Lingolook

I’ve been giving DreamHost a really hard time of late and apparently they have not been acting without cause. For whatever reason, best left to techies, I’ve been abusing their procwatch program whatever that is - they even explained the way of the world with an emphatic “procwatch kills NG lingolook killed 30846″.

Good Lord. Lingolook was killed?

Tech support says it’s a combination of poor code (probable) and high traffic (improbable) which leaves me with the understanding that I have a duff site that no-one visits. I like to think positively so I’ve replaced that possibility with another opinion and it has something to do with my 2008 online resurgence. I have been murmuring about my projects for long enough and the hard-working Sarah from Blogging Expertise is finally coming up with the goods and her uploading and tweaking has put the cheap but oh-so-very-cheerful DreamHost contract I had under too much strain. So, despite all her hard work, it’s all her fault

Still at least it brought me to my senses. I’ve upgraded my account to a Virtual Private Server which sounds like the IT equivalent of the Champagne Room and I’m sure will work out just as expensive but at least it should keep things running. If I disappear you now know why.

Don’t know about you but I’m really looking forward to 2008.

For starters I get to see whether my attempt at putting emotion into the Acer brand gets a warm or frosty welcome. Their annual kick-off is due at the end of January and this year it’s going to be totally different as it’s no longer a “one-nation-one-station” event but something more along the lines of “welcome Acer, Gateway and Packard Bell to your new home (Acer Group), allow us to present ourselves and show you that we’re a hip, smart, forward thinking bunch who know what we’re about, where we’re going and how we’re going to get there”.

Acer 2.0? Well that’s the plan…

Of course there’s a lot riding on this. I might be a master wordsmith but if the company doesn’t believe its own hype then the battle’s half lost. My guess is the company believes in itself but doesn’t yet fully understand its own hype and by that I mean the ability to measure the value of what it does beyond profit margins and market share, so anything designed to get it away from its “spreadset” (the habit of looking at the world through a spreadsheet) has got to be good for morale. Good for customers, good for products and, yes, good for Excel.

What else? Well I’ve set my sights on Canon’s latest HD gem, the HV20. In a few weeks I’m going to start filming multiple episodes of my free English language course site and see where it goes.

Allow me to explain a little about my past: like most English-speaking people who end up in Italy, my first job was teaching English. In fact I’ve been involved with my own language ever since just in different measures. Just check out my über glamorous career path:

Teacher –> translator –> creative translator –> copywriter.

That third category is an important moment in the life of any translator. Its like professional puberty and it comes when the translator’s balls suddenly get big enough for him or her to say: “Hey! This sounds crap in English (or whatever the destination language is). Why don’t you re-write the whole thing like this?” More than experience, this moment requires quite a lot of courage and really does separate the men from the boys or whatever the female equivalent to that is. From there on in, you’re good enough to write your own stuff.

Anyway, despite a stellar career as the world’s most invisible copywriter there is nothing like teaching. I think it has something to do with live feedback or something. Whatever. I really miss it so I’ve decided it’s time to get back into it, although in a version more in line with my way of seeing the world and that’s through a blog. I know how it should end up, but not how it should start so I’m just going to start recording and see where it goes.

Things to look out for in 2008?

I think Dell are going to take online conversations to new heights so expect to see Richard on Oprah in 3Q. I think 2008 will see Acer updating its frankly appalling website in tune with the newest kids on its family block. I also think this is the year flash memory notebooks finally go mainstream which means no or very few mechanical parts which means long, long battery life. Expect to see the word “longevity” come back into favour. How about calling it the UHT laptop (Ultra High Transportability)? Well it worked for milk…

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