One of the best adverts I’ve ever seen — from the chaps at travel firm, Lastminute.com. I watch it now and gain to remind myself not to get too drawn into life’s mini challenges…

You can see Malcolm Tucker in the recent movie, In The Loop, or in the BBC TV Series, The Thick Of It.

If you liked Yes Prime Minister — and can handle thick-Scottish-accent cursing, take a look at the video…

I do a lot of Wordpress installations. A ton. Indeed I think I’ve setup about five Wordpress installations in the last two weeks.

And it can be a little bit annoying, having to download the zip file, unzip and then wait for hundreds of tiny files to upload.

Then I discovered EasyWP.

It’s a PHP script that does it all for you.

Just drag it over to your server, access it in your browser and you’ll be presented with the critical setup features (namely database name, username, password and so on).

Type them in and press ‘go’.

The script then downloads the latest version of Wordpress in the background, decompresses the zip and populates the wp-config.php file for you.

Genius.

It means Wordpress setup takes about 2 minutes now…

You can get the script here: http://www.funscripts.net/php-scripts/

And it’s freeware. Nice!

Heh!

Woot!

My University, University College London, is now ranked number 4 on the planet. We’ve inched ahead of Oxford (number 5, joint with Imperial) and we’re just behind Yale (3) and Cambridge (2) with Harvard at the number 1 spot.

Go UCL! UCL!

US and UK institutions still dominate the top 10:

* Harvard retains top spot.
* Cambridge moves in to 2nd place, ahead of Yale.
* The rise of University College London to 4th place ahead of Oxford (5th equal with Imperial College) will be one of the major talking points this year. UCL outperformed its 800 year old peer, in terms of citations per faculty.
* Princeton returns to the top 10.

Dan Ilett just sent this across as a reminder of a piece he wrote back in 2007 for the Financial Times:

Ewan MacLeod was angry. He had been charged for sending an e-mail from a mobile phone via a package that claimed to offer free, unlimited data usage.

Months after he had written about the experience on his blog, Mr MacLeod was surprised to receive a call from the mobile phone company, 3, inviting him to meet chief finance officer Frank Sixt. Apparently, someone had posted his comments on the company’s blog, set up to promote the free service.

“Any big business is a faceless wonder, but a blog gives you the power to talk to someone in a company,” says Mr MacLeod, author of SMS Text News. “I had a call saying, ‘Frank would like to meet you.’ I was entirely delighted with the result.”

That feels like a very long time ago!

Read Dan’s full post in the FT archive here.

And this is what I put in the ‘any other comments’ section:

The online setup process was simply brilliant. Found the post-code, selected my services, chose my delivery date, typed in my bank details… everything was smooth and efficient.

THEN a day later, someone from Virgin tried phoning me to take 49 quid off me for the V+ box.

There was a specific reason I processed the transaction online. I thought you’d bill me there and then. The dog-and-pony arsing around trying to get the time to phone you guys back with a sodding reference number. Because some idiot business analyst didn’t factor this into your process.

I *TYPED* my card/bank details in. I authorised you to take money from my account. I agreed to the 49 quid up-front cost.

It was almost, almost a flipping amazingly good experience.

The net effect? My wife ended up having to phone up and complete the transaction — that I already thought I’d completed.

And it took a further two weeks for you to install; and for you to get my money.

Huge, huge friction for me. Massive friction — and wasted, wasted time for you. Do you think you could fix this for the new customers signing up? Do the transaction in *one*.

Other than this one point, it’s been brilliant.

I hope they fix that part of the system.

I’ve always been a Land Rover fan.

More specifically, I’m a Range Rover enthusiast — I own two — and I thoroughly enjoy the experience.

My good friend Dan from Greenbang just sent me news of Land Rover’s latest addition coming soon, the LRX.

Here it is:

Interesting.

It’s 3-door. It’s shorted than the Freelander 2 / Land Rover 2, lower — but it’s still 4×4, still properly capable off-road… and it’ll run on bio-diesel:

LRX is conceived as a highly fuel-efficient, US Federal-specification, 2.0-litre, turbodiesel hybrid, capable of running on bio-diesel. In combination with other Land Rover technologies, this powertrain could reduce fuel consumption by as much as 30% compared with other 4×4s of comparable size, and reduce emissions to approximately 120 g/km.

It sports ERAD — Electric Rear Axle Drive — which means that, at low speeds, the car will use electric drive…

…while retaining full (even improved) 4×4 ability in tough conditions. Unlike the hybrid technology used by some 4×4 rivals, Land Rover’s unique solution retains mechanical drive to all four wheels.

Come ON! I like that A LOT.

Off-road, ERAD is good news:

Off-road, the ERAD would provide additional torque only when it is needed, and with maximum electrical torque from standstill, this solution offers even better low-speed control and enhanced pull-away on difficult surfaces (such as packed snow or wet grass) or when towing.

And on-road, it’s even better:

On the road, the ERAD would allow low-speed traffic creep up to 20 mph (32 km/h) on electric power alone, with the Integrated Starter-Generator (ISG) function re-starting the engine automatically when needed. The electric drive would then continue to assist the mechanical drive until the engine is running in its most efficient range, benefiting both fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

Did anyone say ‘iPhone Dock’?

Although LRX is compact, clever use of space makes it impressively roomy, and many neat design touches maximise its practicality. A second touch-screen area gives a fully interactive display and control for LRX’s iPhone docking facility.

Nice!

Yup, come 2011, I think we’ll be getting a few of these…

An absolute genius piece of marketing from Johnnie Walker featuring a super, super performance from Robert Carlyle. (Via ettf)

I’ve been trying to get to the Telegraph website now and again over the past few days. Sometimes it works. Most of the time I have to read the Google cache.

Because their webtrends server — their statistical tracking service — either can’t handle the pace or is overloaded. It’s entirely delaying the delivery of their webpages to me.

Crazy!

Always got Google News though…

I had lunch on Sunday with one of Yahoo Europe’s head honchos. The chap’s a total genius when it comes to marketing so it was good to sit down and have an unrestricted natter.

Both wives came too.

This was the first time I’d been to the pub/dining room style place, The Roebuck. A lot of people had been recommending it so when Mr Yahoo (I can’t give his name) suggested it, I readily agreed.

Living in Chiswick (the W4 area of Greater London) seems to offer a brilliant variety of places to eat and drink.

When I arrived I thought it was time for a red wine. I scanned the list and found a ‘pinotage’ (a South African cross between a Pinot Noir and Cinsaut — thanks Wikipedia).

Here’s the bottle I selected:

Nifty. I didn’t think I was taking a chance. One of my wife’s relatives thoroughly, thoroughly recommends Pinotage — and I’ve never had one that wasn’t a winner.

I took a pic of the ‘SAAM Mountain’ brand so I’d remember it for the future.