Archive for June 2010

 
 

Police bully 16 year old photographer who knows his rights

Saw this on Boing Boing yesterday.  Nice to see a teenager standing up for their legal rights.  Jules deserves, at the very least, a massive apology for the way he was treated.

Man up, Met.

Monday linkdump – Habbo, Glasto and low level sonic weapons

Habbo and MTV are now best of friends and will be cross promoting content and working closer together than ever before.  Can’t wait to see Habbo’s first ever TV ad.

Number of ‘Neet’ (Not in education, employment or training) teens 16-18 falling, but still high. It’s gone from 10.3% in 2008 to 9.2% in 2009 (just in England).

Glastonbury’s finished and, apparently, lots of teens were there.

“Why facebook want you to believe that email is dead” << the suit and tie analogy made me laugh.

More calls for the Mosquito to be banned.  Fingers crossed, it’s a disgusting product. Article here.

Update: it wasn’t banned. Damn.

Oi, Mate, Gimme Some More!

It’s hard not to think it’s all some kind of elaborate joke, a spoof of those who think that young people genuinely respond to, and use, try-hard yoof-speak.  Y’know, like what Tom Watson has done to great effect here and Ali G did, ten years ago.

Sadly, it seems that Oi, Mate, Gimme Some More! has been put together with the best of intentions, but very, very cringey results.   It’s an attempt to make Dickens more accessible to young people and, with titles like ‘Da Tale of Two Turfs’, just seems woefully patronising.

I hope I’m wrong but, as far as I can see, the main market for this will be adults wanting a cheap laugh at the expense of how they think modern teenagers communicate. And dats da troof, ma homiez.

Monday linkdump – MTV, Twilight and exploding jelly babies

MTV looks to UK teenage dramas for inspiration, remaking Skins and Inbetweeners for a US audience.

Cinema chain Vue Entertainment is launching a series of cut-price film screenings exclusively for teenagers to double teen cinema attendance, starting with Twilight and New Moon in advance of Eclipse being released.  Only £1.95!

Confessions from a science chatroom, from our mates at I’m A Scientist.

David Mitchell talks about references in children’s and teen telly

David Mitchell makes the phenomenally valid point that how can we expect children/teens (ie, humans during their formative, most likely to LEARN STUFF, years) learn anything from television if they’re only showed things they already know?

Quite right. I learnt the words ‘righteous indignation’ from the Bucky O’Hare opening credit sequence, looked it up, and it became part of my 6 year old vocab. Nerdy, but true.  I also learnt a surprising amount of Greek mythology from Ulysses 31.

Christian Owens, Enterprising Young Brit 2010!

From:  http://venturebeat.com/2010/06/09/teen-founds-profitable-ad-network-branchr-wins-young-entrepreneur-award/

Fifteen year-old Christian Owens, founder of online advertising network Branchr, was recently named Enterprising Young Brit 2010. The Daily Mail gives the annual award to teen tycoons with startups in the United Kingdom.

Owens founded the startup, which counts MySpace as an advertiser — to give you a sense of the prestige — in January 2009. The company provides small and medium sized businesses with an alternative to Google through its pay-per-click advertising platform.

Love it.