You may have read around the web about the Belgian woman, Tania Dervaux, offering to take the virginity of any Net Neutrality supporting guy. What you may not have realised from the (largely American) coverage is that it was a direct response to a story I posted earlier this month, about the Virgin Media CEO calling Net Neutrality “Bollocks”.

You can check out their anti-Virgin Media campaign page, naturally named “Stop Virgin” here, the site everyone else is noticing though is the ahem registration page.

Further research on Miss Dervaux revealed she seems to have done a lot of press stunts before, she runs a fake suicide blog, and allegedly did indeed give out all those blow jobs to fellow Belgians who supported her political party in last year’s elections (though Wikipedia says it was entirely virtual).

Is this girl for real? No of course not, but she’s achieved her cause.

Via: Engadget Switched (plus a bit of research, whodathunkit)

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Via Gizmodo

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John C Dvorak has a great blog post about a how a new ‘win-win’ deal the Chinese have done with the Democratic Republic of Congo could cause untold problems for the country. The deal (originally reported by the BBC) is to swap the Congo’s resources (needed by China) for much needed infrastructure. The deal, however, has numerous loopholes, such as the fact that the Chinese don’t have to pay any taxes until they complete the building work, and as Dvorak says “Any bets that they get started on the mining before the 32 hospitals?”

For more, check out the must read article here and the original BBC article and report here, please decide for yourself.

Dvorak will be discussing it on his podcast with Adam Curry ‘No Agenda’ later today, you can download that from here or on iTunes here (both free).

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Now I’m a vegetarian, but I have a feeling the following is only a half hearted effort. Peta is offering $1 million prize to a scientist who can create meat without killing animals and have it marketed in the United States at competitive prices to traditional meat.

According to Wikipedia PETA has a annual revenue of $25 Million, so is their offer really serious. As I and many other vegetarians have realised, with proper effort such a product can be made and marketed, but as the blogs who have analysed the press release have said, why do PETA insult those it wants to persuade? Reading the release it’s easy to see it’s a publicity stunt to promote vegetarianism, rather than a serious move to save animals in the long term, it’s such a disappointment.

I realise that PETA is an organisation full of disgruntled angry vegans and vegetarians, but sometimes it pays to be a little less pushy. I hope that one day we can have death free meat (I’m sure we can), after all most meat flavoured crisps have been vegetarian for some time. But acid-laced PR crap isn’t going to do it.

Source: Gizmodo

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Divine Caroline has a great article about how while green and environmentally conscious ads are more memorable, they may not be having the desired effect of convincing consumers. Sustainable marketing is a big issue (I’ve been learning about it), for more and an excellent gallery of some quality green campaign ads check out the article.

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Unilever make many a product that you or I know, like Dove toiletries, Flora and Becal butters, Pot Noodle and Persil laundry detergent. But did you know that all these products contain palm oil? Palm oil is widely blamed for the deforestation occuring in third world countries, devastating our environment and lining the pockets of big business who as you can see, use it in almost any and all products. As it’s earth day I thought I’d bring this to the attention of my many readers, please watch the video below.

Sign the open letter (Greenpeace)
Find out More (Greenpeace)

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The BBC has once again done a half million pound ($1 Million) renovation to their News division, changing and reinforcing their brand, and changing their look.

The BBC keeps refreshing their look based on the same basic idea that was concocted back in 1999, the beaming radio waves, spinning globes and the moving words. Oh the moving words.

So now, the BBC, asking for ‘Simplicity’ Lambie Nairn has provided the same answer as the designers of Special K did, plenty of white space to differentiate the product. As for the globe, instead of emitting radio waves, it is made of them.

The Telegraph seeks attention by saying the new look is nauseating, I wouldn’t go that far, but I don’t exactly like the new look. I would agree the look was a bit stale, but the new versions seem a bit strange.

What I do like is the brand changes. If you ever found yourself calling the BBC’s 24 hour news network ‘News 24′, or calling their 10pm News bulletin “The Ten O’Clock News’ the BBC wants to get rid of your kind. How? ‘BBC News 24′ is now called just ‘BBC News’, (which it should have been called all along) ‘24′ never matched the BBC’s other 4 numbered channels, so it makes sense to just call a spade a spade.

There is one problem however, being that nobody at the BBC knows what to call it. Is it BBC News, or the BBC News Channel? The website seems to be the centre of this confusion, and the word ‘channel’ reminds me of the ill fated ‘ITV News Channel’, so I think the BBC should avoid it at all costs. The other big change is that international channel, ‘BBC World’, is to be renamed ‘BBC World News’, the channel no longer contains as much general interest content like Top Gear, and it now tends to resemble BBC News with adverts, so it makes sense to have the change. Unfortunately the channel now has a terrible logo, but the name is good in my opinion.

Finally the 10 O’Clock News and the like are to be known as the ‘BBC News at Ten’ etc. All part of getting the ‘BBC News’ brand in your head, you see. It’s “dying” apparently, in a world of aggregated news where no one is sure where the source is.

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Can you digg it?

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Awesome.

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