I don’t know the story behind this but I find it fascinating. I’m pretty sure that the Gallaher Group (tobacco company) didn’t come to this back street in London to post this life size cigarette poster. So who did? Is it street-art? Is it advertising?

Here are some other snaps I took over the same wall….

Here is some other things I’ve been getting up sans alcohol.

I went to world music performance that my friend was in

Working late I decided to take a quick snap of the city

Chris at work is a ‘creative developer’, didn’t dare to ask!

Rather than posting regurgitated crap, often, I’m going to post regurgitated crap and include my own thoughts, less often.

Keep it concise- I am the master at writing 100 words where 5 would be sufficient.

I’m going to re-think my tags as I think a different tag per article defeats the object?! Ok so it’s not that bad but it needs work!

Join the blogosphere! I’ve just joined this fantastic Flickr group called ‘Computers behind blogs’. I’m going to contribute to the blogosphere more regularly.

Check out the computer behind my blog…

Congratulations to all my colleagues at Digit who’ve been working on the new Plan A site for Marks and Spencer! The site went live today and it looks great.

In case you haven’t already heard about Plan A from Marks and Spencer, it’s a 100 point plan that aims to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing the company and the world.

What I’ve listened to…
Earlier this week I treated my colleagues to the enchanting sounds of progressive Celtic band ‘Shooglenifty’. It turns out I was the only one in the studio who appreciates the contemporary dance rhythms, inspiringly infused with traditional Scottish tunes! The response was so bad in fact I’ve earned myself yet another nickname, as ‘Cotton eye Joe Turner’. Not impressed!

In case you want a dose of Shoogle, here’s one the cover of their best album…

Running with the Celtic theme, my flatmate introduced me to the debut album from Amy Mcdonald which varies at times from average to superb!

What I’ve read…
I got into an interesting conversation this week about places and areas that are recognised for innovation and creativity. I argued that in the industrial era in which manufacturing ruled, the industry of cities and towns were based on what assets the region had to offer, raw materials being a very important factor.

Intrigued by how digital creative agencies have formed in clusters particularly in New York and London, I went in search of research into how industries of the ‘new economy’ are forming in different regions. I came across two interesting research reports from Nesta, one called ‘Rural Innovation’ and the other ‘Innovation and the City’.

I nearly finished a book I’ve been reading for months called ‘Eden’ by Tim Smit (highly recommended) and have just started ‘The Richness of Life’ by Stephen Jay Gould.

Not really a highlight, but I woke up on Saturday to read a penalty notice my flat mate had pulled off the windscreen of my car. I’d been clamped and was to be towed away that evening unless I paid the penalty (which was just short of 200 notes). The permit which states that I am a resident of the development and that the parking space is reserved for my car only, must have fallen out of my window onto the floor. Day light robbery!

What I’ve watched-
The highlight of the week had to be the recently released film ‘The Kite Runner’.

I was intrigued about the film after starting but not finishing the book earlier this year, it wasn’t a disappointment! Set in Kabul, Afghanistan, the story is of two friends Amir and Hassan. Amir leaves the country to flee to America after Russians invade Afghanistan and later returns to the country as an adult to face his past. Deeply moving and highly enjoyably despite the difficult subject and tragic story.

Another meme on its way soon!

I read a fantastic article last week arguing that many of the metrics that marketers are using to gauge success are “wrong, inaccurate, incomplete or just plain useless”.

Having spent time reporting metrics to marketing teams myself, I agree that analysing the wrong metrics or even the right metrics wrongly can paint an inaccurate picture of a sites performance. I do think however, that all metrics provide us with some interesting insights and are therefore of value, it’s just depends on the objectives for any given campaign that dictate which metrics are of value to it.

So I don’t think it’s about using certain metrics and not others, it’s about spending time analysing the objectives and drawing out the ‘key performance indicators’ (excuse me for the the buzz word babble), the metrics which most indicate how well a site is performing.

Web analytics seems to be a fast developing area with technology advancing all the time, providing us with more and more metrics to measure and report on. Towards the end of last year Google announced a series of new features for analytics, the first one to launch was ‘Site Search‘ which allows you to track the search facility on your site (assuming you have one). Once you’ve set it up you can track what users are searching for, whether they had to refine their search, where they made their search and where they ended up. This is immensely valuable as it can tell you exactly what users are looking for and whether they found it or not.

The second announcement was a new piece of tracking code, that will be necessary in order to take advantage of future tracking enhancements from Google. This includes a limited beta test of ‘event tracking’ that is currently being developed, and will report on how users are interacting with Ajax, Flash and other multimedia on a site. Click here to read a document Google produced to explain the migration process.

Another limited beta test that has been announced is for tracking outbound links, and will report on links that visitors clicked on your site to direct them to another site. In addition to this Google have released an enhancement that will give us the ability to graph multiple data points.

I’ve just updated my flash player to the latest version (thanks Pete for sending the link) which now includes H.264 standard video support.

I didn’t have a clue what that meant but apparently it allows flash to stream the same standard of video deployed in Blue-Ray and HD-DVD (high definition video players) and the audio is also improved (high efficiency AAC).

Check out Adobe’s flash on site, the quality is pretty amazing!