The Apprentice is the future of TV

I have watched the apprentice, as many of us have, for several seasons now.  Last week brought a whole new dimension to the experience.  At the start of the programme,  the BBC encouraged me to play along with the Apprentice Predictor.,  This allowed me to vote at any time on who I thought would be fired, to change my vote at any point, but most importantly, to see how everyone else was voting at any one time.  A careless or mindless comment, and their popularity for being the next to be fired could shoot up by 10 or 20%.  You can instantaneously see whether you agree or disagree with the rest of the world.  It really did make the programme much more entertaining and engaging.

 And I see that Samsung is already adding in Twitter to its new range of TVs.   Services like Joost already allow you to share your viewing experiences online, and this is one more step to sharing your TV viewing with your friends without having them clutter your lounge and empty your fridge of beers.  TV is adapting to social media, and potentially making the experience much more compelling and complete.

Lorraine next for the chop!

Business cards and twitter addresses

Business cards in today's digital age seem so anachronistic, and yet there is still a warmth in the reality of the protocol of exchanging business cards which just wouldnt be the same if you merely touch phones or some such digital equivalent.  And yet, business cards still need to move with the times.  Having taken on a new role, I am getting new cards and the old ones seem a bit out of date really.  Web address and email are of course entirely appropriate ways of enabling direct contact, but that hardly covers the multitude of channels that have now exploded as ways of following, networking or sharing a future relationship.  And yet, where do you draw the line. 

First up seems to add a @twitter address.  How do you format this though?  Just @rosstmw?  or www.twitter.com/rosstmw? or Twitter: @rosstmw? or variants such as Follow me @rosstmw?  Next up would then be the blog address, but for this blog, I would need an extension to my busines card.  Linkedin profile?  Seems sensible, but then you can find the linkedin address from the email address, so that doesnt really seem as essential.

And then the more extreme versions: flickr accounts, plaxo, youtube, delicious.  What about your ebay store page even?

 I can already see examples of cards where the whole of the back is taken up with contact suggestions.  At the end of the day though, while all of these are potentially very worthy, do you really need to advertise all these to people the first time you meet? Maybe a better way is for all the elements of your digital life to link together.  The best example I have come across is this, the Google Me business card, though unfortunately, it will never work for me!