Dear Sven...

I'd really appreciate you giving me as much notice as possible as to when you want to take my other half Lisa out as I haven't got round to telling her about my proposition yet and it could take the persuasive powers of Paul Mckenna to swing it....

' if City beat United, you can have the missus for a night!'

...also it takes at least 3 weeks for the blue and white rubber nurses outfit to be delivered.


Cheers!

Manchester City 1 - Manchester United 0

Don't pinch me I might wake up!

Giddy Kippers

I feel a little giddy this moring and I've been trying to identify the cause.

So far I've eliminated

• the Virgin Pendolino tilting train I travelled to London on today,
• the excitement over my business Spannerworks closing three enormous integrated search marketing deals in the last 24 hours,
• the delicious chips 'n' gravy I had outside the City of Manchester Stadium last night which my old pal Brian is modelling below.
  

No none of these seem plausible. Hold on! I've worked it out, it's altitude sickness caused by Manchester City flying high at the top of the premiership after a second victory which ended 227 days of goaless tedium at the City of Manchester Stadium.

Yep, a bewt of a goal from Michael Johnson ended the drought and the mix of 5 home grown youngsters with flair and experience from all over the world keeps on working.

Get the match report for Manchester City 1 Derby County 0 and all the reaction and I can't wait for the boys in red to visit at the weekend, especially as Ronaldo is banned for 3 weeks, and I hope you'll forgive this feel good optimism, we've not had a lot to enjoy in recent years.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The good Doctor and the Svengali have worked some magic. Last minute pre-season prep, 8 signings in 4 weeks, no time to gel and we play beutiful football and out pops...

West Ham 0 - 2 Manchester City

West Ham are no mugs with players like Ljungberg, Bowyer, Boa Morte, Zamora and Bellamy and we played some lovely footie to roll them.

Read more about Manchester City v West Ham and this celebration is definitely worth a booking...



The sun is out, the sky is blue, the critcs have been silenced, were not the last match in the MoTD running order - I'm gonna enjoy the next few days the roller coaster is on the up boys, it's on the up.

Five - Four - Three - Two - One

It's been 90 days, but it's back and so am I.

The Premiership is underway!

Keano's Sunderland look to be grinding out a 0-0 draw with big spending Spurs at the time of writing - hold on no they just scored - well done boys. Either though he's an ex-rag, no true footy fan could deny Roy Keane's quality, desire, focus and determination.

He and Sunderland have bags of spirit and great fans - I wish them all the best for the season it could be a very interesting one after an truly mad summer...

The Tevez Saga
Sheffield United's Legal Action
Leeds in-out-in-out administration
Big name transfers - Bent, Torres, Nani, etc.
Big Sam / Little Sam switch.
Foreign buyouts at Brum and West Ham.
9 year old wunderkinds - Rhain Davies.

...and of course, life is interesting again for us. We are back on the roller coaster - yeee haa!

Sven is back thanks to Dr Thanksin frankie-instant-team-build-o-matic-human-rights-shedloads-of-spondolics-footballathon Shinawatra.

Yes, ladies and gents, the longest running soap opera in English Football has just been re-commisioned.

Last season was very odd for a Man City fan - not because we scored so few goals and had a poor season, no everyone knows that - but because life at the City of Manchester Stadium was extremely dull, but we don't do dull. We do extreme highs and lows.

Well, City are about to kick-off and nice to see West Ham fans asking for Sven's autograph - top quality fans the Hammers boys.

One thing I know for certain - thanks to Sven and Frankie - this season will be a million miles from dull! Whover you support, have a good one.

Apple iPod Phone - a little disappointing

So the rumours were right, but the phone is nice looking, but average function. A Motorola phone with iTunes loaded...

• Not much like any existing iPod


• No features that weren't around on the old Cingular / Motorola hardware with iTunes from mid 2006


• No serious competition for Nokia, Sony Ericsson, iMate, HTC or Microsoft

The disappointment from the audience at MacWorld was palpable, read the BBC News report of the new Apple iPod phone launch and check out some pictures here.

There was one thing that Steve Jobs announced which did bring out the whoops and cheers - the new Apple iPod Nano - thinner, sleeker - superb.

Apple iPod phone Launching today

The much rumoured, long awaite Apple iPod phone or iPhone is rumoured to be launched at 6.00pm GMT by Steve Jobs today.

Read the speculation / analyisis of the iPod Phone on Bloomberg.

Personally, with such a fiercely commetive market, awash with phones that are MP3 players are more digital music downloaded to phones already than from iTunes...

I wonder if Apple is a little too late to this party.

Sheffield Wednesday 1 Manchester City 1

Two bites of the cherry and I guess a fair result. The first half was pretty average, but the second was a good old fashioned classic cup tie and had "giant killing" written all over it.

We took the lead through a Samaras pen, but The Owls drew level thanks to a Steve MacLean who showed the value of patience as the resurgent Championship side deservedly earned a replay.

Google Scares Me!

What sort of power do Google have when they can eliminate life-forms from space? Nice to have a laugh at the start of the year thanks to the Mountain View boys...

Check out the giant insect destructor beam spotted by our friends at The Register.

No New Year Resolutions - just change

I don't make resolutions - I just make changes. So in 2007 I do the following:

• use the new Blogger (a big improvement, but no great shakes)
• post intersting things weekly
• use the new MS Office / Vista Ultimate (on a fast enough machine Dual Core 2 Duo - I'm stunned by the beauty)
• try to sleep for more than 5 hours a night
• prepare for the day ahead the night before
• exercise
• see my two girls every day
• be grateful for what I have and what I am
• help my colleagues, friends and family with whatever modest talents I have
• cheer more at Manchester City matches
• expect to win
• be gracious and humble in victory
• seize the opportunity defeat presents as a learning / growth opportunity

Not much I know.

But sometimes the events and experiences of others close to you make you realise how fragile life is and how precious / rare friendship, support, family and an exciting job really are.

There's a whole world, nay universe out there and where our personal issues and self-importance pale into insignificance.

Hope your 2007 is eventful, chaotic, enjoyable, exciting, climactic and takes you another step towards fulfilling your dreams.

A child of the sixties

I was born in 1960, so I just about remember the summer of love. So it was pretty cool to be back in San Francisco having dinner on Haight and Ashbury where it all started.

I'd forgotten what a cool, liberal, vibrant and great city San Francisco is, if only I could persuade Lisa to move here!

Anyway I'll be blogging live from SES, San Hose this week on what's hot in search. For now, well as you can see, just working hard with colleagues...

Ban the banners - eBay bans Google

Could you imagine the uproar in Microsoft banned their customers from installing competitor software. The outcry would be deafening before you could say anti-trust.

Or what if Coca Cola banned you from buying their drinks because you offered home made lemonade.

Well eBay banned their customers from offering alternative online payments to their own paypal - specifically Google's Checkout.

Scott Wingo is certain this will upset:

eBay has updated it's "Safe Payments Policy" to specifically NOT allow Google Checkout. I suspect sellers (especially multichannel) will be pretty upset about this. It will be interesting to see what lame excuse eBay uses to justify this. For example, they will probably say it's new so prone to fraud. Well, in reality it's a credit card gateway (and the same one eBay spends millions with as a top google adwords user).

Bill Gates to step down

With the news breaking that Bill Gates is stepping down from Microsoft to concentrate on his charity work I had to pay homage to my old boss.

I count myself one of the lucky few, to have had dinner with him in a partially built, gadget filled house in 1993 and enjoyed many exciting events in my years at Microsoft - the launch and hype of Windows 95, the explosion of the Internet, the maturing of Microsoft from hobbyist hackers, to hated blue-chip beheamoth, to Schobleized good community citzens.

I like this "Dear Bill" letter and paticularly the exaltations:

Do NOT let Steve retire.Give Ray your job and let him do things where he will be
trusted when you might not be. Encourage contribution of attention metadata to an open anonymized pool.

Read about Gates life here and good luck in your retirement Bill.

MySpace - great for a career in Porn

A few days ago I signed up for another MySpace account just to check if the spam filtering and sign-up had got any better.

There'd been a number of critical posts around the net commenting that MySpace was too slow to improve the experience for users and too fast to act with government to censor and entrap people.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I signed up again.

Within 30 mintues of my account being live I received the first invitation from someone wanting me to be their "friend" , so had it improved

I'm 23 and I also love to go clubbing and dancing with my girls. I'm also a very intimate person and I love to have fun and experiment in the bedroom. I'm also very interested in getting started in porn so I'm looking for someone who can help me out in the business. So I finally got my website finished! Don't worry, it's free!! But you do have to be 18+ though. Come check it out by clicking the link below.

...I guess the answer is no then.

Online Marketing Show 2006 Part II - PeekaBooTV and YoMeGo

Is it just me or did anyone who saw YoMeGo at the Online Marketing Show 2006 get a feeling that this company is really trying too hard be trendy. If you get off on the Avatar, CrazyFrog styling this mobile blogging, mobile messaging service is for you, but any space online with primary categories of

Candy Crib Babes, Sexy Girls, Sexy Guys, Gross, Big n'Bouncy

seems just as little bit trite and contrived - maybe my finger has slipped from the pulse of pop culture or I'm getting old.

What am I talking about - let me in nn nn nn n n n n n n!

Online Marketing Show 2006 - mmmm Delicious

I attended NMA's (New Media Age) Online Marketing Show 2006 yesterday at the Royal Horticultural Halls (a building I've always been fascinated with and it certainly felt like a greenhouse yesterday.

I met up with some friends from my old company Latitude (they still had the prime position in the show), had a very civil conversation with my old CEO and chatted with Umair “Paps” Shaikh an old aquaitance whoose new business VideoJug, "Life Explained" is well worth a look.

The show in the main is not that interesting if you're already familiar with online marketing or search engines, but when you are immersed in it you can quickly forget how new some of this stuff is to some corporations and the workshops were very well attended.

The suprising thing for me was the change from last year on the audience's awareness of what's out there. well over half the audience blogged, had MySpace accounts, knew about Delicious, Stumbleupon, Flickr.

If you don't check them out - there's hope for UK social media after all.

Delussional CEOs - I love 'em

A while back I worked in Seattle and met some weird folk in grunge bars (yes they still exist). I came across a name I recognised from the mists of time and micro-breweries over at Futurelab (Glenn Kelman) who co-founded Plumtree Software.

He'd been contribuing to two list of lies from CEOs and entrepreneurs. I found them a little too familiar - hope you enjoy them.

The rebirth of interruption or the extension of engagement

One of the many benefits of having worked for a technology company on the West Coast (of America Lisa – in joke), is that you build up a network of mates in funky little companies like (video gaming, hardware, software, animation, etc).

I had lunch with a mate (Syd) from Industrial Light and Magic yesterday and what an interesting project he’s working on. I can’t say much about it as it is still at an early stage, but picture this scenario…

You (perhaps a 20 year old student from Kent, studying art) and me (an old has been from Manchester) sit in from of our HD, fully digital, broadband ipTVs - ,say a mere 3 years from now, to watch an episode of Coronation Street.

We’re a little late for the start, but it doesn’t matter as this is on-demand-ipTV, so we select the programme from the menu and are quickly presented 4 simple choices:

1. free to watch regular programming (with ad breaks)
2. free to watch programming no ad breaks (but with product placement)
3. free to watch programming no ad breaks (with placement and soliciting our permission to use personal data)
4. pay to view (no ads, no placements)

I already like the idea of me back in control of advertising, but the geeky exciting bit is the third option.

You and I could be watching the same programme 250 miles apart and Vera Duckworth stands at a bus stop and then, as if by magic (sorry Syd), CGI (computer generated imagery) technology seamlessly integrates an advert into the live action on the side of the bus that is news of a photography exhibition in Tunbridge Wells on your TV and hospitality offers for Manchester City games on mine.

We have shared personal information and allowed the advertiser to use it with amazing technology and simple user data to customise our experience. Who knows, perhaps that poster changes depending upon prices paid by advertisers and is enabled by Seach Engine PPC market technology (price, relevance, etc).

The analogy with adverts in RSS feeds is strong.

I still control the feed - what I see. If the feed gets to ad heavy I’ll turn it off, if the feed gets irrelevant I’ll turn it off and it always starts with me instigating the dialogue.

Perhaps there is life left yet in interruption, but only if it evolves and advertisers recognise that I will control the time and type of interruption – heck that’s engagement isn’t it?

Check out Ed Sim for some more background and views on ipTV.

Cheap as microchips - Microsoft AdCentre rolls out

Well after months of anticipation and for some (myself included) months of beta testing, Microsoft has at last officially launched MSN AdCentre in the US.

Just like Hollywood, the first release is stateside, but the UK won't be far behind and according to Nate Elliot, it'll be cheap as chips.

Elliot says:

"Initially, at least, adCenter is likely to be very attractive to advertisers, Because at first there will be a smaller number of advertisers using the platform and bidding against each other, the prices will be low. In the early days, there will be some bargains".

Read the full article here.

The reason of course is predominantly because of the lower traffic volumes and I for one will be watching Microsoft with interest to see what strategies they adopt to attract people to online properties like MSN and Windows Live.

Can you trust Yahoo!

I read with interest Brian Krebs post at the Washington Post's blog about another class action suit filed against a search engine. Yahoo! have been accused of not playing fair with pay-per-click adverts by using sites that exploit mis-spellings, spyware and adware.

Krebs says:

"Potentially more explosive is the plaintiff's claim that Yahoo regularly uses its relationship with adware and typosquatting sites to gin up extra revenue around earnings time, alleging that the company is conspiring to boost revenue by partnering with some of the Internet's seamier characters."

This action follows shortly on the back of a $90million settlement by Google for Adwords fraud - details here if you need a reminder.

To me these actions and the behaviour is further evidence that advertisers should be vigilante in monitoring the performance of their online campaigns or better still seek out a specialist Search Engine Marketing Agency with technical excellence and solid experience to truly get the best out of any online campaign across an every increasingly connected world.