• Addictomatic: Inhale the Web – Social search engine mashup
• Aggregation | drupal.org – Drupal aggregation plugin
• Virb – Social networking site where your profile is built from feeds
• Dipity – activity aggregator visualised in a timeline
• FriendFeed – obviously
• Fuser – email and social network message aggregator
• HelloTxt – multiple status updater
• Pageflakes – it’s like NetVibes
• ShowYourself – It’s a widget, it’s not about flashing your bits
• Socialthing! – Got bought by AIM and is now AIM Lifestream. Like FriendFeed.
  

Similar articles:

• 25+ Ways to Manage Your Online Identity – Mashable
• How To Manage Your Online Reputation – ReadWriteWeb
• The Web Profile Aggregators – Somewhat Frank
  

Good advertising blogs

• Advertising Lab: future of advertising and advertising technology
• Eaon Pritchard’s blog
• Osocio – Social Advertising and Non-profit Campaigns
• CST Advertising – Home of Dave Trott’s blog
• adwomen – Feminist commentary on adverts

Specifically good items

• Influential Marketing Blog: An Insider’s Guide To Marketing On Flickr
• tesco value shampoo – spoof ad
• Sprint: Plug into Now. – Massively awesome and interesting data visualisation on today’s production
• Orange online ad dimensions / specifications – For reference
• HSBC: No “goodservice” in Sight – and Orange Ad Campaign: I Am Lost? -  about using ’search for …’ as an online advertising tactic

2007 links:

• ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing A journal
• CSS: Map Pop Accessible CSS image map tutorial
• Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) W3C guidelines (the obvious one)
• Mike Davidson: March to Your Own Standard Controversial opinion piece
• ATRC Web Accessibility Checker Tool
  

2009 links

• Web accessibility training courses by the RNIB
• SiteRay – test, compare and improve your websites Creates great reports on website accessibility and lots more, useful for before-and-after tests for clients if you’ve rebuilt their site

I would say the most important thing I’ve learnt about accessibility over the years is that it’s not just about deaf people, blind people, or those who can’t use a standard keyboard or mouse, but about anybody who needs to or prefers to access websites in a different way. So it’s about designing interfaces that allow users to choose how to get around to best suit them, and allowing them to personalise the way online media is displayed.

Step 1: Telephone call 1 to order new TalkTalk Pro 24Meg unlimited package. Told we had to sign up for the Essentials package, & wait for connection before upgrading to Pro. Tried again to demand we get Pro to start with. Told no, but assured we could upgrade later. Informed of £60 phone line connection fee. OK, signed up.

Step 2: Wait 10 days for telephone line to be connected.

Step 3: Telephone call 2 to upgrade to TalkTalk Pro. Told that package is not available to new customers and is only available for Tiscali customers. I told them I was told on sign-up that I could have it. They said this was incorrect and no new customers could get the Pro unlimited package.

Step 4: Researched alternatives, decided on Virgin Media via cable. Customer service popup chat on their website did a check on our address and confirmed we could just order by post, modem delivered 19th December, no installation engineer required.

Step 5: Telephone call 3 to cancel TalkTalk. Told that TalkTalk Pro package WAS in fact available to new customers. They then did a check on our line and told us that our line wouldn’t handle that speed though, so we couldn’t get the Pro package after all. Asked to cancel. Man at cancellations department asked why, I explained, he was extremely rude to me, finally agreed to cancel my account and confirmed I would not be charged the £60 connection fee (because I was sold it on false information).

Step 6: Ordered Virgin account and home delivery for 19th December.

Step 7: Received email from Virgin saying actually we DID need an installation engineer and one wouldn’t be available until 4th January.

Step 8: Telephoned Virgin to check and they confirmed we did need an engineer, despite previously being told otherwise.

Step 9: TalkTalk decide to send me a welcome pack and modem.

Step 10: Telephone call 4 to try to cancel TalkTalk again. Told account had not been canceled previously. Nice lady this time on cancellations department agreed to cancel my account, but told me I would be charged the £60 connection fee unless I disputed it. Told I’d be sent a return envelope for the modem. Put through to disputes. Told my account hadn’t been charged YET, but would inevitably be charged, at which point I would have to call again to dispute and they would credit me the £60 back.

Step 11: Grabbed passing Virgin man and asked him to check our Virgin wall box thing, he agreed we didn’t actually need an installation engineer. But by this time it was Christmas and too late to get a delivery by post.

Step 12: Virgin engineer arrived on time to PLUG IN modem for us. Thanks for that. That cost me £20 more than doing it myself. Anyway, we’ve now got internet (woo!) and it seems decently fast at a real speed of approx. 17Mb/s.

Really. It really shouldn’t be that complicated to get a new internet connection! And these companies should start hiring customer service people who get their facts right! Gggrrrrah!

My old blog at Wordpress.com has a bunch of incoming links from various places from over the years, providing lots of lovely Google Juice. Obviously the new site doesn’t (yet). I can’t do any automatic redirecting from Wordpress.com because it’s hosted there and they don’t allow it (for free… there may be a paid option, not sure). So I’ve just put a big fat ‘This blog has moved to bethgranter.com’ message in the navigation and on the homepage.

However, when people go direct to a specific article, which they normally do, via Google searches or inbound links, they still get the content they wanted, so have no reason to go through to my new site. If I were to delete all my old posts, people coming via referring links to posts would be faced with a ‘page not found’ message (albeit provided in a friendly Wordpress tone of voice) with the ‘this blog has moved to bethgranter.com’ message in the header and sidebar.  And Google would recognise the bethgranter.com content as the priority. Although without those inbound links those good (moved) posts would have no Google Juice, so I’d get less traffic. Today so far my blog at Wordpress.com had 68 visitors. This one at Bethgranter.com had 17, of which 5 were from the old blog. I guess that’s not bad considering I only put the blog on Bethgranter.com 48 hours ago. So yeah, the question is:

Should I delete my old juiced up blog posts from Wordpress.com now they are on Bethgranter.com?!

Here's a cool looking kid who doesn't know what to do either. Photo by yamagatacamille.

I’m writing on behalf of the RSPCA, raising awareness of its urgent campaign to protect the welfare of UK meat chickens.

Right now, the government is considering new EU legislation that may increase the number of chickens allowed in rearing sheds. Even at current minimum standards, each bird is given less space than a sheet of A4. It’s hard to walk or even flap their wings. But this legislation would allow yet more birds to be squashed in, cutting that space by almost a quarter.

see larger video

sourced by bethgranter

The RSPCA are asking people to petition Jim Fitzpatrick, Minister for Animal welfare, to make the right choice for UK chickens and quash the squash, by sending an email via the Quash the Squash website. Mr Fitzpatrick’s decision is imminent and we want 15,000 letters to be sent before he makes his decision.

The RSPCA have also created a short film called Irritating Chicken to highlight the plight of broiler (meat) chickens’ if EU legislation on living conditions is brought into force in the UK. The purpose of the stunt was to invade people’s personal space to make them feel what is like being squashed into a chicken shed.

If anyone wonders what people in their 60s do online, here’s my folk’s online activity:

Last week my Dad joined Facebook. My Mum has been on Facebook for around a year. Now when you’re new to Facebook, you get a progress bar to encourage you to come back and do more:

• Dad does social bookmarking, once Furl now Diigo, as well as being an active member of MyLibraryThing. I tried to get him to use del.icio.us but I think he’s sticking to Diigo.
• My mum uses MSN but my Dad doesn’t. If I don’t respond immediately she thinks I’m ignoring her.
• My Dad is a Flickr Pro but my Mum isn’t. I bought him his first Flickr pro account because he was getting into photography and I was sick of getting huge images filling up my inbox all the time! Dad uploads photos that Mum takes too.
• My Mum started a blog recently, about living with Rheumatoid Arthritis, an Aspergic husband, and politics.
• My Dad prefers to microblog on Twitter, is on Last.FM and uses Spotify.

There must be something to the fact that each of them has favoured such different social channels through which to connect. Not sure how much is to do with gender and how much to do with their individual personalities, but Mum’s seem much more to do with communication (Facebook, blogging and MSN) whereas Dad’s seem more hobby specific and functional (Flickr, Diigo, MyLibraryThing, Last.FM).

TEST RABBIT WANTED!
Some fun for a volunteer helping to run public tests of FLIRTMAN in U.K. this summer

CONCEPT:
A free game for mobile phones, which turns people into social viruses with unpredictable behavior. The computer game taken out of the box and placed back into the reality. A hired actor equipped with a hidden mobile phone is walking around and anybody can control him by mobile phone using it as remote control. People can control his movement and send him simple commands, like kneel down, hug, kiss etc… When the actor hears these commands, he has to do them, but still act natural. You can imagine how it affects social games…

It similar to these works
Project website (in progress)

WHAT IS REQUIRED:
A volunteer actor – to be controlled remotely (kind of “live avatar”), approximately 2 hours. A “hidden theatre” experience.
Needed skills: brave heart, a bit social behavior.

REWARD:
30 per session (approximately 2 hours) (I assume that’s £ pounds)

WHEN:
Glasgow: 15.8. / afternoon and/or evening
Edinburgh: 16.8, 17.8. / afternoon and/or evening
London: 19.8., 20.8., 21.8., / afternoon and/or evening
Manchester: 22.8. / afternoon

CONTACT:
Test rabbits can contact Petr Svarovsky via email: petrsvar@khio.no or SMS: +47 928 13 858

[vimeo 1618417]