Will Francis

In a bid to spread my blogging far and wide across the internet like a thick but rich pollutant I’ve become a contributor for Brand Republic’s ‘The Wall’ blog which covers the latest developments in social media, marketing and technology.

Here are my first posts. Please go and read them and more importantly share them. I will then love you for eternity :)

16th July 2010 - New Figures Suggest iPad Is Killing Netbook

19th July 2010 - Foursquare Eyes Search Engine Partnerships

So, after over five years the market leader (in serious gaming at least) gets it’s first major overhaul. New look and new good stuff under the hood.

I got my Xbox 360 S this week and immediately sat it next to my PS3 (original model). They go quite well together, and thank the Lord. The previous Xboxes have frankly been so ugly I’ve always tucked them away with other atrocities such as my Epson printer. But now, Microsoft have had the good sense to realise that people want to show this stuff off and that’s kind of hard if the device looks like something you bought off QVC to fritter pineapple rings or something.

After queuing last week at UK mobile phone carrier O2’s store on London’s Oxford Street for over 2 hours, I actually came away feeling a bit silly. As I weaved between the tourists, pigeons and ‘Golf Sale’ guys clutching my prize I thought to myself “I’ve just queued for 2 hours… for a mobile phone… have I gone crazy? Is my life so empty that I needed so badly to upgrade to the iPhone 4 today?”. Well yeah, it was. The internet was alight with debate around Apple’s new device so I couldn’t possibly miss out, the curve might get ahead of me!

So after over a week in possession of the latest shiny object to drop out of Cupertino, here’s how I got on with iPhone 4:

This morning saw me actually get out and play some games!! I combed the South Hall which is dominated by Xbox, Ubisoft, Konami and MTV/Harmonix making a total n0000000b of myself pretty much everywhere I went.

Nail’d on Xbox

 
Last night (Monday 14th June) we went to a rooftop party courtesy of Xbox and their campaign around the release of Kinect, a peripheral for the console which allows you to control games with just your body. Cue flailing around and looking like a complete chump, albeit having a LOT of fun!

I recently had a look over my profiles on Foursquare and Gowalla (the latter always being my favourite on aesthetic grounds) and seeing my patterns of behaviour spelt out in check-ins made me feel a bit uneasy.  Even though I was always careful to never check in at home, or any locations near home I could instantly see that every Saturday I go to the same organic deli. Once or twice a week I take a train from the same mainline train station. I’m the ‘mayor’ of the MySpace UK office and have made it clear which places in proximity to work I hang out at. Basically I’ve made it incredibly easy for people to find me. People who I do not know.