Will Google pull out of China? I don’t know – here’s some snowmen instead

James Chapman - SEO Consultant — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:18:22 +0000

It’s turning into a very interesting week with the news of Google deciding whether to shut down it’s Chinese branch due to malicious attacks on gmail accounts of known human rights protestors. That combined with the news that Google are also insisting that us jolly Brits should talk like Americans has meant that there is plenty to discuss – however, none of that is getting any time in my head as I can’t ignore a big white elephant in the room: the annoying persistance of this snow.

Rather than going on a typically British tirade about how ridiculously cold it is I thought I’d try and lighten the mood with some nonsense about snowmen. Here goes…

The Worlds Tallest Snowman

This rather intimidating chap is the world’s tallest snowman and was built by the (presumedly bored) people of Bethel, Maine way back in 1999. It took 15 days to construct the 113’7” snowman who was disappointingly named Angus by the locals. Apologies to anyone reading this who’s called Angus – but you’ve got a rubbish name.

The World’s Smallest Snowman

This cute little snowman was created by (presumedly bored) scientists from the National Physical Laboratory in London. Unbelievably, the tiny fella is just 0.01mm wide (a 5th of the width of a human hair) and constructed from 2 tiny beads of tin using tools that were designed for manipulating nanoparticles. If they were really showing off they would have made him a hat but it looks like current scientific techniques can only take us so far.

Lego Snowman

Everyone likes lego. Everyone likes snowmen. This was always going to be a winner.

Pixar Snowman Short – ‘Knick Knack’

This wonderful short cartoon was made by some bloke called John Lasseter (the link is for those who don’t get irony) back in 1989 when Pixar was a fledgeling company. I think it looks fantastic even by today’s standards and still has all the warmth and charm of the recent Pixar output. A couple of interesting facts: apparently this film is one of Terry Gilliam’s favourite short films – and the music was done by Bobby Mcferrin!

Build Your Own Snowman

For those of you like me who are sick to the back teeth of this weather, here’s a lovely little website that allows you to build your own snowman from the comfort of your chair. Don’t build anything too rude, now….oh go on then.

The Snowman in Dubstep

If you all enjoy Phil Collins as much as we do then you’ll no doubt love this bass heavy reworking of the theme from ‘The Snowman’:

Link:

The social media stunt of the year

Phil Harper - Social Media Consultant — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:48:32 +0000

Late yesterday whilst reading reddit, I spotted a link about some 6-year-old who “couldn’t have done all of this by himself”. I didn’t bother to click on it, but nevertheless it was the first vibrations of buzz surrounding what was to became a major news story. That evening, I checked reddit again to see the top story had (at the time) more than 1100 votes, and this is what it said:

The child of a creative garage scientist type had climbed into the base of an experimental helium balloon which took off and travelled south east at an altitude of 7,000 feet. The boy was contained in a tiny compartment made of plywood attached to the base of the balloon

Wowsers. Before you knew it everyone was talking about Balloon Boy. It was a media frenzy, with the international press descending to child’s house and his family, friends and neighbours being interviewed on live television. Everyone was scrambling to ask “where is balloon boy?”

Within a matter of hours balloon boy was a trending topic on twitter, 4Chan were putting their ridiculous twist on things, and there were already mashups emerging surrounding the inspiring story… Where was balloon boy? Was he OK? Was he going to survive the impact?

After the balloon touched down and the boy was nowhere to be seen, it emerged that balloon boy was in fact, attic boy. He’d been hiding in the garage attic all along, so call off the huge rescue efforts and everyone can stop the panic. What a relief! He’s OK!

So the live interviews start to mount up, and whilst on CNN the child was being asked about his trip to the attic. “When you heard them shouting, why didn’t you come down?” and he replied “you guys said, that we did this for the show?”

So what’s the show? A filthy stinking PR stunt? Who is this family? First and foremost, the family in question are no strangers to the media spotlight and have featured on Wife Swap USA. Their show was geared around safe households vs unsafe households, no prizes for guessing which category Balloon Boy’s family fell under. So what was “the show” that balloon boy talked about?

His Father has a website, which investigates psychic phenomenon and other such crazyness, so maybe they were trying to promote that? If that’s the case, they’ve not thought the plan though, because their website has now crashed thanks to the thousands of hits it is no doubt getting.

I’m more of the mindset that this might involve Pixar, and some deal to create a media hype about some kid going up in a balloon. It’s the right timing so it’s not too obvious that this was a publicity stunt. Maybe balloon boy meant to say “you guys said, we did it for Pixar, and that movie…?” Was this a social media stunt for Pixar, or just a massively profitable coincidence for the blue skied animators?