The quizzes I occasionally point you to seem to be popular, so today how about doing "What Type of Dog Are You"? Take the Test Yourself Apparently, I'm a Bernese Mountain Dog! This seems ridiculous, because if you saw me, you'd say I'm nothing like a Bernese Mountain Dog. However, it appears I... "am good-hearted, down-to-earth and loyal, no one works or plays harder. I put my nose to the grindstone when it really counts, but never neglect my social calendar." Which is quite nice really. What are you? Let us know on the Tag Board!

As I write this, old friend Colin Grimshaw is in mid air on the long trip from the UK to Australia. He left at 6am this morning. Hopefully, we'll see some stories and pictures from him in a while. It should be interesting to see what he discovers "down under". Colin is a text fanatic so maybe we'll get a few cryptic messages. And if you're reading this in Oz, Colin, I've put the Slough Weather Girl on the front page just for you, so you know what you're missing. :-) Scroll down!

I've added an Aibo video to the downloads available. This is the full 5 minute, stereo video Sony released when they launched the Aibo ERS 210. If you have an interest in Sony's Aibo robot and have broadband (or are prepared to wait a while), it's well worth watching. The link is on the left or you can click the Aibo icon at the head of this item. The video is a progressive download file format, so if you have Broadband, it will probably stream satisfactorily. June's Maxwell is the Gold one!

Have you noticed how some ATMs have started changing their graphics and user interfaces? Barclays improved recently with colour screens and nice pictures while you're waiting for your cash. (Although you do have to shade the screen in sunlight.)

Here comes a Marketing Prediction. (I do this occasionally.) In a year or so, we'll have full motion video while we're waiting for the money - advertising of course. Some of it will be for the bank concerned, but put this togeher with the knowledge the bank has about your credit card spending habits, add a chunk of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and I bet we'll be seeing video ads directed specifically at us. In other words, if you eat out a lot, you'll see restaurant ads and so on. There might be a "touch the screen to print the details" feature as well. It's what I'd be doing if I were marketing director of a bank. Personally, I don't mind this too much, but the biggest downside I foresee is, if the ad runs for (say) 30 seconds, they're not going to cut it off mid-stream just because the money's counted! Result? I reckon you'll have to wait until the ad is over before the ATM will dish out the cash. Time will tell.

Incidentally, if by any chance the banks have not thought of doing this yet, royalty cheques and consultancy fees are always welcome!

Approximately 1 in every 32 adults in the US is either in prison, on probation, or on parole. Stunning figure.

New Feature Today - the Monthly Survey. The question came out of one of the Web log items saying 75% of British people would vote if it could be done on-line. This would be a far better turnout than any national or local election has had in the UK in years! What's your opinion? Let us know! The Survey is in the right hand column.

Thanks for Visiting!
This site had 145 unique visitors last week (other than me). From Monday to Sunday the numbers were 12, 22, 15, 34, 27, 29 and 6. Obviously, I'm really pleased. Thanks for visiting!

I mentioned the other day I'd received an email from T.Mobile telling me what the music was that was in their new TV ad. It's here now! Click the Music Icon, go to the Music Page, or for a little Immediate Musical Gratification, [Click Here] It's a great track, even better in the full length. Does anyone know if there's any special significance to the final words spoken at the end of the track?

You may have noticed the TagBoard message from Colin Grimshaw, a long standing friend, (over 30 years) who says he wants his picture on this Web site. Well, OK. So, to make it logical to give him his own pop up in the list above, I've got to mention him in the Blog. So here's your mention, Colin! Colin runs the TV Studio at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London's South Kensington. I think he's got a pretty interesting job actually and he sure gets to play with lots of great technology. For example, they have just replaced their digital Media100 edit suite with a new one that also allows them to create DVDs. Great fun. He's off to Australia next week, so maybe he will send us a pic or two from there.

How would you like to change your name to, say, Lara Croft, or Super Mario or Turok? They call it Identity Marketing and there's people willing to pay you to do just that - legally change your name to advertise video games! Click here for another crazy marketing idea. The idea is each person will act as an ambassador for the game, taking the time to explain the origin of his or her name to anyone who asks. And I thought branding baby buggies was daft. It's not even as if the money's any good!

I see today, there are now half a million Web Logs and a new 'Blogger' joins the crowd every 40 seconds. So, what’s happening on the 499,000 plus Weblogs that few people see - and I include this Blog in that number? We make up the vast dark matter of the Blogosphere, and portend a future where blogs become a nonremarkable part of our lives, such as previous breakthroughs like desktop publishing and instant messaging. Blogs will be for our family, our friends, our community and ourselves. Very few will reach fame or notoriety. Most will be viewed only once by strangers, and if that's you right now, it was nice to see you passing through.

Remember "Are You an Internet Addict?" (see 8/14/2002 posting). A lot of people took the test and reported their scores (huge shame that Tag-Board did a 'Restore' the other night and set everything back two weeks!) Now there comes "Are you a Geek?" Me? Apparently, I'm 26% Geek and might well have Geeks as friends and/or have a job requiring mediation between geeks and 'normal' people. Take the test yourself and let us all know the result in the Instant Replies!

If, like me, you have been watching the tragic news about Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, you might like to know there's an online book of condolence set up by the Cambridgeshire Police. It is recording messages from all corners of the world, at the rate of one every two seconds. You can find it Here.

Two former Danish ad agency executives have spotted a new place to advertise. Through their outdoor-media company, they've started giving Danish parents of new born babies free use of a top-quality baby buggy if they agree to push it around Copenhagen with a corporate sponsor's logo on the side!

I saw an item on TV the other night saying 75% of British people would vote if it could be done on-line. Interesting - that would be a far better turn out than any national or local election has had in the UK in years! The government has just produced it's report on the recent electronic voting experiments during the May 2002 local elections in England, when thirty local authorities ran electoral pilot schemes. Here's the future folks!

Yesterday I flew up to Scotland with a colleague, Phil Clarke. For a week or more, I've been telling Phil how good the breakfasts are on British Midland. In fact, I would go as far as to say, it's why I've always asked for a British Midland Flight. Expecting scrambled, egg, bacon, hash brown, sausage, grilled tomato, tea, orange juice, roll, butter and jam, I was astounded to receive . . . a bacon roll and a cup of tea! Most disappointed (and made to look somewhat daft). Next time, I'll try BA again. It's what the HR people would call a "Hygiene Factor" and it works just the same with customers as employees. All the time the great breakfast is there, people take it for granted. The cessation of it however, leads to huge dissatisfaction. Bring back the Hot Breakfast, BMI!

Apparently, I am 31% Internet Addict. Take the test yourself! It tells me I could go either way; deep into the madness of nights filled with coding CGI-Scripts and online role playing games, or I could yet revert to being a normal user. Good luck. Let me know your score in the Instant Replies!

This week, June's been looking after Brimble, the neighbour's dog, while they're in Teneriffe. Last night, June decided to start ''Maxwell'', her Sony Aibo robot dog (there are some links on the left if you haven't seen one). Brimble went mad! He knew, deep down, it wasn't a real dog. But it moved on it's own like a dog, it looked like a dog, it made noises (but not dog ones) but . . . it didn't smell like a dog! It was fascinating to watch the real thing trying to come to terms with it's robotic counterpart. Brimble didn't know whether to try to ignore it, play with it, or kill it! We think he settled for try to kill it; nipping at it's ears and head as the robot moved and reacted to him. June fairly rapidly hit the "off" button and Maxwell was re-consigned to under the coffee table to recharge. Brimble sat watching it like a - well, like a dog - for a good half hour, just in case it moved again. Eventually he lost interest, but for a while, we considered moving Aibo to a high shelf overnight just in case.

A friend sent me this. I've added a few of my memories. Add yours and pass it on.

Close your eyes and go back in time... Before the Internet or the Apple Mac. Before semi-automatics, joyriders and crack... Before PlayStationII and X-Box... I'm talking about hide-and-seek in the park. The corner shop. Butterscotch. Handstands. Bill and Ben, Andy Pandy. Beano. Dandy and Dennis the Menace. Hula Hoops. Jumping streams. Building dams. The smell of the sun and fresh cut grass. Bazooka Joe bubble gum. An ice cream cone or perhaps a Screwball on a warm summer night from a van that plays the Popeye tune. Saturday morning cartoons. Short commercials. The Double Deckers. Road Runner. Zeebedee, or staying up for Dr Who. When around the corner seemed far away and going into town seemed like going somewhere. Earwigs. Wasps. Stinging nettles and bee stings. Sticky fingers. Cops and Robbers. Cowboys and Indians. Climbing trees. Walking to school no matter what the weather. Running till you were out of breath. laughing so hard that your stomach hurt. Jumping on the bed. Pillow fights. Spinning around, getting dizzy and falling down. Being tired from playing... remember that? Water balloons were the ultimate weapon. Trading cards in the spokes transformed a bike into a motorcycle. Eating raw jelly. Orange squash ice pops. Remember when... there were two types of trainers - girls and boys - and the only time you wore them at school was for P.E. You knew everyone in your street - and so did your parents. It wasn't odd to have two or three "best" friends. You didn't sleep a wink on Christmas Eve. When nobody owned a purebred dog. When 25p was decent pocket money When you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny. When nearly everyone's mum was at home when the kids got there. It was magic when Dad would "remove" his thumb. When it was considered a privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents. When any parent could discipline any child, or use him to carry groceries and nobody, not even the child, thought a thing of it. When being sent to the Head's office was nothing compared to the fate that waited at home. We were in fear for our lives but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc., parents were a bigger threat. Didn't that feel good? Just to go back and say. Yeah, I remember that! Remember when... Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-mo" "Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest. The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was germs. And the worst thing in your day was having to sit next to one. It was unbelievable that British Bulldog wasn't an Olympic event. Having a weapon in school meant a catapult in your pocket. Nobody was prettier than Mum. Scrapes and bruises were kissed and made better. Drugs meant orange-flavoured aspirin. Ice cream was a basic food group. Getting a foot of snow was a dream come true.

Pass this on to anyone who may need a break from their "grown up" life.

A £900,000 mirror sculpture destined for a square in Nottingham, will have to be shielded to prevent it focusing the Sun's rays and barbecuing birds. "Direct sunlight hitting the mirror would be focused into a beam only a few centimetres across, as hot as the surface of the Sun" said astronomer Michael Merrifield. "Concentrating tens of kilowatts into a tiny area is not something to mess with."

A while ago, I mentioned the music in the T.Mobile TV commercial. Well, I emailed T.Mobile and they just emailed me back. Nice of them. The music is apparently ‘So Easy’ by Royksopp from the album ‘Melody AM’. If you get the chance, have a listen. Come pay day, I might buy it and put a sample on the new look Music Page. (We're finally getting there, by the way. The Music Page is the latest and probably the last to feature the new design.)

Regular readers will know of my fondness for gadgets and games of all kinds. Many will also know the links I publish are usually to FireBox.com. They've been a firm favourite source of mine for a couple of years now. However, I came across the aptly named IWantOneOfThose.com and they do have a few things FireBox don't, so check them out if you're in the market for things you can't possibly justify but just want! They also have a clever gift finder on their site. Put in the event, the person and the person's personality type and the site will serve up some clever and accurately targeted ideas from a fiver upwards. Personally, I'd still check out Firebox first, if only for their sense of humour, but it's good to have a few different sources of such trivial necessities

Dean, June's son, is off to Liverpool to collect some friends from the port tomorrow morning, so I'll lend him my Garmin StreetPilot II GPS. I haven't mentioned this gadget before, but it's amazing! Put together with "Metroguide" the UK map series, it will find any street address, right down to the house number, in the UK and direct you to it. It's quite fun to know that you're driving around being guided by $400Bn worth of American satellite hardware. (And of course, it was all put up there just for me!) Well, tomorrow, Dean gets the benefit. I'm sure he'll enjoy it.

The sharp eyed among you will notice a new box there on the right. Web Talk Guys were described by PCWorld thus: "The WebTalkGuys - actually two guys and a gal - put on a good low-key show with interesting guests and lots of useful advice . . . when it comes to the Web, there's a lot to talk about."

I'm delighted to announce, This Web Site is The World's First to feature a new direct link service to WTG. Click the graphic and a pop-up will open, giving you instant access to this week's show - without having to go and search for it. You saw it here first!