Island of love indeed. A military love fest (thanks, Dimitri) involving one woman and well, an entire battalion, seems to be doing the rounds. I guess the old "make love not war" mantra is going strong at the borderline.

Greek Cypriot soldiers involved in a wild sex party at a border guard post on the divided island have been banished to remote corners of the country as punishment.

Remote corners of the country? A whole two hours away? Always entertaining to see what the foreign press picks up on but hopefully this will lead people to some real Cypriot issues.

So,  it's been leaked that CMD and myself (update: in my haste I forgot to mention Howard. Sorry man.) are working on User Experience Magazine. That's UXMagazine to you and me. If the wind doesn't shift we should be ready for December 1st and are looking for anyone willing to participate with content or anything else deemed appropriate (free beer?) -- it's an exciting project that will hopefully get people from varied fields involved in the discussion of what makes good user experience. From hands-on to theoretical, we hope to cover it all (well, a lot of it anyway).

I enjoy getting funny e-mails. You know the ones where those guys make the Heathrow airport announcement say rude things with carefully constructed foreign names, those funny pictures of (alleged) ladies parking badly or those viral beer ads. I have a good friend who keeps me amused with a steady flow of these little buggers. But sometimes, sometimes they just annoy me, like this one:

It really does work!!! Wierd... Open a WORD document and type =rand(200,99) and then press enter , wait for 3 seconds. Bill Gates cant even explain this one....

The ker-azy punctuation isn't helping and Bill Gates might not be able to explain it but Microsoft's support site sure can. This is a feature of Word and yet it turns into a chain mail, go figure...

The most evil still remains those "Wierd but true!!1 Microsof & AOL will pay you $1 per person you forward this e-mail to. Their testing the new e-mail!!" messages you might still be receiving once in a while. The onslaught of badly formatted, randomly punctuated, FW:FW:FW:RE:FW titled e-mails is bad enough but the way some of these things make me feel is indescribable. Like those "ever wonder" ones...

"Ever wonder... You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?!" -- Well, because it wouldn't fly for one. Sigh.

The obscure Xbox 360 Origin "viral" bunny rabbit/bonzai countdown ended just as I'm writing this (and many were still hoping that it will culminate in the announcement of Halo 3.) These types of "what the hell is going on?" virals have been deployed by Microsoft since the first Xbox You can explore them, zoom into them, decode them to find marketing dressed up as secrets, brilliant. For anyone hoping this would be the big Halo 3 announcement, they might be slightly dissapoint. Halo 3 might be in there somewhere but I don't really have the time to figure it out.

This one is particularily strange. The cute music, fluffy rabbits and just plain odd video footage makes those old David LynchPlaystation 2 ads look normal. Origen seems to be some kind of place. There's a competition of sorts (click on the fruit) to win a "place at Origen" where you'll be asked three fact or fiction questions about the Xbox. It's effective, if somewhat disturbing. There's seems to be something in that video, I'll let someone else figure it out. What a surprise, Cyprus isn't on the list of countries...

As expected Skype is adding video functionality (thanks, Howard) but much sooner than you think. And just as I managed to put the finishing touches to our Messenger 7.5-based video conferencing system.

Upcoming version 1.5, schedule to be released in October, is to add video and client-side web presence features. Version 1.6, in November, streamlines the client and adds social networking, among other features.

If they can deliver a video experience that matches what they've done with voice (in my view still unmatched) expect webcam manufacturer shares to go up.

If you own Squeeze 4.0 you can upgrade to 4.2 for free apparently. Promises of On2 support were somewhat exagerated as it comes as a plug-in costing an additional US$179.00 -- ambiguous marketing, certainly not...

The On2 VP6 Pro Plugin for Sorenson Squeeze 4.2 is the professional's choice for delivering high-quality video compression for Flash 8. VP6 Pro provides superior video quality as compared to Sorenson Spark Pro. Sorenson Squeeze 4.2 seamlessly incorporates the VP6 Pro plugin to optimize both the quality of your video and simplicity of your workflow.

With already decent Flash 8 tools and On2's own (newly acquired) Flix software going for US$249.00 (or US$149.00 if you go for their budget option) it would look as if Sorenson is facing an uphill struggle in the Flash 8 arena. If you haven't been introduced to the quality jump the new On2 codec brings to Flash 8 click here.

With Google (happy 7th birthday) moving from a propriatery plug-in to a Flash player for its Google Video service the era of Flash video is just beginning. Flash has already proven itself worthy as a robust audio playback tool and it certainly has the potential to make embedded Quicktime or Windows Media players redundant for video.

VR is crap. You feeling sick, you're tangled in wires with your head leaned back thinking you're completely straight, one eye sees a blurry blotch, the helmet digs into the top of your head and the headsets are set so loud so you sound like an idiot when you yell out "this is quite uncomfortable" in a quiet room. Well, that was my experience anyway, and I was being filmed... by a TV crew. Perhaps dealing with public humiliation is what has made me dislike VR so much. I mean, I'm a game geek, I should get off on that stuff...

Thankfully, this could all change if the VirtuSphere works as well as they say it does. This giant hamster ball could actually make VR, well, fun.

The device consists of a large hollow sphere which is mounted on a specially designed platform that allows the sphere to rotate freely as the user walks in any direction.

They still have to sort out the fact that you look like an absolute twat but it's a step in the right direction.

Seems that Quark is getting quite a lot of heat from the design community after someone discovered that its new logo is identical to the Scottish Art Council's (and hundreds of others). I quite like it, I like the colour, I like the fact that it looks like a Q and an ink pen but I could have also told you that somebody somewhere would have the exact same logo (or the same font). While the SAC adopted the brand in 2001, Quark seems to be the only one that sports a little TM. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Google says "fuck that, we're taking over!" and announces Google Secure Access. Should go nicely with their giant WiFi network (kudos, Howard). I would love to know where all this is going.

If you choose to use Google Secure Access, your internet traffic will be encrypted and sent through Google's servers to the Internet. The data that is received will then be encrypted and sent back through our servers to your computer. Your privacy is important to us, we strongly encourage you to read our Privacy Policy to be fully informed about how your privacy is protected.

Ok, so Google is cuter than SkyNet but it won't be long until sentience kicks in and the Linux server cluster decides that humanity isn't worth much. Three hours later an army of android Sergey Brin and Larry Page clones marches out of the Googleplex (all communicating through a giant WiFi network and some Jabber-based talk application) and starts taking over the SF bay area. 16 hours later, the entire west-coast is under Google's control. Using its extensive map system makes the tactical coordination simple, they know where everything is. Its news & blog indexing systems keep all Brin and Page androids up to date with military and police movements making it easy to preemptively attack all major resistance forces. 32 hours later the entire American sub-continent is under Google's control. After that it gets a little fuzzy as the androids self replicate using computer parts from millions PCs  hijacked through the Google Toolbar. 72 hours later the entire human race is enslaved and indexed. You've been warned.

Howard goes against the trend somewhat and announces the possible appearance of what he calls "Retro Marketing". In a world where going against the current is what everybody tries to do it becomes terribly important to take a step back and evaluate (instead of simply reading and nodding) how the new world of marketing is being forged. Advertising is dead, marketeers lie, and such new mantras are often being perceived as absolutes. Howard rightly thinks that this too could very well change. Hence the "retro marketing" concept.

I find myself wondering if the "new era" of marketing is quickly becoming the cluttered noise that it is hoping to rise above. The latest "Fad" based on a few case studies where a different approach proved successful.

The thing is that basically people love fundamentals, big concepts, and omnipotent ideas that replace/fix everything that came before. It's much easier to latch on to something that will "change your life" than something that will "make your life a little better over the years". This is how telemarketeers sell stuff and it's how Seth Godin sells stuff. "All marketeers are liars", etc...

You'll notice that every one of these gurus loves to be what can only be called a fundamentalist. You can't sell yourself as a "well, it depends on the situation" type of guy. A few days ago I read on a blog (I forget which one) that "airport billboards don't work". Never? Really? The last time I landed in Heathrow I selected Vodafone as my mobile network because of one. The fact is you can't turn "simple common sense" into a book, you can't make "eh, it depends..." sexy. What sells are things like "fire all clients that aren't exceptional!" or "make everyone the boss!". The world doesn't work in absolutes but it sure loves to listen to them.

My least favourite Seth "I refer to him a lot" Godin book has to be The Big Red Fez ("How To Make Any Web Site Better") specifically because it talks in those absolute terms. Throughout reading it I kept thinking things like "well, not ALWAYS but it works sometimes, if placed there, made smaller, or redesigned to look like this". It didn't work for me, it was targetting the lowest common denominator and trying to give answers which would suit most of the people most of the time. Ironically for Seth, much of the advice wouldn't make the websites outstanding, it would just about work, band-aid. Which isn't bad, or useless for that matter but just that. To become outstanding requires a lot more, even doing some "Retro Marketing".

The best one can do is look around, pick some good ideas and let his/her good judgement do the rest. At the end of the day it isn't meeting Tom Peters or reading a Seth Godin e-book that's going to make your business succesfull, it's you and the things you figure out before everyone else does.