Bill Gates has bought a stake in the UK carpet retailer Carpetright, according to this article. A strange choice of business, at first sight, but what if he’s working on interactive floor coverings? Put the Carpetright story together with this one, and all becomes clear.
http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/11/ad-zappers-for-facebook.html lists a variety of plug-ins for Firefox that will remove contextual ads from your Facebook experience.
It might get a bit tricky charging for ads that are being removed at the browser. Whether they’re counted as valid ad impressions before they’re removed isn’t made clear in the article.
You understand why this car’s license plate is significant…
…or you get this cartoon…
Anything to add?
In preparation for Blog Action Day on October 16th, there’s a quiz that tells you what kind of blogger you are. I’m a purist expert socialite, apparently. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not…
Based on this article, which says that 31% (of 100 people) lie when they register on websites, I thought I’d do some research of my own. Do you tell the truth when you register?
According to this article at WiredNews, the emoticon is 25 years old tomorrow. They were first used by a Professor Fahlman at Carnegie Mellon University, apparently.
I found this article from Microsoft really helpful, if a little serious, on the subject of how and when to use them. It explains that “emoticons are sideways faces that express emotion”
About 20 million people seemed to have made it down to the South Bank this weekend for the Thames Festival, though it doesn’t seem to have got much news coverage. They closed Southwark Bridge on Saturday for a food fair, and it was so busy they had to stop people going up the steps from the Embankment. A highlight was the Transe Express performance, in which several crazy musicians and trapeze artists were suspended in a metal contraption with winches and pullies, to play some drums and bells. Very odd.
Some of my photos from the V&A Village Fete can be found here.
The Fete was a great afternoon out. The highlights for us were:
We went to the Roald Dahl Museum at the weekend, which is really well done. The first half focusses on the life and work of Roald Dahl himself, and the second on giving children ideas and tools for creative writing. We all got to sit in the great man’s writing chair, which was an experience… I want one myself now.
On the wall in one room a tree had been painted and children are encouraged to stick leaves and fruit onto it containing the names of their favourite books. Here are some of them.
