Remember Kodak?

Of course you do.

Gone.

In a ridiculous and extremely disturbing move, the US congress is attempting to legislate the World Wide Web.

It’s worst than it sounds.

Much worse.

In protest, huge sites like Wikipedia have blacked their English pages out for 24 hours to raise awareness.

Please take 5 minutes to learn what is happening, because this affects YOU, as well as the rest of us.

Go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more

28th May 2011, EUEFA Champions league. Manchester Utd played at home… and were completely outclassed by the world champions.

What can I say…

Other than…

OLE!

Seriously.

No, seriously. The UK government has released a 20 page document that they are calling ‘a template guide’ to using Twitter in a ‘professional’ manner.

I’m still unsure whether the guide is meant for corporates in general, for all UK businesses or for anybody else, because the ‘noise’ out there is conflicting – mostly because not everybody has read this ‘guide’.

Including myself.

I won’t be reading it.

If the scale of ridiculous misinformation and horrendous dietary advise on the government’s food pyramid chart is anything to go by, then their Twitter usage template promises to be nothing but a bunch of laughs.

Written by people with way too much on their hands, who like nothing better to do than to tell me how to use Twitter.

No thanks.

Okay, so we all know the banks are out to ‘get us’. They broke the gold and silver standard (yes, the government had a hand in that too) and they came up with the most convoluted system imaginable to lend money and then shaft you forever and a day whilst you desperately try to repay your loan back.

Einstein was right about the compound effect.

But here is some good news: there’s a chap named Philip Tyrone who knows about money and he knows how the banks ‘really’ tick.

This little video of his, where he waltzes into a bank and secretly films his interaction, is a priceless eye-opener.

Pun intended.

If you want to know about money, take a look at this:

I admit it: I once bought something from play.com

And truth be told, sometimes they have very good deals. This mini rant isn’t about what they sell, nor about what they do.

It’s about something else.

It’s about the fact that I keep receiving their newsletter, even though I keep unsubscribing and I appear to be unsubscribed.

But no. Sometime soon after I unsubscribed, I received another newsletter.

So I unsubscribed again.

Now, unlike some auto responders where you just click the unsubscribe link to get to the very screen where you can unsubscribe yourself, play.com make you log on to your account and scroll down to the bottom of the page where you have to change the radio button from subscribe to unsubscribe.

My point is, you’re hardly going to forget that you unsubscribed any time soon, if you did.

In my case, I didn’t forget any of the three times I unsubscribed.

And still I receive the newsletter. Incessantly.

I logged back into my account and sent them an e-mail telling them to stop sending me newsletters (asking them to manually remove me from their list).

When this didn’t work, I sent another e-mail in which I shouted a bit louder.

Finally I received a response…

… in which they apologised (fair enough)…

… and explained to me that it would take up to 10 days to process this.

WHAT?

10 days to process what exactly?

I processed their e-mail in seconds!

Perhaps they mean that unsubscribing me will take 10 days?

AS IF!

Once you change that radio button from subscribe to unsubscribe, the system runs a query and changes one value in one field in one table in the database. Namely, the value that says ‘yes’ or 1 to the ‘subscribe to the newsletter’ option in the field belonging to my record.

And that takes…. less than a second.

So here’s a suggestion: sort your system out. It’s broken.

Google has launched a service to help people find other people who may have lost contact with each other as a result of the terrible Tsunami that has hit Japan.

Important links:

• http://www.google.com/tsunami_relief.html
• http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/
• http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/?lang=en

Google has acted extremely fast, and most commendably.

All the best
Jose

I’d like to know which clown thought – and still thinks – that packaging corned beef in a tin contraption that can only be opened by prising out a thin strip around the tin by turning a flimsy key is a good idea.

If you’ve ever tried this, the first thing you would have noticed is that, if you have fingers, then it’s impossible to turn the key in anything that resembles comfort. There’s just no room to manoeuvre.

And if you do manage to unwrap the tin strip all the way around the can, then you will know that the little metal key doesn’t bode well with so many folds of tin around it.

It’s downright stupid.

Now, I don’t know about you but the term ‘corned beef’ makes me think of wartime and rationing. I imagine that a large portion of the people who consume such crap are of the elderly persuasion.

I had the misfortune only last week of deciding to buy a corned beef tin as a treat to sprinkle on my dog’s food. Alas, I am here ranting now.

Search Google for ‘how to open a corned beef tin’ and behold.

How does a corned beef tin merit almost 100,000 related search results?

Thankfully I seem not to be alone in this: whilst some people are missing the point entirely and asking for instructions on how to open a tin of corned beef, and others – [ insert your name here ] – have recorded videos on how to open a tin of corned beef using DIY tools (again, missing the point completely…) there are a good few that are actually ranting about how stupid this whole thing is.

There’s even a Facebook page called ban the corned beef tin in the top 10. I’m so pleased about this and I’m going to give them a link here:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=63143898972

Many a cut finger and a sliced hand has resulted because of the ridiculous design, which can only be the work of a sadistic and bitter fool.

Nobody can possibly argue that the corned beef tin is designed well and survive a slap.

If I can’t f*@! open one easily, then I don’t believe that anybody else can either.

Behold my wound after trying to open one of the blighters.

Asda: sort your corned beef tins out!

Which brings me to the extended part of my rant. Supermarkets yield tremendous power. We all know this. They dictate and drive down the prices farmers and other merchants hope to net, and everybody has to like it or lump it.

I don’t believe for one moment that Asda and Tesco can’t ask (or tell, more like) the corned beef packager to stop acting like an utter twat and start making a tin that people can actually open, or pay somebody else to do so.

And so, this is on them.

If I was in the retail business and I was selling crap that my customers couldn’t open without mutilating themselves, I’d be ashamed.

Sometimes financial difficulties will drive down the quality of products… but in this case we’re talking about supermarkets that OWN the producers.

Moreover, many products are packaged on behalf – and for – the supermarkets. Even product grown or fermented abroad spot the proud slogan that informs you that the product was packaged for the supermarket, making it ‘seem’ exclusive.

So to amend my former statement: if I was in the retail business and had more millions than Brewster, and I was selling crap that my customers couldn’t open without mutilating themselves, I’d be very ashamed.

If anybody at Asda or Tesco wants to dispute this, perhaps they would like to open a tin of corned beef in front of a video camera, taking less than 30 seconds (well, it doesn’t take me 10 minutes to open a tin of tuna…) without breaking into a sweat or loosing blood, and then open a second one just to proof that the first one wasn’t a fluke.

Care to take me up on the challenge? Post it to YouTube and send me a link.

I’m waiting.

Sometimes you’re rendered speechless and completely immobile by somebody’s display of sheer, unbelievable stupidity.

What can you do… such things can’t always be avoided…

One such moment struck me when I watched an utter buffoon fail not just at geography but at ‘existing on the same plane as the rest of us’.

I’m still put off my pickled eggs at the unsettling thought that somebody walking around the Western Hemisphere doesn’t know what Germany is – doesn’t even have f’ing inkling – and is allowed to hold sharp cutlery.

See for yourself, and avoid doing this at all costs.

Eventful, but mostly noise.

Rumours abound again that the Sucker twins (I’m sorry, that’s not a slur, I just can’t remember their name, and I can’t be bothered to look it up…) are still in relentless pursuit on Mark somebody (the chap that put together The Facebook, as it was originally called).

There are of course denials about this rumour, so who knows: they’re either trying to sue again, or they’re not yet suing for more.

They got $65 million for their troubles a while ago, but allegedly they want more.

The point here is that they’re pretty miffed that Mark took what they claim was their idea and actually made it happen.

So I’m spending the day coming up with ideas, but doing nothing about them, in the hope that somebody else does so that I can start suing them for getting off their butts and acting on what can surely only be my idea.

Hmm.

Sucker brothers: let it go.

You Were… the weakest link?

Anyone remember YouAre.com? I happen to do, and I was somewhat surprised this morning when I popped over there to find the doors had closed.

You Are ‘were’ a social media site – inspired by microblogging phenomenon Twitter.

Alas, they’ve given up the race.

At least they’re not trying to sue anybody over something they themselves failed at.