“The noisiest paper, without doubt, was the News of the World, which resounded with three continuous notes. The first and most defensible was sport … Then, there were television performers … Last and most cacophonous, there was the assumption, or the ardent hope, that somebody, somewhere, was having sex with somebody he should not be having sex with. Viewed from outside, what this fixation suggested was a giggling braggart, fidgeting in the schoolyard and pointing at girls with whom he’d never have a chance.”

Great article in the New Yorker this week on Murdoch and his empire.

There’s been a lot of talk over the newest addition to the photo sharing iPhone App — both good and bad (Robert Scoble has been pretty vocal, singing songs of praise to the little app).

Instagram is pretty simple app that lets you take a picture and then share it simultaneously on all your social networking websites. The pull of this app (and, I think, 90% of its explosive popularity) is that you can add different filters onto your pictures. Most of them focus on making your picture look nostalgic and vintage.

The criticism that the app has been getting is that some people are saying that we’re damning an entire generation of photo evidence by attaching cheap effects and (quoting the most vocal of the damning naysayers):-

This is an entirely untrue statement. Instagram saves the original photo to your iPhone’s camera roll, along with the filter-ized photo.

Talking more generally, the author of the linked article also says:-

As a society, we have already made a collective sacrifice in photo quality in the name of quantity and convenience. There was a dark period in the late 90s when average photo quality plummeted from the 20 megapixels of film to pathetic VGA, 640×480 (0.3MP) photos. But it climbed, and now your average point-and-shoot has 12MP, roughly film quality. But in the meantime we sacrificed quality again, this time in the name of portability, and we rely mostly on the cameras in our phones.

With these rubbish phone cameras we take terrible photos of some of our most important moments and cherished memories. I am not complaining about composition and lighting here; I’m not a photographer. I am talking about the quantity of meaningful visual data contained in these files. Future historians will decry forever the appalling lack of visual fidelity in the historical record of the last decade.

Again, I disagree.

The advent of the mobile phone, specifically the camera on the back of the mobile phone, transformed photography. We have so many more pictures of everyday life (like the pictures of this blogpost for instance) in the last 10 years than we did the 30 years before that. Yes, we did sacrifice quality for
convenience, but we’re not taking bad photos.

Smartphones are actually pretty decent cameras these days — the iPhone 4, miles ahead of other phones in some areas, lags behind with a meagre 5 megapixels. And even what’s considered ‘meagre’ is changing. 5 years ago the 640×480 (0.3 MP) was all people had.

Mobile phone cameras have a huge advantage over cameras in their instantaneousness. We don’t take our cameras with us everywhere with us (or if we do, they’re in a bag and not readily accessible). Matt Smith (The Eleventh Doctor) summed this up well in the latest Doctor Who series when he remarked that the end of the world was going to come down the screen of a mobile phone (because everyone would be tweeting it).

Getting back to Instagram and its filters, I have to question the other author’s remarks on how “future historians will decry forever the appalling lack of visual fidelity in the historical record of the last decade.“. How will the historians see our pictures? If they have our phones, the original is there. If they’re looking at the pictures we tweet? Well, this is us!

**

History class, 2050.

Teacher: “…and some of the users of this social networking site liked to add effects to the photos that made them look vintage.”

**

We are making history here. There’s no rule book that says the photos we take have to be original and unedited. If there was, the creators of PhotoShop would’ve been lynched ages ago! All Instagram is guilty of is loving too much making it easy to edit these pictures.

So go on, get Instagram here (iTunes store link) and go have fun with the effects.

In the summer of 1937, when tension was rife in Europe, when satellite photographs weren’t invented yet and in a time when Ordinance Survey (OS) Maps were hard to come by, English country lanes were full of foreigners cycling their way between historic monuments and spending their nights out under the stars in fields (Famous Five style).

The only problem with an idyllic thought like that is that some of those groups were teenagers who belonged to the Hitler Youth.

Their itineraries were usually built round visits to the great English historic sites – Oxford, Cambridge, London, though one party was touring Scotland and another finished in Wales.

In May 1937, British newspaper the “Daily Herald” published an article based on a translation of the Nazi Cycling Associations’ guidelines for cycling abroad:

“Get into your head all landmarks like steeples and towers and all fords and bridges and acquaint yourself with them in such a way that you will be able to recognise them by night”

And one of the senior figures in the Hitler Youth had moved to London at the start of the year, ostensibly to study. MI5 suspected that Joachim Benemann’s real object however was to develop the Hitler Youth in the UK.

He tried to develop links between the Hitler Youth and the Boy Scouts, albeit unsuccessfully.

The Hitler Youth who travelled to Britain had been specially selected – a number had even had been to training camps before the visit. Some of them met or shared camps with British Boy Scout groups. The most striking was the Tamworth Scout troop – for whom this was a return visit. They had already been guests of the Hitler Youth in Hamburg earlier in the summer, thanks to their very pro-German Scoutmaster.

“It was like a Roman legion”
-Les Fardon, former Boy Scout

They had stayed at a Hitler Youth camp and even taken part in a torchlight rally. One of the boys, Les Fardon, told Radio 4′s Document Programme ten years ago: “It was like a Roman legion,” he said. “You had these long banners and you were marching to tune… it was very stirring and frightening”

Link to full article

Poster wording translates into: “Youth serves the leader. All ten year-olds into the Hitler Youth.”

Despite agreeing with some of the points he makes about religion, I’ve never liked Richard Dawkins. Not only does he force his beliefs on others, he does in such an annoyingly smug manner that I don’t see why or how anyone stands him.

Why am I blogging this interview? Well it seems to be an exception — to me, he seems a lot calmer in this interview than others. More ‘these are my beliefs’ instead of ‘these are my beliefs, they’re right and you’re all fools for thinking anything different’.

Advertising has always interested me. While I never considered a career in advertising to be the one that I’d choose, I still love it and think it’s a very cool area to be in.

The picture is of an ad for the iPod Mini, scanned from my English book for demonstration purposes.

Firstly, the copy reads:

Little. The next big thing.

Meet iPod Mini. It’s the world’s smallest 1,000 song player,
comes in 5 colors and works with Mac or Windows. Just $249.

Let’s look at the overall picture first. The iPod doesn’t take up a large area of room to underline how small it is, the background color is neutral so as not to distract from the main feature. Despite coming in 5 colors, this iPod is silver so as not to alienate potential buyers (old versus young, males versus females).

The copy is concise (only 26 words) and laid out in 3 sizes. The biggest text is the one that’ll be read furthest away and it’ll be read more than the copyright notices at the bottom.

The copy also uses many subtle devices to help us familiarize ourselves with this product. “Meet iPod Mini” portrays the product as if it were a person. “Just $249″ is portraying this as a small price.

The ad also informs us that the product will work with both Mac and Windows, thereby refuting any worries potential consumers may have referring to compatibility.

Despite being short, the copy has given us a wealth of information including comparative size, song memory size, colors available, compatibility and price

**

As you can see, a lot can be taken out of this ad and I think Apple are geniuses when it comes to marketing and packaging.

Have you any other examples of effective ads or has anyone had any experience working in advertising?

Before I go any further, I’d just like to say that I’m not one of those people who doesn’t partake in traditions (such as Christmas or Valentine’s Day) and therefore goes and writes an angry/sarcastic post about it and thinks that because they dislike it, it should be banned.

It’s a case of..

I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it

Why don’t I like Valentine’s Day? Well, what about every other day? Yes, you bought me flowers that were probably 50c in Dunnes, very romantic. If couples are so insecure in their relationship that they need flowers and chocolate and weekend breaks to substantiate their feelings for each other, well you’re going to have a problem.

Also, I’d like to make it very clear that I don’t feel this way because I’m single. I don’t see this as a ‘fail’ on my part, or some sort of ‘sin’.

So in closing, I never really ‘got’ Valentine’s Day, but if that’s your cup of tea, you’re more than welcome.

I’m not totally devoid of romantic feeling though — I agreed to cook dinner for Mom and Dad as a treat. Then again, my cooking style couldn’t be described as anything near romantic… unless yelling obscenities at frying pans is your thing :)

As you do, right?

Taken in France in 2009.

If you’re wondering what I’m staring so intently at.. I can only equate the light show to…

I tried to catch up with the blue box but it got away :(

Except poetry.

For the most part, I enjoy reading poetry. I just don’t enjoy studying it. Don’t worry, this isn’t one of these teenage angst posts about how ‘the Irish secondary school system is a farce’ and ‘as if I’ll ever use trigonometry/chemical bonding/ox-bow lakes in later life’, it’s just that poetry isn’t my thing, as it were. I’ll put effort into it and everything, but don’t ask me to like it.

Anyhow, I’m showing you a poem from my English book. Why? Because I like so few of them, finding one I actively enjoy should be noted!

War and The Simpsons – Hilary McKay

The really good thing about war is that they generally put
it on at 6 o’ clock.
Same time as The Simpsons

And nowadays, of course, war is quite safe.
It stays in the TV and makes no mess.
Even if it gets too noisy you can just turn down the sound.

(If you can find the remote.)

Also it is very clean,
No dust, nor smoke, nor blood leaks through the screen.
And when it gets boring you can switch over and watch
The Simpsons

(If you can find the remote.)

The only trouble is, it still goes on.
(The war, not The Simpsons. The Simpsons lasts for
twenty minutes — unless it is a special.)

The war still goes on. The noise and the smoke and
the leaking blood. The dirt and the boredom and the fear.
You cannot switch it off with the remote.

(Even if you can find the remote)

You have to switch it off another way
You have to say, No
No
No war
You have to say No To War.

Then you can watch The Simpsons
In peace.

I think I like it because it’s a poem on an everyday subject, and not something difficult to relate to. I think that’s why I enjoy this poem of Sinéad’s so much. (Check out her other stuff, it’s good too)

Photo owned by Bramus! (cc)

So why, in 2009, is this any different?

It is for me, anyway.

Did I miss the changeover? because when I order pizza now, there seems to be a rigmarole associated with that I go through each time.

There’s the tweet:

…and the Facebook picture:

This is the thing, though. We no longer do these things on their own. I know several people who never watch TV any more – they watch it with a laptop on their knees and they’ll be following the #XFactor tweets or MSNing with their friends about how Ryan Tubridy looked like he was on caffeine pills during the Late Late Toy Show..

Frozen fruit, only 2€ per packet from Dunnes Stores. Why struggle with fresh fruit when you’re going to be eating it cold anyway?

Next, natural yoghurt. That squiggle on my hand was testing whether a pen works. It did.

Either milk or orange juice can be used.

Pour the orange juice into your concoction, which admittedly doesn’t look particularly appetizing. Just you wait… :)

Nope, it’s no more appetizing this way up. Anyhow, put the lid on, and T minus 30 seconds until….

Vroom vroom.

Do I realize that they’re Christmas themed glasses? Yes. Do I know it’s still November? Yes. Do I care? No. In fact, I’m listening to Christmas music right now. I regret nothing! :)

Viva la Navidad!

So, one’s for me, who wants the second one?