Bedpost: Track your sex life online

Internet dating must mean that more people are having dates and meeting up than ever before. Invariably this means that people are also having more sexual encounters, right? I’ve always wondered how, if one was so sexually active, you’d remember all the different people you encountered. Oddly enough about 4 years ago I had the idea for this site – an online diary of who you slept with and how they were – but I did nothing about it!

Bedpost lets you create an account where you can track your sexual activity. You tell it who you slept with, how long it lasted and give them a 5 star rating. It’s all a bit impersonal but if you’re the woman/man about town, maybe it’s just what you need.

The site is currently in private beta but I see so many applications for it. You could be reminded to have a sexual health check-up after every x number of shags, or if it starts to notice you’re having an enjoyable relationship with someone, suggest chocolate, flowers or sex toys as a gift. Do dating sites ask you to rate someone after you’ve met them? This is just a natural follow on to that.

It appears they are launching a ‘partner account’ which I can only assume would mean people in regular sexual relationships could rate each other and see if there was a differing of performance opinion. I’ll watch this site with, ahem, interest.

Plan your journey with an iPod playlist

I’m no driver but I like new sites that mash things up and give you some sort of tangible output. harman/kardon Aplified Journeys does just that.

The premise of the site is you get driving directions along with a personalised playlist for your journey.

The playlist is based on either an artist of your choice, a genre of music or your mood.

You can then decide whether your playlist is built based on driving directions (so the Oversley Mill Roundabout on the A429 for some reason triggers It’ll Take Millions in Plastic Surgery to Make Me Black by Kid 606), dictated by landmarks along the route (which resulted in nothing for the Evesham to London route I looked up) or by bands that are linked to places on your journey. Apparently the 4th exit on the M40 ramp to London/Banbury is linked to Coco Lee, whoever that is, and her song Belly Dance.

Once you’ve picked your playlist, you can email it, print it or export it to your iPod. If you print directions out, you are told the reasons for match, which in most cases for my route were either because ‘London’ was in the track name or the song, was considered ‘upbeat’, my chosen journey mood.

Right now I think it’s a great bit of fun to have a site suggest tracks for you to listen to in addition to the Google Map directions output but I don’t yet see its value.

What would make this a useful tool is it suggesting music I already own, or letting me pick what percentage of new music I’d be willing to buy for my journey.

Should I ever start driving I’ll give it a go and tell you how I get on!

All British citizens get free Big Ben ringtone from government

I’m actually not joking, either. If you visit http://www.bigben.parliament.uk you can nab yourself a Bing Ben chiming sound file, that Parliament.uk are marketing as a ring tone!

Who would do this? Anyone?

Stop Yawning! BoringStudent launches first Beta

The other day a very quiet launch happened. It’s a project that’s been going on for a while called BoringStudent. The site, www.boringstudent.com, aims to be the definitive resource for anyone contemplating Higher Education or University and is aimed specifically at 16-19 year old students.

How will it do it? Good question. The site focuses on 3 core strands:

1. Honest & reputable University & College reviews. There are lots of sites out there giving thought and opinion on Universities and students can now use Facebook to connect with people and directly ask questions but rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, we’re going to take the wheel and add lots of nice, useful things.
2. Advice, information, thought and comment. BoringStudent will have a clear editorial voice. Aside from telling students what it’s really like in halls, how to ace your personal statement, what the UCAS process is all about, how to get through an admissions interview, we will also provide relevant editorial that goes beyond the facts and challenges prospective students views on higher education. We’ve called this area Total BS. D’ya get the irony?
3. High quality production values. There are so many student sites out there but apart from a select few, they lack production values. We’ve a team of strong, highly professional, ex-students who are committed at delivering the best stuff out there for people considering University or College. Already we’ve produced loads of professionally produced videos showing what student life is really like, being a fly on the wall in halls and following the angst of A Level results day to name but a few.

Wrapping around this student-focused information is a bubble of interactivity. Users will be able to find people looking to go to the same University as them, share their UCAS Personal Statement (but, of course, not copy them!), ask the questions they’re too afraid to ask about Universities and generally have fun interacting with the site and each other.

It’s genuinely exciting for me to be part of this project. The people working on it are really committed to the best and I think that always makes work seem more enjoyable, doesn’t it? We’re very lucky to have the ex University of the Arts Student Union President for two years running heading up editorial and University relations and a fantastically talented video producer overseeing all our video content.

The site is in beta and there will be lots of significant developments over the next few times. If you have a few minutes, check out the site at www.boringstudent.com and let me know what you think!

Loyal employee gets Microsoft tattoo, then they lay him off!

Poor bloke. A certain Dan Woodman got a job for Microsoft back in 2008. He was so pleased about it. So pleased that he only went and got himself a corporate tattoo. Not the brand’s logo but a blue monster, apparently something used in internal communications. So pleased that he even blogged about it. Wow.

Sadly for Dan, he – and 1,400 other employees – got laid off leaving Dan with a rather bitter memory. The thing is, unlike the Murphys, he’s not bitter.

“Working at Microsoft has been the greatest experience of my life and I have no desire to forget about it” he continues that “even if I don’t get back into Microsoft right away (which is, by the way, my plan!), then I have a reminder that even outside of Microsoft, I need to do my best to change the world every single day.”

Wow.

Source: techflash