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There are a certain number of opposing views on the importance of a website’s ‘fold’ (the first content displayed in the browser’s viewable area – usually the top section of the home page). Depending on what source you rely on, this is usually seen to be anything between the first 500 pixels and 1100 pixels and beyond depending on screen size.

One view is that this is what our friends over the pond would call ‘prime real estate’ – all your call to actions, key messages, logos, navigation should be crammed into this area as to not to lose the visitors’ attention. The other view (and one we would like to align ourselves with) is that the first theory is outdated and misinterpreted. The web is now mature enough for the majority of visitors to have enough nous to work out that there is indeed more content down the page. Blogs are commonplace, blogs require scrolling. An outdated print-based term such as ‘page fold’ has no place in the cauldron of modern media browsing.

Of course, it would be unwise to fill the first part of your web page with ad banners with no branding that corresponds with your site. It’s up to the designers to educate their clients who may have preconceived ideas about the dreaded fold and tell them that the web has moved on. Content display has moved on. Scroll wheels rule the world!

…only in an online game but – hey – it’s a start.

Thanks to Brand Republic for this one:

Virgin Trains is launching an online game based on its current zombie ad campaign (you know, the one you see and think ‘that’s pants and actually quite disturbing’);

Presumably the Egomaniacal one wants to cash in on the current craze for all things vampire (clearly aiming at the teen market then; ‘hey kids, we have trains like the ones in those cool Harry Potter films – only ours are dirtier and slower – and we have dead people, like in those cool vampire films or Tuol Sleng) so if you’ve been wowed by the print ad – but can’t afford to buy a ticket as your surname isn’t Croesus – then you can satisfy your brand aspirations by going to dontgozombie (a call to action that includes negation…what will they think of next?) where you can…wait for it…

use an automated ticket dispenser to fire tickets at a zombie driver, saving them from traffic congestion.

Being able to find an automated ticket dispenser that works is pretty bloody amazing in itself (well it is only a game).  Surely it would have been more fun to have created an online game where you have to search the land to find an automated ticket dispenser that is actually dispensing tickets that are valid for the route on which you want to travel this side of Easter.  Then you have to defuse the broken machine, as it has seized up after becoming a repository for used kebabs, 10 cent Euro coins and wee, before the polyester-clad Platform Manager catches you.  Kind of like The Hurt Locker, just less exciting.

As for shooting drivers to put them out of their misery, one can only guess that this is more acceptable than showing a vet putting little Tiddles to sleep.

Let’s hope they’ve missed the conotation that shooting things at drivers – whether train or car – is a f**king stupid thing to do, kids.

The winning participants will be entered in a draw to win a first-class journey on a Virgin Train, something denied to the vast majority of the travelling public on the basis of a) there not being any first-class carriages and b) in the wider sense, it is nigh on impossible to have a first-class experience when you are sharing your carriage with a pramface, whose mini-pramfaces are determined the scale the north face of the seatback, and a toilet with a revolving door that opens as if revealing the prize on Bullseye.  Gee, a f**king speedboat…thanks Jim.

Sir Richard says the “campaign encapsulates our vision of liberating travellers from the drudgery of mind-numbing car journeys.”

Let’s hope that cars doesn’t include Virginracing (when I was a lad, virgin racing was a popular Saturday night sport after the pubs kicked out: winner stays one) in Formula 1, although it could explain their form so far this season.

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The BBC is considering whether to move BBC Breakfast north.

Jan Mayen Island?

North Greenland?

Oh please.

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Oh dear, they’re at it again.

Having wowed the British population with the fractal disaster that was the London 2012 logo, we now have the official mascots for 2012 (that’s the Olympics as opposed to the Mayan calendar’s end of the world, although you do wonder whether the agency got these confused).

Two one-eyed characters.  Presumably that’s better than one two-eyed character, on the basis that you still have one left after the first one catches sight of itself in a mirror and promptly blows its metallic brains out.

Did LOCOG or whoever was charged with spending lots of lovely taxpayers’ dosh, not consider when engaging with its stakeholder groups that creating anything ‘one-eyed’ might have just the slightest connotation with the one-eyed trouser snake (look it up here)?  Or perhaps they did but thought that the best solution was to create two characters that are synonymous with cocks.

So, was it worth the wait?

Er…no.

WTF springs to mind.

Wenlock and Mandeville look like the result of years of laboratory testing and inbreeding between a Smurf, a weather balloon and Kang & Kodos from the Simpsons;

Stephen Bayley, commentator on everything űber-cool in design and a genuine national treasure, summed it up beautifully in the Telegraph; “what is it about these Games which seems to drive the organisers into the embrace of this kind of patronising, cretinous infantilism?  Why can’t we have something that makes us sing with pride, instead of these appalling computerised Smurfs for the iPhone generation…If the Games are going to be remembered by their art then we can declare them a calamitous failure already.”

Lord Coe of Detached Reality said in response that “we’ve created our mascots for children”.   Are you sure that you didn’t mean “we’ve created our mascots to scare children”?

Surely if you wanted two hilarious caricatures with whom the deluded, stupid and bonkers could identify, they could just have let our old friends out of their room (the one that has mattresses on the walls and no door handle on the inside);

Just watched the LibDems election campaign on the TV.

What’s that piece of music as its soundtrack?

Yep, it’s An Ending (Ascent) by Brian Eno.  Now, whilst that may have been a rather apposite track to use in a previous NSPCC campaign (bringing an ending to child cruelty), is it the best message to be attaching to your electoral prospects?

Unless of course you’re being really clever and sending the subliminal message that it’s an ending to the current order and the dawn on a new day.  In which case, perhaps this would have been more suitable;

Jaz of the Joke…we love you.

Malcolm Mclaren has sadly died.

It was only last weekend that we had his ground-breaking album Fans playing in the offices – an early example of a mash-up.

He was responsible for unleashing the Sex Pistols on the world as well as being a major contributor to British style and fashion through this personal and commercial relationship with Vivienne Westwood.

So long Malcolm, your influences in culture, fashion and music will continue to be felt.

Am in London and just taken a black cab back to the hotel.

The fare was £11.60 (that’s about £10.90 on a ‘made to wait for the bendy bus’-adjusted basis, allowing for the extra time you  have to give the driver to work out that…yes..your bus is quite long and…nooo…the back bit doesn’t follow the line of the front bit when you turn tight corners.  Come on Boris,hurry up and get rid of them!) and I gave the driver £15 and said “give me one back”.

My usual thought process is to add 10% onto the fare as a reasonable tip, although today, for whatever reason, I thought ‘hey, make it a bit more’.  We aren’t yet at the stage in this country where tipping becomes expected (unlike in New York where cabbies will come running down the street after you with an axe if you don’t tip them enough) and so it is appropriate to be able to give an amount that you’re comfortable with.

To my very pleasant surprise, the taxi driver seemed genuinely taken aback and said “but that’s too much guv”.  To which I replied “no, it’s ok”.

He then said “I wish I had more customers like you” and drove off with a broad smile on his face.

Sitting here now, overlooking the river and counting the tower cranes that appear to perch on the rooftops like metallic storks, I think that was one of those little moments of joy in a day; I made him feel good and his compliment made me feel good.  Since the onset of the financial crisis, the sheer scale of the billions given to banks by the government and then given out to bankers in bonuses have made the value of money incomprehensible to almost everyone.  We have become anaesthetised to just what money can provide, as it is used in ever increasing amounts with seemingly inversely proportionate effects.

Do you remember your first pocket money or paypacket?  The sense of achievement, empowerment and wonder that it provided when you held those coins between your fingers and began to contemplate what you might be able to acheive with them.

Well, for a few brief minutes today, I had that same feeling because of a couple of quid.

So, next time you’re in a taxi, in the queue in the coffee shop or standing up to leave a table in a restaurant, think of how much those couple of extra quid could make someone else smile and…as you give that tip…could also make you smile yourself.

The tall man.

The green tree.

These are examples of the attributive adjective; a basic and longstanding component of the English language but one – it seems – that has eluded the Labour Party and whichever agency it commissioned for its election strapline.

‘A future fair for all’.

Now, if you were wanting to convey a fair future you would probably have said…er…’a fair future’.

Perhaps if you were wanting to communicate a future that would be fair for all you would probably say…let’s see…’a future that will be fair for all’ or, if you were a bit cash-strapped and paying by the character; ‘a future, fair for all’.

But no, we have a future fair.  So that’s a funfair in the future, in the same way that ‘a good fair’ would be a fair that is good or a festive fair would be…OK, you get the picture.

So, after 13 years of national ablation (look it up) we have a strapline that has been written by a) an 8-year old or b) Yoda (“strapline, write I for you will”).

Unless, of course, on May the [date censored] when you walk into the polling station there are dodgems and a coconut shy.

Thanks to mylabourposter.typepad.com for the image; no doubt they’re thinking along the same lines.  Have a look at their site for some more, very funny spoof ads…or at least I think they’re spoofs.

Jellyhaus is not politically aligned.  This is about basic grammar.