coxy's profile

I'm pretty sure I've posted a bunch of stuff about pop-princess Luke Leighfield before, but what better reason to post again than to promote the release of his new single, a music video tie-in, his upcoming tour of Europe, some spiffing t-shirts that he's selling (though not as good as the limited run of Prince Charles ones I have) and an opportunity for me to give you track of his to download for free.

As you can see, Luke Leighfield is keeping himself busy on his path to potential future pop-stardom - it won't be long before you see him on Top of the Pops. But, before that can happen, you'll need to purchase his single as either a digital download, or a limited edition 7" vinyl disc - preferably both.

The single 'If You Haven't Got Anything To Say' is set to be released on 16th June 2008 via Banquet Records and Luke's own label Got Got Need Records. The 7" comes with an exclusive new demo which hasn't and won't be on any future releases, online or off, and can be pre-ordered / purchased at Banquet Records for just £1.99. Did I happen to mention that the limited pressing is only 500 copies? BUY IT!

For those that want to try before they buy, you can check out the music video for the single at Luke Leighfield's YouTube Channel. It sounds the same as the single, but has motion pictures for you to marvel at. It's in colour and has stereo sound. WATCH IT!

If you're not one for buying singles or haven't got a record player, you can support Luke Leighfield by going to see him play live in person at a venue near you. He's playing all around the UK and Europe at normal gig venues, festivals and people's living rooms - he may even play at your house if you send him a nice message on MySpace - which is also where you can find a comprehensive list of tour dates. LIVE IT!

Where it's not often you'll find me posting about a band's collection of t-shirts (except for maybe Encyclopedia - kings of merchandise), but there are some spiffing tees available with a Luke Leighfield logo on the front. What's more, they verify Luke as being 'pop music' and have a 'Got Got Need Records' logo on the back - there is truely no better way you can look good this summer. WEAR IT!

If you're still reading this shameless act of promotional guff, I thank you and present you with your reward; an MP3 of 'If I Try' - the second track taken from Luke's latest album - which you can buy together with his debut album for just ten of your Great British Pounds. DOWNLOAD IT!

Related Links:
Luke Leighfield on MySpace
Luke Leighfield on Facebook
Luke Leighfield on Virb
Luke Leighfield on Last.fm
Luke Leighfield Official Store
Got Got Need Records Official Store

I was hoping to return home and be able to post an exciting new blog post about two of my favourite companies around; Pixar and Yahoo!, but as the title suggests, the tone is a little different.

For those that don't know already, I was really excited all day today - right from the moment Vikki told me that I had mail from Pixar. Being at work, I couldn't wait to get home, and all day the excitement was building as to what they could've sent me. I was expecting a response to a letter that I'd sent to them, you see. I wrote it little under a month ago and had only sent it off around two weeks back. I don't really want to detail of what was in the letter, because it was quite lengthy and I can't remember, to be honest.

Anyway, so today I got the response. It was described to me as an A4-sized envelope which read 'Please Do Not Bend' on the front. Oh, how I was excited to hear that... which made it all worse when it was a total disappointment. I opened it up as soon as I got home to find a letter inside. Rather than quote it, here's a scan of the letter:

As you can see, it's just a really generic auto-response; this is so offensive and impersonal that it makes me want to get in touch with them and have a rant at them some more. I understand that such a big company like Pixar must receive so much mail each day; but I'd prefer someone to read it and respond with something relevant ten years down the line than be just another crappy letter that's probably just tossed to one side.

Thank you for your letter to Pixar! We apologise for the delayed response, but we have been very busy working on our next feature animation film, "Wall.e", due out next summer.

First of all, I doubt the people in the mail room have been working hard on making the film. If someone's hired to do the mail, they're obviously sat replying to letters like mine all day, not just printing off auto-responders whilst waiting for their 3D model to render! Plus, one of the things I'd queried was why movie releases in the UK are months and months after US releases; and since they could clearly see from my address that I'm not from the US - this means their next feature animation film won't be released Summer 2008, but more like Winter 2008.

We love hearing all the great things you had to say, and we always appreciate any support and feedback we get from our fans.

As a simple token of our appreciation, we hope you like the enclosed photo of "The Incredibles".

What? I said one sentence of praise - the rest was questions I wanted answering about release dates, hi-definition movie releases and other matters I wanted to discuss. And your photo print is alright - I guess it's better than nothing - but I would've preferred a proper response and no silly print-out!! Maybe Pixar should save money in printing out all these photos and use the money they save to hire someone who will write back to fans properly!

Bah, it makes me sick. I took the time to write them a letter, hand-written on decent paper and everything; and their response made me dislike the company's way of handling things like this?! I would've preferred no response and then could pretend that someone has read my letter and taken in what I'd said, but is actually too busy to reply because they're busy on improving the product.

Anyway, rant over - on my blog, at least.

Today I got invited to Yahoo! Mash - this is the new social network from Yahoo! - who previously maintained Yahoo! 360 (nobody seems to really know what's happening with 360 at the minute; whether it's to be scrapped, merged or to be continued). Y! Mash is currently in it's beta stages and somewhat closed off to the general public (an invite-only beta) and I didn't quite know what to expect after hearing very mixed feedback from sources on the web.

Signing up is easy; getting an invite doesn't just send you an invite, it creates a profile page for you to 'claim' should you want to join. Of course, if you decline, you don't get your page and it's deleted - but I think it's nice that it's done this way because you feel that you're already part of the network and it would be rude not to claim and start editing (or 'Mashing').

Editing your profile is also simple, and within seconds I had my page looking different from the default theme by changing a few colours and adding background images in the 'basic' mode of the Profile Editor and whilst I've not looked into more advanced CSS editing, I'm sure the profiles are quite easy to transform should you know CSS.

Your profile consists of modules which are also easy to add, move around (click and drag), edit, remove and steal (add to your profile, from a friends page). Unfortunately, most of the modules are very basic, rss-based modules, or silly 'fun' activities. Upon installing the Last.fm module I admit that I was expecting a bit more than it just to fetch the information and display it as an uninteresting and unformatted list. It would've been nice to see some colour, or even the flash music player available in the Facebook app. However, Yahoo! are set to release a developer API to allow people to create their own modules (akin to that of Facebook's Applications) in future.

One thing that is instantly noticeable (and also very annoying from both a Yahoo! supporter and a Yahoo! user's point of view) is that there is little integration with current Yahoo! services, and what is there is poorly implemented. Bearing in mind that login to Mash is accomplished via your standard Yahoo! ID, a good example of this is the Flickr photos module. Once you add the Flickr photos module, you see a box to enter the URL of your Flickr Photostream appear on your profile. My immediate reaction to this was "hang on, I log into my Flickr account using my Yahoo! ID too; why isn't this automatically linked up?!" I guess in the case of the Flickr module, this is for if you wanted to add the photostream of a particular tag, or a friend's photostream instead? But if that is the case why isn't there a nicely implemented user interface, as if it were a Yahoo! Widget?!

Other good examples of bad (or non-existent) implementation is MyBlogLog which has been dubbed MyMashLog and only shows recent visitors from within the Mash Community as a list of profile names, as opposed to any MyBlogLog member (no account linking, again) regardless of Mash membership and a nice profile picture thumbnail, an absence of an Upcoming or del.icio.us module and also the presence of Google-owned YouTube video modules as opposed to Yahoo! Video or Jumpcut.

Personally, I'd be quite happy to use it as my primary social networking site if they can give me greater and accurate localisation options, it became fully integrated with relevant Yahoo! services (sometimes I wonder if Yahoo! even know what services they own) and also that I can convince a good circle of friends to join. As a social network, I think it has potential - it's also relatively ad-free, which is a bonus. However, it does seem to be missing any sense of evolution over what we've witnessed from sites like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo - the ability to customise a friend's profile for them isn't enough; and then there's also the question of whether the time's right for yet another social networking site.

http://mash.yahoo.com/mattcoxonline

Today has been quite good.
I've not done anything; it's been quite good regardless.

So, Vikki had the whole day off work / uni / her daily women tasks that I don't quite understand yet and so we got to spend it together. I diverted my attention away from the computer (for once, sorry Jon von Opera) and we did couple-like things together; making dinner, going for a walk, going to the shops and winning money on scratchcards.

It all started when Vikki decided she wanted to cut her hair off, and in true woman style, wanted to buy a magazine for hair style influences - or something. Being the kind soul that she is, she bought us a scratch card each when we'd got to the newsagents.

I'd announced that should we win any money that we should split what we've gained and rejoice in harmony. But, when it came to light that Vikki had won a mere one pound, I elected that she keep it all to herself.

Happy enough with the winnings, I'd passed my losing scratchcard to Vikki so she could have a goose and bask in victory; only to reveal that I myself had won sixteen pounds!

After visiting my nephew (who is all better now after he's successfully passed his ill state onto others), we went to collect our money; biding our chances once again on scratchcard riches.

Avoiding the temptations of spending all our winnings on scratchcards, fifteen pounds were held back and just two spent on two more scratchcards. Chances of winning; slim to none.

It must've been our lucky day, however, because Vikki came up trumps again and redeemed herself the cost of the scratchcards; winning another two pounds.

Once again, we spent this money on two more scratchcards and... didn't win. Over all, we (or rather I) came away fifteen pounds better off than before Vikki decided to get her hair cut.

This good start to the month looks to continue as FlameDigital got in touch with me about an interview (thanks, Ian). The company looks quite good; I'll update you on progress after I've spoken to them a bit more.

So, whilst my day offline proved to be quite successful and very enjoyable, I'll have to get back to the interwebs to tend to the creation of a new portfolio to present to FlameDigital... if only I can drag myself away from the increasingly addictive Yahoo! Answers.

Should you find yourself with five or ten minutes to spare, perusing the internet, here's a short but interesting film following a mystery person who got lost in the catacombs of Paris and also a twee flash game called Sprout which may entertain you somewhat.

Are the boys and girls who run YouTube marketing genius', or just lucky bastards?

So, here's what happened;

Some delightfully old British man by the name of geriatric1927 recorded a video using his webcam and uploaded it to YouTube. One of the staff at YouTube made this video a 'featured video' on the frontpage of the website, which seen it gain tens of thousands of hits.

In the usual YouTube style, the video was greeted by a number of people who 'flamed' the old fellow for his video, citing that it's rubbish - or just mocking geriatric1927 in general.

This, in turn, seen a whole range of older folk set up their webcams and get posting their opinions on the original video. Admittidly, it's strange to see an influx of old people on the net - but in this case, well welcomed - because they all came to the defense of geriatric1927.

Not only that, but old geriatric1927 has inspired a whole range of people - young and old - to get creating and posting their video blogs onto YouTube. Some putting their own spin on things, and others just signing up to defend geriatric1927.

I like it when things like this happen; things that not only see everyone go out their way for, or pull together to help others, but also to see things that inspire others and motivate them into doing something they may not have tried otherwise.

As it happens, geriatric1927 has inspired me to create my own video blog. I haven't. But I want to. I just don't have the guts to get up there on camera, in my own house, record myself, then show it to the world - and that's why I have a lot of respect for what geriatric1927 did, and feel sorry that he got so much abuse of people for doing so. I mean, this also made the BBC News.

So, maybe oneday in the near future I'll turn this blog into a video blog. But in the meantime, while you wait, why not watch the 'most famous video blogger of the moment' in his first try: