Branson's big idea for a little i-pad mag.

so richard branson and his brilliance in entrepreneurship have struck once again. branson is set to unveil plans for a new i-pad only magazine according to mashable.

when first leaked in july, the magazine was said to be about "new creative, business and technological ideas" but further speculation suggests that it could just be a digital in-flight magazine for branson to showcase on virgin flights.

nevertheless, i find the specified and sole use of the i-pad to publish a magazine to be quite intriguing and maybe a little bit strange...

to think that it wouldn't have a sister blog, website or even paper version seems to make the digital magazine appear almost isolated. if it is just a digital in-flight magazine i guess this wouldn't matter as much but if you had another device (similar to but not the same as the apple brand) would this mean that you'd miss out on reading the articles your smug i-pad equipped fellow passengers have access to?

bit of a strange one... not sure what i think at this point. comments and feedback welcomes as always.

Fashion Media Conference: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

whilst this is a little late, i did want to comment on it... so i am. last month, the london college of fashion held a fashion media conference that brought together leading experts to discuss the key issues that are facing fashion media and communications today and consider them in relation to historical and future media cultures.

sounds like something i should have been in the audience for doesn't it?

unfortunately i found out about it all too late and was unable to get myself a ticket in time. gosh and darn it quite frankly.

put together by penny martin, editor of the gentlewoman, and dr. djurdja bartlett, of the lcf, it involved presentations papers from many influential academic figures in fashion including dr. agnes rocamora of the lcf, who is currently putting together the first comprehensive study of fashion blogging.

so it all sounded very interesting and i obviously got very excited about it all due to it's fashion media content but there are lots of things about it that niggle me.

when one googles about the fashion media conference there are, of course, lots of references that pop up but at no point will you find an official blog or website dedicated to the conference. this boggles my brain considering that this conference is meant to be about contemporary fashion media... you'd think that they at least set up a blog about it?!

also... one month on and there doesn't seem to be any videos or recordings taken from the conference that can be accessed online. why not? you'd think that they would want to get the conversation out there. what is happening in the world of fashion media?

finally... and this seems to be the most telling of the lot... despite the obviously brilliant presentations that were on show on the day, i can't help but feel the majority of presentation topics had very tenuous links to the actual discussion at hand.

overall the fashion media conference seemed to offer an academic point of view of their own personal research all gathered up and labelled as a discussion of contemporary fashion media in relation to historical and future media cultures even if their research possessed the most tenuous of links. maybe i'm wrong? perhaps someone that was there could correct me?

however, in my opinion, perhaps a london edition of the future of fashion blogging conference by the Independent Fashion Bloggers network would have been a lot more useful, accessible and relevant. here's hoping they come to london next time.

can't get no satisfaction.

so my morning of searching and achieving was a little bit of anti-climax. my trip to hobby craft did not find me the wool i wanted... it was all sold out. then i thought, well i could always buy that crochet book i've been after. so for about ten minutes i took apart the book/magazine area trying in vain to find it. of course it wasn't there. the thought of asking some smug 18 year old sales assistant if it was out the back did not appeal to me but oh.... my dear mother, no she thought it was the best idea in the world. so the smug 18 year old sales assistant with uber floppy hair told us if it wasn't there on the shelf it wouldn't be out the back but insisted that if he went through the same ten minute search that i had just endured as he was more likely to find it (probably with the power of his floppy hair). ten minutes later and a very impatient me managed to get the smug floppy haired one to stop searching in vain for a book that had evidently been sold out and to stop holding me up from storming back to my car with steam fuming out my ears with frustration.

then i went to the university of southampton's lovely hartley library to get my sconul access card and also get out a book i have been searching high and low for all over the place. found the book... hallelujah! so then my only task was to go and see the nice lady at the desk for my sconul card. this was straight forward enough but then... shock horror... she informed me that i couldn't take out the book that i had so needed for sooooooooo long. it was a one week loan and sconul access only entitled me to three week loan books. cue a massive sigh and a shrug of the shoulders from me... then a a barrage of muttering to myself all the way from the snazzy library turnstiles back to the car.

then i had to take my mother to the range. if you have ever had the pleasure (and i use this word with much emphasised sarcasm) of doing this then you will know how the urge to rip out my own eyeballs was rather pressing. i like the range as much as the next person for about twenty minutes to half an hour tops but AN HOUR AND A HALF with an indecisive mother is enough to try anyone's patience. fortunately i am used to being exuding an air of patience as part of my part-time job is teaching 90 year olds how to control a mouse so my mother was blissfully unaware of my frustration. how lovely.

so back home, i get to eat some homemade soup for lunch and now i am working happily away on some bits and bobs. still need that book though... if anyone knows of any online source i can get the time of the tribes by michel maffesoli then please give me a heads up. i will be eternally grateful.

right... back to cv tweaking and singing along (badly) to roxy music.

the distractions of knitting.

so i know i have been quiet of late but i have been trying my very best to find three very interesting and very needed books for my dissertation. and also knitting...

my time has been taken up with finding books, reading them, making notes on them... and then knitting.

i have also been revamping my cv and will be attempting to contact people i would like to work for in this week to come. i'm looking for freelance work really, with publications that are pioneering the way in new and different ways of fashion publication. whether they are these wonderful style mags that i can normally be found salivating over in a corner of magma or even in mike's newsagents near my work... or the usual gossipy weeklies that i like to indulge myself in from time to time. whatever they may be... magazines are continually evolving at the moment in many different ways and i get so excited over it i can hardly contain myself. i just want to get stuck in.

before i get into that today... i will be visiting my local hobby craft. i need some wool to finish off a christmas project for one of my friends.

knitting can be so distracting.

i'll huff and i'll puff and i'll blow your house down!

for those of you who do not know, the huffington post is an american news website which describes itself as "the internet newspaper" and has been going since 2005. have a look, see what you think... then pick a side.

it's paper versus web once again.

according to a former washington post executive... sites like the huffpost are akin to the big bad wolf. a moron who leaches off others to tower over their much cleverer little pig prey. the little pigs in question being those who work in "real" journalism for "real" papers.

what's your opinion? leave your comments and discuss. whilst you're at it... here's a useful little guardian poll on the subject.

enjoy.

popped out to get some milk.

i've been dying to upload photos for so long now. thankfully i've eventually found my camera lead thus enabling to do so... hurrah!

so back in the summer, amongst all the drama, i managed to get away for a few days to cornwall and to wales. one of the highlights of my cornwall trip was the magnificent eden project. the biomes were fabulous of course but the thing that got me most excited was the eden project's education centre, also known as the core.

its a hub of all things sustainable and eco-friendliness, lots of things to play with and read about. the best thing being the massive wall of fridges complete with fridge magnets.

everyone was clambering to get to the wall of fridges to arrange a message of their choice whether is be a "so-so was ere" message or something jokingly derogatory about their friends. it was a fascinating sight to behold and really got me thinking about my MA project.

the action of arranging a message using the fridge magnets in the way the eden crowd were desperate to do is very much comparable to the way that people constantly update their facebook/twitter/myspace etc statuses. you can't obviously write a long message in either case but you can portray enough to get attention. but, whilst using fridge magnets to display a message on a fridge wall is much more of a physical act (in that it uses more of your body than just your fingers), it's still very much ephemeral in the same way that updating your status is. someone can come along and start rearranging your carefully placed letters as soon as you walk away, it's never permanent.

and so my thought process tumbles along (also very good example of design being used for something it wasn't originally intended to do!)... could i possibly use something inspired by this in my final project solution? hmm...

also got a quite nice pic of the centre piece of the core called the seed. it's one of the largest sculptures ever to be made from one single piece of rock.

very imposing and impressive up close.

Kate Moss in 3D

just when i thought that i had seen kate moss from every possible angle, pose and compromising position that she could possibly be seen in, here comes a film that made me exclaim in a granny- esque way, "i've seen it all now".

another magazine present a collaborative effort between moss and filmmaker, baillie walsh, (who previously worked together on a holographic film for Alexander McQueen's AW 06 show) hailed as the world's first 3D fashion film. cleverly enough, you can get the accompanying 3D glasses needed to view this vid in the latest issue of another. it's also a perfect opportunity to recycle your 3D specs from avatar. failing all of that, it still looks pretty ace without any specs at all.

click to see KM3D-1. is this the future of fashion publishing? let me know your thoughts.