That is so not Cuil

If proof were needed that the general public have a natural aversion to change and anything that is new or different, look at the reaction to upstart Search Engine Cuil in the last week.

The former Google employees responsible for Cuil seem to have piqued interest, and the product is quite stylish (very stylish for a Search Engine) and on the whole not bad for a first effort. The problem is the fact that 'not bad for a first effort' won't make Cuil a viable challenger to Google, or even to Yahoo or MSN.

Another problem is the problems. Blogs galore have picked up on the quirks of sticking a picture next to all results and the various issues that creates. I undertook a single search to see if this was true, and the results below show Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman next to David Beckham profiles. Obviously.



Of course it's an easy target and ambitious launches will suffer glitches, as unambitious ones will. It's also an unique issue for Search Engines that Cuil's rivals can undermine its early progress, by design or coincidence. The true tests will be if Cuil can get suficient power to deal with a decent volume of searches, and if they can attract users and, ultimately, PPC advertisers.

Has anyone got the new Norwich shirt?

Last night was a slightly surreal experience. Watching Norwich play Spurs on television on a balmy July evening is strange enough. Seeing Stephen Fry, so long considered a Norwich fan without any visible evidence, sitting next to Delia Smith decked out in yellow is an entirely different phenomenon.

This is a curious bit of PR. There have been murmurings of discontent among the Carrow Road faithful over the rebuffing of an approach from Peter Cullum, the 40th richest man in Britain. Delia's stock fell last season with the Peter Grant debacle and the club's flirtation with relegation. Is she now taking the Flavio Briatore route?

It was Norwich's lowest public ebb when City went down to QPR on Sky, with Rangers' new owner Briatore flanked by lovelies including Naomi Campbell in the Directors' Box. The coverage in later days barely touched on the abject Canaries performance or even details like the score. It was all about Naomi and pals and their excitement at their evening out at Loftus Road.

Stephen Fry is not exactly Naomi Campbell. I never thought I'd have to write that sentence. But he is a very respectable and intelligent person, and will generate positive publicity in his own way. It could be for his very presence. It could be that he was wearing the shirt. It could be that the figure-hugging nature of the shirt was not especially flattering to a man of Fry's age and girth.

Or it could be that he was wearing the OLD shirt. As, it appeared, was everyone. Has the arse fallen out of the hideous replica shirt market? Or was it intended to show us that Fry isn't some fly-by-night who arrived at his seat via the club shop?

Either way it cements Norwich's place as the Daily Telegraph reader's club. If you ask the more considered individual who they might like as dinner guests, I'm sure the likes of Fry and Delia (now Hugh Laurie's big in America - a new series?) would be on many lists. Norwich were the first club seen by a reigning monarch and, although Prince William is a Villa fan, I'd expect the Queen herself wouldn't mind bowling up at carrow Road for one of Delia's pies and a chat with that nice Stephen Fry. Maybe she could help stump up a few quid for a new striker...

Who needs a clothes rail?

Brick Lane. In location and spirit.

Oyster card backlash begins in Hackney

Hackney, and East London in general, seems to be the source of a
decent amount of subversive activity.

This picture is of a small flyposter I spotted near London Fields this
afternoon on my way back from a lovely day wandering around the
Columbia Road, Brick Lane and Spitalfields area, my favourite bit of
London.

It would appear the information Transport for London's Oyster card is
capable of storing about the user has some people on the defensive.
Are TfL responsible for introducing ID cards on the sly? If the recent
breakdowns in the system are any clue, the Government could well be
involved!

The Ronaldo question on everyone's lips...

Never has there been so much fuss over such a regular part of the footballing summer. Granted, Cristiano Ronaldo had an awesome season and is rightly the focus of a lot of attention, but there is a very important question that needs to be answered, the truth behind which may never come to light.

I'm not talking about the interminable saga surrounding his shameless flirtation with Real Madrid. I'm a fan of neither them nor Manchester United. I do think that, should he leave, he will do well to find more talented and more selfless teammates than Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tevez and Ryan Giggs. As good as he is, you don't hit 40 plus goals a season on your own.

No, the major matter concerns the other end of the newspaper. The injured Portuguese has been sunbathing! And he has gone brown! Fancy, a handsome young Mediterranean man going somewhere hot and turning the colour of Marmite. While wearing tiny shorts! They'll be telling us Rooney went like a lobster and wore a baseball cap next.



The video above is proof if proof were needed that You Tube has a clip for all occasions. It's Ronaldo sunbathing with our old friend Nani. Not only does he wear his clothes backwards, it would appear he also sunbathes backwards. As one of the comments alludes to, it's not entirely clear why Nani would spend time trying to get an even tan.

Yet there is an even bigger mystery that nobody seems to have discussed. How bad is the tan line going to be from his recuperative blue boot? he's going to look bloody ridiculous. And it's the people he is most concerned to impress - the laydeez, that are going to be most let down.

When he's back on the pitch, whatever colour of stockings he wears will more than cover his shame. In the bedroom, he'll look like he's going swimming with a verruca. Unless he keeps his socks on. I do know from personal experience that he doesn't wash his hands after having a wee.

Sing for your supper

We had a few friends round last night for a bit of a buffet and a lot
of singstar.

Particular highlights were Marc's version of the rap from 'One Week' by Barenaked Ladies
and the Spin Doctor-off, which I surprisingly won. Oh, and of course
Louise's amazing fairy cakes.

BBC in Olympic collaboration with Jamie Hewlitt and Damon Albarn

The men behind Gorillaz, Jamie Hewlitt and Damon Albarn, have teamed up with the BBC to provide an innovative promotional campaign for the BBC's Olympic Coverage.

The video, which can be seen here, is an animated version of the 1970s show Monkey. It features the epic journey of the principal character and his friends to the Olympic Stadium in Beijing.

Hewlitt is currently working on another series of Phoo Action for BBC Three, while his collaboration with Albarn will move on from the Royal Opera House show of Monkey: Journey to the West to a mysterious project called Carousel
.

Albarn and Hewlitt have achieved critical and popular acclaim for their work with Gorillaz, the cartoon band who have also had an innovative live-action tour using huge projected images.

ITV extends FA Cup coverage to web

As part of their FA Cup coverage, ITV are to make use of the rights to the early rounds by screening highlights across their web portfolio and the Football Association's site, TheFA.com.

ITVLocal, ITV.com and TheFA.com will screen footage gained by ITV sending cameras to selected early rounds of the competition from August, giving exposure and potential revenue to sides from the lower leagues of the football pyramid. Clubs not chosen will also be invited to submit their own footage.



The BBC, who had held the rights to the FA Cup along with Sky, previously showed a single live match from the first two 'proper' rounds with a smattering of goals from other times on its flagship Match of the Day programme, usually after the weekend's main Premier League action. The BBC would also occasionally follow a small number of clubs in some of the preliminary rounds.

ITV's proposed use of their ITVLocal site, and indeed their site as an extension of the viewing platform, extends areas of their portfolio to an under-represented part of their audience, young males. Their Catch-Up player lags behind the BBC iPlayer in showing mostly soaps and female-focussed shows, while the BBC includes radio, comedy and flagship programmes such as The Apprentice and Dragons' Den.

It is also refreshing to see the country's premier commercial broadcaster making some original moves and beginning to differentiate themselves having taken over an important heritage property such as FA Cup coverage. Their 'The Premiership', which had the audacity to run its flagship highlights programme early evening on a Saturday, was widely panned despite making perfect sense, particularly commercially.

Running football coverage on ITVLocal should open the network up to a wider audience as well as ;giving something back' and hopefully fostering some forgiveness for ITV from fans of lower league football clubs. ITV Digital's spectacular collapse is still blamed for the parlous financial state of a lot of clubs, who had budgeted for TV money which never came.

Scribble it, just a little bit

I'm running the risk of boring my jealous iPhone 3G-less mates to
tears and my entirely disinterested girlfriend to the brink of
insanity by bigging up iPhone applications.

This morning I discovered Scribble and, in lieu of doing something
genuinely useful with it, drew a picture of a house. Which I am now
sharing with the world. Enjoy.

Ne's a Norfork legend

I'm pretty sure that when foreign sports stars come over here, our local news is as condescending as anywhere in the world. It just seems that Americans are so much more natural atbeing ill-informed and patronising.

'English legend' Darren Huckerby (who I believe may have slain dragons) got the full treatment following his signing for San Jose Earthquakes. Apart from not knowing how to pronounce his name, the presenter on Kron managed to refer to Huckerby's former club Norwich City as 'the Norfork (sic) club', who are apparently based in the North East of England.



The interviewer went on to listen to pretty much nothing Huckerby said, even ignoring his intial mention of David Beckham (he was in the team when Hucks scored a superb goal for Coventry about ten years ago at Old Trafford, which he discusses with the presenter while a goal for Norwich against Birmingham from 2 season ago is shown). When asked about his own 'WAG', Hucks pulled some comedy gold out of the bag by declaring his wife as 'too old' to be a pop star. It never stopped Cher, Darren.

As I say, it's easy to poke fun at the Yanks and in particular their horrendous interpretation of football coverage and culture. It wasn't all that long ago, though, that I remember Wigan Athletic pulled off a major transfer coup by signing three Spaniards.

Isidro Diaz, Jesus Seba and now Swansea City manager Roberto Martinez were the men, and Granada Tonight celebrated by togging them up in their Latics kits, taking them to Wigan town centre and feeding them pies. While referring to them as 'The Three Amigos'. It's the sort of preposterous stereotyping often seen in the work of BBC's Football Focus, and particularly Garth Crooks. Who I think would do very well reporting on the MLS. Where I can't see him.

Last.fm iPhone app - where have you been all my life?

It's very easy to convince oneself that you know more about something than you do. When you're trying to keep abreast in a world of 'Web 2.0' where new sites, social media fads and applications are popping up at such a ridiculous rate, the boundaries between fact and fiction can become blurred.

Last.fm is probably nothing new to most people. It turns out that, until I randomly downloaded onto my spanking new iPhone 3G the new free Last.fm iPhone Application
, I actually had no idea what Last.fm was. I am incredibly impressed.

The Last.fm iPhone application, which was announced early this year and which created a lot of buzz among users, looks great. It's not available everywhere, particularly in Australia, much to the chagrin of some, but the fact that it is genuinely free and, in my opinion, adds value to the user, is a major bonus of the Last.fm iPhone application.

This is more than can be said for the Shazam iPhone application. I was excited by the possibility of having access to Shazam for free, but the terms and conditions state that they can start charging you for it at their discretion. For iPhone 3G users it would appear to be advisable to check the conditions of license for all applications prior to downloading. What initially may not cost a bean could end up milking you.

This could be the case for Last.fm, but largely because it offers the chance to buy your favourite tunes direct from iTunes onto your iPhone 3G, and also tells you when and where your top bands are appearing next. I'm sorely tempted to head over to Canada to see Oasis perform, but will have to wait until they are here. Until then, enjoy the Last.fm iPhone application, and this:

SkyTunes vs iTunes

Sky are to step into the world of music downloads in a joint venture with Universal Music.

The satellite TV giant, who have extended into offering Broadband and telephone services as part of their package, will take on Apple's iTunes with a launch later this year, according to Brand Republic.

The monthly subscription model should at least provide a well-known alternative to Apple's iTunes service, which currently dominates the download market.

Universal boast the likes of Amy Winehouse, Girls Aloud, Razorlight, McFly, Kaiser Chiefs and Kanye West on their roster, which gives me a tenuous excuse to embed a Girls Aloud video below.



Incidentally, there is a version of this song, 'I Can't Speak French' which Girls Aloud recorded in French. Surely, logically, the last song of all songs in the world which should be re-recorded in French is a song called 'I Can't Speak French'. Just pointing it out.

iPhone Distorted Images

I have to apologise for not being able to post my own photo with this. I haven't had chance to give this a whirl in a suitable environment but, rest assured, I will as soon as possible.

What am I talking about? The fact that, according to Wired, a bug with the iPhone means that you can take quite funkily distorted images.



The video above shows how to do it. Apparently it's due to the shutter being more like a scanner than a camera. I've got my little sister down this week and she's a handy photographer, so if I have any trouble I'm sure she'll be able to help.

Watch this space for funky pics. And I'm going to Face My Pockets soon as well.

Men of means

It came to light today that Norwich goalkeeper David Marshall was fined £800 for failing to pay for his Television Licence. This is hilarious.

It's not the thought of Marshall stretched out on the sofa of his mock-Tudor mansion watching Loose Women of an afternoon that makes me chuckle, and obviously I would never condone not paying one's TV Licence, nor would I condone driving while using a mobile phone, which the errant former Celtic goalie has also been fined for over his summer holidays. I pay my TV Licence by Direct Debit and hence I believe am paid up until some time around 2018.

The funny part is that Marshall's fine of £800 is below the maximum of £1000. Why? Because it is means tested. What do you have to earn to get the full £1000! Even more bizarre is the fact that El-Hadji Diouf was also fined a few years back and was given a £100 fine. While he played for Liverpool. And earned around £20,000 per week.

It makes you wonder just how threatening the TV Licensing authority actually are. They make a big noise about students making sure they get individual licences if they're in their own locked room in halls, but what would the fine be? A Pot Noodle?

Still, if we didn't have to pay the TV Licence, we would never have had the stupendous Reeves and Mortimer ad from a few years back:

Adidas 'Celebrate Originality'

I can't help but be impressed with a lot of online viral marketing for sportswear firms. Converse and Nike have done pretty cool stuff recently, and Adidas Originals have now come up with a new hit as part of their celebration of originality.

Michael Sieben, a Texan artist, has designed two exclusive pairs of sneakers, a hoody and a t-shirt, as well as producing a surreal San Francisco-based web film.



The characters are colourful to say the least and decked in various Adidas Originals garments throught their boarding jaunt around the Bay area to the tunes of JohnnyRandom.

It's sure to be an underground hit and the microsite allows you to download desktops and icons featuring the characters, who are reminiscent of the Jamie Hewlett creation that recently aired on BBC, Phoo Action, which starred Jamie Winstone alongside a number of bizarre sub-Banana Splits villains and sidekicks, and the legendary Carl Weathers.

I was to understand there would be bluebirds...

I went to the South Coast this weekend to camp in Folkestone for a friend's birthday.

The town itself is remarkable for the number of road signs in French which remind you to drive on the left, and for apparently having not one single cash machine.

This was the view from the campsite. Lovely stuff.

BBC Dragons' Den Game

The BBC has a lot of faults, but it seems to be using online to promote and extend some of its flagship properties brilliantly.

The Apprentice was exactly what the BBC iPlayer was made for and where it really came into its own. In our office the number of people who caught up on the previous night's show at lunchtime, having studiously stuck their fingers in their ears and made loud noises whenever anyone threatened to discuss it during the morning, was astonishing. Consequently the show was always high on the most watched list.

Now with the sixth series of Dragons' Den, the often imitated but never bettered entrepreneur-destroyer and the vehicle that brought you Reggae Reggae Sauce looming, BBC Online have launched a game based on the pitch part of the show. It features animated versions of all the 'Dragons', including Duncan Bannatyne constantly puffing his cheeks out and Theo Paphitis looking like a very stern vole.



I'm all for this kind of innovation from the national broadcaster. They are free from commercial concerns, despite some of their ventures having tremendous money-making potential, and should be taking risks and pushing boundaries. Little games like the Dragons' Den game and the excellent Denise Lewis Heptathlon generate great traffic, huge buzz and PR and provide a genuine user experience. The Dragons' Den game could be considered to be fairly educational as you have to really consider the business side of your responses. Denise Lewis Heptathlon, on the other hand, allows you to leap over the long jump pit and run 100 metres in about 8 seconds, depending on your key-tapping ability.

Got, got, got, neeeeeeeeeed, got on swap

Sometimes people randomly go up in your estimations. As arbitrarily as you can develop a dislike for someone, the coldness can be thawed by the littlest things.

There are a few people, and when I say people, mean famous people, I really dislike for no particular reason. John Barrowman heads the list. He is just everywhere, and has no discernible charm, humour or talent. He is a grown-up, male version of those screeching pretentious little American girls who sing 'On the Good Ship Lollipop' at talent shows. Let's face it, he has almost certainly done this at some point in his life. Get off my telly.

I digress. Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse are right down there. I briefly forgave Doherty for the ridiculous status he has gained without actually doing anything of note. I say babyshambles perform at Benicassim a couple of years ago and they were fine. Fine, not slit-your-wrists amazing. Even when I discovered he was an ardent footy fan, and of a proper team like QPR, he only rose slightly in my estimations. I just don't get it.

Winehouse, I get. I'm not the biggest fan of her music but it's preferable to a hell of a lot of stuff. I don't need to know that she has gone out without her shoes on to buy fags though. Everyday. I don't care if it's a free newspaper, this is not what I pay for.

Having said that, the fact that literally everything she does is in the media managed to make her an example to my own girlfriend this week. She procured a full Euro 2008 sticker album for her scrote of a husband when (could be a while Blakey) he gets out of jail.



Much like everything from your youth, stickers seem to be making a comeback with that retro feel. Coca Cola are pushing them as a means of extending their football-based marketing, and hats off to them.

A couple of mates and I are discussing the potential to collect 2008-2009 stickers but the absence of a full English and Scottish league roster means those who support Premier League teams and those who support lower teams can't be catered for together, reducing potential for swapsies. It's not like 1987

I'm Darren Partridge

I have to admit I'm a bit obsessed with Steve Coogan, and in particular Alan Partridge. It could be that I'm particularly susceptible because I was born in Norwich and removed at a young age but, as a Canaries supporter in the North West I have always been associated with all things Norwich.

Mustard, Turkey and Delia (bless her) don't offer much, but Alan Partridge is the gift that keeps on giving. Much like the character in the book I'm currently reading, Slam by Nick Hornby, who can find a quote from skate hero Tony Hawk to apply to any situation, I and several of my friends can counter almost anything with an appropriate Alanism.

Of course, living in a world where Alan is never far away makes it all the more hilarious when life imitates art. This week, I've been cast back to Norfolk Nights by a couple of footballing stories.

The first and most hilarious concerns Norwich legend Darren Huckerby. Huckerby has enhanced what is a mildly tentative legendary status with his insistence that he would never play against the Canaries, a move which has earned him a contract in the good old US of A with the San Jose Earthquakes (managed, I believe, by former Ipswich stalwart Frank Yallop).



Darren, who I cannot think of without thinking of the video above, has such a love of Carrow Road that he has bought season tickets for the pending disappointment that is The Coca Cola Championship 2008-2009. Despite living about as far from Norwich as you can get.

He has also, upon starting to settle in in his new Californian surroundings, seen fit to describe the beautiful, enormous, sunny, mountainous state as 'The Norwich of America'. Superb. With footballers short of options when they quit the game, Hucks has guaranteed himself a place on the Norfolk Tourist Board. He might be a bit of a pariah in his new home, however, if anyone decides to test the comparison for themselves.



Another player who I've thought could do with watching a bit of Partridge is Crystal Palace's Clinton Morrison. Morrison is the sort of player you hate unless he plays for your club, but who you would expect the majority of second tier sides to secretly covet.

Norwich were linked with a big money move for the Irish International but he chose a return to Selhurst Park. He has now, it seems, been cast adrift, but is keen to stay 'in London'.

May I present a solution. The fictional 'Linton Travel Tavern'. The genius of its location is that it's equidistant between Norwich and London. With many footballers suffering from constant relocation, staying in Linton would provide Clinton with an excellent base during the week. Go on, Clinton. It was good enough for Alan.

Google reveals "Speech-to-text" technology

Google's purchase of You Tube was always going to present a world of possibilities. Put your hand up, though, if you thought that any of them would relate directly to coverage of the electoral process. I thought not.



The Official Google Blog reveals that the search giant's Google Research has a specific speech team. Using speech recognition technology, Google has managed to come up with a system that automatically transcribes videos on You Tube's Politicians Channels into text and indexes them. With this information it is then possible to search for specific themes within a video and, because they know exactly when the word in question is spoken, use shortcuts on the play bar to jump to the relevant points.

This tool is an extension of a theme written about a lot by Nick Burcher on his blog, concerning the role of various newer forms of media in the upcoming US Presidential Election and the recent London Mayoral Election.


What I find particularly interesting about this is the potential it has. I have spent a lot of time in the past (definitely not today at work) looking for specific comedy sketches and phrases. They're all there on You Tube, but having to trawl through a three minute Alan Partridge clip to find the killer line isn't as immediate as it could be. In the absence of a You Tube editing facility to chop and paste your own videos from those existing on the site (please someone tell me if this exists), being able to effectively bookmark a video for the money shot (if you'll pardon the expression) would revolutionise the sharing of videos.

My First iPhone 3G Update

I've been a busy boy over the last few days with work and the fact that we've got into Wii Fit at home. I've also taken the plunge, got out of bed early on Friday and am now the proud and slightly nervous owner of an Apple iPhone 3G.

A full day at work and a trip to see the lovely Suzanne Shaw in Chicago on Friday night ate into my fiddling time, and Saturday was when I encountered my first problem. My ageing iBook G4 has finally found something it can't do - update an iPhone 3G. I have upgraded my OS X as far as it will go without having to buy a new version, but my version 10.3.9 won't do - the iPhone 3G needs version 10.4.4 or later.

I managed to get it started on my girlfriend's rather rudimentary PC, so it's operational but only has a couple of Razorlight tracks and some random stuff from the Jam, one of which is wrongly titled which is annoying. I wouldn't have been enormously better off on my own Mac though, as updating to iTunes 7.7 seems to have wiped my library. I'll now have to try and find a way to get stuff from my 30GB iPod video to my iPhone 3G. I'm not hopeful, even with the wonders of Apple's systems.

Anyway I'm still waiting for my number to be ported over as they were a bit flustered in the Carphone Warehouse (which doesn't sell Carphones and isn't a Warehouse. It may as well be called the Cheese factory) and I had to call up myself. They initially denied it could be done after the point of sale but O2 have sorted me out. The consequence is that, not wanting to look like a pimp, I have restricted myself to one phone today.

I'm quite excited about getting my teeth into my new device. There seems to have been a fair bit of negativity about it but some people want the moon on a stick. I'm confident it will prove to be a great acquisition and will blog whenever I find somethign significant. Someone has already told me how to change the format of iTunes tracks into ringtones, which opens up endlessly annoying possibilities.

At the moment I'm favouring this. Ignore the start bit, that's not on the track.

Not always The Real Thing

An initiative by Coca Cola to generate buzz around a new product in Brazil has irked bloggers the world over.



The catchily-named i9 Hydrotonico hand-picked nine prominent blogs, customised their pages and sent the authors a USB fridge and a sample of the product.

The noise it has generated around the web has been considerable, but a lot of it has been negative, as reported here and here.

BlueBus, who labelled the sites in question 'rent-a-blogs', even went as far as to create a 'Blogger's Manifesto', which reads thus:

“A blog is a personal page, is a time logbook, is expression, is someone saying what they think/reckon/believe for those who want to read it. There aren’t bloggers’ union, wages, holidays, but we do lots of overtime. A blogger is not a journalist or an advertising agent: they can be everything and nothing, teenager or mother, hairdresser or CEO. Each one has the audience they deserve, the credibility they have conquered.”

I suspect much of the negativity is simply because it's Coke. Had a sportswear firm or anyone more easily associated with this type of thing done the same, they'd probably have been applauded. You wouldn't see people complaining because Innocent Smoothies had bunged someone who blogs on health issues a crate of a new flavour and some wooly hats. Still, a cautionary tale.

Status symbol

One of the things I've heard discussed in several different circles in recent years is how much easier it is these days to cheat on your partner. It's also easier to get caught.

Technology has created myriad opportunities to flirt and make more practical arrangements via text, email, msn (I refuse to call it Windows Live Messenger and still don't see why you would take a name that had penetrated the English language and just discard it. Shame on you, Microsoft.) and, it seems, new means every day.

Footballers have a lot of money so have access to as much cutting-edge technology as the next man. Yet, they aren't the brightest LEDs in the circuit board, and more and more seem to be tripping themselves up, usually in their personal lives.

Aston Villa flier Ashley Young showed his England pedigree during his Moscow-based webcam antics. You know these things are bad when half the words in the article are asterisks, as David Beckham will testify after his thumbs did the talking with Rebecca Loos.

Another young England star with the world at his feet, Manchester City's Micah Richards, was caught out by the good people at News International filming himself and a couple of friends/acquaintances on his mobile phone. It was a bit of an updated version of Marc Bosnich and Dwight Yorke's camcorder efforts of about ten years ago, or Lampard and co's infamous holiday 'romp'. Interestingly in the article about Lampard, Rio Ferdinand and Kieron Dyer, the former scummer is not in the accompanying photo. He must have been injured.

Probably the most expensive technological incident would be David James' use of Friends Reunited to track down an old flame. The reunion ended up in divorce from the mother of his four children, and a hefty pay-off for the wronged party. Until, potentially, now.

Crystal Palace youngster Ashley-Paul Robinson may have lived up to the second two-thirds of his name and let an important chance slip through his fingers. It's all down to his misguided desire to share his life through the medium of Facebook. As Ashley-Paul will soon learn, the likes of Facebook have privacy settings for a reason. So Neil Warnock can't find out what you're up to, god forbid.

Robinson, who can count Teddy's lad Charlie Sheringham among his pals (and Sheringham junior's wall has more lower division names than the Soccer Saturday vidiprinter), was apparently lucky enough to land himself a trial with Premier League Fulham over the weekend. Clearly his current club knew nothing of it, however, and Ashley-Paul's mobile status updates somehow found themselves translated into Warnock's language. Perhaps by one of the player's rapidly increasing number of friends, perhaps by one of the 2.7million members of the London network who can still see everything the guy posts.

"We feel it's probably better that he looks elsewhere to further his career," was the reaction of Mr Warnock, which is possibly his most considered response to anything ever.

Perhaps the person to come out of it best was everyone's favourite fooballing fisherman Jimmy Bullard, of whom Robinson said "Ashley-Paul Is Travling 2 Bath With Fulham Fingers Crossed. (Im lukin 2 Get Sum Tips Of Jimmy Bullard He's ON DIS TING NO HYPE LOL !", which roughly translates as a compliment to the former Wigan man.

With Bullard said to be on his way to another side in the Prem (although he hasn't put a video announcement on You Tube), it may all come up roses for Robinson, particularly as he looks likely to be a free transfer. Alternatively he could go the way of the Manchester City youngster who had a cigar stubbed out in his eye by Joey Barton.

Bee afraid, bee very afraid

Tim Lovejoy, the former Soccer AM presenter and ongoing 'personal friend to the stars' has teamed up with 'Spice Girls Svengali' Simon Fuller to create a new website, Channel Bee.

It appears to follow the broad Lovejoy format of sketches, football-related funnies, girls and banter and, if you watch the 'Behind the Scenes' bit, you'll realise it features pretty much everyone who was on the old, Lovejoy-fronted Soccer AM.

I don't have Sky anymore, but I do feel whenever I see it now that Soccer AM misses something from not having Lovejoy and in particular many of the crew he took with him. Despite all his protestations to the contrary, I would expect they often regret fleeing what must have been a fairly cushy number. In his latter days Lovejoy had even managed to get a gig doing some of the midweek games, but clearly lusted after something over which he had more control (he was, admittedly, the producer of Soccer AM, so he had a fair bit already).

Much more than Something for the Weekend on BBC on a Sunday, during which Lovejoy tries desperately hard not to talk about football, more than his foray into writing, and on a potentially far more original and wide-reaching stage than his radio shows (even his disappointing 6-0-6 outings), Channel Bee has potential.

There are no ads on the site, which went live yesterday, but, according to his Guardian piece, Lovejoy wants it to avoid anything 'corporate or boring' . How he proposes to make money out of it is anyone's guess in that case. My guess would be by phasing in a subscription, or by running pre-rolls on the exclusively (at the moment anyway) video content.

If this does succeed, and the presence of the savvy Fuller gives far more reason to believe it will than the involvement of any of the crew who left Sky and thought a show about American Soccer on Channel Five would be popular, it could worth taking notice of.

Run to the beat

As part of the ongoing hoop-la around their much-vaunted tie-in with Apple, Nike+, the funky folk at the sporting giant have collaborated with DJ A-Trak to create a special 'Running Man' track designed to help you with your training.



Running Man: Nike+ Original Run is a 45-minute mix which begins with a gradual build-up or warming up period before hitting a running groove and ending with a slower cooling down phase.

Adidas' own attempt to follow in the footsteps of their fierce rivals, a collaboration with Samsung via a mobile phone, looks like being left behind both in technological and marketing terms.

Nike have supplemented their already successful events programme with their latest venture, The Human Race, which pits cities across the world against each other. Aside from having a unique and market-leading product, through the Nike+ brand they continue to take strides towards owning popular running, an area they have not traditionally excelled in.