products or services can help identify what customers want and what concerns they might have.
• Foursquare Now Has 3 Million Users | Geeky Gadgets – Foursquare is continuing to grow at impressive pace with now more than 3 million reported users. It took Foursquare a year to reach one million users, two million was quicker in just three months, and now it has reached three million users in just a month and a half.
• Older web users flock to social media – A Pew Internet survey report has found that older web users have adopted social networking at a faster rate than younger users.
• Labour MP Diane Abbott abused on Facebook – Tory boy forced to quit : Online Social Media – We’ve seen it happen many times before, people write things they maybe should have thought twice about on a social networking site, and it gets them into trouble, such as the recent case of a teacher having to quit after she made remarks about her job on Facebook. The latest example involves young and upcoming Tory, Edward Hallam, who was the Conservative Future national campaigns co-ordinator
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error

Just wanted to share this gem of a story with you all by the genius that was Douglas Adams (author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy):

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person was me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong.

I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table.

I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind.

Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase.

It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies.

You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know. . . But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, what am I going to do?

In the end I thought, nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, that settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie.

Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice . . .” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away.

Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back. A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies.

The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

(Excerpted from “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time” by Douglas Adams)

Ethan Zuckerman studies how the world (the whole world) uses new media to share information and moods across cultures, languages and platforms. His TED talk earlier this summer focuses on how our growing reliance on the localised web as a news source means that we are becoming more and more isolated from the plight of our fellow net-zens in other global regions:

Sure, the web connects the globe, but most of us end up hearing mainly from people just like ourselves. Blogger and technologist Ethan Zuckerman wants to help share the stories of the whole wide world. He talks about clever strategies to open up your Twitter world and read the news in languages you don’t even know.

[click here if you cannot view the embedded clip above]

Zuckerman puts it simply:

“We end up in these filter bubbles… where we see the people we already know and the people who are similar to the people we already know. And we tend not to see that wider picture.”

Reading some of the comments on the original TED page for this talk, it is interesting to see how Zuckerman divides opinion with his take on the cultural web – particular when he refers to Twitter trends in terms of white vs. black conversations:

“Fernando Viegasand Martin Wattenberg, two amazing visualization designers… looked at a weekend’s worth of Twitter traffic and essentially found that a lot of these trending topics were basically segregated conversations – and in ways that you wouldn’t expect. It turns out that oil spill is a mostly white conversation, that cookout is a mostly black conversation. And what’s crazy about this is that if you wanted to mix up who you were seeing on Twitter, it’s literally a quick click away. You click on that cookout tag, there an entirely different conversation with different people participating in it. But generally speaking, most of us don’t.”

However, it is clear that cultural differences and agendas are often just a Google search away and never has it been more easy to access the views of disparate communities with just a few clicks of a mouse. Which is perhaps why Zuckerman finds it disappointing that we generally stick to what we know when it comes to accessing foreign content online.

It is interesting to hear for example, how the flow of communication between the English speaking web and the Chinese web is set to change in the next few years, with Chinese Internet users currently logging an average of 2 billion hours online each week. The point is made succinctly by Zuckerman when he points out that he English web is practically ignoring (or cannot linguistically access) content produced by 400 million internet users out there who have Chinese as a first language. He adds: “My guess is at least one of them has something interesting to say”… or as they say that in Chinese:

The whole TED talk could probably be summarised in the following paragraph where Ethan focuses on Fijian content online:

“If I walk into a store in the United States, it’s very, very easy for me to buy water that’s bottled in Fiji, shipped at great expense to the United States. It’s actually surprisingly hard for me to see a Fijian feature film. It’s really difficult for me to listen to Fijian music. It’s extremely difficult for me to get Fijian news, which is strange, because actually there’s an enormous amount going on in Fiji. There’s a coup government. There’s a military government. There’s crackdowns on the press. It’s actually a place that we probably should be paying attention to at the moment.”

Zuckerman cites examples from around the globe that fill us with optimism that the net is a true leveller of cultural barriers to communication. Yeeyan, for example, is a group of 150,000 volunteers who get online every day and look for the most interesting content in the English language. They translate roughly 100 articles a day from major newspapers, major websites and then put it online for free.

It’s the project of  Zhang Lei, who was living in the United States during the Lhasa riots and who couldn’t believe how biased American media coverage was. Lei’s motivation was to get people between these two countries start understanding each other a little bit better.

Since its inception in 2006, the site has grown into a key gateway for Chinese speakers who want to follow international news. It has been so successful that it has attracted the attention of major news sources like The Guardian and ReadWriteWeb — and also the Chinese government, which abruptly shut Yeeyan down last year for several months.

Read more about Yeeyan here: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/01/06/welcome-back-yeeyan/

Zuckerman also cites the example of the Foko Club in Madagascar which was originally formed with the simpler premise of teaching Malagasy citizens to learn English and computer literacy by using citizen media to portray their daily realities and connect to the global conversation.

However, in recent years when Madagascar went through a violent coup, most independent media was shut down and the high school students who were learning to blog through Foko Club suddenly found themselves talking to an international audience about the demonstrations, the violence and everything that was going on within this country. So a very small programme designed to get people in front of computers, publishing their own thoughts ended up having a huge impact on what we know about this country.

Read more about Foko Club here: http://rising.globalvoicesonline.org/projects/project-foko/

About Ethan Zuckerman

Ethan Zuckerman is a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. His research focuses on the distribution of attention in mainstream and new media, the use of technology for international development, and the use of new media technologies by activists. He and his team recently launched Media Cloud, an open-source platform for studying online media that enables quantitative analysis of media attention.

With Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan co-founded international blogging community Global Voices, sharing news and opinions from citizen media in over 150 nations, translating content from over 30 languages, and publishing editions in 20 languages. With support from foundation funders and media partners, Global Voices supports dozens of smaller citizen media projects in developing nations, and is a leading voice for free speech online. In 2000, Zuckerman founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer corps that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. Geekcorps sent over 100 volunteers to projects throughout the developing world, working on projects that ranged from bringing internet connectivity to Malian radio stations to digitizing databases to manage Rwanda’s Gacaca trials. In an earlier life, Zuckerman was a founder of Tripod.com. He’s a legendarily dedicated blogger at … My heart’s in Accra.

“Ethan Zuckerman is up there with Yo-Yo Ma among my heroic models of global citizenship. His brainchild, Global Voices Online, is my model of journalism transforming itself.”

Christopher Lydon, Open Source Radio

Photo: Ethan Zuckerman

Parting question: When was the last time that you went to a foreign language page online and learnt something new about a different culture?

Comments, as always…. below.