Use Tagxedo to create cool word clouds

Here's my new word cloud for SWATE courtesy of Tagxedo:

Facebook’s Amusingly Cruel CAPTCHA

This would be a tough way to start the day... You log into Facebook to see what's what and you get presented with this CAPTCHA.

British Teenager Fired From Job Via Facebook, After Cookie-Related Ineptitude

I posted this link the other day on Twitter but thought it was worth sharing in more detail here as well. From Fast Company:



Things you need to know before we get started: in England, cookies are called biscuits. Also in England, the word "cookies" does not also mean cookies, because this story revolves around a cafe called Cookies that does not sell cookies. This may all sound like a fun bit of wordplay leading up to a punchline, but it's not--that's just how they roll in England. It's a mysterious island nation, I know.

As the Daily Mail reports, Chelsea Taylor, a 16-year-old clerk at the Cookies Cafe in Leigh, was sent, improbably enough, on an errand to retrieve cookies for the staff of Cookies. She was given a "tenner" (in proper American English, God's own language, that's a "Hamilton") for the purchase of said sweets, only to lose it sometime during the journey. She returned to the Cookies Cafe both cookie-less and penniless.

Young Chelsea Taylor's boss at the Cookies Cafe was not pleased with this turn of events. How, she wondered, did she manage to open and run a cafe named after a snack she could not manage to procure? Heads would roll for this one! And it was our poor heroine who got the axe--and not in a very pleasant way.

Yes, Chelsea was fired via Facebook. The message is conciliatory, apologetic, and polite, yet its mere medium suggests a lack of personal involvement and a distancing that borders on the insulting. The shortened words, the text-message abbreviations ("u" for "you"), and the aversion to tell Chelsea in person all combine to form an epic brush-off--and Chelsea is not pleased.

"Even if she had sent me a text message or something it would have been better than on Facebook. She didn't have the guts to tell me face-to-face," said Taylor. Her mother called the action "appalling," "heartless," and "dreadful," and (rightfully) identified the typos and abbreviations as "disrespectful."

Is it okay to fire someone via Facebook? Would it actually have been more appropriate to use proper grammatical conventions? Those norms are still being formed. All we know is, don't go to the Cookies Cafe expecting cookies. They don't have any.

I think the Nestle Social Media Manager was having a bad day

And it undoubtedly got much, much worse after a lapse in judgment about how to deal with customers.

Here's a suggestion:  Going to war with your customers is never sound business practice and insulting them in this manner just seems petty and vindictive. What was there to gain? When you start in with social media - like Nestle did with their Facebook page - you lose some control over the conversation and you need to be prepared how to deal with that. 

Today's something or other #52

Is it really #52? Ah, who knows, who's counting and who cares? 

This was a Blogger Blog of Note:  Running From Camera. So simple. So effective. So genius.

Today's something or other #50

A recent "Blog of Note", Sleep Talkin' Man is pure belly-laughin' good times. A mischievous and fun-loving wife records, and more importantly shares, what her husband says as he talks in his sleep. Hilarity ensures.

A sample:  "Lentils are evil. Pure fucking oozing evil. Take them away from me."

Good thing her husband seems to have a sense of humour about it. Enjoy!

An amusing slice of life

Saw this today on the ever-awesome My Life Is Average (MLIA) blog.

Today I was at the dentist and they were asking me questions while they had instruments in my mouth. When they took them out I said sorry I can't talk when I have something in my mouth. The dentist said under his mask 'That's what she said'. I no longer hate going to the dentist. MLIA

Star Wars and Facebook: Together at last

From CollegeHumor.com. See more Facebook feeds here.

Effective pie charting

Please design a logo for me. With pie charts. For free. http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html

There's a lot of funny stuff on this guy's site. Definitely check out Strata Agreement (I posted the link previously). Very funny.

Well sir, I guess there's just a goodness in this world

From: My Life is Average

Today, I stuck a hand into my coat pocket and found five dollars. Wrapped inside of the five dollars, there was a note. "You have just been reverse pickpocketed. Enjoy this five dollars in knowing that it was forcibly received by your pocket; take that, society." I then proceeded to stick both the money and note into another victim's pocket. MLIA.

A new look and feel for SWATE

I've been experimenting with a few things at Slightly Worn Around the Edges to improve the reader experience. As you probably noticed, the blog looks a little different:  New image (I'm still not 100% sold on it), different colours and more.

I felt it was time for a bit of a change but, more importantly, I changed the layout to give a wider main column as some items were being cut-off with the old layout. I've also gone with more white space. More white space is going to be a hot trend in 2010 (if it isn't already). I think there still needs to be more differentiation between posts so consider this a work-in-progress.

I've also added some functionality that will make it easier for you to follow the blog and share blog posts. There are Follow and Share buttons in the NAV bar at the top of the page. The Share button allows you to forward a post to Twitter, Facebook or Google Reader (a tool I highly recommend, by the way) as well as by email. The Follow button allows you to follow SWATE on your blogger dashboard (if you have one).  

You can also more easily subscribe to the blog via your favourite Reader (again, I like Google Reader, but many people swear by Stumble Upon). There are a number of choices that will send new content automatically to your Reader of choice. The button for this is just under the About Me section on the right side of the page. Can't miss it. Subscribe and  never miss any of your favourite, super-awesome content.

Another interesting wrinkle to the subscribe option is that you can opt to add SWATE to your iGoogle homepage. Yes, now SWATE can sit on your home page beside such august news feeds as CBC and ESPN. Here's a picture of my iGoogle page so you can see how it could look. Click for full-size image. I'm so proud.

Today's something or other #33

This blog appears to be abandoned, but the fact that it exists at all demonstrates the wonder of the internet: Beard Of The Day.

Scene Advisor determines the world's most desirable city to live, stay, eat and play

Let the debate begin. The Global Cities Index.

Movie Posters As Art

Smashing presents Fifty Beautiful Movie Posters. I believe I had the Star Wars one above my bed as a kid.

Today's something or other #26

The world's most unique buildings.

Cool new travel tool from Google

From The Guardian:

Google have made tentative steps into the world of travel with the launch of Google City Tours. The site generates suggested itineraries for thousands of destinations around the world, and allows users to customise their schedules according to how many days they are visiting, and what they want to see.

"Perhaps the coolest part of the new product is the way it uses Google Maps to figure out which locations are closest to each other. Rather than simply present a list of places Google thinks you might want to check out, the site will logically order them according to where they're located, minimising the travel time between each."

Cool indeed. Matt McGee of searchengineland looks a little further into the distance;

"Imagine Google pulling in the public transit information that it already has for many cities. Imagine it pulling in event listings like concerts and sports. Imagine local businesses being able to write their own suggested city tours that include a stop at the business's own location, and being able to embed those tour maps on their web sites. This seems like an interesting experiment to watch."

The ducks in the bathroom are not mine

Here's how to handle annoying building management types. I should have used this approach when I was in Gotham.

Perfect for playoff season

Check out The Sports Cliche List. They are missing the goalie is "standing on his head", but is otherwise pretty comprehensive.

Evil Fortune Cookies

Perfect for your next dinner party! These cookies tell it like it is.

Evil Fortune Cookies - "The Gourmet Flavored Fortune Cookie That Tells the Truth"

People have always talked about how it would be neat to receive a fortune that wasn't the same old piece of Chinese Wisdom and vague stuff you receive in the normal fortune cookies. Now here is your chance, plus they come in a variety of over 15 different flavors, each colored resembling their flavor.

You should have seen this

If you can't find a way to waste time at this website, you aren't really trying. This is, like, a crash course on internet awesomeness and stupidity since the dawn of time. Or, at least since Al Gore invented the internet and Scientology freed us from the tyranny of psychiatry. Or, more accurately perhaps, since broadband made video on the internet viable.

It is hard to pick out just one to highlight, but if you haven't seen Battle at Kruger you must watch it. It is hard to believe what you are seeing. Also, Best Man Ruins Wedding is hard to believe what you are seeing, but for different reasons.

Enjoy!