The other day I asked my Twitter followers for their favourite blogs. I wasn’t looking for ‘industry blogs’ – its the Xmas holiday after all and I’m sure we’re all enjoying a break from work. I wanted pure awesomeness and thankfully, the Tweeple came through. Here are some of the best recommendations for holiday reading:

Paul Daniels’ Ebay Transactions An in-depth look at the eBay trading of celebrity magician, Paul Daniels. Each auction is closely followed with deadpan commentary and we get an insight into the private online life of one of Britain’s best loved entertainers. Pure genius. Thanks @Carpsio

Clublife Follows the nightly experiences of a New York bouncer. Full of wit and an almost sympathetic look at the junkies and asshats who make his life difficult. Thanks @Stuartpturner

Fun With Opinions A blog about blogging, or ‘metablog’ if you will. It picks apart our everyday conceptions and asks the questions most people don’t even think about. Thanks @arickmann

LOL god Religion can get kinda dull, right? Here’s a whole load of religion fun, which reminds us that we shouldn’t take god too seriously. Thanks @onewild

Photoshop Disasters A collection of hilarious…you’ve guessed it, photoshop disasters from around the world. This one’s from me

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We don’t all live in London. This may come as a surprise, but it’s true. Sometimes 200 miles is a bit too far to travel for a conference, especially when your boss turns white at the very mention of paying for a hotel and as for the £XXX entry fee itself, well, he’s just run off to the bathroom clutching at his stomach.

Outside the M25 we’re a bit more down to earth. Leeds’ newest and bestest internet conference, Think Visibility, organised by Mr. TheHodge, costs just £30 and speakers include:

Dave Naylor
Al Carlton
Jamie Harrop
Dirk Ginader
Tim Nash
Tom Smith
Katie Lips
Richard Hamer
Dan Lynch
Patrick Altoft
Tom Critchlow
Kieron Donoghue
Guy Redwood
Rob Lee
Peter Cooper

If that’s not enough to have you weeing yourself in excitement, there are nibbles and a party afterwards.

If you don’t know where Old Broadcasting House is, look on a map. See you there!

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I’ve never really been on the review site Ciao before, but some Googling related to my recent obsession brought it up as the third result. I can only surmise that Ciao don’t moderate contributions.

This is a review of ChuckleVision by the user, ShemalesWalkAmongUs. Enjoy…

Full Review

Two men, one destiny and one married man. This is the legend of the Chuckle brothers, the men who inspired Laurel and Hardy and, to a lesser extent, Queen.

Born in 1908 and 1912 respectively, Barry and Paul Chuckle are best known these days as TV’s premier entertainers, having appeared in such time honoured epics as ‘Chuckle Vision’, ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ and, more famously, the global sensation ‘The Male G-Spot’. We’re here today, however, to celebrate just one of these achievements. Chuckle Vision, a national instituiton and the longest running TV show of all time. It’s been translated into 48 languages and is said to be shown somewhere at any given time of day or night.

Chucklevision was the brainchild of Alfred Hitchcock and was originally written with Sydney Poitier in mind. After a successful 25 year run known as the ‘golden streak’, Sydney left the top spot to persue other projects and allow fresh talent to saunter in. After a successful audition in which Alfred was brought to tears, Paul and Barry were given the job. 1948 never looked so pretty. The show went from strength to strength and included such daring storylines such as the 1958 Oscar winning episode where Barry Chuckle had explicit (some might say unnecessarily hardcore) sex with a black man. This 98 minute live extravaganza managed to pull in an impressive 74 million viewers world wide.

Sadly the 1958 spectacular was the height of their success for now as their most controversial moment was a step too far. In 1968 the brothers went to Vietnam to entertain the troops. Unfortunately their career was stopped for the time when they not only entertained the wrong troops but they chose that moment to showcase their latest show ‘The human toilet’. In theory this was comedy gold but in practise having a 57 stone morbidly obese man sit on the frail face of Paul backfired spectaularly. After three months of extensive facial reconstructive surgery (which achieved mixed results), the Chuckle Brothers were spectularly charged with crimes against humanity and sentenced to 74 years in prison. Chucklevision, as we knew it was dead.

In 1985 they were released and made a Lazarus like come back, appearing on Michael Parkinson’s show. Unfortunately, the show was interrupted when Barry fell into an instant unexplainable coma. Allegations persisted of heroin and cocaine abuse and the Chucklevision project was haunted by repeated homosexual allegations.

With Barry critically ill in hospital, Paul headed for Hollywood where he starred in the cult classic ‘Son of deep throat’. Sadly, a stunt backfired and Paul’s windpipe was cruelly crushed and he was unable to speak for two years.

In 1992, a Jesus like resurrection from Barry saw the Chucklevision project given the kiss of life. This new incarnation was helped along by some familiar faces such a young Ghandi, William Shatner and the pope. Finally back in the lime light the brothers took the time to write their famous autobiography ‘A life in pictures’. It’s still a best seller, having shifted in excess of 700 million volumes.

Things were going well until, in 2001, allegations of Paul having an affair with a married man hit the newspapers. Cruel pictures and the nickname ‘the golden shower’ forced Paul to go into hiding for two years. Barry carried the torch, but Chucklevision felt the loss of the leading man during this period as audiences plummeted to all time lows of only 10 million. Something drastic had to be done…. and it was.
In 2004 a star studded cast, including Art Attack’s Niel Buchanan and Nelson Mandela, welcomed the brothers back out of the darkness. The show was an instant global success. The brothers continue today to continue to wow audiences the world over and the upcoming movie about their lives featuring Hugh Jackman and John Candy is tipped for the top. We wish Paul and Barry all the luck and thank them for putting Britain on the map.

Chucklevision has been with us since the beginning and we owe these men a huge debt of gratitude. Many years and many seasons have passed but the legend that is Chucklevision lives on. It is art, it is poetry, it is Chucklevision.

Little Known Facts:
Paul is a devout Muslim.
Most expensive episode cost £50,000 in 1961 which, in today’s money, is about £13,000,000.
Barry famously filmed a season while afflicted with Malaria.
Paul was born without legs but has been in denial about it ever since.
Paul and Barry aren’t actually brothers, they are father and son.
For one season, Mr. T filled in for Barry Chuckle and nobody realised, not even Paul Chuckle.

List of special cameos:
Keanu Reeves, who made his TV debut in 1959 on this show.
Elton John
Joseph Stalin, in rare TV appearance
Steven Spielberg
‘Nasty’ Nick Bateman from Big Brother 1

Famous storylines:
Paul in space (1958)
Barry and the law suit (1960)
Paul and the accident with the chocolate log (1967)
The jail special (1983)
Sex education video #1 (1988)
Paul and Barry vs. AIDS (1992)
Chuckle your way to a better body (1997)
The disadvantages of being gay (1998)
X-Men (2000)

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I love Google Insights. It tells me things like Barry Chuckle is more popular than Paul Chuckle, and that Strictly Come Dancing is more important to the Great British Public than the economic crisis.

Aside from the half hour I wasted today playing with it, what else is Insights good for?

The comparison feature obviously has its uses – X-Factor producers will be glad to know they get far more searches than Strictly for example. It’s the search trends over time that really fascinate me however…not just to learn what’s becoming popular, but to compare what was popular in the past and why.

Let’s take a look at London 2012. Back in 2005 Lord Coe and his friends were organising their bid and winning the contract and we can see a huge peak on the trends graph. In 2006 no-one cared, but the Olympics were a point of interest again in 2007, apparently when the horrendous logo was unveiled.

Insights really demonstrates how search behaviour follows offline events and I think search marketers should take note. Rising trends, the next big thing, the hot news story…it’s all reflected in the graph. If you keep an eye on current events you can probably guess what’s going to hit Google next – what you do with that information is up to you. Building a site all about the impending Olympics or deciding to fire Paul Chuckle…we’ve got all the justification we need.

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I found something disturbing in Google’s search suggest feature today:

Is this such a popular phrase that it’s made it into Google’s database? Is Barry Chuckle indeed dead? All I know is, the nation cares.

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Patrick over at Blogstorm has posted about Interflora suing M&S over brand bidding. Apparently Marks & Spencer were bidding on the keyword ‘interflora’ and the flower company took exception. Now, according to Google it’s OK to bid on someone else’s brand, but UK courts could take a different view – after all, there are all sorts of laws safeguarding people’s trademarks and the implications of keyword advertising are still being explored.

I really wish I’d taken a screenshot because it looks like they’ve stopped, but a few days ago Purenet were bidding on the keyword ’9xb’ which, as you know if you’ve read my about page, is the company I work for. Now, to get them to stop presumably we’d have to jump through lots of legal hoops to prove 9xb was a trademark and Purenet were damaging us by bidding on it. Personally I’d rather just create our own advert saying “Accept No Imitations, There Is Only One 9xb”…but that’s just me.

People bid on people’s brand names all the time and it’s only occasional that it goes to court. It will be interesting to see what happens in the M&S case, but I think there’s a wider issue to explore – an issue to do with language and the internet in general.

Firstly, information is so widely (and easily) available that your trademark isn’t what protects you – it’s your reputation. If you search for Interflora and all you see is a load of news stories about them suing someone, it won’t matter how much they’ve kept their brand name to themselves. In an online environment you will never have full control over your brand name so you should concentrate on making your company image as positive as possible so other people mention you in a positive light.

Secondly, and reinforcing the fact that your brand name is never under your control, language evolves. Remember when ‘hoover’ referred to a brand and not just an appliance? (If you do you’re older than me!) Several brand names have fallen into common usage just because of their popularity. Google in fact is one of them – I’ve lost count of the American films I’ve seen where a character “googled” something (question – is this product placement for the digital age?).

Google’s stance is that imitation is the best form of flattery. If you google something, you’re finding it on Google and that can only be a good thing. A rival company bidding on your key term may not be a perfect parallel but I see similarities – your brand name is being used in a way that’s outside your control. Do you take drastic action and sue/launch a brand awareness campaign, or do you do a Google and let your company image evolve naturally?

My opinion? If someone’s bidding on your brand name, bid higher than them. If someone’s talking about you, talk back. You can’t hide behind a trademark all the time.

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I’ve been thinking of doing a post about what I call “grey-area paid links” for some time, so when John of Eggrage wrote a post yesterday slamming Chris Garrett for blogging about a Supercar driving day my interest was piqued. Now, first of all let me say that there’s been a lot of…um… “rage” flying about because of this (but no eggs for some reason) and I get the feeling that by writing about this I might be opening myself up for some of it. But whatever, it’s a hot topic so here goes.

I think the point of John’s post was to say that he doesn’t agree with bloggers using their blogs to promote things outside of their ‘genre’. In his book it’s tantamount to spam. So Chris Garrett ‘ruined’ his internet marketing blog, because he wrote a post about a Supercar day and linked to the supplier, Supercars having nothing whatsoever to do with internet marketing. John goes on to say that it’s hypocrisy because Chris and the other bloggers who wrote about the Supercar day preach good SEO practice and then create ‘spam’ on their own blogs.

So far so good. John’s angry that these bloggers got something for free and then wrote about it and of course there’s an argument to say that he’s right. After all, this is a prime example of my grey-area paid links. If someone sends you a free product and you write a review of it and link to the supplier, is that a paid link? Well sort-of, yes! You’ve been given an incentive after all!

On the other hand, bloggers write about stuff all the time. My mum wrote a book for example and I did a post about it. If she sold it online I’d have linked to her, and yes I had an incentive to write that post (she gave me a book). Pretty much everyone with a blog has written about a product or service, but John seems to be arguing that it’s only OK if you didn’t get it for free. Otherwise it’s just spam.

The trouble is, this is a HUGE grey area. In the case of the Supercar day, it was a genuinely great experience and of course people wanted to blog about it! The same goes for loads of other products that bloggers get. Bloggers also totally pan things if they don’t like them – if someone sends you a free camera and you write a post saying “it’s shit”, would you still be guilty of paid linking? John makes the point that he hates ‘paid positive reviews’ whether they’re online or in magazines or whatever. Well, what if the review is negative but you still get paid?

I think that bloggers have been writing about stuff for years, and linking to stuff for years, and in the world of marketing sending out products and getting user feedback on blogs is an established technique. If the reviews are good then that’s great, and if they’re bad then you know you have to work on your offering. The fact that you have to send something out to get a review in the first place just goes to show that people won’t do something for nothing. So when John accuses the bloggers of arranging a free day out so that a client would get some links…well, yes that was the end result but as Patrick pointed out in the comments, the bloggers did what bloggers do and blogged about their experience. Grey area!!

The trouble with the whole Eggrage post is that it pretty much started out as a personal attack on Chris Garrett. Then when people inevitably started commenting, John used phrases like “Patrick, you are clearly just a pathological liar” and “You are what I like to refer to as a “scumbag”” and my personal favourite “I am flattered that you girls are calling each other to come help”.

Dude, girls rule.

Any point John was trying to make was overshadowed by the militant way he went about it. Dave Naylor wrote his own reply which has been described by John as nasty and libelous…which sounds a little like pot-calling-kettle to me.

To wrap this all up, I have to say that John’s managed to create a lot of interest in his blog thanks to this fiasco and if that was the motivation then bravo. As I said above though, this could have been a good debate about bloggers being paid for links…but it’s not. It’s just a big mess, and the author of Eggrage has come out with egg on his face.

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