Fran's Blog

Vote now!

Francis — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:30:01 +0000

I promised myself I wouldn’t get into political or religious discussion on this blog because, well, you should never discuss either with people you potentially don’t know. Also, every other blogger and news reporter will be writing about the same old damn stuff.

But, before I stay up all night to see if our friends in the US of A have come good, I feel like posting to say to those in the States: http://getyourassoutofthehouseandvote.com/

For the rest of you who can’t vote, you can stay and watch this if you want, a mesh of sampling by the people of LA (Miles, is that you at 2:43 in? You got the move down finally!):

And now to resume normal programming.

My first websites

Francis — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:20:31 +0000

Way back when in 1997, I had been creating websites. I had been doing it for a while before then, but then it was all about just creating stuff at home and having fun. So, I teamed up with my good friend Nick to build some websites that would see the light of day.

Anyway, I thought about these last night as I discussed some (mainly drunken) ideas with our creative director here. So, I introduce to you some of my first work.

The Syphilis Tank (1997)
A batch of stories and stuff usually written while drunk (and sometimes incoherent). The first landing page was intentionally meant to be harsh on the eyes showing you are about to enter a hellish realm, which isn’t so hellish. Nick’s story “the coffee machine” was written while we remained in a 7-Eleven in Stockholm at 4am after having tried to sleep in a park by a graveyard. Heady times indeed!

The Biggins McMunch Corporate Experience (2000)
A take on the corporate sites of old, this little puppy started winning awards. Mr Biggins McMunch himself was even quoted on Lovemarks.

Get the 80s snacks back here

Francis — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:40:03 +0000

For too long we have had mediocre snacks from the 1990s and 2000s. Everyone will be aware by now that Wispa is back. Lovely!

However, nothing quite prepared me this very lunch time, as I popped out with friend and old time colleague Mr. Clive Murray for the weekly Subway, for the discovery we made.

We headed to the local shop and as we reminisced about Wispa being back, the plucky shop owner said “they’ve also brought back the 80s Monster Munch packaging”. We excitedly looked, and there, in all its glory, was the old packaging, almost. Almost is better than nothing! They’re bigger again too!

I then saw this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3110135/Monster-Munch-crisps-relaunched.html
and this
http://www.findourmonsters.com/

AWESOME! What’s next? Any guesses?

Give me fruit, fruit & meat

Francis — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:25:31 +0000

I love startups, I really bl**dy do! Well, when they are exciting. I take the same view as Stefan Fountain that startups should be useful, fun to use at first, then they just get integrated into your life, they become something you just use. Some aren’t that useful and just fun, but hey, it generally follows.

Anyway, this year I really thought startups would be thin on the ground and I would no longer have that “crap, I wish I’d done that” thing I always have. Not so. I have discovered 2 I love. I have already written about Soocial, which is my current favourite, but another is called Graze.com. Graze has been set up by one of the guys who set up LoveFilm.com. It is a way of sending out fruits, snacks, hell, even meat to people in healthy snack form, they send it out in the post and it arrives the next day so you can scoff away and feel healthy-ish at work.

You have now been blessed with the knowledge, now go forth and spread the word.

Stars, geeky stars!

Francis — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 10:44:57 +0000

Many years back, I used to work at a very small agency (2 of us), it was a subset of a Hedge Fund thing, I think… something like that. Anyway, I read an article by one of the directors which was titled something like “Hedge Funds are the new rock ‘n roll”. It was mid-dotcom crash and it was about how Hedge Fund managers were the new cool.

I disagreed. I had always seen San Francisco and its entrepreneurs, full of startups and funky companies as, well, not Rock n Roll, but pretty damn cool. Silicon Valley was (and still is) my Mecca.

So, the point of this post? Well, I had the pleasure of seeing Kevin Rose (Digg) and Alex Albrecht filming an episode of Diggnation in London last week. I have never seen guys who really put the funk into being internet entrepreneurs! Their thing is that they sit on a couch (sofa, I know, sofa) and get drunk while discussing stories on Digg.com. Very simple, and something I envy Kevin Rose for coming up with such a great and simple idea. So they bumble through stories usually ending up with anecdotes, arguments, bets, ideas. They tend to manage to offend at least 1 country per episode, in a jokey “we’re American” way. Brilliant, just brilliant, well, fun anyway.

It’s worth having a look, you can subscribe then watch on your ipod, have a go!
Diggnation - Revision 3

The Contacts Fiasco

Francis — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 10:21:36 +0000

I’ve just sorted a problem I have had for more than 10 years now. It took a while, but I think it is finally sorted.

What is this problem I speak of? Well, my contacts. I started using a mobile phone back in 1997. I had been using the internet for email and did have an address book. I had a list of phone numbers in my mobile which I had to re-type in a new phone each time I upgraded. My PC had friends’ emails, lovely. These friends also have addresses, one would hope.

So, 11 years later (probably more), I have a bunch of contacts which, despite being the same people, are not the same, my PC has an email, probably old and maybe a mobile number. My phone has loads of numbers for 1 person, but no email. Outlook has addresses. Each time a friend moves house, email provider or mobile number, I have to change a few devices which aren’t synchronised (well, some are, some aren’t). I know there is Plaxo and the rest, but it never quite did what I wanted.

Enter Soocial (pronounced “Social”, just to really confuse things). There are all sorts of sync clients for my laptop, PC, Gmail, Mobile. I don’t even need to plug anything in, it updates on the interwebamathingy. Next step was to blindly let these devices, not aware of each other yet, synchronise to 1 place. It was harsh, duplicates, mixed data etc. it took a couple of hours of synchronising, looking etc. (luckily I don’t have a huge database of contacts), but now I’m happy, eventually, I’m sure I’ll have to sync Faceboook etc. Maybe in 10 years or so, let’s see.

Don’t dial 0870

Francis — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 06:41:42 +0000

There are days when you need to contact a company’s customer services of some kind. You tend to call and have to wait for them to pick up, sometimes for 1 minute, sometimes 10, sometimes 1 hour. A lot of the time, these services have an 0870 number which is a national rate phone number which can get quite expensive if you are spending a long time, and generally, on your mobile, this will not be used on your free minutes.

So I went an discovered something that is genius, or helpful at the very least. 0870 numbers have to be attached to a normal landline number. There is a site that has these landline numbers in a database and it is called SayNoTo0870. You can then look up the 0870 number or company name, and get the cheaper normal landline number. Brilliant!

Now go and save those pennies!

World’s greatest unboxing

Francis — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:36:37 +0000

I’ve just seen something wonderful. For anyone not au fait with unboxings, they are usually a video or sequence of photographs showing the packaging of a product, for example, an ipod. It’s usually done by Apple fans as Apple’s product wrapping is great. This one’s, erm… quite different.

Beer for your car

Francis — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:23:41 +0000

I recently attended the London CAMRA (CAMpaign For Real Ale) beer festival. A great time was had by my better half and I as we tried to get the best beers, a lovely night out.

So I decided to have a look at the CAMRA website to look at what was hot in the hoppy world of ale, and I noticed an add-on for your Tom Tom GPS which says when you are near a good real ale pub for a mere fiver. At first I thought “fantastic idea” which it is. Then I thought, some are weak, some would have this add-on and be driving merrily, stop off, pub, and drive off even more merrily, and how often would this happen? Anyway, great idea, but be careful out there.

Those outdoor toilets

Francis — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:01:20 +0000

So there I was, walking home last Friday. And I saw the photo pictured to, hopefully, the left of this text. I found this funny, why? I love these things. I love them because every time I am quite drunk round town. I look for the darkest alley I can find, and usually find one of these bad boys. It makes me feel good that I don’t have to sully someone’s doorstep, and now it isn’t even an option to try and find somewhere else.

The reason i found this funny was because while Westminster do it well (alleys) Hackney council don’t do it well at all. First, note the chain on the smallest branch of the tree. Now some drunken nutters will be tempted to tip the thing. But best of all is its location, on Old street. The centre of it all. Right in the middle of everything. Now, there are tons of alleys and small areas (only last week I heard a man loudly vomitting outside my flat, he really went for it), so why not put it there? Not sure. Keep on the Hackney, keep on.