what we've got

My wife Jennie recently told me a anecdote about a stint working as a waitress in Canada, a period in which she made ends meet whilst she studied. In the restaurant, there used to be a box passed around into which the patrons could drop their tip, hidden from the rest of the group. One tip would reappear with wearying familiarity and that tip would be a scrap of paper upon which was written: don’t eat the yellow snow.

No doubt suffering from l’esprit de l’escalier I suggested that my tip would be a perhaps more serious, even pompous one: ‘stop being offended’. I think, like irony and innocence (which are another matter), that being offended has become a real blight on the relationships in our everyday and cultural life and at its worst threatens one of humanity’s greatest achievements, free speech. Or rather, as the writer Philip Pullman reminds us with his pithy, eloquent and beautifully pitched response, you don’t have the right to live without taking offence:

Just as we have the right to publish our thoughts and feelings – and we do, now that we blog, and Tweet and share so keenly – we are equally subject to those thoughts and feelings being criticised, from which offence might arise. We show our strength through our reaction to criticism, where it falls on the right side of a law that embraces free speech.

Watched the news lately, picked up a newspaper? Then it’s likely you’ll be at least tempted into being afraid, if not downright hide-behind-the-sofa, peek-from-under-the-cushion terrified.

Here’s what you do to overcome the fear in the media. The first is listen to Doug Stanhope. He seems to know something about fear (the audio is not suitable for work so put your headphones on).

When you’re done with Doug read this analysis of how fear works by Tom Engelhardt, along with some statistical analysis (especially if you’re American – I’m not – but the principle applies elsewhere, too).

And if you’re still a little unconvinced, then watch Adam Curtis’ superb dissection of the ways that governments and organisations use fear to try to control me and you, in his documentary The Power of Nightmares.

And by then – well, you may have stopped worrying and learn to love the calm.

Don Draper: a new kind of ad man (image ©AMC)

When Don Draper, head of ‘Creative’ in the advertising firm at the centre of the hit TV series ‘Mad Men, rolls his eyes when someone tells him that ‘sex sells’ we know advertising is failing. When he suggests to a client that ‘If you don’t like the conversation, change the topic’ we know that PR is replacing it.

The reason why Draper is so successful and highly esteemed is that he recognises the importance of public relations. What he sells is the brand, the entire set of practices and beliefs that underpins the product, whether it be toothpaste, a bra, or an airline. Advertising is visual; public relations is verbal. The image of the woman draped across a car won’t sell anything; but the conversation, and the aspiration that is carried upon it, just might.

It’s no coincidence that Don Draper used to be a car salesman. That racket was the embodiment of an early, ‘hard’ approach to advertising: drown the client in details; appeal to base impulses; pressurise through conformity, and so on. There’s an example in the show where Draper’s creative team want to sell a Kodak carousel on its technical innovations; for Draper, it’s more about the memories that the projector helps relive. In ‘The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR’, Al and Laura Ries tell us: “The harder the sell the harder the prospect resists the sales message.” Hard selling didn’t work anymore for Draper in the car dealership; and now it won’t work for him at Sterling Cooper.

Advertising was then, PR is now. Only the ‘now’ of Mad Men is the early 1960s. As a result, Don Draper’s trajectory from car salesman to head of Creative at an advertising firm represents the beginnings of the movement from advertising to PR as the preferred approach to persuading the client.

What does it mean to be French?

The French have began a process of reflecting on their national identity by asking what it means to be French in the 21st century. Ostensibly this is happening as a result of recent perceived issues with parts of the population that are felt to have not integrated into French society, at least as some see it. But it also appears uniquely French itself, in that it represents another way in which the French undergo a perpetual (it seems) analysis of their language and culture, their politics and ideologies, their people and beliefs.

A strength of a society (and its individuals) is calculated in its ability to accept and respond to criticism, to solicit it even. Inevitably, the Grand débat sur l’identité nationale (The Debate on National Identity) will attract criticism of the French. One thorny issue that appears frequently when considering French identity is the perceived conservative attitude to its language and culture.

The BBC’s ‘From our own correspondent’ outlines this single, but significant element, by expressing it as a desire of the French to embrace their own culture jealously, even at the expense of others:

The French collude in the over-praising for two reasons, one good, one bad. The good reason is that they are genuinely fond of their culture. [...] One realises after a while that the French view their [celebrities] almost as members of the family. They enjoy going to see them in the same way they enjoy catching up with the latest family gossip.

The bad reason is that it is all about self-protection. Succumbing to sycophancy, after all, is a way of reassuring oneself that all is good in the world, when clearly it is not.

As an outsider and relative newcomer to the country, I’ve yet to form a picture of what it means to be French, but I’m learning a great deal (it wouldn’t be fair, either, since I wear rose-tinted spectacles having fallen for the place). I probably never will satisfy a complete conclusion but what I can say is that the national debate on what it means to be French appears to me a clear-eyed approach to learning more, good and bad, about itself.

And when you point such a focus elsewhere, it’s only a matter of time before the focus rests on you, and rightly so. I’m from the UK, so I wonder: what does it mean to be British? And by extension, what does it mean to be me, or be you, and where you’re from?

I’m going to take one seemingly independent observation, then another, and then make an obvious one of my own (I call it iSynthesis).

Apple is likely to announce the launch of a new tablet-based Mac, probably called (if you are to believe the hype) either the iPad or the iTablet. No real news there – you knew this already. But the thought preoccupying everyone is: no one knows what we’re meant to be doing with it. Charles Arthur in The Guardian echoes the sentiment:

Here’s a story from the near future. It’s been a long day. Finally throwing aside the cares of work, you slump down on your sofa and pick up that shiny new device you bought the other day. […] it’s Apple’s stylish new iPad (iTablet? iSlate?) – a smooth 10in screen with no keyboard, like an iPhone on steroids. You pick it up, turn it on with one swipe of a finger, and begin to . . .

At this point, the picture goes hazy and freezes. The reason: […] still no one is certain what the hell their creation is actually going to be for…

There, that’s the first of the observations. Many people will want one, many will buy one, but if we’re going to justify the price – thought to be around £1000 – we better know how we’re going to use it.

Now for the second, seemingly unrelated observation. In another section of The Guardian, (the wonderfully-named) Mercedes Bunz tells us how iTunes might save the publishing world through simplifying the ‘micropayments’ approach for buying newspaper content:

Payment has to be simple and elegant. Click and run, and don’t think about it. Apple can offer that: there are more than 100 million iTunes accounts with credit cards already. If the transactions are batched so that the fixed cost is amortised across multiple articles, iTunes can offer readers a simple and elegant way to pay, and readers like that.

Now, for the third and final observation, my own. No doubt you’ve already guessed it: what we’re going to do on the iTablet is subscribe and purchase electronically-published content through iTunes.

The signs are there: The New York Times is considering switching to a micro-payment system; I understand from Bunz’s article that various publishers have been in talks with Apple about distributing their content; some newspapers are already using alternative methods of creating revenue through such approaches as the aforementioned The Guardian‘s iPhone app.

I’m not the first to put two-and-two together and I won’t be the last. iTunes might be the future, whether you like it or not, of some types of publishing.

Take the Pepsi Challenge

I am an aspiring amateur photographer who sometimes wonders whether he wants to join a club that would have him as a member.

I am concerned at times about the current state of photography, professional or otherwise. On the one hand, I am awestruck by the talent demonstrated in some of the photos on Flickr – amazing shots that are scarily intimidating, as well as inspiring.

At the same time, I wonder about the qualities required to take good photos now digital cameras are everywhere. I picked up a copy of ‘The Digital Photography Book’ by Scott Kelby. What’s the first thing he says to do? Buy more equipment: the better the equipment, the better your photos will be. What started as the democratisation of photography (following its predecessor rock ‘n’ roll, made with home recording equipment) seems less democratic than ever.

There seems something disingenuous with this model because it appears to replace talent with technology (and concomitant economics). It needn’t apply, and doesn’t work for many things. There’s a joke on the golf course that the new guy: ‘Has a 400 dollar golf club and a ten dollar game’. As a novice (and even later) you can’t simply improve your game by buying a better club.

When technology does make a difference – you’ll find it easier, most likely, to write something on a computer where you can re-order, copy and paste, etc than you would with a pen – you are still left with a gnawing hole where the writing should be. I’m not sure this is a problem facing photographers, as the disciplines differ by degree.

Even if you struggle to point and click you can improve your efforts afterward to such a degree that they’re largely unrecognizable from the original. For example, as a novice you learn quickly that taking shots in RAW format (if you have a digital SLR camera capable of doing this) means you can radically change photos using tools such as Photoshop. So can you tell the difference between a ‘real’ (untouched by tools such as Photoshop) and a ‘fake’ photograph? Try the Pepsi challenge here.

I hope you did better than me. What was interesting was that so many people couldn’t spot the difference. Some were more obviously fake than others but often a photograph split opinion: you can see the results by completing the challenge.

But does it matter that the photo is real or fake? Here, the recent issue of Robert Capa’s ‘faking’ of his famous ‘Falling solider‘ photo is illustrative. It has since come to light that this shot was staged, taken outside of a combat zone according to newspaper reports. For years this has been considered a definitive statement on the personal horrors of war, a visceral reminder of the individual cost of combat.

Is the appreciation of Capa’s photo – and by extension, photography in general – any less real or fake since we failed its Pepsi challenge?

Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pepsi_Challenge.jpg

One of the (happily few) disappointments of living in France is the difficulty and expense of buying an English newspaper. In time, I hope to read Le Monde and perhaps even Le Figaro. But until then, I’m happy to be reliant on ‘journaux anglais’ – a phrase I know well because I’ve said it in many tabacs in both France and Switzerland to little avail.

We live a little out of town, so the local tabac doesn’t sell an English language newspaper. We could go into Geneva, where several shops sell them – but not as many as you’d think, since the Swiss enjoy a Sunday free from shopping, and even smaller shops close. And it’s the weekend newspapers I miss most. I’ve used the web for news, and WRS (World Radio Switzerland) is in English, and both have served me well. Accepting that I wouldn’t have something to read in the garden away from a computer, I thought I’d try the digital editions offered by The Times and The Guardian.

Both use a more or less identical engine for the main functionality of the paper, provided by NewspaperDirect.inc. You can turn pages, zoom, copy articles, email them, all the things you would expect in a front end that does its best to approximate the real thing. What’s striking is the difference that the format makes. Sure, you could get more or less the same content via an RSS feed or through the newspaper website. But seeing the news in high-res spread across a large-ish screen is very satisfying and it’s one of the reasons I’ll subscribe.

The Times e-edition front page

The right-hand navigation panel gives useful previews of pages and means you can navigate the paper quickly. If it all looks a bit busy, you can minimise the clutter and just look at the pages. I found moving within the page a bit difficult and the mouse movements counter-intuitive. It just takes getting used to and others might find it suits them. You can open an article and read it in a non-newspaper box, which looks more like the website and undermines the illusion a bit. There’s lots of other things you can do with an electronic newspaper, too – like search, or just look at the pictures.

Where The Guardian group’s Digital Edition adds further value (The Times call it their e-paper) is the ability to share content through a variety of social networking tools. Articles can be saved to Delicious, shared on Facebook or blogged and so on. The latter function has it for me: it makes sharing the content much easier, something that I hope will prompt a some sharing on this humble blog. It is illustrative, I think, of The Guardian Group’s growing embrace of the web, although the sticky subject of how old media will survive or not is still unresolved.

The Guardian Digital Edition frontpage with share icons

Both are relative cheap services, too. You can pay a whopping 7.50CHF (Swiss Francs) for a bonafide paper copy, which is about £4 for a Sunday paper that’s sometimes incomplete, with often the best supplements are missing (meaning it lacks the heft of a Sunday paper and therefore one of its most attractive qualities). It will cost only £4.99 a month for The Observer; £3.99 for a month’s worth of The Sunday Times. I guess the extra pound pays for all that social networking goodness. Both have mobile-friendly editions, so you can use your mobile device for the odd read although like many things the screen might be too small for prolonged reading. You can also download if you plan to be offline.

Despite this, I’d really like to see some of the excellent multi-media material we find on both news websites (and especially The Guardian’s) integrated into the editions. Although you can listen to the Guardian’s stories (a function I’ve been unable to get to work), in an ideal world both could follow the example of ‘electric!’, a rich media publication from Virgin Media, which uses the Ceros engine. Superb interaction, although quite unlike a conventional newspaper reading experience and appealing to different markets, a hybird which incorporates existing audio/video from the sites seems possible (from this distance). The image below offers video playback embedded in the publication, and there’s audio too. Try ‘electric!’, you might like it, if not the name.

electric! is a rich media publication from Virgin Media, powered by Ceros

So, I’ll have to compromise: I won’t be able to shape a paper copy to my whim, read it in the garden or at the cafe. Lamenting this, in the never ending pursuit for that elusive hardcopy,  I ventured out to the Swiss / French border near Perly following a rumour that they sold English newspapers. Success of sorts: I did find a single copy of the Sunday Mail. It may still be there for all I know: there are standards.

It’s an adage of public relations that ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’, as if simply being in the public memory ensures the kind of success that leads to profits.

That can’t be. I remember Jeffrey Archer, Anthea Turner and wasshername – that gun-toting, twitching, winking, hockey mom… ah, yes, Sarah Palin – but no matter how large a chunk of valuable memory I inadvertently devote to them, it will never convince me they are valuable for anything other than how to get things woefully wrong. Is remembering someone or company for their huge failures really useful to them?

I doubt it, as the recent example of Neal’s Yard tells me.

I will forever remember Neal’s Yard, purveyor of expensive homeopathic potions and lotions, for their huge PR error in failing to answer many of the questions fired at them during a Guardian live debate. They forgot that the public can be a taxing lot, firing all sorts of awkward questions about how far the efficacy of these ‘remedies’ can be proven scientifically.

I’ll remember, too, being prompted to go online and find further evidence of how Neal’s Yard struggle to find what they might call a ‘PR solution’ to the inestimable problem of their claim that certain remedies can help prevent one of the world’s most deadly of diseases, malaria.

It’s these connections between memory and experience that prevent us from making the same mistakes twice. Bad publicity is a reminder that not all products and services – and ethics – are created equally and this bears no relation to the amount of infamy they occupy in our collective consciousness: lest we forget.

Men and women, I should say

How did people emigrate before the web? With difficulty, surely. It’s been useful for almost every step and some of our move would have been impossible I feel without it, at least in the time we had. Of course, underpinning all the technology were two people filling boxes, completing forms, driving miles and pulling the levers and pressing the buttons. But the web has been outstandingly useful for several particular reasons. Here’s a quick fire list in no particular order – I’m certain I’ve left some things out – but like Kane’s gang (as if you’ve forgotten!) it’s what we’ve got:

Interviewed for job online. Without Jennie getting a job for the UN none of this would have happened. In her application she sent all documents online; underwent a test that was performed over the net; was interviewed via web-based video conferencing; and finally sent the medical / admin documents in PDF form to Kuala Lumpar for processing.

Google Docs for a to-do/resources list. This was invaluable and still is. It’s not as complex as something like specific to-do collaborative tools like RemembertheMilk, but it worked beautifully. Simple crossing things out with strikethrough was enough to say they’ve been done. We also collected resources, figures, phone numbers and so on here and worked on independently and together.

Synchronising weblinks using FoxMarks. We independently found various links as we browsed the web, hungry for a fix on our new country. I set up all computers with the favourites tool Foxmarks, regardless of operating system, to synchronise the links we dropped into a ‘Moving on’ folder in our browser. Worked well when Google Docs (eventually) became swamped. Sometimes we used Delicious, but not as often as I thought we would.

Sign-up service for moving. There are a handful of agencies online who make it easier to move by you entering some details and they doing some work for you, like letting the gas company know you need a meter reading and so on. We used these with partial success – sometimes the manual way is best.

Royal Mail’s redirection service. We have mail redirected and using this service meant we didn’t need to trundle down to the post office and take our identity documents, they check details online. We’d need the legs for the thousands of times we climbed the ladder to the loft to pack its contents.

Skype telephony. We bought a UK online number, so our friends and family in the UK would only need to call a local (to them) phone number. Skype has worked really well so far and since we’re not settled for a few months, goes where we go. It also works nicely on my iPhone, which saves us a fortune. We were able to stay in touch with our regi (estate agent) easily and without incurring further mobile phone costs.

Keeping the social network alive. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, this blog – all are things we use to share our experiences here and keep in contact with others. This is important when you’re away from home, and I’ve found it really useful to have some sense of continuity in terms of who I’m speaking with (especially when discussing the cricket, which is only available online here via the BBC’s wonderful TMS – this feels like I’ve never left!).

Transferring money. We now have to work with several currencies – US dollar, Swiss francs, Euro and GB sterling – and so being able to transfer them quickly online (and often without charge) helped us enormously. Of course, this isn’t just something you need when you move. What’s more, currency conversion rates online are always up-to-date.

Checking in online when flying. You’ve used this already, maybe, but printing out a boarding pass for flying seems novel still, and helped get things going when we were a rush: Jennie flew to Geneva and back the same day to secure our place in France.

Google chat. Sometimes email isn’t enough, and you need to make decisions through synchronous discussion. Google’s online chat, via GoogleMail, was vital for the hundreds of discussions we had when not together.

Removal quotes online. You enter your details and you get quotes from multiple removal companies. This helps get the best price of course, and is also a necessary part of claiming for expenses.

Google Maps and Google Earth. Knowing where you’re going to live and its local amenities used to something you needed to find out when you turn up. And although it’s still a thrill to find new restaurants and bars, knowing where the bank or petrol station is not so much fun. What’s more, we used Google Maps to find directions. If only it plugged into…

Satellite navigation. We bought a TomTom One XL, and this has the advantage of connecting to the web and downloading changes that users have made to the maps. In short, it corrects the errors that sat navs are annoyingly prone to, especially in areas under construction. Worked like a dream, although I wouldn’t say that it’s perfect even now.

It has helped me learn a new language. There is an embarrassment of excellent online resources for learning French. Some of the best are About.com‘s guide (with the inaptly named – for a grammarian at least – Laura Lawless); and the BBC comes up trumps again. Although not an online app per se, Genius (for the Mac, free download) helped with remembering verbs.

The web helped us find a place to live. We searched a variety of sites to find somewhere temporary in Geneva, and later, more permanent in France. In the case of the temporary accommodation, the website came with an interactive 3D tour of the apartment. Whilst this is pretty advanced I admit, all the websites we used to find a home had pictures. The difference was that we could save time and money using this process.

Hi-resolution floor plans. Houses in many European countries – alas, but excluding the UK it seems – come with detailed architectural plans, even those you just plan to rent. They locate plug sockets, light switches and so on and give precise details of every measurement both interior and exterior. Not sure if your sofa is going to fit? The plans will help tell you. These took seconds to send over email and illustrate how the communication between people in different countries is made so much easier.

Shopping. Inevitably we had to buy several things, oddments which we’d never got before or those things we needed to replace and pack. Ikea figured heavily in equipping our new place. Their website – intuitive, well-organised and with clear illustrations, it’s a good example of how we saved hours browsing online rather than visiting stores. What’s more, it provides real-time stock levels, is an example of how you can use the web to plan your deliveries or visits.

Freecycle. Even if you’re moving up the road you’ll still have a lot of stuff you’ll want to recycle. We used Freecycle online to invite people to collect some of the stuff we didn’t need or couldn’t find room for. They came in the night and collected, as if whisked away by recycling fairies, without us even knowing.

It would be no surprise to learn that one of the first things we did in Geneva was buy a 3G USB dongle to get us online (expensive but very fast).

Do you only use these things when emigrating? No, we use them now for a variety of reasons. It’s only together that they make sense as vital tools for moving country. Did we still print stuff out? Sure we did. Somewhere we’ve got a file with print outs of architectural plans, photos and the like. But this was as much as habit and security than anything: some lay untouched and unread. Is there anything I’ve missed – I expect so – even as I write I think of all the music and podcasts I’ve downloaded, some of which are about Geneva, or local news programmes and such. And booking tickets and… well, all those things we use the web for all of the time.

Now, if the BBC can get iPlayer available outside of the UK I’d pay the licence fee happily…

If you haven’t already seen the speech of Daniel Hannan – a hitherto little-known Conversative MEP – attacking Gordon Brown’s economic regeneration policy (and more), you’re in for a treat. It’s a wonderful piece of rhetoric, whether you support Hannan and the growing list of Brown’s detractors, or the Labour Government, or neither. Even Gordon Brown laughed – a nervous laugh, I think, since it’s deadly serious – and every effective. It earned its applause. Here it is.

There are two notable things about Daniel Hannan’s speech. The first is that it wasn’t picked up by the mainstream media in the UK – that is, the news channels and cultural affairs programmes – until it became an internet phenomenon on YouTube. It’s certainly not the first time this has happened, but it’s a major development because the mass media is now reporting on an internet meme. The net got their first. Long live the net.

The second point is that its success largely depends on creating an extended metaphor which is, unlike many of the attempts made by the mainstream media to describe the economic crisis, is successful. Its success depends upon the application of a conventional trope – the idea of failure as represented by a sinking ship – but skewed to address the particularities of this sinking ship – that is, the UK economy.

It’s so inventive, in fact, that it was most likely prepared for the occasion. This is at odds with the delivery, which seems natural and restrained. If it sounds churlish to suggest it was written and therefore of lesser value, then this is not the intention. Rather, I mean the very opposite: it is carefully hewn yet passionately delivered, artificial – as it were – and perfectly natural. (I’m assuming here, I don’t know for sure.)

There is a touch of the ad hominem about it – a last bastion of the fraud, the uncertain – and would appeal to those who instinctively find Brown wooden at the best of times. But after watching Hannan’s attack on Brown in the context of the division in Europe over whether it’s right to spend your way out of a recession, it feels like it has distilled a moment in the history of attempting to overcome what threatens to be a damaging economic slump.