Martin, a robotics researcher friend of mine, showed me this video at the weekend:

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

It certainly got us talking about where augmented reality may be headed, particularly for advertising. While the video is perhaps a little over exaggerated, the technology is rapidly getting there. Take, for example, the new augmented-reality mapping from Microsoft:

Martin, a robotics researcher friend of mine, showed me this video at the weekend:

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

It certainly got us talking about where augmented reality may be headed, particularly for advertising. While the video is perhaps a little over exaggerated, the technology is rapidly getting there. Take, for example, the new augmented-reality mapping from Microsoft:

Nice little stunt in the street outside Sony HQ in Great Marlborough Street - Watchdog has a van parked up full of engineers who are repairing PlayStations for free to bring attention to Sony's charging policy.

This kind of consumer direct action reminds me of a Milton Jones' joke - available I believe on a nice shiny DVD just in time for Christmas. 

"I went to our local train station and they told me 'There's a bus replacement service running today.'  So I gave them a tin of pineapple rings.  'What's this?'  'It's my money replacement service.'

Speaking as someone whose last meal was the all-you-can-eat buffet at Pizza Hut in Victoria, Diana Janicki's blog Growling Belly is a glimpse into a magical fairytale land where food is lovingly prepared and eaten with proper relish (and where relish does not equal bacon bits).

As I salivated over the "foolproof" recipe for pavlova with fresh summer berries I did worry that even my pizza-enhanced frame might struggle with the combined calorie load of meringue, whipping cream and sugar.

And astonishingly Google's content matching algorithm agrees with me - dropping in a banner for a weight-loss product into the recipe.

Hmmm.  Good thinking Google!

Of course if you really did want to lose weight, in the words of the old Irish joke, you wouldn't want to be starting from here!

Speaking as someone whose last meal was a the all-you-can-eat buffet at the Pizza Hut in Victoria, Diana Janicki’s blog Growling Belly is a glimpse into a magical fairytale land where food is lovingly prepared and eaten with proper relish (and where relish does not equal bacon bits).

As I salivated over the “foolproof” recipe for pavlova with fresh summer berries I did worry that even my pizza-enhanced frame might struggle with the combined calorie load of meringue, whipping cream and sugar.

And astonishingly Google’s content matching algorithm agrees with me – dropping in a banner for a weight-loss product into the recipe.

Hmmm.  Good thinking Google!

Of course if you really did want to lose weight, in the words of the old Irish joke, you wouldn’t want to be starting from here!

Marketing has a story about an attempt in the United States to rebrand swine flu.  Swine flu is hitting consumption of pork products (not that you can really catch flu from a sausage) so officials are trying to persuade us to talk instead about the ‘2009 H1N1 virus’.

Well good luck with that.

The marketing industry has a long history of using cuddly animals to bring a brand to life. In fact the ITV Digital Monkey famously proved more durable than the brand and has moved on to promote PG Tips.

So what chance that we can forget about pigs and think about a row of numbers instead?  Pretty slim I would think.  They would be better off trying to associate the flu virus with another even cuter small animal – perhaps the ubiquitous meerkat could be a useful fall guy?

Or how about ‘piglet flu’?  Sounds much friendlier, and it already has its own viral!

Ryanair has had quite a week, what with their ‘lunatic bloggers’ outburst and now the announcement on BBC Breakfast News by their chief executive Michael O’Leary that they are considering charging passengers to use the toilet while flying.

Those stories currently rank on the first page for a search for ‘Ryanair’ on google.co.uk.  One useful side effect of Ryanair’s robust PR strategy is that this video in which O’Leary promised ‘beds and blow jobs’ in business class on Ryanair has now dropped off the first page of Google’s search results.  Brilliant stuff…

Update: got to love this Ryanair spoof that started circulating after the “£1 a pee” news.

Still no sign of Richard Madeley or Maggie Philbin in spite of their first-rate twittering. Ditto Andy Murray – perhaps those rude things he said about England are coming back to haunt him.

On the chart itself, the unthinkable has happened: Coldplay has knocked Jonathan Ross into third position.  If they can sustain this rate of growth, they could be bigger than Stephen Fry, which would probably require a rewriting of the laws of physics.

I had a quick drink last night with my old friend Bo Hellberg, who has just been let go by Ogilvy Interactive where he was creative director.

Bo and I have a bit of history when it comes to the depressing subject of redundancy – in fact back in 2001 we were both made redundant in the same meeting by a rather busy manager.

Bo mentioned a speech that Rory Sutherland gave last year which is particularly relevant to the times we are going through.  And here, thanks to the miracle of YouTube, is Rory on the enticing subject of ‘If WPP owned a strip bar’:

Not – just to clear up any confusion – that I think that Bo has a great future as a male stripper!  But if it comes to it, best of luck mate!

After four years of English at University, I ended up concluding that at the end of the day a good novel was one you like, and a bad novel was one you don’t. 

Subjectivity wins every time.

And I feel the same about the current crop of car insurance ads being inflicted on us.  I love Iggy Pop, but I find the Swiftcover commercials frankly disturbing. 

Yet weirder still is the Compare the Meerkat campaign for – of course – Compare the Market.  The latest TV slot shows that this is a campaign with legs, albeit slightly short, stubby ones.  I think the ads are genuinely funny and a brave step forward for an insurance aggregator.

What’s the difference?  Meerkat is charming.  Iggy is a sweaty, drug-induced nightmare.  But at the end of the day, like literature, I think it might be simply down to personal taste.