Tonic

‘Feeling like the world is becoming less friendly? Social theorist Jonathan Zittrain begs to differ. The Internet, he suggests, is made up of millions of disinterested acts of kindness, curiosity and trust’.

Its a really well delivered, funny and engaging talk. Made me feel more believing that people are good underneath it all. Like when Zittrain talks about the response of NANOG to the hijacking of youtube: ‘Kinda like if your house catches on fire. The bad news is there is no fire brigade. The good news is random people apparate from nowhere, put out the fire, and leave without expecting payment or praise’.

Watch it

Angela leaves us today and we’re very sad to see her go. As a parting gift we’ve got her a huge slice of stinky cheese. Maybe the thought of lovely Angela will prevent me wretching when I walk past the neals yard dairy.

really interesting talk by the anthropologist of New York city’s sanitation workers.

‘Listening to New York City sanitation workers - and working side-by-side with them - NYU professor Robin Nagle uncovered a wealth of knowledge about the job and the people who keep the city clean’.

‘Nagle also talks about our relationship with trash - and why we might want to respect, maybe even love, what we leave behind. This is an anthropological study well worth learning from’.

Robin Nagle at Gel 2009 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

….some strange things.

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reading the most recent entry on trendwatching (which happens to be about ‘transparency’) which quotes Neilsen Global Online Consumer Survey: “Recommendations by personal acquaintances and opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising globally. The Nielsen survey shows that 90% of online consumers worldwide trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trust consumer opinions posted online.”

Which made me think, what defines a person as ’someone you know’? Do you have to have met them? What if you spend more time talking to them than your parents, but only ever in a forum. Do you ‘know’ someone you were introduced to at a party better than someone you work with regulalrly but who lives the other side of the world?

We recently took a Tonic team outing to the Roxy Bar and Screen on borough high street for their wonderful pub quiz, which consisted of us all filling our bellies with pies and chips and salmon and chicken (not all in one go) and then watching clips from films and guessing what they were (safe to say neither of our teams came anywhere near winning!)

Kat took a lovely photo from the night…which ended in memorable renditions of ‘Kids in America’ and whitney Houston in a nearby Karaoke pub….glorious!

thanks to Michael Bentley to sending this on: great ad from nike.

I am so excited for the upcoming release of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ , the film adaption of the famous children’s book by Maurice Sendak, directed by Spike Jonze.

I remember reading the book as a kid so will be really interesting to see how they adapt it to the big screen. I think the soundtrack is set to be as brilliant as the film, as it’s composed by Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs!

Here is a lovely still from the film.

there’s been so much fun / interesting / inspiring stuff floating around the office today. All very different stuff, but there seems to be an underlying theme that if you want to do something you should just do it.

lemonade movie ‘is about what happens when people who were once paid to be creative in advertising are forced to be creative with their own lives’

paint my album started when two mates were bored in an office and, with only ms paint on their computer, recreated album covers. ‘Pet sounds’ is my favourite - love their expressions. They are now almost at 2000 contributions

‘You need to live a little’. ‘I have. It was brilliant. I remember it. I remember doing it. It was really good’.

AMAZING bike tricks (Luke - have you found a frame for me yet?)

And finally, ‘dudeism and the power of film‘

Have a great weekend.

The idea is to write a word that sums up your day, press the button and your photo is uploaded online to the Southbank communal flickr account. A lovely bit of summer fun.

The live installation is running daily from 10:00 - 20:00 until 31st August, 2009.