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

I spend all day glued to a laptop, much of it browser-based. Not many advertisers manage to cut through the clutter with an ad that grabs the eye, holds the attention and gets the message across. And how rare is that?

I store special hatred for those annoying rich media ads. You know the ones, an accidental scroll of the mouse across their annoying hot spots and they expand over the content you originally wanted to see. If they have an X to close the ad, it's near-impossible to see or is so small you the steady hand of brain surgeon to close the damn thing.

Well, for the first time in ages, I watched an online animated advert all the way through to the end, thanks to the Twitter friends who pointed this as for the new Wario Land game on the Nintendo Wii:

I've seen something similar before, but can't for the life of me remember which brand it was. If you can remember, leave a comment below, I'd love to know.

And if you like that sort of thing, I suspect the creatives that came up with this ad owe a not inconsiderable debt to Alan Becker, who created the now famous Animator vs Animation movies in 2006.

Animator vs. Animation

Animator vs Animation Part 2

As I was writing the post about phrases from baseball becoming a part of everyday office jargon, a Sunday evening TV stalwart flashed back into memory. The master of corporate gibberish was Gus Hedges from Channel 4's Drop the Dead Donkey. Played to perfection by Robert Duncan who gave life to Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's poke at 80s yuppie corporate flannel.

Sadly the copyright void that is YouTube doesn't have any clips of Gus, so you'll have to make do with the written form. Spot any favourites?

Just so you know, I'll be stir-frying some ideas round my think-wok first thing Monday morning. Enjoy...

• All right Team are we achieving megathrust? Ace!
• Anyway, heads down, chins up, chests out, teriffic, well played team.
• Are we nuking the opposition news busters? Teriffic.
• Are we sniffing round the bottoms of the opposition?
• Aye aye coach, had a good weekend recharging the batteries for another surge of powerhouse info-dynamics?
• Coach, if I could input into your mental mainframe for a moment...
• Could we interlock brain spaces in my work area?
• From now on I'm going to employ relaxation techniques to turn off stress river and mosey gently down contentment creek.
• George, can we pool our brain spaces into a centre of excellence?
• Good morning newsbusters, are we cooking with napalm today? You bet!
• Good morning scoop busters!
• Good morning teamsters!
• Helen we need a rapid interface in the chin-wag department.
• Helen, if I could just park in your mental multi-storey a moment...
• Henry, television is no longer corner store it's a hyper-mega-market. And if we want Connie Consumer to slip her hand into the freezer cabinet and pull us out, we have to be the frozen peas with the nice picture on the front and the 10% off coupon.
• Henry, welcome to my humble living space.
• However, the fickle hand of Mr Fate has spun the coin of destiny.
• I feel a very real sense that we ought to be wary of running any unsubstansiated stories if we're to avoid a faeces and fan situation.
• I see myself as a sort of hands off overview executive who sits at the sharp end and interacts within the office matrix...
• I think we have a slight togetherness shortfall here.
• I'd just like you to stir-fry something in my think-wok.
• If Mrs Whitehouse saw this, she'd have our collective danglies in a Magi-Mix.
• I'm a committed anti-tittle-tattle person.
• I'm in major cellular rejuvination mode, fast tracking my way to eternal biological viability.
• I'm not here.
• I'm reading this great new book on the benifits of reciprocal social intergrational relationships within the work environment. ("He means 'having friends")
• I'm setting you free! Free to rome the high seas of enterprise as the buccaneers of our broadcasting future!
• It's an anti verminous defecation deterrent. ("It's to stop pigeons crapping on the building")
• I've never been at a burial scenario before.
• Jill, could you come for a brief scuba in my think tank?
• Just a thought I wanted to pop into your fishbowl to see if it blows bubbles.
• Lady Merchant's just arrived, so no drops in the clanger department.
• Let's keep kneecapping the opposition.
• Let's opperate a zipped-lip scenario on this one.
• Let's stress how Tony (Blair)'s got a superb raft of ideas, several rafts in fact, which he's lashed together into a pontoon of excellence!
• Look out Mummy, the snake wants a reproductive interface.
• Look, Henry, if it's any help, I do have a sleep area over capacity situation.
• Morning hotshots! Are we cooking with napalm? You bet!
• Morning newsdiggers! Have we struck gold this morning?
• Morning ratings busters! Are we scraping Pete Punter with sexy scoops? You bet!
• Morning talent base! Are the afterburners on full thrust? You bet!
• Morning, mountaineers. Climbing the north face of newsmaking again are we? Teriffic!
• My place is here, with my family of co-acheivers!
• Problems are just the pregnant mothers of solutions.
• Quality stress diserpation opportunities here.
• Sorry, Helen, had a bit of a composure shortfall earlier.
• The three of us can go back and get into some real pro active recreational interfacing...
• There is just something I'd like to pop into your perculator, see if it comes out brown.
• Today is tomorrow's tadpole of opportunity.
• We all need to go on a forgivness curve.
• We do rather appear to have an ongoing underwear entanglement situation...
• Well, butt-kickers, what's cooking?
• We're merely running our bulletins through the cappucino machine of innovation, see if it comes out frothy.
• We've got to downsize our sloppiness overload.
• What stories are we scorching the opposition with today?
• What's filling today's scoop sandwich chief?
• Yes, Alice is indeed now occupationally challenged.
• Yes, well, I sense we may be straying down tangent boulevard here.
• Yes, well, obviously I don't have an opinion, I'm a support module, but it would be very easy to fnd ourselves standing on buttered ball bearings over this piece.
• Yes, well, publicity-wise this is a rather regrettable gonads in the guilotine situation.
• You see, when it comes to sexual interfacing with the female gender group, I've always been caution-orientated due to ongoing problems of an adaptive nature regarding the gooiness factor on the physical front.

Thanks to Hazey, Shaolin_Monkey and h2g2 for the quotes. If anyone's got more, do let me know and I'll add them or leave a comment below. Thanks.

Trying to find instruction manuals online is a pain. I blame Google. Or more specifically, the SEOers who are working the search engine algorithms for the online retailers.

It's happened to me a couple of times recently when I've been trying to find out how to use relatively ancient electrical items. Most recently, I was attempting the 'healthy option' of making pizza at home, rather than popping in to the local Domino's.

The bread machine (Panasonic Automatic Breadmaker SD-206, in case you're wondering) produces a rather splendid dough in about 45 mins, although go easy on the water. The recipes provided tend to make the dough a little too stick, using slightly less water does the trick, about 15ml, usually.

It's not that often that I get a chance to use the web in a way that say, my mum, would use it but this is a great example of when Google's just isn't helpful. Try searching for panasonic SD-206 bread maker manual. It actually works better with fewer keywords, try panasonic SD-206 manual instead. She'd definitely give up. Even the links that look like they might be helpful are pleas from other users for the manual, sites charging for downloads or non-English versions.

You'll be glad to hear (or perhaps by this stage, you couldn't care less) that I found the manual on Panasonic's website. I downloaded the nice shiny PDF to find some of the ropiest scans I've come across. Very funny. Still, at least I got my pizza dough.

Lessons learnt:

1. Google is a highly polluted beast if you're searching for something that's heavily SEO'ed
2. Panasonic are ripe for some SEO - get in there agencies
3. Home-made pizza really does knock the spots off most take-aways

And if someone is looking for the manual for a Panasonic SD-206 Automatic Breadmaker, I've stuck a copy here. Although the scans are fairly rubbish, it's readable when printed. Happy baking!

Admittedly, it's taken me an absolute age to sort out my personal blog. I've had one previously, but ran out of time to keep it updated. Fortunately, blogging, social media and community are at the heart of what Chinwag is trying to do, so I get to dabble and it's relevant to the day job sans guilt. Marvellous.

One thing that's surprised me is how hard some of the social networks and web-based applications have made life for me. I've been trying to find buttons or badges to add to my blog, partly so I don't have to replicate lots of information here and partly as an exercise in cross-linking. Roll on the day that there's a tool to manage all this stuff. My aged brain has plenty of trouble trying to keep up with all these accounts.

Considering word of mouth marketing is central to most of these organisations, it can be a bit of a hunt to find how to make these links. Perhaps, it's just the way I look at web pages, but judging by the instructions in this rather excellent post, I'm not the only one. In case you're wondering yourself, I've put some quick instructions below.

	Login to Facebook Navigation to your Profile page Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page Click on 'Create a Profile Badge' link
	Login to LinkedIn Click on the 'My Profile' tab Voila! There's a link to Promote your profile half-way down the page
	Login to your Upcoming profile Scroll down to the bottom of the page Click on the 'Upcoming Badges...' link
	Login to Twitter Scroll to the bottom of the page Click on the 'Care to Share...' link

Gold star to LinkedIn who have the easiest link to find and a good variety of badges.

And whilst I'm in minor-rant mode, why don't they have simpler badges, too? The badges and widgets that have interactivity up the wazzoo are all well and good, but what if I want a straightforward image? Wouldn't a selection of different sizes logos in badge format be a useful addition, not just for bloggers but also press people or anyone who wants to make a generic link to their sites. Definitely missing a marketing trick.

Still, I can't grab too much of the high ground. A quick scan of Chinwag's sites quickly reveals that we don't have badges, widgets, logos or anything else, but having been through this exercise, it'll be one thing that certainly gets bumped up the 'to do' list.