The Megaphone : A Debate Blog

Dear Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple Computers Inc.),
You and your team of trusty employees are pretty good at designing stuff, so I have a challenge for you. The conventional supermarket trolley still seems to be the worst designed thing in the universe ever. You have already made mp3 players work really well, so why not stop improving them further and make a supermarket trolley that does all of these things:

• Has all 4 wheels on the ground at the same time
• Rolls along silently, and does not sound like the clean, smooth supermarket floor is made of gravel
• Goes exactly where you intend it to
• No matter how many times you touch it… it never… ever sends a bolt of lightning coursing through your body

With today’s technology, it really can’t be that difficult.

Dear Jodie Marsh,
I have a strong distaste for you.

Dear Sky,
Please could you sack the wise-guy who came up with the idea to use corporate blue as the colour of making the top and bottom letterbox elements bright, distracting, eye-catching blue… damn you. This is just a way of punishing those of us not fortunate enough to have a new-fangled widescreen TV. I am sending you negative energy as we speak.

EDIT - Since I originally wrote this, the problem has been resolved… wow this blog has got some power, I hadn’t even published the post… Dear Shannyn Sossamon…

Who would you like to write to today and what would you write?

Ok so Radio 2 is running this competition as you can see above it is insane. Basically the listeners of Radio 2 have to vote on a celebrity who is the ultimate icon symbolising all things Radio 2 over the past 40 years… ok, so it’s not that insane, but the 16 finalists are.

Yes these are the finalists, which suggests they beat off some competition to get here. So understandably there are some names in the running who are the epitome of Radio 2 like the man himself Mr Wogan and even the Beatles, they are popular and clean cut and loved by people my parents age.

There are however some bizarre (I reiterate) FINALISTS. My personal favorite is Lara Croft. Yes you heard me right Tomb Raider herself. She is young sexy adventurous, and hasn’t even been alive for a quarter of the time Radio 2 has. Also I doubt if many Radio 2 listeners have heard of her let alone tried playing one of the games. How the hell is she a finalist, is this some sort of joke… I have no idea.

You know the first thing that pops into my head when I see this image… Radio 2. What do you guys think?

So here is the full list of finalists:
Muhammad Ali
The Beatles
David Bowie
Kate Bush
David Cassidy
Lara Croft
Diana, Princess of Wales
Michael Jackson
John Lennon
Nelson Mandela
Sir Paul McCartney
Morrissey
Donny Osmond
Elvis Presley
Sir Cliff Richard
Sir Terry Wogan

My vote is with Lara. Who would you vote for?

So I don’t really have question today.. maybe it could be do you like this game. Anyway my friend told me about this game LocoRoco which you can play here. The controls take a while to get used to… but you don’t have anything better to do so go play, it is ace.

Ok so this post is a double whammy.

Point the first is does anyone actually buy Spam, the meaty treat any more? They did go for a bizzare and widespread TV advertising using the “Spam up” strapline, whatever the hell that means. When I see Spam fritters in the shop, I don’t actually know what the are, but they sound wrong. With every supermarket under the sun offering value luncheon meat, I can’t believe there is a thriving business for Spam, but there is never any talk of them losing profits.

Anyway the other thing I wanted to talk about is spam emails, like this one I received just a few hours ago.

I really can’t see how spam emails are successful. Are there really people out there who purposefully go into their junk folder and think “oooh I wonder if there are any good deals on Viagra today”?

Yet these emails never seem to slowing down, and with a high profile Viagra scam on the news recently it doesn’t seem like they are going to go away. I also heard that Viagra is like the second biggest selling drug in the UK at the moment (I don’t know if that is factual). They are designed so badly too… they are really not enticing.

So does anyone buy stuff off spam? I just can’t imagine anyone buying anything off a spam email. What do you all think of Spam of the email and meaty variety?

EDIT: Maybe if spam emails looked like this people would buy that stuff…

Found at CR

So on Sunday night I watched an ace programme on BBC4 about the dispute over whether or not Steve Ditko is deserving of being called Spiderman’s co-creator.

For those of you who don’t know (shame on you) Stan Lee is the incredibly famous writer and widely acclaimed “creator” of the Spiderman comics and head honcho over at Marvel comics, home of such greats as X-Men, The Incredible Hulk and The Fantastic Four. Steve Ditko is the artist who originally artworked all of the Spiderman comics before walking out after a man row with Stan Lee.

Stan Lee’s Side of the Argument…
It has been said that Stan Lee will “take any credit that hasn’t yet been claimed”, and with this mentality to this day he made no effort to hide the fact he believes he is the sole creator of Spiderman. Stan lee believes that because he came up with the concept of Spiderman he is therefore the creator.

Steve Ditko’s Side of the Argument…
Steve Ditko believes he should be considered the co-creator of Spiderman because the instantly recognisable appearance of Spiderman we all know and love to this day was completely dreamed up by Steve Ditko.

Before Steve’s departure from Marvel Stan did write Steve a letter saying he considered him to be co-creator of Spiderman and said he could show that to whoever he wanted. The letter really was written in a kind of “yeah right” manner and Steve was not happy. Soon after Steve Ditko left Marvel and had a relatively un-successful career writing politically conservative comics which were not popular with rebellious comic reading teens. He also voiced his opinion on the matter with a comic he produced which showed on the left Stan Lee’s contribution to Spiderman which was a paragraph of text and then on the right, his contribution which was a beautifully illustrated image of Spiderman swinging on a web trough the city.

This dispute continues to this day. Although on the Spiderman movies’ opening credits Steve Ditko does get a mention. Most people including the man hmself believe Stan Lee is the creator of Spiderman.

What do you guys think? Does Steve Ditko deserve the title “co-creator of Spiderman” or does that honor belong to the legend that is Stan Lee, as it was after all his idea?

Leave your comments in the box…

I found this while scouring the web. This is a spoof of the logo for Microsoft’s iPod called the Zune.

I guess this explains why the zune is brown.

So to randomly throw in a question, do you think this will be better than the iPod?

It does have a pretty cool sharing facility, but with the new iPod touch out now… wowaweewa… my biased vote goes to Apple.

Today I want to talk about your guilty pleasures.

I have to admit that at the weekend if I am up early enough, I am secretly a massive fan of the OC. It’s not just because I fancy all of the women on it (including the hot moms… don’t tell Sarah), I actually really get into the cheesy acting and impossible story lines. I want the DVD’s, but I couldn’t face the shame when friends came round… explaining owning 5 series of the OC would be tricky.

Ok, so that was a tough confession for me, so I want to know about your guilty pleasures. They don’t have to be TV shows, could be a crappy film or band. So let me know with a comment.

I’m sorry for feeling the urge to show you this, but I feel I must share it with the world. I don’t think it’s a joke… you just have to watch it. I spilled boiling hot coffee on myself laughing at this.

Can anyone explain what it is all about?

If you’re into keeping your blog up to scratch with Web Standards and Mr XHTML Validator over at The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), but every time you embed YouTube and Google video in your blog it really messes everything up… I’m here to help.

So to embed valid XHTML YouTube and Google video in your blog just copy and paste the code below, change the url link to the video you want to show and you’re good to go… you’re welcome.

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="INSERT URL HERE" width="425" height="355">
<param name="movie" value="AND INSERT URL HERE" />
<p><a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer"><img src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif" alt="Get Adobe Flash player" style="border:none;" /></a></p></object>

And it’s as simple as that.