Tim Vine – Ventriloquist

This is fantastic:

One day I'll get around to seeing Tim Vine live :)

Greased Lightning Showroom Shine

I ran out of Greased Lightning's Showroom Shine some months ago and I as refuse to pay full price for it (£20 a bottle) I've been waiting to catch it on the Ideal World channel where they always have it on special offer - the other day I managed to catch it on the TV so off to their website I went and placed my order.

I've not washed my car (or what I really mean is I haven't taken it through a car wash) since the end of last year so the only way the muck has washed off my car is from any rain we've had!

I woke up early this morning and there was a clear blue sky with the sun shining down so I decided to grab my Greased Lightning Showroom Shine and micro-fibre cloths and head off outside to wash my car.

I purchased two packages from Ideal World - 1 triple pack of Showroom Shine and 1 box containing one bottle of Showroom Shine, one bottle of Stain Shifter and one bottle of One Minute Wheels.

Here are a few photos that I took of my car before I washed it:

 

I decided to clean the wheels first using the One Minute Wheels bottle. All you have to do is spray the wheel with the solution and then use a wheel brush to turn it in to a bit of a lather. You then need to rinse it with water and Hey Presto nice and clean wheels!

I was pleasantly surprised with the One Minute Wheels product and it brought the wheels up very nicely as you can see from the before and after photos (above and below).

I then grabbed a couple of micro-fibre cloths (one for cleaning and one for buffing) along with a bottle of Showroom Shine and began to clean my car.

As you'll see from the 'After' photos below it wasn't long before my car was sparkling in the sun once again!

 

One of the good things about using Showroom Shine is that it puts on a protective coating so the next time you clean your car it's a lot quicker as the grime/much is on the protective coating rather than your cars paintwork itself.

Once again, Greased Lightning's Showroom Shine has done a fantastic job on my car and I would recommend this product to anyone who wants to quickly and easily clean/wash their car and end up with a fantastic looking shiny car!

Another Internet Dot Com Bubble About To Burst?

Along came MySpace, Bebo & Facebook. Out of the three FaceBook became the most popular and has millions of users worldwide and it makes it's money from the adverts shown on the site that are taylor made to their advertisers requirements - i.e. if an advertiser wants their adverts to be viewed by males aged between 25 and 35 then FaceBook can facilitate that request.

BeBo and MySpace are still around but have developed in to a niche market whereas FaceBook is popular to the masses.

Then along came Twitter. It started with them wanting you to 'tweet' about every single thing you were doing. Lots of people joined but soon got fed up with the mundane tweets. Luckily they made a point of letting people know about how mundane and uninteresting their tweets were and things began to change.

 

Twitter transformed in to haven for famous people tweeting about the interesting things they are getting up to and now it's more about following interesting people rather than tweeting about absolutely everything you do.

More recently the likes of FourSquare came along which I tried for a few months and just didn't get the point of the whole thing. I cant see what use it was to me or how they were going to make any money - at least twitter is now getting some money with advertisers being able to add a paid-for result to the words that are trending.

DailyBooth is another social networking site that has jumped on the Social Networking band-wagon and is basically twitter with photos instead of tweets.

Then there's the Social Network for business people to use, LinkedIn - this has recently floated on the stock markets for millions of dollars so how long before some others follow? It's only a matter of time and when they do, that's when the bubble will start to get bigger and bigger until finally it bursts.

The Goss, The Pics, The Biz, The News of the World

Photo credit: News International/PA Wire.

It hasn't hit the shops yet and already you can 'pre-order' a copy on eBay for around £5.50 a copy!

After 168 years this iconic newspaper is no more with the last ever edition going on sale tomorrow.

It's the best selling Sunday newspaper in the UK with a current readership of around 2.6 million readers which is more than double the next 'red top' Sunday paper.

Gone are the World Exclusives that have made it famous throughout the UK - I guess the pressure of getting bigger and better Exclusives got so great that they not only crossed the line but kept on going until it was too late to go back and after tomorrow they will be no more.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Wernham Hogg Paper Company

Ten years ago the Wernham Hogg Paper Company hit the headlines as the (now worldwide phenomenon) Gervais and Merchant mocumentary sit-com was first broadcast by the BBC where we became a fly on the wall in The Office following David Brent and his staff in their day-to-day business of paper.

I have to admit that I only managed to watch a few minutes of the first episode and couldn't watch any more a few years to come - not because it wasn't any good, but because I had previously worked for someone who not only looked like Brent but was exactly like Brent in so many ways and a whole lot worse so it brought back bad memories!

The person I worked with previously was so much of a bad manager that most of the staff knew him as Captain Nob-Shite as he was a Nob that talked shite and although he was only a deputy, deputy manager he thought he knew what he was doing and was under the misapprehension that he was in charge (hence the Captain title). He was the sort of salesperson who knew nothing about anything but didn't stop him from selling anything as he'd just make stuff up - the amount of refunds from people who when they got home realised he was talking shite was unbelievable.

Finally I got in to the right frame of mind as was able to watch The Office and couldn't help but laugh at the cringeworthy moments and fully emphasise with the staff that worked there!

I've not seen the US version as it will probably end up being 21 episodes per season and 51 seasons long - they seem to drag everything out far too long. Just like the classic sit-com Fawlty Towers, The Office is 2 series long which left us wanting more - better to finish at the top than half-way down the other side.

Secret Agents Raid Apple Artists Home

Yes, you read that right!

USA Secret Agents have raided an 'artists' home after they found out that they had installed software on the laptops in their local Apple store that every 60 seconds took a photo using the built-in webcam and if the software detected a face it was uploaded on to the internet!

The 'artist' thought it was OK to do this as they had sought the permission from a security guard...

Apple & Microsoft Consortium Buy Patents

My first ever phone was a Nortel phone and the feature that made it stand out from the crowd at the time was the fact that it had voice-activated dialling and it was the only one at the time to have such a thing so I snapped it up!

The fact that no one I knew had a mobile phone was neither here or there! But if they did get one then I could call them by simply pressing one butting and saying their name (along with keeping my fingers crossed it would work) I could make a phone call to them!

Patent wars are becoming more common place these days and are highly sort after pieces of intellectual property. In my opinion the constant legal action taken by one company to another who then in return dig up a patent that the the other company has infringed, or worse still buys a patent from another company that the original company has infringed just so they can counter-sue them is not only daft but is stifling innovation.

So it is very refreshing to see that Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Ericsson, EMC and Sony have joined together in the form of a consortium which paid $4.5bn for around 6,000 patents and patent applications.

The fact that a consortium now owns these patents rather than an individual company can only be a good thing for the industry as a whole as (hopefully) there will be less legal bickering and more innovative and fantastic products for the general public to enjoy!

TJ Hughes In Administration

Another UK company has just gone in to administration leaving around 4,000 people at risk of losing their jobs.

Founded by Thomas Hughes in 1912, just like the failed Woolworths chain - TJ Hughes is just 1 year away from celebrating its 100th year in retailing.

No doubt in the next few weeks there will lots of bargains to have as the Administrators are likely to try an liquidate as much stock as possible in the shortest amount of time.