“Check in” @ the cupboard under the stairs

Being playing around with the Foursquare the social “location tagging” service and I’ve been loving it…..BUT!

Nobody seems to know what the hell they are doing with it.   Other than clocking points and becoming the mayor of your most visited locations I have seen very little sign of social interaction.

The service could be great for when you visit a location you haven’t been to before.  If people have added good descriptive tips about what bars and restaurants offer, what the atmosphere is like or how good the service is; you can always ensure you end up in the right place.

When your in your local area however the main benefit has to be meeting up with people to say hello (not that you can’t do this while your away from home base just your more likely to connect with somebody local).  One of the problems with this is making sure locations are tagged in a way that makes this easier.  A bar should be straight forward; you in the bar or not!  When it comes to locations like a clothing store your not likely to want to meet up with anyone; your shopping.  Do you check in to the whole street that the shops are on, “Northumberland Street”, “Princess Street” or even the whole city centre?

I don’t’ have an answer for you; so I’m asking.

Do we need some loose guidelines on what type of locations we should be tagging and checking into?

Should you be adding better quality tips for people visiting your area?

Your comments are welcome.

A glass and a half of loss

Its been one of the greatest British brands for 186 Years. John Cadbury went from selling a hot chocolate drinks and turned it into a chocolate empire. Today the money men have given into greed and sold out to the cheese maker Kraft.
Lets just hope they don’t mess about with John’s chocolate genius and go all American on us.
I thought I would mark the passing of the end of a British institution; with a reminder of one of the reasons almost everybody in the UK loves Cadbury and it’s not just the chocolate:

NDCC: Re-design – Logo

For the people that have been following me on twitter for some time or know me in the real world; you will be aware that for the last few years my Girl and I have supported a charity Project Ryton2Ethiopia.

The charity that the project raises money for is the New Day Children’s Centre (charity no – 1117381) and it is in need of a new website.

I’m going to be pulling the site together but I’m not great at certain aspects of web design so I’m asking for help from you… Yes you.

The basics of the website will be a CMS (WordPress is looking like the best option) installation.  Also there will be some social network elements.  So the help that I will need will be around the theme design, logo design and also background designs for things like a twitter account etc.

The first thing to look at while I set up the WordPress installation is the Logo.

The basic brief for the Logo is that due to existing print material it would need to keep the similar design of the existing logo.

I think the best way to do this is to open it up to you.

Just download the image below; redesign and email back to me( phil (at) smlp .co.uk ).

I’ll update this page with each design as I get them; if everybody could comment below on ideas on what could be done with it or which design you prefer (Once I’ve put them up)

A big thank you for your time and help to everyone that has already offered to help.

UPDATE – 25/01/2010

Re-Design 1 – David Sharp – @a303dj

Re-Design 2 – Paul White – @PJ

Some Great Work from Leanne – @minxlj

Check out my Sockets!

Ever been in one of them situation where you just can’t remember what the name of that port on the back of your computer is called.  Trying to work out what processor socket type goes into that old PC or you have laying around in the spare room.  All question that you don’t really care about don’t want to know….

Well not you can answer them all by following this handy Computer hardware chart:

View the image full size

Original Image by deviantART user Sonic480

Sweet and Sticky

Just a quick post for today due to Saturdays Night being a “My Girl” night.

With it being a “My Girl” night I thought I would share with you the Lush meal she just made for me.  Chicken soaked in Nandos Sweet and Sticky Marinade for 24 hours.  I would highly recommend it; but don’t forget your own home made flag.

Dr MakaMats

For today’s post I was trying to find some not very interesting facts to share with you all but ended up on a click through trip around Wikipedia looking at inventions and inventors.

Yoshiro Nakamatsu the inventor of the CD, DVD and Floppy disc also know as just “Dr. NakaMats”.  A man that I feel like I should already be aware of, due to his CD, DVD intention.  Today was in fact the first time I have ever heard of him and maybe the first time you have too.

With over 3000 inventions under his belt he is one cleaver but crazy man: