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

Company Blocks ‘Reply All’ Email Function – Brilliant Move

I love this so so so much. Nielsen, the audeince measuring company, have blocked the use of Reply All in the Microsoft Office email clients of every single one of their 35,000 staff. What a fantastic idea!

According to an email sent to all staff:

Eliminating the “Reply to All” function will:

• Require us to copy only those who need to be involved in an e-mail conversation
• Reduce non-essential messages in mailboxes, freeing up our time as well as server space

We waste so much time reading emails that aren’t really intended for us or have no relevance to our daily lives and though I understand that this move was because of a cock up by an employee last year, I hope it sets a prescience.

Source: techcrunch

Google Drive About To Launch?

Stuff Facebook. Sod Twitter. I’m obsessed by Google. I know this statement doesn’t make me cooler, smarter or sexier but they really do make nice web products. So when I saw this bit of gossipy news, I got very excited.

Apparently, venturebeat reports that a bit of code has been found in Google Pack software which reads:

GDrive provides reliable storage for all of your files, including photos, music and documents.

With another bit saying:

GDrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime, and from any device – be it from your desktop, web browser or cellular phone.

Eek!It makes perfect sense to me that they should offer this facility and I think they have suitably held out for a long time.

During my time at AOL I worked on a localised project of numerous names but would be most people will know it as XDrive. Though a great idea – virtual storage and lots of it – the time and market thirst for such a product wasn’t right (we weren’t sharing large files or viewing video in the way we are now) and it cost a lot of money to run with little viable sources of direct income. I think the imminent launch of Google Drive will be interesting as, it seems, Google have held out and waited until there was a market for the product.

Using picassa, google docs, gmail for all my web stuff, I am starting to find that my 10GB storage allowance across the Google network is being quickly used up but I am unwilling to pay for additional access as right now I can’t use the additional space as I wish. Google Drive will change this as I then have a virtual drive, something mac users are used to with .mac. Couple this with Google Gears, the offline access tool, for all Google products and full integration with mobile (and in particular my iPhone) and you’re getting closer and close to the perfect consumer web apps solution. For me, at least!

Source: venturebeat

Bad NASA – They Faked an image

I wouldn’t be able to tell if this is real or not. It all looks a bit Star Trek to me.

Apparently a blogger at Discover Magazine picked it up straight away!

Gun Ruler

When I was a little kid, my dad would go out in the garden and nail two pieces of wood together into an L shape. He’d hand it to me and call it a gun. I’d spend the next few weeks “pow pow pow”ing around the house and garden getting a handful of splinters and making the neighbour’s dogs bark like crazy. I’m not now a gun carrying gangsta and I’ve no plans to be one.

So why is is that when I saw this Gun Ruler available for 9€ from French store Atypyk, thoughts of ‘inappropriate’ crossed my mind? Argh! I’m morphing into Mary Whitehouse. Stuff it, I’m going to buy one and “pow pow pow” around the office.

Online Pawn Broker – Borro

Has the bank refused you for a credit card? Can’t get someone to tide you over until payday? Find it really difficult to walk into a pawn brokers in case someone spots you? Well this might be a great way of getting cash now and worrying about how you’ll pay it back, if at all, later.

The site launched back last year and offers short term personal loans with a valuable item held as a guarantee. Gold, jewellery, even cars with a resale value over £25,000 are all acceptable pawning items. The item is checked into Borro’s site and valued. A courrier comes to collect it and then on receipt and accurate valuation, Borro dumps 40% of the object’s resale value into your bank account. Should they take the plunge, the borrower couriers their item to Borro, receiving their loan via bank transfer or postal order. The interest rate is “4% simple interest per month” (a whopping 53.8%APR), and for loans of less than £1000 charges are 6% “simple interest per month” (an eye watering 85.0%APR) but you are expected to pay the loan back in 6 months to get your item back, so it would be unfair to compare this to a longer term method of lending, such as a bank loan. Unless you fail to pay, that is!

This sitebrings a  shady and poorly marketed industry into a more modern and acceptable arena. It will be interesting to see at this time of credit crisis crunching capers whether it becomes a viable method to borrow over a short term.

Source: Borro