Paul Annett

I came across these online. For more details, and the full slides (with audio) from my talk, see my previous post.

Oooh, that’s Clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web Design) – video clips!

Talking about clever logos and hidden messages… (Youtube)

Silly live-action stage show of the Silverback holding page, featuring a “live gorilla”! Okay, so it was just a bit of fun rather than a learning exercise… (Viddler)

…and even a sketch of my talk by Austin Kleon!

For the third year running, I was fortunate enough to travel to South by South West interactive festival in Austin, Texas, with the other guys from Clearleft. It’s always an amazing event, where I learn some useful stuff but more importantly meet some fantastic people (hello!). The difference for me this year is that I was giving a presentation.

My talk was about design delighters and Easter eggs, about hiding clever little gems in websites which people will find, enjoy, and share with their friends. The benefit of this is an intangible viral marketing effect which will help engage your audience and build hype around your product or service.

I have been overwhelmed by the positive response to my talk, on Twitter and elsewhere, with people describing it as their “favourite thing they’ve ever seen at SXSW [#]“, and “the presentation that stayed with me the most [#]“. Paul Boag, of the Boagworld web design podcast, said “A really, REALLY good presentation by @nicepaul. Very entertaining and inspiring [#], the best I have seen in a long time. It was obviously carefully prepared, informative and very entertaining [#]“. Very flattering indeed!

Unlike some of the others at Clearleft I haven’t done a lot of presenting, so I was a little nervous to find that I was in Ballroom A – the largest room at the conference, with over 1,000 people in the audience. Still, I had fun, and hope it will lead to more speaking opportunities at conferences in the future (I’m already in talks with a couple, so watch this space!)

If you saw me present and haven’t yet rated my panel at rate.sxsw.com, please do, so I’m invited back next year! (you’ll need to scroll down to the 3.30pm timeslot to vote)

The talk was deliberately very visual, featuring a magic trick, several website examples, and Elliot Jay Stocks in a gorilla suit (naturally). Unfortunately no video recording was made, but I have sychronised the audio recording with my slides below. During my presentation I demonstrated each website’s easter egg on the video screen, but when viewing this you will need to pause the slideshow and visit each site in a new browser tab to get what I’m talking about! You can also find many of the example sites I referenced in my bookmarks at Del.icio.us (plus a few that didn’t make it into the final talk).

If you run a conference and would like me to speak, please get in touch.

Enjoy…

Oooh, that’s Clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web Design) – with audio!

Choosing a username on Twitter matters a whole lot more than many other services. As the site gains more and more popularity, I hope these tips on how to choose a good Twitter name will come in handy.

1. It will be what you’re known as in the social world of Twitter, not just what you use to log in. Choose something fun! And best to avoid numbers, special characters, or anything unpronouncable.
2. People will be typing your username lots send messages to you, like “@nicepaul“, so it should be short for their convenience.
3. Messages sent on Twitter have a maximum of 140 characters, so it’s annoying to use up 1/10th of a message just with someone’s username.
4. If you’re Twittering as your business, use the business name you’re known as (Little Tikes use Twitter under the name of @CozyCoupe – who’d have known!)
5. If you’re Twittering as yourself, don’t use your business name. People will only follow businesses they have an interest in for fear of just getting a load of spammy messages.

Sorry to use my friend Hannah as an example here! She’s a fantastic wedding photographer based in London and her business is called Funky Photographers. Her personal Twitter account was originally @funkyphotograph, which is inconveniently long to type, takes up over 10% of any message to her, isn’t her own name and isn’t her business name either because the maximum length for a username is 15 characters (but it sounds like a business so that might deter some people from following her). As a result of reading this, she’s now changed it to @MrsMacG – a much better choice!
 

How to Change Your Twitter Username

 
If you end up registering with a username you later want to change, all is not lost. Unlike many services, Twitter does allow you to change your username at any point, and you retain all your followers. Remember to tell them about your new username or they might be confused where you’ve gone and who this new person is that they’ve never heard of!

It’s worth mentioning that your username is also your web address on Twitter, so if you change your username any links from other websites to your old messages will stop working. All my messages are stored at twitter.com/nicepaul and because my timeline is set to public rather than private, many of them have been indexed by Google. Were I to change my username, all of these links would break. Not such a problem if you’re a relatively new Twitter without two years of messaging history up there.

You can change your Twitter username on the ’settings’ page – just follow the link in the top right corner of your Twitter page.

Please leave a comment if you found this at all helpful.