G's latest spweings from twitter...

We have a unique 'soft sponsorship' system coming on tap! [see it on twitter] 2010/09/03

Something fresh: Landed : http://bit.ly/aNfcxJ [see it on twitter] 2010/09/02

Arnott's rice crackers - made in Indonesia, a fact listed in really fine small print #fail #arnotts [see it on twitter] 2010/08/31

Bike Doc App

I told myself a little while back that I was going to only try and post meaningful discourse (to me in anyway) or entertaining/inspirational things. Prolly will last about a month and then I’ll start throwing up random shite again.

I stumbled on this this morning doing the rounds. As per my post about iPod apps I like and use, this one’s really interesting in helping people work out all those little niggles on their bike. The concept is totally interesting and signifies just where media is heading, especially the media that Apple (love them or hate them) is moving into the market. What I find most interesting about this is where once you had a book, which might or might not have been out of date or was soon to become so, this App should and could in theory always be up with all the latest. What’s more, unlike a book, you can have this with you when you need it most… when you are out on the bike. The interactivity is also far more intuitive than trying to leaf through a book to find a particular niggle, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and a picture that goes ‘bing’ is worth who knows how much?

You can grab it here, if you are so inclined.

AT-AT

AT-AT day afternoon from Patrick Boivin on Vimeo.

Inspiration: Shinya Kimura

via [hfl]

Bend Over Please

Over the years I have written numerous bits about the (lack) of service from bike shops. It’s not a pet peeve but it does get my back up, after having spent the past 10 odd years selling to the ‘cycling community’ and now being on the front line, steering a mountain bike marquee. So that I am writing about it again, in a sad sort of way, tells me that for some of the ‘bike shops’ out there, how they view their customers could be similar to the way I view their so called customer service.

It was time to buy the Lad his first real bike. The past year or so in his ‘like-a-bike’ proved time well spent as his sense of balance grew to the point that he needed something more to do than push. Now I know buying a ‘kid’s bike’ is fraught with all sorts of dangers, mostly to do with the total crap they pass off as kid’s bikes these days. So rather than going to some big box store and picking one up cheap, I decided to the the ‘right thing’ and go to my local bike shop… LBS. Now where I live in Sydney I have several choices. Towards the city, down Oxford Street, is the well executed store that’s bang on the demographic for the areas it’s in. They have kid’s bikes but based on my past experiences with them, their ‘too cool for school’ attitude, means you basically have a target painted on you the minute you walk in (read paying them $100 service charge for shortening brake hoses), so there was little chance I was going back. The other option was the smaller, much less cool shop in the opposite direction up in Bondi Junction, where I bought the ‘like-a-bike’ in the first place. They seemed OK then, so why not again? (more…)

Aprilia’s new trick

First the original BMW piece:

And Aprilia’s response…. which I think is really quite clever: