Content Fairy – Guy Redwood's Blog

I didn’t realise it – but Last.FM are based in the UK. yeah.

I love the concept – but get really stressed with the way it works. There seems to be so much good stuff inside – but how do I use it? I wanted to listen to a user’s radio station in my desktop player and couldn’t work out how to do it. I payed for 3 months of service to see if that improved matters. One of the fab bits about Last.FM is the wikpediaesque library of info about the artists accessed on the site, through the player. I’ve learned alot about my favourite bands recently and discovered some new stuff. Which is what it’s all about.

The main rival to Last.FM is Pandora (apparently only for users in USA, cough, cough) and it’s streets ahead when it comes down to the user experience. Pandora is simple, robust and leaves me with a smile everytime I use it.

Maybe the guys and girls at Last.FM are too close to their baby to understand how joe public use it. Maybe they are all OSX users that haven’t noticed there’s no pause button on the XP player? or tried to listed to a user’s station?

Tom loves Last.FM and has done some clever stuff with the API – but that doesn’t fix my very basic desires:

– build my very own radio station, just how I want it

– explore more music through other people

I’d love to work on the IA and Customer Journeys within Last.FM. I think it would be a pretty major gig/project – which then leads to the 64 thousand dollar question – can they afford the work they need to do? cos it’s ambitious, complex, sticky, etc. I think our heads would hurt doing the project. But hey, what a project?

Jaguar had me watching/drooling for over 3 minutes with their video about a contemporary use of materials – how much would that have cost in old advertising money? Even changed my perception of Jaguar.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=u4jrl1UWbBc

Heuga – please shoot some videos. please.

more design-led videos from Jaguar here

http://uk.youtube.com/user/JaguarCarsLimited

Very clever research and demonstration of how images can be resized intelligently and also information (like ex girlfriends) can be automatically removed from photos. You have to watch this – it’s one of those things that challenges something that you thought could never change. Resizing an image is simple eh? just look at this research. 

A few weeks ago, Patrick http://unique-spaces.blogspot.com and Cath from Heuga, started blogging. It’s interesting to see that both blogs have quickly settled into their own distinct styles, reflecting the personalities of the authors.

So, how do we put these blogs infront of people that should be interested in reading about home interiors & the interior industry?

Heuga are changing a fickle industry – slowly moving a behaviour that’s been engrained over many decades of consumer comfort. How do we spread the word and find these blogs an audience?

I love fire. it’s hypnotic stuff. There’s nothing better than gazing into an open fire. hence my attaction towards these rather special firebowls on etsy.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6389630

I’ve not seen Etsy before but got me thinking about fellow geekup evanglist – Rob – and his Folksy project

http://www.folksy.co.uk/

coming soon :-)

Anybody that knows me, knows I’ve got a thing for using carpet tiles in the home (the nice ones from Heuga – not the old fashioned cheap stuff). We’ve had a multicolour design down in the games room for a few years now and they still look as fab as the day we laid the flooring ourselves.

There are many benefits to using carpet tiles over traditional carpet on a roll (less waste, wine spillage is just washed off under the tap, etc) but the thing that I most love is the little known use of tiles to make flooring a lot more interesting. There’s some really cool stuff you can do in a room, once you open your mind to doing something different. The big eye opener for me is the idea of marking out the area around your sofa and coffee table with different colour/textured carpet tiles. This photo shows one idea – but go and explore – there’s lots you can do.

2 new flooring blogs from Heuga:

http://www.square-vision.blogspot.com/

http://www.unique-spaces.blogspot.com/

The photo above looks like it has the shag pile tiles that we have in our office – my favourite product they sell.