It was a really good event – a kind of intranets anonymous. Big thanks to Simon Hill and Rod McLean for their warts’n'all stand-up routines. It certainly seemed quite a cathartic experience for all involved. Intranutters.

This morning a text message arrived from Twitter. I’m tracking the word “intranet” – more on subject-tracking in twitter here. It was none other than Richard Hare, yesterday’s whistle-blower and one of our hosts.

We touched on Sharepoint and accessibility, or rather the lack of it. Maybe we should set up the SHarepoint Accessibility Group – a self-help sub-group of Intranetters.

Some questions from the event…

1. If you could build an intranet from scratch, what would you start with? And what would you tell people it was for?
2. What are the best prizes to offer if you’re running a competition on your global intranet?
3. Management won’t allow blogging because it might encourage cyberbullying. Where do you start?
4. Is there a precedent in UK law (or any other country for that matter) where a company has been taken to court for an intranet not meeting DDA accessibility requirements?

Just wondering…

More often than not they say “thank you” instead.

I was just wondering if this is conscious and deliberate.

Did “Please stand on the right” originate on the London Underground? Like Pavlov’s dog, we’ve been gradually conditioned to do this. And why is it the opposite to our roads in the UK, where we drive on the left?

One thing’s for sure wherever you are. If you’re not standing on the right there will always be someone in a rush trying to get by.

Does a lift in Belfast have a different accent to a lift in Manchester, Falmouth or Glasgow?

Should the automated announcements on trains change accent depending on which part of the country you’re in?

I’ve just been sent this info about an event taking place in July. I’ve added in the link showing where the venue is on Google maps.

Title: Gas Organ exhibition
Venue: The Sassoon Gallery
Location: Blenheim Grove, Peckham Rye, London SE15
Date: 16th – 18th July
Time: Midday – 9pm
Cost: Free

On three sultry nights in July, the sepulchral vault of Peckham’s underground venue The Sassoon Gallery will reverberate to the eerily melancholic strains of the infamous Gas Organ.

The Brain-child of founding collaborators Lou Smith and Rufus Burdett, the Gas Organ is a fabulous musical instrument, able to play itself, or be controlled or played remotely.

Constructed from freely available plumbing, electrical and laboratory components, the Gas Organ is a fusion of Art, Science and Engineering, beautiful in its clinical appearance and mesmerising in its auditory effect. Witnesses of the event have their credulity challenged as they view the ephemeral chaotic turbulence of a flame producing such incredible range and depth of sound; how can a science lab experiment evoke such an emotional response as this? I am watching this, but I don’t believe it.

Weblink: www.experiment1.co.uk

I will definitely be checking it out.

Imagine a world where we all watched one TV channel.

Imagine a world where we all read just one newspaper.

Imagine a world where we all used just one search engine.

Now I don’t know about you, but right now I’m thinking about one search engine, and it’s probably the same one you’re thinking of too.

So the ad continues…

Ask.com… the other search engine.

At this stage I’m momentarily thinking I’d heard “arse dot come” – seriously, that’s what it sounds like.

But I’m also still thinking about one search engine, and it’s not ask.com.

I’d be very interested to know how the agency involved persuaded a company to accept that they’re second best, that they’re other.

Has it always been anticlockwise?

Is it clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere? [No, actually scrap that]

Does it mean top athletes’ descendants will have shorter left legs than right? [Actually scrap that one too]

I was just wondering what kind of Christmas tree we should be buying this year.

With all the recent mention of carbon footprints, are we doing more for the environment buying the traditional Norwegian Spruce or is it time to opt for the articial variety?

We’ve already made the decision. This year we’ve gone for a 6’6” Killington from Homebase. It’s got real pine cones on it and it’s not bad for an imitation.

I guess we can find other ways to reproduce the smell of pine. And at least the “non-drop” bit is true at last.

What I will miss is the annual outing to buy the tree. From now on it’s the annual putting-together of the tree, quite an ingenious contraption it is too.

I’m putting my green money on the fake paying for itself over the years both financially and environmentally.

I’ll dig around to find out the true cost of norwegian wood versus fake plastic trees and will report back with any findings.

It would also be interesting to know what all our evergreen politicians are going for.