Google has designs on your entire computer now with their upcoming Chrome OS. This video explains it in a straightforward way. Perhaps a little too straightforward…

It’s really exciting stuff, but I mean come on, there are TWO letter Ts in the word ‘inTerneT’ guys. Innernet just makes me think of Dennis Quaid floating around the inner ear in his teeny submarine.

Still, people are increasingly making this sort of video now to explain their products or services. Perhaps because online things tend to be technical and scary to some people and are more palatable in felt tip pen and a soft Californian accent. Apple’s iPhone ads are almost painfully patronising.

Here’s a video which should help the Daily Mail get it’s head around Twitter.

As technology becomes more intuitive and reaches out to every generation during their everyday lives, then it’s only right that explaining things like this gets more natural, with companies’ official marketing starting to imitate the traditional word of mouth explanation in the pub. After all, previously technical terminology like ‘blog’, ‘ping’ ‘tweet’ etc are becoming more everyday language every, er… day. We’re finally getting comfortable with the future.

I’m holding out for Branding in Plain English, or something about the offside rule. A new video meme? Just wait for the parodies…

Where were you when you heard Michael Jackson had died? It really doesn’t matter I’m afraid. Sorry.

We’re living in a time when information is more mobile than ever and things happen FAST even in your pocket. You don’t need to be there, you just need a hotspot. The video above shows the news breaking on Twitscoop, which tracks Twitter trends. It’s fascinating, this is how information behaves in real time, it’s alive.

All of the frantic information, rumour and then iPhone scrambles for valid news sources to verify the story, led to a massive spike in internet data usage. Twitter was groaning under the strain, think of the poor birdies trying to lift that massive King-of-Pop sized whale…

In fact Twitter became the star of the show, as in addition to the turmoil in Iran, Michael Jackson’s death was something which offered one of its first true tests, the world was really relying on it to find out what was happening. It’s no good Googling “Michael Jackson Cardiac Arrest” in the middle of the night when you suspect someone is surely pulling your leg, there’s no cached information to draw on. MJ hadn’t had the foresight to put out a press release or preschedule his multiple organ failure to coincide with the evening news (although Uri Geller seemed strangely available for comment). No, Twitter is the immediacy search engine™, the only way to find out what’s going on right now. No wonder so many important people are frightened of it.

And so maybe it’s fitting that Twitter also offers up the best tribute to Michael Jackson I’ve come across so far, the inspired Billie Tweets by 9Astronauts. I could try and explain but it’s easier if you just click this link and see it for yourself.

Amazing.

These really are fascinating times we’re living in.

Rest in peace Michael.

Neil Buchanan is not dead.

The much loved children’s TV presenter is the subject of a false rumour which has gained momentum on Facebook, with a group entitled ‘RIP Neil Buchanan (the art attack guy)’ which at the time of writing this has 21,236 members. It seems it might all have started with a false Wikipedia entry claiming Neil had died last month. An obvious April Fool, what with the equally obvious cause of death being joked of as an Art Attack (sigh), but even so it, just goes to show how viral information is on the internet and how little rigour we often apply to what we read.

Wikipedia has long been dogged by cases of false information (sometimes intentionally, sometimes lazily) and there’s a long established history of false obituaries, but I imagine that the news was most shocking to Neil himself.

Of course, you can also be resurrected digitally, as Bob Monkhouse proved to great effect in aid of prostate cancer awareness:

Oh, and don’t forget to join the Neil Buchanan is ALIVE AND WELL Facebook group…