fabric of folly

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Twitter play: Lyric for the day

Four weeks ago I set up a new Twitter account called Lyric for the day and started posting snatches of song lyrics on an (almost) daily basis. I then tweeted it's existence on my main Twitter account, encouraging fellow tweeters to guess the track and artist by replying to @lyricfortheday. 28 lyrics later and the account has 37 followers and a burgeoning sense of competitiveness, as well as some indie snobbery. There's only one rule (no Googling!). Below is the high score table (one point for the first correct answer) and the answers to date (only three of which went unguessed). Come play! :)

Lyric for the day hall of fame:
R4isStatic (4)
aarons (3)
LouiseBrown (3)
onpause (3)
willhowells (3)
chunkylover (2)
dogwinters (1)
helenroper (1)
ms_jackson (1)
rooreynolds (1)
slim_cop (1)
SplintUK (1)
tbgkerry (1)

Answers to date:
1. Sympathy For The Devil - The Rolling Stones (onpause)
2. Abattoir Blues - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (aarons)
3. Babies - Pulp (rooreynolds)
4. Our Mutual Friend - The Divine Comedy
5. Sit Down - James (willhowells)
6. O Maria - Beck
7. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand (willhowells)
8. When The Sun Goes Down - Arctic Monkeys (R4isStatic)
9. Faith - George Michael (slim_cop)
10. Mexican Wine - Fountains of Wayne (helenroper)
11. Mrs Robinson - Simon & Garfunkel (R4isStatic)
12. Playground Love - AIR (chunkylover)
13. Singing In My Sleep - Semisonic (R4isStatic)
14. Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) - Kenny Rogers & the First Edition
15. Fat Bottomed Girls - Queen (SplintUK)
16. Me In Honey - R.E.M. (chunkylover)
17. Cabron - Red Hot Chili Peppers (R4isStatic)
18. Mile End - Pulp (aarons)
19. The Bends - Radiohead (aarons)
20. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol (dogwinters)
21. Where Is My Mind - The Pixies (onpause)
22. Don't Speak - No Doubt (LouiseBrown)
23. First of the Gang to Die - Morrissey (willhowells)
24. Tiny Dancer - Elton John (onpause)
25. Mysterious Ways - U2 (ms_jackson)
26. Shakermaker - Oasis (tbgkerry)
27. Bohemian Like You - The Dandy Warhols (LouiseBrown)
28. Frontier Psychiatrist - The Avalanches (LouiseBrown)

Job opportunity: Head of Multiplatform Products, BBC Vision

Looking for an exciting new job and at a loose end this weekend? Why not spend it applying for the role of Head Of Multiplatform Products for BBC Vision? Don't know what any of those words mean in this context? My earlier post on my elliptical job title should explain some of them.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

BBC widgets

At the tail end of 2006, I confidently predicted that 2007 would be the year of the widget and thanks in no small part to Facebook and iGoogle both 'going large' in that year (see respective news stories), I wasn't embarrassingly wrong.

Yesterday marked a more modest milestone in the 'mainstreamisation' (warning: made up word alert) of widgets as some of my colleagues quietly launched bbc.co.uk/widgets. It's pretty light on widgets at the moment (four at the time of writing) but I've got a feeling that could grow pretty quickly, even if all it does is aggregate more of the BBC widgets already out in the wild (e.g. LiveUpdate, Lily Allen, Glastonbury, Olympics).

One of the new widgets available is the BBC iPlayer widget (embedded below) which promotes a selection of TV and Radio content available to consume on-demand via BBC iPlayer, with some very light-touch personalisation built in (thumbs up, thumbs down). You can't actually watch programmes within the widget (I guess the viewing experience might be slightly sub-optimal at 300 pixels), although the Clearspring wrapper provides easy integration with an extensive range of social media sites (incl. Facebook and iGoogle) as well as the vanilla embed code.

Designed more as a proof of concept than a major distribution play, it will be interesting to see whether it garners many installs. Of course it'll need to get linked to first; here's link number one for Google to spider: BBC Widgets. Now go forth any embed...

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Best Films of 2008

From music to movies, the year-end list-making continues...

I'll spare you the lengthy preamble on this occasion and get straight to the list.

Usual rules apply (i.e. all films must have been released theatrically in the UK in 2008).

		No Country for Old Men (dir. Ethan Coen & Joel Cohen)
		Waltz with Bashir (dir. Ari Folman)
		There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
		Man on Wire (dir. James Marsh)
		Changeling (dir. Clint Eastwood)
		Juno (dir. Jason Reitman)
		Gone Baby Gone (dir. Ben Affleck)
		Gomorrah (dir. Matteo Garone)
		4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (dir. Cristian Mungiu)
		The Baader Meinhof Complex (dir. Uli Edel)
		The Wave (dir. Dennis Gansel)
		The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (dir. Julian Schnabel)
		In Search of a Midnight Kiss (dir. Alex Holdridge)
		Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (dir. Alex Gibney)
		The Visitor (dir. Thomas McCarthy)
		W. (dir. Oliver Stone)
		My Winnipeg (dir. Guy Maddin)
		Lust, Caution (dir. Ang Lee)
		Of Time and the City (dir. Terence Davies)
		Son of Rambow (dir. Garth Jennings)
		Charlie Wilson's War (dir. Mike Nichols)
		Water Lilies (dir. Céline Sciamma)
		The Duchess (dir. Saul Dibb)
		Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (dir. Sidney Lumet)
		Quantum of Solace (dir. Marc Forster)