News & Opinions

Tomorrow the much anticipated Geek Pride Day will be with you. In between practicing our bowtie tying and wand waving, we thought we’d each share our geeky guilty pleasures.

Get your thick rimmed glasses positioned comfortably for a very personal insight into what brings out our inner geek. Feel free to share your thoughts with us on Twitter. Until next week, live long and prosper, unlike Dobby (still sad about that).

For me, it is all about old-school technology: van der Graaf generators, mechanical calculators and slide rules. And don’t forget non-Newtonian fluids.

Tom Berry

It’s a full-scale replica of an X-wing fighter made entirely of Lego bricks. Yes, that’s right. An X-wing. A life-size X-wing. Made of Lego.

It’s 11 feet tall with a wingspan of 43 feet and is an exact 42-times scale model of the same kit you can buy here. Apparently it’s made up of more than 5.3 million bricks, weighs nearly 46,000 pounds (that’s 20+ tons) and took 17,336 hours (that’s four months) to build. Time well spent.

Phil Corfan

That moment when I realised that I wish Chris Anderson was my dad. Because he totally 3D prints toys to order for his kids. How cool is that? I can tell you…that is pretty cool. Everyone on the team now shares any 3D printing-related news with me as standard, and I’m not complaining.

Sarah Hay

Those who know me will find it odd I adore the whimsical, arrogant Doctor. Just like they would find it odd if I were sarcastic. I know Doctor Who is a children’s programme. So what?! Harry Potter, too, was created for children. Like Harry Potter it shares a very important quality that adult stories don’t tend to; it excites the naïve dreams of our inner child.

I know that this troubled protagonist is as much a reality as the worlds he visits or the aliens he battles. For an hour a week though, I can forget that. I can turn off the logical bit of my brain and indulge my imagination.

Callum Heckstall-Smith

To impersonate Yoda I love hmm…hmm… but as you can tell from my meager impression I still have a long way to go. Ever since my father introduced me to the world of Star Wars and the Jedi Master himself, I have been obsessed with perfecting my Yoda voice. Some may say a little too obsessed. But thanks to the wonders of mobile app technology I no longer need to spend countless hours practicing my ‘hmmms’ and Yoda-esque sentences. I can now rely on apps like Yoda Speak and Yoda Says to do the work for me – leaving more time for me to start practicing my Darth Vader voice. In the words of Yoda himself: “Do or do not…there is no try.”

Christina Farrugia

I’ve been to data centres, seen unified communications demos, and marvelled at microprocessor architectures. But I’ve never seen a Lorch machine for fillpower testing in action… Hang on, the what?

Remember puffa jackets that were all the rage in the early 90s? They have a highly technical, adventurous cousin – the down jacket. Owning five or six of them, along with no fewer than five down sleeping bags, you could say I’m obsessed. There’s just something mesmerising about their ability to loft up from nothing. And so back to our Lorch machine, which establishes the volume which a measured weight of down will fill. Geeks like myself can spend hours comparing a product’s “down fill power” and measuring every gram/metre of fabric weight. As far as geekery goes, I’ll concede – it’s niche. Maybe we should actually spend more time going outside and actually climbing something.

Tom Buttle

When trying to rack my brain for the special geeky thing that I love, I almost missed the huge part of my life that is my (not-so secret) love of sci-fi. I’m not quite Comic Con level (though I do have a mug saying Mrs Archer on it and have been known to be a fan of fancy dress parties), but if there’s a new sci-fi series/film/book out there, I’ve probably watched/read/learnt all the quotes from it. I blame my parents who gave me the original Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy tapes of the radio play (properly old school). From there I progressed to the TV series, books (all 5 or so of them) and more recently, the film version. Arthur Dent and his towel opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Now all I need is to find me a two-headed alien who’s president of the galaxy…

Georgina Miller 

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While the lure of the start-up scene is appealing to more and more personnel in the tech sector who are prioritising job satisfaction over salary, where does PR fit within the scene?  

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With just two years to the next general Election, a Conservative-led Government that is fast recovering its focus has used this Queen’s Speech to clear the decks of unnecessary baggage in order to set clear legislative and political priorities for the next year. In what will be received as a very political approach to delivering the Queen’s Speech, the influence of Lynton Crosby is in clear evidence, his role having been brought into the Conservative machine being to sharpen their messaging in advance of the General Election.

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This week, former Conservative education secretary Lord Baker told the Telegraph that a rise in arts degrees across the UK is leaving the nation with a major skills crisis in science, engineering and technology.

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Several years ago clients began demanding integrated solutions to solve their business problems.  So FleishmanHillard quietly reimagined, reinvented and realigned our business.  We hired new talent.  Invested in new capabilities.

Today we’ve transformed from a public relations consultancy into a communications consultancy that provides the world’s most complete communications solutions – capable of reaching any audience, anywhere, anytime, with any message, through any channel… all to prompt just the right response.

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Last week we wrote about wearable technology, this week we thought we’d share a couple of stories about technological bodies! We spotted these intriguing stories that will change the way you think about your body.

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In November last year we wrote a blog about wearable technology – clothes with remarkable properties such as cancer-detection or the ability to charge your phone. Since then we’ve seen an increase in the buzz around Google Glass and the Apple iWatch as wearable technology moves into the mainstream. IMS Research predicts that the wearable technology market will exceed $6 billion by 2016. This will include health-tracking devices, smart watches, glasses and clothes. Separately ABI Research has predicted that by 2016, wearable wireless medical device sales will reach more than 100 million devices annually. Here we look at some of the developments and their implications.

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From April 1st, responsibility for public health, including obesity, was transferred from the Department of Health to local government in a move that could have significant implications for the broader national obesity debate and the businesses that operate within it.

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Today Google announced the launch of a new tool that will allow users to decide what happens to their data once they pass away or stop being active online. The new feature will apply to Google’s email and social media services and will allow users to choose to have their data deleted after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity. Google is the first big company to tackle this sensitive issue but I’m sure others will follow suit in due course as we adapt to managing the minefield that is online data security.

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An interesting video in The Guardian this week about reducing your digital ‘life’ really got us thinking; How much does ‘The Internet’ know about you? Have you ever ‘Google Imaged’ yourself to find a whole host of embarrassing photos of your not so best side? Seen your name on a website you have never heard of? Let’s not deny it, sometimes the idea that there is so much information out there about ourselves, which is free for our friends, family and work colleagues to see can be a little daunting.  So here are our top five definitive tips to reducing your digital footprint:

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