Ewan McIntosh › Comments

IF you ever doubted a man’s face is his autobiography and a woman’s her work of fiction, look no further than the latest Facebook application. MirrorMe, launched yesterday, simulates facial ageing in a manner unlikely to conclude that your face will remain your fortune. Instead, having weighed up the effects of lifestyle, and availing of CSI-style facial recognition technology, MirrorMe will give a no-wrinkles-barred presentation of what your kisser will look like going into the future. - Ewan McIntosh

Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco, who is curating a new exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, talks to SPIEGEL about the place lists hold in the history of culture, the ways we try to avoid thinking about death and why Google is dangerous for young people. - Ewan McIntosh

Spotlight is thrilled to announce the launch of “StudentSpeak,” a new teen-produced reality series on how teens use digital media in their day-to-day lives. Every other week, Chicago students will take viewers inside their world, and show how technology is transforming how they think, learn and socialize. Watch the sneak preview produced by Ben Wolff. - Ewan McIntosh

Do you ever wonder about an inexplicable change in your traffic? Or forget exactly when you launched something, or who was responsible? After scratching your head, did you have to chase down different departments in your company or go digging through old emails to get an answer? For instance: * Was that dip in traffic because the servers went down? * When did the new display ads campaign launch? * Who's responsible for the checkout page redesign and when did it go live? Running around asking everyone from marketing, IT, and product doesn't scale. More and more large companies are using Google Analytics, so we wanted to cut down on the mileage you need to cover to account for everything that happens to your website and online marketing. This week, the wild goose chase is over -- you can now easily denote unexplained dips or spikes and figure out "what happened" with the launch of Annotations in Google Analytics. - Ewan McIntosh

Different websites suggest that the full cost of employing someone is between approximately 40% (www.interimmanagementuk.com/management-cost.htm) and 100% (www.startinbusiness.co.uk/flowchart/4flowchart_employment.htm) of an employee's salary, plus the salary itself. How are the numbers calculated? We did not find a detailed cost model that is accepted by professional organisations or HM Government. Therefore, we designed a cost model (cost-of-employment-calculator.xls), with the help of people from UKBF (www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk) and PCG (www.pcg.org.uk). Costs vary by employment sector. The spreadsheet is for office-based work. It is not perfect. As far as we know, there is no one correct method of calculating employee costs. For example, the marginal costs of a new employee do not increase the infrastructure cost. Therefore, do you apportion infrastructure cost to the new employee? - Ewan McIntosh

“I want MyPolice for Christmas..What a promising and exciting product mypolice is: its independence and user-friendliness making it especially useful for engaging people from those groups who may feel nervous about approaching the police directly: groups who tend to under-report crime, and whose community safety needs may be less clear to the police as a consequence “ Paul Matheson, Equality & Diversity Co-ordinator, Strathclyde Police - Ewan McIntosh

Spending time with Ewan and Darcie at Channel 4ip, giving seminars with Mike to Business Gateway, testing new social media product launches, asking for help or advice, putting people together that could benefit from an introduction – hell I’ve even recommended it to recruitment companies. The gem of course has been learning about and taking part in 38 Minutes – which is Scotland and Northern Irelands answer for Media people to Bebo for the over educated… The dominance of this group are a core of freelance very knowledgeable social media people (some have since gone on to work with bigger companies) however it occurred to me that, right there in that room we could solve just about any problem or provide the solution to almost any situation that involved social media. So why don’t we harness it – why don’t we create this social media collective “agency” that answers all those questions you ever had or wanted to know about social media? - Ewan McIntosh

Medical animation specialists - Ewan McIntosh

Pretty things to look at while you wait for things to load. - Ewan McIntosh

If the only thing that schools do with Internet and computer technologies is create a system that has more-efficient ways to deliver content and has predetermined objectives, all they will have done is repeat the mistakes of the 1950s, when the common thought was that TV would revolutionize schools by delivering the best content in the world. Instead, we as a society need to understand what schools can be if they become transparent through the use of 21st century tools. When the classroom, the teacher at the front of the room, and the school library are not the be-all and end-all of gaining information, schools can become truly inquiry driven. - Ewan McIntosh

Professional indemnity and liability insurance: Towergate is Europe's largest independently owned insurance intermediary and a driving force within the industry. Offering over 200 specialist insurance products, underpinned by strong relationships with some of the UK's leading insurance companies, we're committed to providing customers with insurance they can trust. - Ewan McIntosh

Doubles from £99 Situated in vibrant and trendy East London, David Carter’s home is a historic and elegant four storey Queen Anne townhouse built in 1717. David is an internationally acclaimed interior designer (check out his super cool website at www.alacarter.com), and the extensive work he has carried out has generated hundreds of pages of editorial in leading interiors magazines all over the world. - Ewan McIntosh

Doubles from £79 The Hoxton Urban Lodge, where urban living meets country lodge lounging, opened in September 2006. With roaring fires and cool cocktails, fabulous linen and flat screen TVs, sumptuous duck down duvets, Aveda bathroom products and free WiFi. With 205 bedrooms, the Hoxton Grille Restaurant and 6 meeting and event rooms, the Hoxton Hotel redefines the urban hotel experience. - Ewan McIntosh

Welcome to the Fox & Anchor, a beautifully renovated traditional pub in the heart of Clerkenwell, serving the finest local food and with a suite of six luxury rooms upstairs. Doubles from £95 - Ewan McIntosh

Bedrooms are available from £95 in sizes tiny, small, medium and bigger and feature either king-size or super king-size beds and are equipped with treat-packed mini-bars, free wireless internet, Sony flat screen TV's with Sky plus and DVD, and bathrooms with rainforest showers complete with Cowshed goodies. Hotel reservations can be made using the online system. - Ewan McIntosh

Links to subscribe to the Global VC Blog Directory in bulk via Google Reader (RSS/OPML): - Ewan McIntosh

Lovely historical overlay of London past with London present - Ewan McIntosh

Lovely historical overlay of London past with London present - Ewan McIntosh

Did you know Twitter only lets you see your most recent 3,200 tweets? Take control of your Twitter account and make it permanent. Get started as soon as you can so you don't lose any tweets! - Ewan McIntosh

Beware! There seems to be a new type of cyclist out there – not the Lycra lout but the iPod zombie. I must declare an interest as a keen cyclist, pedestrian, train passenger, driver and, indeed, iPod user. However, like drinking and driving, I don't think iPods and cycling mix. On my bike, audible warnings are just as important as visual ones. Even if you can see what is in front of you, you have to hear what is behind you as you move out to avoid potholes or raised manhole covers. - Ewan McIntosh

This holiday season, when all your friends want to go to the bars and get liquored up, try bringing a level head with you. Introducing "You Booze, You Looze," a new iPhone app that offers partiers an entertaining way to keep track of their drinking. - Ewan McIntosh

A list of social interaction metrics / KPIs - Ewan McIntosh

We're pleased to announce the overall winners in the Android Developer Challenge 2 - Ewan McIntosh

Superb shop with toys, oddities and cool stuff, in Amsterdam - Ewan McIntosh

Ewan Macintosh . Actor The Office. + numerous characters . TLC regular . Really nice guy. #inthebackofmycab - Ewan McIntosh

The problem is that most publishers will not review unsolicited proposals or manuscripts. I personally receive hundreds every year; our staff receives thousands. We simply don’t have the resources to review these. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. So as an author, what do you do? - Ewan McIntosh

If you have an idea then how could it scale? Which elements of scaling are important to you? And what would it take to get it there? - Ewan McIntosh

I was once a real nut for the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games. But this? This is some next level stuff. I was barely able to accomplish the minimal task of putting drum stick to pad on expert. I can't even fathom 1. hitting the target with a kick reliably and 2. doing it with any sort of timing like the soccer players (footballers) do in this video. Bravo. - Ewan McIntosh

Interesting snippets of film looking at education systems and classroom models around the world - Ewan McIntosh

Playdar is a music content resolver service - run it on every computer you use, and you'll be able to listen to all the songs you would otherwise be able to find manually by searching though all your computers, hard disks, online services, and more. - Ewan McIntosh

Following RL Stevenson's footsteps with GPS and a Google Map - Ewan McIntosh