Fake Plastic Noodles

Spotted this on Sixty Second View: a spot-on version of the zombie dance from the Thriller video. I have quite the affinity for the Philippino prison version (minus the creepy cross-dancing inmate), but this one has better technique.

Oh, and for you female fashion aficionados, check out the girl in the back’s FANTASTIC scrunchy boots.

A lot of people have been asking me when I’m moving to London. So much so that I think it’s about time I give a proper update.

The sad truth is I really don’t know. After many months of back and forth, the situation is at a bit of a stalemate. It’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just that these sorts of things happen in the business world. I will still be doing my best to preach digital love all through the blogosphere as well as examine the UK digital PR industry, but for the time being it will have to be from State-side.

On the bright side, flights are quite inexpensive at the moment and it’s been over a year since I’ve been to London, so I’ve decided to take advantage of the last days of the British Airways nonstop Detroit-London route at the end of February. If you fancy sitting down to a cocktail with yours truly, leave me a comment and I’ll send on the details.

P.S. The photo up top is from my last trip to London. You can see the rest, including the noodles from Wagamama that make up my banner, on Flickr. And please note, my hair is very different than it is now. I tend to do that quite a bit.

As usual, Mondays are hellishly busy and I’m hellishly exhausted, so here are just a couple tidbits of fun that popped up in my reader over the weekend.

1. An interesting little diagram of the life of a blog post from inception to fruition to obscurity, courtesy of Wired:

Now when my grandmother asks what a blog actually does, I’ll be able to show her. Ah, visual representation! You make life so much easier.

2. Most of us have been pummeled over the head with seen pictures of the Googleplex, but the site UADDit has taken upon themselves to post pictures of the inner workings of other digital media giants Facebook, Last.fm, Twitter, Digg, Joost and plus a few others. To be honest, I think my office rivals most of these in terms of aesthetics with its exposed brick and track lighting, but I must say, Twitter looks like a lovely space:

3. I’ve never found a cat that actually likes to sleep in a cat bed (mine is keen on spooning all night), but if you do - and you’re a bit of a geek - you might want to invest in one of these:

Awww, wook at da widdle mowse!

via Unplggd

Bad Dr Who references aside, are any of you planning on participating in International Delete Your MySpace Account Day? Next Wednesday, the 30th, is one of the first large-scale movements (probably of many) to start pounding those nails into the MySpace coffin.

The idea comes from fed-up Bloggasm blogger Simon Owens. Owens feels that there is no real purpose to visit the site anymore with all the Web cam-girl spam and obnoxious banner ads mucking up its original purpose. He lists a number of reasons why he’s deleting his profile and encourages anyone with the same gripes to do the same.

I’ll admit that I agree with him on a lot of his points (the marriage proposals in particular), but I’m still not convinced that MySpace is entirely useless. For one, I have an archive of nearly three years of my life on that site. If I delete my profile, not only am I cut off from that, but others are too. Once you delete your profile, all messages, comments and correspondances are replaced with this:

And who am I to deprive someone of my infinite wall-comment wisdom?

Londonist reported today an apparent effort by the US company Taxi Promotions UK to have Brit cabbies preach to Brit riders the benefits of an American holiday. By holding people captive for 10+ minutes, a taxi driver is able to act as a word-of-mouth ambassador on behalf of the States. This is, of course, in addition to the adverts splashed along the side of and sometimes in the formerly-black cab.

I’m reminded of a slightly similar WOM campaign from the Steve Wynn camp in Las Vegas. Before the opening of the extremely upscale Wynn hotel, Wynn personally invited a fair amount of the city’s drivers to be pampered in the hotel for free. Now every time a tourist asks where the best place hotel in Vegas is, they can spread the gospel.

It makes sense for cabbies to recommend hotspots to tourists, but I wonder how you might feel as a Londoner if your taxi driver, while whisking you away to your appointment, started talking about all the wonderful things going on in Florida this winter.

In any case, the dollar is so weak right now, I doubt very many Brits need any nudging to go on an American holiday. Clothes and electronics are nearly half the price of their UK counterparts and Florida is actually rather nice this time of year.

Beside being absolutely shocking news, it’s interesting to note that (once again) a la Anna Nicole Smith, the blogosphere leaked the story before everyone else.

Sadly, I don’t travel as much as I would like to, but every time I do I’m reminded of all the reasons I think airports suck, especially for business.

Boing Boing had a little blurb on Heathrow’s Terminal 5 over the weekend. I’ve only flown into 3 and 4 and luckily haven’t had to wait too long in either, but apparently Terminal 5 has not one power outlet for electronics in the waiting areas. It’s bad enough that most airports only have a few (all of them usually occupied in a mad dash to the gate), but none? Apparently there’s one outlet, but “the only way a laptop user could use it would be if he or she sat in the hallway obstructing people walking by.” Just great.

On top of that is my other pet peeve of airports, seat dividers. There’s almost nothing worse then not being able to lay down during a long layover. I’m reminded of being stuck in Ft. Lauderdale for 5 hours, having to nap on the floor because stupid Spirit made me miss my connection to Detroit. Terminal 5 has those too, apparently.

So if you find yourself traveling in the near future (and not just to Heathrow’s Terminal 5), here are some tools to make your waiting times and connections a little more tolerable.

1. The AirPower Wiki and Flickr Group: Know where the actual power outlets beforehand so you don’t have to look like a nomad searching the lower walls and floors of your gate.
2. Airport Wifi Guide: A rundown of 219 U.S. airports with Wifi access including what’s free, what’s not, and costs. Hint: most of the crap airports have free Wifi. So if you need to go to Akron for something (poor soul), at least you can watching YouTube to escape mentally.
3. Sleeping in Airports: When I did my after-college traveling to Europe, I spent one awful night at Stansted (after missing my bus to the airport and being stuck outside Liverpool Street Station until 3 am). Sleeping a proper night in an airport is something I hope never to do again, but if you’re on a backpacker’s budget, this site gives some tips on how to make it as comfortable as possible. I’m sure that doesn’t include seat dividers.
4. Best and Worst Airports: Also from Sleeping in Airports, the list of airport winners and losers. Singapore’s Changi airport has taken the crown for the past 10 years. The worst? Bomba, India. Heathrow didn’t even make dishonourable mention.

Of course this might not help when have little control about what airports you’ll be stuck in over the next few years, but at least you’ll know what you’re in for.

For those that were curious, you can read the full transcript of Jezebel’s Tyra liveblogging event here,  but if you want to save yourself 7 minutes, just know that it was pretty boring.  A sampling:

MOE: It’s always really weird when someone w. huge tits wears a little girl dress. All that aside, she looks pretty though! And speaking of pretty, Hillary circa 1988 was totally working it.
TRACIE: too matchy matchy. should would lose the personal style challenge on top model
MOE: Okay, so they just played the “crying” scene only they gauzed it up and made it all blurry, like you were watching it THROUGH HILLARY’S TEARS. And that made it look more like real crying.
TRACIE: hahahaha, i like that tyra was talking about doing research for this interview like it was a novel thing.
TRACIE: but to be fair, it probably is. i doubt she really does that often

I can picture having most of this conversation with my girlfriends, but transcribing it doesn’t really bring on the full effect.   They really should have looked at the flowchart before deciding to live blog. This would have made a much better couple updates on Twitter than anything.

In theory I like it better than Twitter, but I haven’t really been able to “work with it” yet. If you’re a tumblr or tumblrette, won’t you be my friend?

I read on Jezebel that Hilary Clinton will be on Tyra today. Yes, Ms. Tyra Banks, guru of crazy and host of every girl’s guilty pleasure America’s Next Top Model, will interview the top-contender for President of the United States. According to a teaser, Hilary will asked mostly about her husband’s infidelities and her body imagine, which I’m sure both have a lot of impact on her ability to run the country, but I digress… What actually bothers me about this is that Jezebel is liveblogging the event.

Let’s forget for a moment the absurdity of someone wanting to liveblog that show anyway and concentrate on the idea of liveblogging in general.

There are very few instances where I think liveblogging is an appropriate outlet.  Constant updates on a show that can be seen or Tivo’d by millions of people is not one of those instances. Therefore, I propose that anyone considering liveblogging take a look at the following flowchart made by yours truly. It’s a bit rough, but it’s the best I could do on my lunch hour…