Oh Charlie Brooker, I love your Guardian blog – particularly on a Friday afternoon after a tough week.

Here’s some highlights of his review of the iPad:

“It’s an oblong box that lights up.”

“It’s an iPhone for people who can’t be arsed holding an iPhone up to their face.  A slightly-further-away iPhone that keeps your lap warm.”

“It’s the spork of the electronic consumer goods world.”

“I’m sick of being pitched to like I’m a one-man corporation undertaking a personal productivity audit anyway. I don’t want to hear how the iPad is going to make my life simpler. I want to hear how it’ll amuse and distract me; how it plans to anaesthetise me into a numb, trance-like state. Call it the iDawdler and aggressively market it as the world’s first utterly dedicated time wasting device: an electronic sedative to rival diazepam, alcohol or television.”

And later on buying a MacBook…

“I just hope buying a MacBook won’t turn me into an iPrick. I want a machine that essentially makes itself invisible, not a rectangular bragging stone. If, 10 minutes after buying it, I start burbling on about how it’s left me more fulfilled as a human being, or find myself perched at a tiny Starbucks table stroking its glowing Apple with one hand while demonstratively tapping away with the other in the hope that passersby will assume I’m working on a screenplay, it’s going straight in the bin.”

This week I’ve been grappling with the problems of being a big social media fan, and wanting to use it for both work and personal reasons.  I must admit, at times I haven’t got it quite right; sometimes it’s a bit weird when someone at work stumbles across some of your more personal stuff on Facebook or Twitter, and at other times I’ve held back and been too formal.

I’m sure lots of other people must struggle with this.  Everyone’s heard the more extreme stories of people being sacked after their bosses saw what they’d been up to on Facebook, but what about the day-to-day stuff of making sure the right people see the right things?

The problem is that you can’t really package up sections of your life into neat boxes because people are much more diverse, contradictory and interesting than that.   And should you even try to?

This is where I’m up to:

Facebook:  Just for friends, fun stuff, silly photos, staying in touch.

LinkedIn: For business, with a focus on networking with other marketers.

Flickr: All my amateur photos.  I don’t really mind who sees these as it’s amazing how many places you can find other photographers to share ideas with, whether it’s at work or home.

Twitter:  This one’s causing me trouble.  I can’t decide whether to use it for my personal thoughts (what I had for tea this evening type stuff) or just to post marketing related stuff.

My blog: Again, this is similar to Twitter.  I’m now coming to the conclusion that I want to incorporate much more of my general interests, not just marketing. I’m also going to have a go at taking my own photos for my blog posts…

In case you haven’t read about it yet, it’s the official new symbol for sarcasm.  Tom Meltzer says: “Although ­strangers to the mark might mistake it for a squiggle with a dot inside, the “SarcMark” will soon be turning up in our inboxes every day. The question that will baffle future generations is how we managed to live without it for so long.

The real breakthrough… is the realisation that, ­despite having used sarcasm and irony in the written word for hundreds of years, humans are simply too stupid to consistently recognise when someone has said the ­opposite of what they mean”

And you can buy it online as a font – for just £1.50.  Genius.

Going mobile

Mobile apps are really taking off,  websites are becoming more ‘mobile  friendly’ (around 3% of UK web traffic comes from mobiles), iphones are very much becoming the norm, and this year there’s the big stand-off between Apple and Google’s new Nexus One handset.

Cloud computing

Despite its mysterious title, it’s actually quite simple.  It’s about moving your IT storage and systems from your own personal computer to a shared online space which you can access from anywhere.  I think it will be really useful to businesses. You can also see Wikipedia’s definition on cloud computing here.

Are you getting bored with Facebook?

Ok, so it’s not going anywhere fast (it has over 350m users)  but I’ve noticed that lots of my friends and colleagues are using  Facebook less.  Apparently, we’re moving towards more special interest groups and sites.

Google’s eyeing up SMEs

In 2009 Google  launched its new Google Export Advisor site in partnership with the UKTI, relaunched its small business toolkit site, and in 2010 it is launching a new project to get 100,000 British businesses online.

Measuring your social media campaigns

It’s always really difficult to measure the impact of social media campaigns (and advertising!) but this year I hope that we’ll all take some steps to crack this one.  It’s not all about quantitative data either; qualitative data has to be just as useful when measuring conversations and people.

Less green-washing, more green credentials

I hope that this year marketers will realise that there’s huge interest from the public in the environment, and that it’s actually beneficial to use green credentials as a USP and a key message in your marketing campaigns.  But it needs to be genuine – less of the token gestures!

Governments engage more with social media

With an election coming up, it will be really interesting to see how the parties use social media to win us over.  Although I can’t imagine any of them producing a similar version of the ‘Yes we can’ Obama music video on YouTube (below).  Although I do hope they try.

Kenco has committed to source the coffee for its entire range from Rainforest Certified farms by 2010.  It must be doing something right; according to Marketing Week magazine, Kenco instant coffee is now worth over £116m and has grown year-on-year by over 16%.

Another company reducing its packaging Original Source.  It’s new pouches use 50% less packaging, stand out more from all the other bottles on the supermarket shelf, and look really funky.  I hope the public realises that it has to put its money where its mouth is and buy these products – to show companies that it’s worthwhile focusing on green issues.

There are a few companies that I think could do a lot better.  Fast food chain Wasabi is one of them – every piece of sushi you buy is wrapped in plastic, you then put it in a paper tray, which is then put into a plastic bag. So wasteful!

If you want to contact a company to ask them to reduce their packaging, the Positive Package website has a template letter you can use, and also lots of tips on what to look out for when you’re shopping.

Interestingly, Amazon fares rather well on price, and they’ve also developed a nifty little app which means that you can import your purchases straight into iTunes or Windows Media Player.  Having tried both, I also think the download time for your files is much quicker than on iTunes.

I’m such a huge fan of Flickr.  As a self-taught amateur photographer, it provides me with no end of inspiration and ideas.  I love being able to chat online with other photographers, and I frequently use it as a bench mark for my work (the more views and comments the better!)

For those of you that haven’t used it, it’s is a social networking site where you can upload your photographs to your personal profile, and make connections with other people.  You can write comments and form groups. You can also organise your pictures into collections and sets.

Anyway, I was really pleased when Flickr announced that it was offering a new feature: galleries.  The idea is that you can curate galleries of other Flickr users’ work, according to any criteria or theme you like.  You can then share your creations with your contacts.

Here is Flickr’s description of the new service:  “For whatever you find interesting, fascinating, or mind-blowing on Flickr, galleries are a way to curate up to 18 public photos or videos of your fellow members into one place. It’s an opportunity to celebrate the creativity of your fellow members in a truly unique way around a theme, and idea or just because.”

The photos at the top of this blog are taken from my gallery on abstract pictures of eyes.  There’s something so beautiful about eyes in abstract form – particularly in black and white.

Visit my galleries on Flickr

I’m always looking out for interesting marketing campaigns, and I have to confess, I am rather smitten with Sarah Lu’s Youdoodoll brand.

I first stumbled across Sarah Lu a few years ago, when she spoke at a ‘women in business’ event at the British Library.  The idea behind her product is that you buy a plain fabric doll, and you can then personalise it with photo transfers, fabrics, etc.  She’s now extended her product range to YouDooLand, which includes cats, dogs and superheroes!

So here’s why I rate it as a brand:

Firstly, I love the packaging design.  It lifts what is essentially a rather plain product into something very creative and fun.  The designs flow really well onto the website, promotional material, and so on.

She has linked herself to other cool brands. She ran a fabulous launch party with Pepe jeans, which included producing a 6ft Youdoodoll,  and decorating over 500 dolls at their flagship store, in collaboration with Pepe’s creative director Douglas Cordeaux and her supporter, BBC Dragon Deborah Meaden.  More recently, she’s collaborated with H&M.

She’s developed a community.  Anyone who buys one of her products can share their designs online, via her website, by uploading their photos to Flickr, and tagging them with ‘youdoodoll’.  Alternatively, customers can register their dolls on her website and share photos in an online gallery.

She uses social media to its own advantage.  There’s a Youdoodoll blog, YouTube channel, Flickr group, and so on, all of which are great.

It’s very honest.  Sometimes marketing can feel a bit, well, over engineered.  I like Sarah’s brand because she’s just having fun with it, and being herself.

Watch Sarah’s story on YouTube: