Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: rhys giles jones, the day the media died
Was surfing a new site this morning by Giles Rhys Jones and found this little musical ditty. All sensationalism aside this is a great little toe tapper. Enjoy.
I’ve been trying to make a claim (or in fact about 40 claims) with HBA my health insurer today. It has become so difficult to even make the claim that it’s becoming laughable. I pay an extraordinary amount for health insurance a month, I mean a lot. I looked up on the net today to see whether I could make a claim online to start sorting out my receipts, you can claim online but not for medical, dental and some other category. Right.
I then rang them to see if I could visit an HBA centre (how very old school I know) but guess what? they’ve closed every single HBA centre in Sydney apart from Chatswood which might as well be in Canberra given the proxiomity to Surry Hills and the CBD. They said I could claim over the telephone which I thought sounded labour intensive but at least it provided me with an option. But wait, you can’t claim amounts over $500, or anything to do with medical, sport and some other restriction.
Okay so I’m just a little peeved so far so I ask the nice lady on the phone what my options are to which she replies – Snail Mail. She says she can send me out some claim forms by post and I can return them in the post and get them to process the claims remotely, all of which will obviously take a significant amount of time. I check the website to see if I can circumvent even one step in this arduous process and download a claim form online but the link is broken. Of course it is. So I ring back another nice lady and ask if she can send me a soft copy of the claim form (it didn’t sound like HBA even made soft copies of the online forms available for their operators) but the lady was very helpful, however I suspect I shall have to wait to receive some claims forms in the post.
Admittedly I’ve been a little fluey off late and my tolerance is low but oh my lord HBA in the days of digital communication and electronic efficiency, you guys absolutely suck. Further to this, the fact that I pay such a ridiculously huge amount each month in health insurance (a preventative style anxiety I probably inherited from my mother), and you can’t provide me with a branch or an online service that works.
Health insurance has always been difficult to understand, impossible to negotiate and now, they’re making it near impossible to even make a claim. I don’t know about any of you but the health insurance industry is one space which is crying out for a new competitor to cut through the crap and offer real value, easy access and efficient effective service.
I was just flicking through some old newsletters from Australian Anthill when I came across this article about Quirky. Quirky is the brainchild of 22 year old Ben Kaufman and it’s a really interesting site worth checking out. So here’s the deal:
Entrepreneurs and other creatives can submit a product idea to the Quirky community. The community picks one product idea every seven days and then everybody gets busy on that one idea to see whether it could fly. Basically the idea is that you get a whole bunch of creative people involving themselves in the ideas from the very beginning, the product positioning, packaging, naming etc right through to the marketing and selling of the product which happens via the quirky online store. Once the product hits its pre-sales threshold, the product goes into the production and delivery stage. Thirty cents out of every dollar a quirky product makes goes back to the quirky community, with 12 of these 30 cents going to the person who originally suggested the idea.
An interesting idea, especially for those of you who are itching to get out of your advertising careers and make a million selling widgets all of your own. Stop by and take a look. Check it out here quirky
A little slideshow from Katie Chatfield over at Get Shouty I thought I’d share with you
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Gregory Page, Lazy Grazing, poltzy, steve poltz, sydney
Two mates of mine are very much into Steve Poltz and yesterday, they brought him to our place for a Lazy Grazing. He played with Gregory Page and the two of them were absolutely fantastic. He’s been touring round Oz for the past few months and apparently always does a couple of house concerts in each city that he visits. Yesterday was our turn. He came with his band and joined us for a long boozy lunch and a couple of sets and it turned out to be an absolute cracker event. Thanks to Mads, Poltzy made a cameo appearance just about everywhere. There was plenty of food, even more wine and lots of people united in their love of the Lazy Graze. Poltzy sang an original song for little Archie [pictured] for his first birthday and that was it, the little guy was mesmerised for the rest of the day. The idea behind Lazy Grazing is basically just to get together with a few peeps and listen to some music. As it turned out, it was quite the event. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Stev Poltz you can check him out here or here.
I don’t know about you but I’m always on the lookout for new thinkers that spread the gray matter a little further afield. Kevin Roberts’ latest email pointed me in the direction of a young lad by the name of Jonah Lehrer whom I hadn’t heard of before.
He’s a Contributing Editor at Wired and the author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist. He graduated from Columbia University and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He’s written for The New Yorker, Nature, Seed, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe and is also a Contributing Editor at Scientific American Mind and National Public Radio’s Radio Lab.
In his latest book How We Decide he looks at the role of emotions in shaping our brain’s responses to all the decisions we make from day to day. He explores intuition, that sense of just knowing and how our emotions affect our decision making. Lehrer concludes with a simple rule of thumb. We all know it and we all know we should follow it, but as we get more experienced and more educated it gets harder to do. If it doesn’t feel right, or it feels too good to be true, it probably is.
His website is also full of meaty articles that are well worth a look if you have some time to spare. Move over Gladwell there’s a new kid in town.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Channel Seven, double take, intestifresh, Intestigas, TRAY Spray
Ok so I clearly wasn’t the only one who was surprised by the TRAF Spray ad which aired during Grey’s Anatomy last Thursday night. Apparently it had a promotional super for Channel Seven’s ‘Double Take’ comedy show at the end of it, if it did, I along with a rather large group of other Grey’s fans, clearly didn’t notice it. So the mystery is solved, it is a promo for a comedy channel. Not that mysterious after all.
For those of you who didn’t see the ad – here it is here. Enjoy.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Channel Seven, double take, intestifresh, Intestigas, TRAF Spray
Was I the only one watching Grey’s Anatomy last night on Channel Seven? About halfway through the program there was an ad for ‘TRAF Spray’ a fresh air spray by Intestifresh. The advertisement talked about the problems with normal air freshner just covering up odours that are still present [by which stage I'm thinking it's an ad for Glen 20 which is running a similar theme right now in their advertising], but no, TRAF spray by Intestifresh recommends you get odours at the source – where the woman is shown to hitch up her skirt and spray her butt. The advertisement ended with the tagline “TRAF, it’s FART backwards” or something like that.
I waited for the following super to come up, inevitably advertising The Gruen Transfer or some other comic relief but no, straight back into a few serious ads and then back to Greys. Have I missed something? Is this some Channel Seven buff having a joke? or maybe the ad agency for Glen 20 is attempting a viral that didn’t quite work out? I twitted it and within moments received one back from my mate Speirsy who had also been watching the program, both of us had been privately laughing to ourselves about the ad, we’d Googled it on our phones….no mention, but at least I wasn’t sitting home alone in between watching Izzy Stephens walk into the light, wondering whether I had in fact just made the whole thing up. No…it really did appear, did I miss something people? Is there some Channel Seven joke I don’t know about?
Please explain.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: dr amantha imber, inventium, 50 scientifically proven creativity boosters
“Love may make the world go around but it’s creativity that drives it forward. Unfortunately, creativity is often viewed as something that is elusive and unpredictable, a quality only owned by “creative” types. Psychologists have now demonstrated that we can all be more creative in our thinking. They have rigorously researched the conditions and techniques that allow people to maximise their ability to think creatively about problem solving and the way forward. There is, in fact, a formula – and it isn’t difficult. The Creativity Formula draws on that research to provide 50 simple and scientifically-proven ways to improve their creative thinking ability – instantly. Its easy techniques will lead to more effective problem solving in both work and life and a business that gets ahead and stays ahead by out-thinking and out-innovating its competitors.”
This book is by a local smarty pants just south of the border – Dr Amantha Imber who nows runs Inventium – a clever little innovation company which teaches creative thinking techniques. I’m normally not a big pusher when it comes to reviewing things but this little gem is a fantastic read. It covers the 50 scientifically proven creativity boosters and unlike much innovation consulting [and I can say this because I've been there], it’s not hot air fluffery or vague statements it’s a bunch of experiments and behaviours that have been PROVEN. That’s right , proven. Whoever continues to hope that creativity lies in the arms of a few blessed advertising executives or arty types, realign yourselves people. It’s not to say that there isn’t a predisposition in some people where they naturally lean towards sport or music or painting or writing, but this book is an energising and motivating read for those of us who want to keep developing our creative selves.
You can get more info on the book here and you can nosy around more about Amantha here and here [don't tell me I'm the only one who does that because I know that's not true]. Whilst it’s not a cover-to-cover style read, I’ve been scanning it over the past few weeks and picking up some great tidbits and workshop ideas. Plus, it’s been endorsed by the big fella Seth Godin which means it must be worth a look in. Enjoy people.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: michael fantuz, sticky bar, table for 20, tablefor20, tablefor20.blogspot.com
In Surry Hills one guy is reinventing the idea of the evening meal by opening his space for a weekly gathering of friends & strangers. So grab yourself a seat, pass the wine & pitch in because this is neighbourhood dining at it’s very best. The project is called Table for 20. The idea behind this project is to create a completely new experience in the dining market. Bucking the trend of fancy restaurants & one hat wonders, this is family orientated communal neighbourhood dining at its best.
The idea behind Table for 20 is to create a space where Surry Hills locals can interact with others in their community with a percentage of profit going to the charity which owns the building the restaurant is in. The experience plays out as a neighbourhood supper where local people come & pay a modest set fee to dine at the communal tables. As is Michael Fantuz’s specialty, the food is festive Italian with a twist. Fantuz is a man who clearly loves his food and can constantly be seen running up and down tables dishing out a vintage olive oil or rare Buffalo Mozzarella or even a plum mustard which we enjoyed on the night we were there. The food is undoubtedly exceptional, but unlike other restaurants, Fantuz shuns the idea of food reviewers and would instead prefer them to come & make a contribution to the mission. “I have no need for fancy hats or stars” Fantuz says, “I’ve finally found an opportunity to do what I love and help out people along the way.”
The price includes three courses – a starter, main and dessert. If you’re lucky, you’ll arrive on one of the nights where Michael’s mother has been commissioned to create her famous homemade Tirimisu. It’s certainly worth the wait!
I admit it, this is a shameless plug for what I think is a great restaurant concept but if you haven’t been, you’re missing out. Check out the blog www.tablefor20.blogspot.com and do yourself a favour, make a booking.
There are thousands of normal restaurants in Sydney.
This is not one of them.
PS > If communal dining is not your thing, Sticky Bar upstairs [pictured above] is a great place to drop by for a drink and a nibble.
