Archive for November, 2008
Sad:: loss in family
Just to say Mum lost the battle with an infection in hospital.
The last chapter of an epic life story was completed at approximately 04:00 on Thursday 27th November 2008 at the age of 84.
A wonderful person and a perfect mother in so many ways. She had a big heart always putting others first.
Mum, I miss you so much already – it may not always show on the outside, but my heart is sad, and you're never far from my thoughts -thanks for everything, love Martin.
Saturday post
I’m sorry that posts have been a bit far and few between lately; at least for my personal blog. for the past three weeks I’ve been busy at work costing and ordering for the next project I’m working on a wopping £660k’s worth! And guess what! Christmas is cancelled – I’ll be working at the data centre for most of December.
Mum is still in hospital, while her condition improves, she seems to be weaker every time I see or talk with her. Her medication always seems to be a balancing trick, I only hope they are still tweaking the many combinations, a we will see an improvement soon. Dad is soldiering on, although he caught the cold that’s floating around at the moment.
I was proud to have another guest post published at http//www.wearejustcreative.com and hope to write some more very soon.
SoulTweet:: honourable mention
Had the pleasure of assisting in the setup of www.soultweet.com with Graham Smith; it was one of the fastest moving projects I’ve been involved in. Graham contacted me on the Sunday morning; within 30mins we’d agreed on the domain name, later afternoon and evening the basic site was online – an amazing idea.
Graham talks about SoulTweet;
“It’s nothing more than a regular dose of featured Tweople. Suggest, choose, ask, nominate anyone you feel could do with a Twitter lift. Give someone a chance to rise above the Twitter chatter for a few days. SoulTweet is all about singling out one person from the Twitter crowd. It’s a good karma thing.”
I was surprised on Monday morning that I was the first “SoulTweet” – an honour I can assure you; check it out.
Twitter Interview
Forgot to mention; a month of so ago I got interviewed by Jonathan Cutrell about my thoughts on Twitter – here’s what was said;
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
So here we go!
Why do you use twitter?
Martin Newham
Twitter is naturally social beast by design; it allows a single individual the ability to talk to 1,000′s of people at the same time; and that’s the difference between MSM. AOL etc… of course it all depends if anyone is listening
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Agreed. The last part is completely true, and I wonder if Twitter is so successful because it is so customizable as well; in other words, you follow who you want to follow, etc.
Martin Newham
Yes it’s not until you try a client like twittervision you realise how global twitter truly is..
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
And now is the first time I have looked at that. Wow!
Alright, well, Twitter has been called the "telegraph of Web 2.0". How has Twitter affected business as usual for you?
Martin Newham
Twitter is an excellent communications tools as we mentioned earlier, with "re-tweeting" the 140 characters between people information can be "broadcast" very quickly. This was evident when the news of Steve Job’s falsely reported heart attack hit Twitter, and apple shares dropped.
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Very true.
What does it mean for your business to have more and more connectivity?
Martin Newham
Communication between team members is more important than ever now, previously we would all work in a office and we could talk face to face – but with the internet and home working teams have spread out not only across the continent but across the world. Tools such as Twitter allow the "chit-chat" to continue, is far less formal than an email and more convenient that some IM clients.
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
And how about communication between you and your clients?
Martin Newham
A lot of my current clients aren’t quite switched on enough for Twitter yet, but I’m trying to train them. Typically a 1-1 is required, so a phone is more useful or Skype VOIP of course
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
With the expansion of Twitter through applications and with the creation of sites such as JustTweetIt, how do you think social networking will influence business as usual in the future?
Martin Newham
Twitter expands on a global basis the best and oldest advertising technique; word of mouth – only its digital. I will expect to see more applications, and automated systems that you can subscribe to via Twitter; already RSS updates from sites are pushed into Twitter and people be notified of changes.
Perhaps in the future, for example; Companies will squirt encrypted data into Twitter that you can subscribe to and with an appropriate client the information can be retrieved. Whilst to everyone one else it garbled
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
What a fantastic idea!
Martin Newham
Ha-ha, just an idea
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Well, obviously even beyond communication, people can expound on twitter at ground level;
Just as some have done with MySpace with embeddable stores, etc.
Speaking of MySpace, What social networking do you use, beyond twitter? (Blogs, Digg style sites, MySpace/Facebook, etc.)
Martin Newham
I’ve done a few guest posts on Styletime and one coming up on Graham’s site; I have my own blog but it’s more of a personal journal. I have a Facebook page and a Linkedin page obviously Twitter and Digg/stumble/design float to mention a few
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Obviously we all have online "identities" that we probably have even forgotten about! Ha-ha. ok, so, what do you think microblogging’s biggest contribution has been to the social networking scene? We know that WordPress gave everyone the ability to blog, and MySpace gave people the ability to have friends across the world. What has Twitter done, and do you think it will last?
Martin Newham
You mentioned WP & MySpace etc, these are all static (to a certain extent) but Twitter is very dynamic and operates fast! It allows you to talk to large groups of people at the same time and yet have a conversation with a single person if you want to either through the Replies or Direct and private mail.
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Can you give an example of a client or a path to a client that came to you as a result of twitter or another social network?
Martin Newham
Spoke to a friend over Skype regarding a website design for a aerobatic pilot, he didn’t have the skills to do it himself so he asked me and I built the site.
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Interesting stuff.
More of that in the future I imagine.
Who is your favourite Twitterer?
or Tweeter?
Martin Newham
Oh they’re all great, and unique in their own ways — hahaha, I only follow people I find interesting
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
How do you receive your news? Like political issues, local issues, etc.
Martin Newham
Mornings and when I’m working at home I generally have BBC News 24 on TV, in the office it would be Twitter/MSM/Skype and an assortment of RSS/Websites
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
What is your forecast for Twitter and the microblogging world?
Martin Newham
Twitter is still quite unique and it has a good foothold in the market, I don’t see its imminent end any time soon. The future; maybe more integrated clients for phones, PS3 Xbox, TV’s Fridges – Twitter maybe an idea medium for your washing machine to say "Help! I’m flooding; but I’ve Tweeted a local plumber"
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
I really appreciate you doing this interview. First off, any links you’d like to promote? This will be put into an article, and I will send people to wherever you’d like.
Martin Newham
My twitter one is fine, people can find me there.. I would like to see the article once it’s finished
Freelance: Jonathan Cutrell
Yea definitely. It’s gonna mostly focus on the use of these different faculties.
