Howdy folks – did you miss me? Wow I should try and update this more often. I have been busy though – operation kitteh has been taking up about 12 hours a day but thankfully I’ve finally managed to work my voodoo black magic on google/live/yahoo and hey presto – over 10% of the first page images for a [tom critchlow] search result in a picture of a kitten. Job Done. Case closed.
Now, what’s next – maybe Stephen Pavlovich knows?
Word on the street is that the afore mentioned Ciaran Norris is a Koala Bandit. NOT TRUE say I! He’s far more like a superhero in my eyes. Spandex and all.
If you’re interested in reading more about who Ciaran Norris is then why not head on over to his blog? Ciaran Norris.
Or, if you’re after his work website then try this one on for size. Ciaran Norris.
For all my regular readers (all 7 of you) normal posting will be resumed shortly.
Firstly, let me set the record straight. I love ninjatune. I love it to bits. If I could I’d hug it and love it and call it George.
But I digress.
Recently, I’ve seen that Ninjatune’s Mr Scruff has recently started a new project entitled Ninja Tuna (btw, I have a ninja tune t-shirt. It shows a tuna fish wearing a ninja bandanna. I know, ninjatune are the best). What is project Ninja Tuna? From the ninjatune website:
As any fool knows, Mr Scruff is more than just a DJ/producer. Now the Mancunian maverick is to launch a new venture: NINJA TUNA. Instead of a traditional album campaign, over the next 18 months Ninja Tuna will release various types of Scruff ephemera, intramedia and post-prandial devicing – music, clothing, merchandise, art, technology, widgets, wall vinyls, videos, refrigeration devices, you bloody name it. If we can fit a wobbly cartoon of a potato person on it and render it with the production values of a space shuttle mission, then it might just happen. Just to ease you into things, release number one in this new venture is the most traditional – a single on which Scruff shows that all his music-making virtues are intact. Funny, funky, musically warm and astute, but with some of that cartoonish funfair atmosphere that makes every Scruff release a celebration, “Donkey Ride” is a collaboration with longtime cohort Quantic and pianist Andy Kingslow. Meanwhile, “Giant Pickle” slaps the biggest hip hop break up against hi-life keyboards and moody strings for the most moving ode to large vegetables killed by vinegar since…. erm, well maybe it’s a first. Unfeasible bass and cowbell snaps, this will move the floor. It’s not for us to say where…. Ninja Tuna – fishy business in an age of watered-down flava. Get collecting…Ninja Tuna 01 released 12th May.
But where are they going wrong? Well, there’s a couple of things. Firstly take a look at these search results. I know, I know, the single isn’t out yet, the project has only just launched. But surely it’s worth having something available to the search engines so that they can rank a page for ninja tuna (btw, I anticipate this page may well end up ranking for a [ninja tuna] search but obviously bear in mind that before I wrote this post it didn’t rank for it. Yagetme?).
Secondly, why isn’t there any link on the ninjatune site (or the mr scruff site) for me to link to about this story? If someone did want to blog about this event (like I’m doing now) I have nowhere to link to for this story 
So, there’s a couple of problems, sure, but loads of music people suck at this online marketing thingamajig. Why all the fuss about these Ninja enabled Tunas? Well if you read the quote above, one of the drives for the Ninja Tuna project is “intramedia”, “technology” and “widgets” – sounds pretty web 2.0 to me. And if you’re going to go after web 2.0 then you should frickin go after it! Let that fat little wobbly cartoon person loose on the web 2.0 world and take it by storm. Social media loves the kind of kitsch, slightly daft and adorable cartoon drawing niche and so I think mr scruff could do really well in this space with some creative games, cartoons, story boards etc. Couple that with the album sales and music sales to back it up so the yanks can chip their $0.02 in and you’ve got yourself a recipe for ninjatune to break america. Something which I don’t think has really happened yet (though I may be way off on this one so please forgive me).
All in all, what it seem to me is that Ninjatune have their heart in the right place by pushing online marketing and trying to move away from the traditional album sales, but that they’re implementing it in a slightly backwards fashion.
Ninjatune boys, if you’re listening, I know a thing or two about being Ninja and a thing or two about online marketing. Gimme a shout if you’re interested, I’d love to chat (tom at distilled dot co dot uk).
Ok, so I’m starting to get image results for some Tom Critchlow related searches to appear in the main SERPs. Only problem is, the images are of Jane. Bummer.
… is well underway! Not only do we have Tom Critchlow links knocking around but we now have our second picture uploaded which has a much better URL (I completely forgot about the URL for the first one). So, if you would all be so kind as to drop some links to this tom critchlow image it would be much appreciated.
Edit – also uploaded to flickr. Flickr is a great site to look at photos of people, for example here’s a photo of tom critchlow on flickr
I know the subscriber base of this blog is pretty small anyway, but please excuse this post while I try and rank the below image for a Tom Critchlow search on them thar interwebs (mainly Google to be fair)
So here’s the photo of Tom Critchlow. For those of you who know him, this is spot on I think 
If anyone has a blog and fancies helping me out on this one then if you could drop a few links to the image with the anchor text Tom Critchlow, or Tom Critchlow Photo that’d be greatly appreciated.
Just like this Tom Critchlow folks.
“Do no evil” – Google circa early 21st century
This is the quote I envisage in a museum somewhere in 100 years (less?!) next to a picture of the Google logo and pictures of world terror.
Sometimes, when I’m searching all day long it occurs to me that I’m going to outlive Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In fact even more troubling is the fact that I’m almost certainly going to out-live all the top execs within Google right now. Even if I don’t, any children I have will. Sure, Google isn’t that bad right now but who can say who will be at the helm in 20 years? 50 years? I’d like to put a bunch of school kinds in a room and let them play chinese whispers with “do no evil”…
War is Peace. One of the famous party slogans from 1984. The war on terror has already started. Anyone know when that war ends?
If any of this remotely clicks with you then you need to follow this link and read this story. Sure, it’s just a story. A fantasy, a fairytale, a nightmare. It’s not real right? Right….?
(Found via Graywolf)
As an individual who is quite a long way from the statistical norm I’m scared. Not worried but scared. I think I might go and sign out of all my Google accounts for the rest of the day (oh, if only it was possible to spend a whole day of using the internet without being signed into any Google account)….
