I was so impressed, decided to blog my excitement over this place as I will be recommending it to friends: Introducing the Lord Poulett Arms in Hinton St George, Somerset. My parents took me and The Burb there a couple of weeks ago for Sunday Lunch. Everything was excellent, the ambience, the food, the interior design, the patrons, the staff, the loos (the boys reported their loos were interesting too). The food is really really fantastic, great presentation & great taste. If you are planning a holiday near Somerset, then you must book your table early and visit this place. You will not be disappointed.
I think I may enquire about getting married there, it just felt so right, only 100 guests though, hmm who could I cut of my list. Check out their website here:
We've all seen them, 404 pages. On websites that are served by Windows servers it is a plain white page that has this text:
Error 404 - The page cannot be found
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
Please try the following:
If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.
Open the www.mysite.com home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
Click the Back button to try another link.
This screams BORING and I have decided this year and into 2011, I will be campaigning (via Rocktime) to make our clients 404 pages more friendly, attractive and useful to visitors.
Anyone reading this can have a more attractive 'page not found page' on their site, you just need to ask your website host to set it up so you can use your own custom made 404 page, which makes it clear to users that they have indeed found the right website and have simply landed on the wrong page.
For usability I suggest you link your 404 page back to your home page or maybe provide a Sitemap too (that would be handy) or direct them to the inbuilt search engine built on your site.
I really liked this on pack promotion from Impulse (Unilever), which drives the savvy customer straight to the "Impulse Diaries" Facebook fan page, and invites them via a 'Shopping Spree' Facebook App to key in the on pack code.
Really straight forward and easy process. I am sure it will have a very positive outcome amongst their target audience.
A couple of days ago, I read on Mashable about a recent study of more than 1,600 people aged 18 to 60 (by DDB Worldwide and Opinionway Research), found that 75% of those who liked a brand on Facebook did so because of an ad or another form of direct outreach. Invitations from friends was the impetus for 59% of likes, while personal research accounted for just 49% of them.
So sounds like I am not the only one who is compelled to follow these ads through to the Facebook page. Interesting....
Shame I had nothing to do with this campaign..> find out more about 'Bilington Cartmell' the agency that created this integrated marketing campaign here and view their fabulous graphics.
Format: PS3 Developer: Quantic Dream Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Released: 24 February 2010
Score: 9/10
Summary: Heavy Rain - asks you to make some tough decisions in a video game.
Four characters are hunting for the Origami Killer in what I am classing as an “Interactive Thrilling Drama”. The animation, music (recorded @ Abbey Road Studios) and attention to detail in every shot are excellent, engaging the player from the start - in summary, it all just feels so very real.
The game is great for two players (passing over game controller), as you can talk about the decisions you make (quickly!!).
It begins in one of the main characters family home, Ethan and his wife are preparing for one of their kids birthday parties. It is a domestic scene in an idealistic family home, during this gameplay you really get a sense of the sensitivity of the controllers. For example: Ethans wife invites Ethan to put the plates out for dinner, you need to be very sensitive in the placement of the plates otherwise your wife will shout at you!
All actions are in context, in this early part of the game I was telling @the_burb to go over to the sink and let Ethan give his stressed out wife a “sink cuddle”, and you could do that!
There are streaming character thoughts that you can access via the controller to determine the characters next step. We identified quite early in the game that if you choose the wrong way to set up a sentence, then it can have negative consequences, for example in another scene @the_burb made a lady of the night cry, I grabbed controller off him and gave her a tissue to clear up the problem.
Although not designed for two player, it does work as a great game you can play with others. We even put the game on when we had friends round for dinner (is that wrong!!) and there were then four of us, deciding what to do next. The experience really sits with the one with the game controller, thanks to the well timed Playstation controller vibrations, letting you know... “it is going to kick off in a minute”.
David Cage the director is amazing, I am in awe of him and advise you to watch the above interview to understand more about the premise behind ‘Heavy Rain’. I especially like the point he makes about how he wished to make a game that will trigger real emotions. Mr Cage it worked for me, I was terrified in some scenes and really sad in others.
What I really like about the game, is that even the character prompts (to make a decision) move in context with what is on the screen. Even the controller actions scatter around the screen in moments of high stress. Brilliant !! While all that is going on you have to really have to keep a close eye on the game at all times of and look for clues of next steps.
Some of the controller actions are a little complicated from X, R1, L2 and Triangle, but then this fits in context with the scene. At one point I was in a tricky life threatening situation, which included a tricky controller move, this put me in a state of panic which was a similar state to what the character was feeling at the time. I saved a character but left another behind to face the inevitable consequences. So at this point, I guess I changed the game play. Would need to play again to change the destinies of those characters. I was pretty disappointed about my decision of loosing one character to save another, they didn’t deserve it, plus I had recently just killed off another character in an earlier scene. Began to feel remorseful. A game that takes you to that place, of feeling disappointed in your actions and worried about the future, is amazing and why this game gets a 9/10
The game is not only ambitious, it is brave and shows a tale of how real people may react in certain environments, you really do see the characters crumble and at the same time due to the script you are in a constant need to keep the game play moving.
The four main characters in the game include; Ethan, FB1 agent Norman Jayden, Private Investigator Scott Shelby and Journalist Madison Page.
Norman Jayden was my favourite character, as he collated the killer profile, had a heavy virtual reality addiction and there was the good cop bad cop thing going on too (like it).
Those that know me, are aware of my very vidid imagination. To share my thoughts: a way that this game could have been more shocking, would be to close the mirrored bathroom cabinet, then have a face in the mirror !! Arrrh scared just writing that.
Go play / experience Heavy Rain, I am sure you won’t be disappointed.
Make sure you check out the extras too, for the making off, casting calls and for the collection of graphics.
Have fun and for full effect make sure you play it in the dark.. Enjoy ;)
My friends mate is doing something quite extraordinary, he is on a quest to run 105 marathons in 105 days around Britain.
As a non runner I don’t quite understand it...the aching; sweating; twitching muscles; injuries; being delirious and not forgetting the overall pain.
My bloke @the_burb has run the London marathon, I asked him why he did it, the answer was “because I wanted to do it”. So there you have it, you either want to run a marathon or you don’t.
But to want to run 105!!
Anyway as this is such a BIG quest, thought to expand his ‘social graph’ and blog about it and ask you to support Neil who from 10th Sept to 23rd Dec 2010, is running the 105 marathons in 105 days around Britain for Cancer Research UK.
“Keep the donations coming as even a couple of quid will make a big difference”
On day two he raised £2,210 for Cancer Research UK and 22% towards his target of £10,000. Well done him.
Please do share this blog, re-blog it and RT to spread the word further, as 105 marathons in 105 days seems like a pretty awesome deed to do to raise money.
I wish he was on Twitter as I would be interested to hear the progress in real time and see the photos on route too.
The above table from http://www.emarketer.com/, which is backed up by an ExactTarget study, reproduced by eMarketer, assists with the "influence over numbers argument" on Twitter, as it shows that US Twitter users in April 2010 were far more interactive online, than general internet users. The results table indicates that US Twitter user’s were more likely than general internet users to post to forums, to write their own blog, comment on blogs and post ratings and reviews.
I have written what this means for brands and companies over at the Rocktime Blog.
I was so impressed, decided to blog my excitement over this place as I will be recommending it to friends: Introducing the Lord Poulett Arms in Hinton St George, Somerset. My parents took me and The Burb there a couple of weeks ago for Sunday Lunch. Everything was excellent, the ambience, the food, the interior design, the patrons, the staff, the loos (the boys reported their loos were interesting too). The food is really really fantastic, great presentation & great taste. If you are planning a holiday near Somerset, then you must book your table early and visit this place. You will not be disappointed. 
