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If you are, then in my humble opinion there’s only one store for you. Forget Gok Wan,  if you really want to know what’s in this season pop in here and ask Ron.

Cheshire St (just off Brick Lane) London, E2

Sony Ericsson, C902

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Watched Jools Holland last weekend which was an awesome show with Alice in Chains, Steve Martin’s Banjo band, Martha Wainwright and a new three-piece from Manchester who I hadn’t heard of called Delphic. Made a mental note to check ‘em out on the web, did a search and saw this.
Someone at their record label is on the ball.

Just received an email from Be, my broadband provider, to inform me that my payment card had expired. Love the tone of this email…I’m sure approach leads to fewer defaults and churn.

And this tone is reflected across their site. See the examples below. They even seem to have got their customer care outsourcing right. A couple of weeks back I had a technical issue, phoned their support line at 11pm in the evening, got transferred through to what I presume was an Asian outsource centre but the guy was amazing.  Very knowledgeable and fixed things in a jiffy (he even addressed me properly, none of this robot-pigeon English “Hello Mr Chris”).  I could probably save a couple of pounds  by switching to another provider but given the quality of the service and the hassle of doing so, I’m staying with Be.

Fortunate to catch the Onedotzero CityStates09 series of shorts at the BFI a couple of week’s back featuring 10 different interpretations of urban dwelling. Stunning digital cinematography and story telling by a super-talented bunch of movie makers. Unfortunately, a friend couldn’t make the screening so I managed to track down most of the films on the web and put them together here (for him and you). Well worth 30 minutes of your time, although lacking the audio-visual experience of  big screen viewing. BTW – the YouTube films are embedded. For the Vimeo ones you need to follow the links below. Watch them, they’re worth it.

• keith loutit: mardi gras / australia 2009   (one of my favourites)
• Eric Testroete : This is Japan (love the simplicity in how this film is constructed from stills)
• Ace norton: Soundscapes / usa 2009 / 02:43     (love this one)
• nirmal singh dhiman: destination direction / uk 2008 / 01:06
• d-fuse: endless cities_redux / uk 2008 / 04:36
• jeff desom: morgenrot / hauschka  / germany 2009 / 03:36

[please see end of films for full credits]

Still Searching for…Soki So ‘hong kong labyrinths’ Richard Hardy ‘The Eco Commune’,  Shobna Gulati ‘akshay’, Asif Mian ‘rerun’

Checking of the Guardian’s Mega Awards for digital stuff, and noticed the ACDC album promo via Excel.
It’s really rather smart. One of the challenges in the old viral world is how do you get round firewalls which routinely strip out any non-work attachments. Not only does embedding the music within Excel get round this but given most finance departments in London media companies seem to be full of Aussie Rockers, it’s well targeted too. I note that it’s not produced by a creative agency, so wonder if it was someone in accounts payable at the record company that had the idea?