Inspired by Peter Hill, writer of pithy, witty and altogether-too-clever headlines, who is too lazy to update his own blog, so I'm posting them corking headlines here.

Nope, it's not faked, it's actually snowing in Las Vegas (the one in the middle of desert) for the first time since 1979. Check out the photos at designyoutrust.com for the full majesty (Ok, that's a bit much, let's say effect) of the Vegas strip covered in snow.

Doesn't it look romantic. Get thee to an Elvis-themed chapel this instant.

One tip, if you're in Vegas and a red-faced portly gentleman starts shouting "Ho ho ho" at you, the surprise gift you'll pick up will probably clear up with the right ointment. Or so I'm told.

[Pic courtesy of Dmitry at designyoutrust.com]

Like being a virtual owl, but without any head movement required.

Click play, let the video load and then click and drag your mouse inside the video screen.

Whilst static 360 degree views have been de rigeur for estate agents and restaurant owners for a while, this is the first example I've seen moving video. Bonkers.

[Update: that's just the beginning there's a load more demos on Immersive Media's website. Amazing stuff.]

"Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead?"

If you're a child of a certain age (the show last aired in 1994) that'll mean something to you. If not, you missed a cult kids TV show that implored yoof to get outside during their Summer holidays. Back in those days video games weren't what they are now.

What brought this to mind was a series of photos taken by Wolfram Hahn that glared out at me whilst leafing through an old copy of Adbusters magazine. The collection, "A Disenchanted Playroom" is a study of children's faces as they watch TV.

Their faces look glazed, passive, devoid of any emotion almost like their 'off switch' was flicked, just before the photo was taken. Do we look like that when surfing the web? Or playing computer games?

Hope not. Perhaps it's time to get our more? Why don't you?

There's a detailed interview with Hahn on the C/O Berlin - International Forum For Visual Dialogues website.

[Pic courtesy of Grant Neufeld]

I'm a hoarder of Post-It notes. Forever grumbling as I rummage around the stationery cupboard for another pack whilst there are dozens secreted away around my desk.

As everyone obsesses, quite rightly, on important things like crunchy credit and the US election, here's a beautiful office-stationery-related distraction that uses almost as many Post-Its as I've found on my desk. Ain't it marvellous?

What happens when a hot new director makes a film, which turns into one of the 1990s' most memorable ads, then turns his powers for good. Wassup? This. Brilliant.

 Thanks to the rather ace Bringing Nothing to the Party blog from Paul Carr.

If you're like me, you'll probably spend as much time tinkering with the layout and technical gubbins of your website, as you will writing for the site in the first place. This bad habit isn't help in any way at all by the rather excellent Google Analytics service and worse still the desktop application which even saves the hassle of firing up a web browser.

Launched in November 2005, it's easy to install, easy to use and rather addictive. Start digging into the data and there's all sorts of weird and wonderful information tucked away. Like my friend Billy found when looking at keywords that brought visitors to his website, the results can be disturbing.

Imagine my despair then, when all of a sudden after what could be called an unintentional upgrade (remember kids, always back up your website before tinkering) my Google Analytics stopped recording anything. Surely everyone hadn't deserted the site? Yikes.

After wading through the help text on the Google website, I was pretty certain that the code was in the right place and almost certainly right. But, and it's a big but. there's a delay of about 12 hours between adding in the tracking code and the results showing up.

12 hours! In that time the refresh key would be completely worn out.

Thankfully, after some judicious Googling, Epik One's Sitescan popped up. Whack in the website to test and this tool will scan up to 15,000 pages and send an email with the results. For testing one page only, there's a Sitescan widget for the iGoogle homepage. Ahah. No more waiting.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, for starters here's a list of dozens of hacks to super-charge Google Analytics even more and a book, Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics written by the guy who used to run Google Analytics in Europe.

Get measuring.

Easy come, easy go. At least if you're a newspaper pundit estimating Guy's divorce earnings. Compare the front page of thelondonpaper and London Lite this week.

Still, in the light of the government shelling out a couple of trillion quid, £100m is chicken feed. Some mighty fine chickens, you'd hope.

A while back, Danny, friend and long-time cricket partner - an unbroken run of five six years Twenty20 Cup finals - told me about his dream of creating a new type of music company.

The aim, as I understood it was simple. Forget about restrictive contracts that fleece the musicians, instead treat them with respect and utilise all the tools that the Interweb has put at their disposal. Use the new techniques provided by MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm, etc and work with the artists to make the best of them.

Despite the tough times in the traditional music biz, it looks like this approach is working out. His company 360 Degree Music is running its first showcase of new talent at In The City in Manchester on 6th October.

Sadly, I'll be stuck in London, but if you're knocking about in Manchster, why not pop along and soak up some great music? Plus, it's free...

360 degree music Showcase

featuring

• Krakatoa
• Mozzy Green
• No Picasso
• Reader's Wives
• Roses Kings Castles
• Rum Shebeen

7pm - 12.15am
FREE ENTRY

Cellar Vie (Map)
18-22 Lloyd Street
Manchester M2 5WA

Oh yeah, you're a super-clever, behaviourally targeted leading e-commerce website, but basically you're calling me a fat geek. To my face. Nice.

Check out the homepage below, which greeted me when I cruised past the Amazon website the other day. O'Reilly books, donut maker and a chocolate fountain.

And what's worse is the suggestions are based on a book I bought for the office, and a gift for my sister. Honest.

It's a sad day when you're getting slagged off by an algorithm. Perhaps I do need to get out more. And maybe I should take in a bit more literary culture. Damn it, maybe the targeting is right.

A strange thing happened in London tonight. Strange, but good.

Just over a month ago, the Harvest Twestival was a twinkle in the eye of @benrmatthews, @timhoang and @tommalcolm. With lots of help from lots of Twitterers (Twitter? No? Watch this) and the impressive event skills of @amandita, the event that took place in London tonight was a packed-out success. Hopefully, the Twestival's aim of making money for charity delivered the goods too. 

Chatting to Internet lags, sorry veterans,@mbites, @technokitten and @bmje, two things made this event stand out for me from London's plethora of networking events.

Firstly, the gender split at the event was a lot more balanced than I've seen at other digital-type networking shindigs. It could be down to the organisers' roots in PR, but judging by the professions in the room that didn't seem to be the case.

Secondly, everyone's name badge used their Twitter handle, @toodlepip in my case. Amongst people that I knew, it made little difference as I'm usually following them on Twitter already. For new folks, it made more interesting introductions where impressions were formed from their contributions to Twitter rather than their name, job title, company, etc.

I'd never met many of the people I follow on Twitter before and my pre-conceptions of what they might be like from their tweets were usually way off the mark, in a good way. In many ways I was reminded of what it was like meeting contributors to Chinwag's email forums for the first time, where my impression was built from their email contributions rather than other abstract information.

Probably why the Twestival's focus on the social rather than heavy-duty networking was a welcome relief, especially after a full-on week of uber-networking in New York.

So, despite the fact Twitter is an interruptive, time hoovering service with many useful uses, and as many useless ones, still in the hunt for a business model, it's micro contributions enable users to build a reputation based on 140 characters and less on extended profile blurbs. I'm still not convinced it'll last another 18 months, but I'm enjoying the ride and hoping to be proved wrong.

A great event and big thanks to the organisers and sponsors (UnLtdWorld, Huddle, Diffusion PR, Tactile CRM pictured, Winston & Strawn, Just Giving). Top work all round.