Rob Cottingham

Meeting your social media humor needs since 1963

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17 Nov 2009

Thanks to everyone who suggested their favourite cartoons!

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A week ago, I asked if you’d lend me a hand choosing which cartoons I should start with as I begin offering limited-edition prints… and you responded with dozens of suggestions.

Thanks so much – it isn’t going to be easy to choose! But what was easy was picking a name at random… and lakes, of the Chilean tech blog raton.cl, will be getting his pick as a snazzy print. (Kind of cool to send the very first one off the continent!)

I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve chosen the first three cartoons to get the limited-edition treatment. In the meantime, thank you all again… and feel free to keep offering suggestions!

16 Nov 2009

Granville raves about Little Nest (and uses one of my photos!)

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Category: Everything Else
Commercial Drive's Little Nest

Commercial Drive’s Little Nest offers incredible food in a casual setting, catering to families, people watchers and foodies alike

I now have another reason to frequent Vancouver’s Commercial Drive: Little Nest, a neighbourhood restaurant and café serving gourmet food in a casual, family-friendly environment.

Walk into Little Nest and you’ll find families eating together, kids running around, and friends chatting. With its casual retro decor of old wooden tables, chairs scattered about, and wide array of toys and stacks of magazines, it’s not fancy, but it’s comfortable.

And what you’ll find in this casual restaurant is incredible food. Little Nest’s menu is written on two floor-to-ceiling chalkboards and changes regularly based on what’s in season. The restaurant strives to use as many fresh, organic and local ingredients as possible, and quality is king (meaning no frozen or pre-packaged crap).

Fresh from Granville Online’s blog, there’s a rave review about one of our favourite restaurants: Little Nest, just off Commercial Drive. It takes family-friendly to a level that will spoil you for other restaurants, without skimping on a sumptuous brunch menu that never gets old.

A year or two ago, I was there with Alex and the kids, and happened to shoot a few photos of their incredible muffins. At the time, I was pretty happy with the shots – and so, apparently, were the nice folks at Granville, as they asked permission to use one.

Here’s the original of those chocolate-banana-hazelnut muffins (and you can find the others here). If that doesn’t make your mouth water, then friend, you have no taste buds.

Chocolate-Banana-Hazelnut Muffins at Little Nest

Posted via web from robcottingham’s posterous

We mean you no harm

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We mean you no harm(alien to two army generals in Roswell, 1947) Your primitive organizational culture is not ready for our advanced social media technology. Call us in 60 years or so.

15 Nov 2009

Sauce for the Google: Rupert Murdoch slams aggregator sites for doing what his media sites do

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Category: Everything Else

As Rupert Murdoch talks about how he wants to cut off Google, while claiming that aggregator sites are “parasites” and “stealing” from him — and that fair use would likely be barred by the courts, it seemed like a good time to examine at least some of the sites that are owned by Rupert Murdoch that appear to aggregate content from other sites and which rely on the very same fair use argument. [...]

Well, let’s start with the flagship Wall Street Journal itself. …[O]n the WSJ’s tech news page if you scroll down, you’ll find a bunch of headlines and links to other sources — without permission:

Oops. Looks like the WSJ is “parasiting” and “stealing” according to Murdoch. Perhaps he should cut them of too.

Techdirt does the online world a service by applying Rupert Murdoch’s standards to his own media empire – and the results are pretty damn funny.

The fact that Murdoch’s media outlets employ fair use shouldn’t be a surprise. Even traditional reporters do it pretty much every day – for instance, quoting someone’s speech or something they’ve written. And with hyperlinks and aggregation, the sheer utility becomes overwhelming: “here’s the excerpt I’m quoting, and here’s the original so you can find out more (or make sure I’m not taking it out of context).”

And for anyone who thinks questions of utility shouldn’t enter into the conversation around intellectual property – that this is all about fundamental issues of natural justice – the history of IP law says differently. (Have a look at Lawrence Lessig’s fascinating Free Culture for more on this.)

Posted via web from robcottingham’s posterous

13 Nov 2009

How Fox News wanted to cover today’s NASA news

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2009.11.13.obama.breaks.moon

Measure your social media influence with Influ-a-rama-matic Pro 2.0! (beta)

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Are you eager to track your social media influence? Desperate to boil down the complex intricacies of human interaction into a single number? Of course you are!

But you’re also probably sick of getting results that suggest you could be doing better if only you had more followers… retweeted more often… wrote more interesting blog posts… or, y’know, really worked at it.

Well, my friend, do I have the social media measurement instrument for you. Carefully calibrated, precision-coded and guaranteed accurate to .025 microScobles, the Influ-a-rama-matic Pro 2.0 is nothing less than the greatest web application in the history of humanity.

Take it for a spin!

 

9 Nov 2009

Also, a decent macro utility wouldn’t hurt

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Also, a decent macro utility wouldn't hurt(man in a bar to his friend) Life needs an ‘Undo’ command.

Help me choose Noise to Signal limited-edition prints (and win a print for yourself)!

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Ever since I started drawing Noise to Signal, people have asked me if it’s possible to get a print. I’ve finally gotten around to looking into that question – and lo and behold, making prints turns out to be perfectly feasible.

So I’m going to start selling prints of Noise to Signal cartoons. And I’d like to do it in two ways.

  • First, I want to make prints available for any cartoon someone thinks is good enough to hang on their wall (it’s a hell of a compliment). That’s still in the works.
  • But second, there are some special cartoons where I’d like to create a few limited-edition prints.

And that’s where I’d like your help: choosing which cartoons to start with. I want to pick three cartoons for limited-edition prints in time for the holiday season. So here’s my question to you:

Which Noise to Signal cartoon would you most like to receive under your tree / in your stocking / during your awkward office gift exchange / next to your Festivus pole?

Leave your suggestion in the comments below. And as my way of saying thanks – because I appreciate your doing a little free market research for me – I’m going to randomly draw one name from everyone who helps out, and send that lucky winner a print of their favourite cartoon.

We’ll do this for the next week or so, and I’ll announce the three cartoons (they won’t necessarily be the ones that get the most votes, but your suggestions will carry a lot of weight) next Monday.

You can find the Noise to Signal cartoons here. Just drop the URL for your choice in a comment below.

Thanks for your help!

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