Retail therapy pays!

Check out www.quidco.com to make money every time you spend money on the boring essentials.

Quidco links to hundreds of top websites (Carphone Warehouse, Apple, Expedia, Play.com, Tesco, iTunes, British Gas.....).

If you click through to any of these sites, YOU receive the referral commissions that would normally go to third party referral sites, search engines or price comparison sites.

For example, if you click through to Virgin Media's website through Quidco, and sign up to a Virgin Media package, you get £80 from Quidco. Pure cash in your bank!

Finance and utilities products pay the most, so next time you need to get a new mobile phone, arrange gas or electricty, open a bank account, book some travel or renew your car insurance, click through Quidco, and you can make yourself a nice bit of cash to spend on the fun things.

WHAT A FIND...

Perfect 'little' decadent find in the heart of Soho!

Have you ever tasted the best cakes in-the-WORLD!!! Cakes that basically melts away in your mouth mmm mmm!

Go down to Princi, 135 Wardour Street, W1F 0UT

Princi is a distinctly authentic Italian bakery that offers its customers a mouth watering selection of pasta and meat dishes as well as some sumptuous freshly baked bread and dont forget about the unbelievable cakes.

PEER -TO-PEER, my one friend that is Italian (which never likes restaurant food as it never compares to his mom's home cooking) absolutely loves it!

The restaurant/deli is good for any occasion from a first date to a quick bite to eat with very nice ambience even a friendly doorman that welcomes in and greets you on the way out!

Go and enjoy!! Mmm mmm mmm

Movember Mofo

A few of my fellow Loungers may have noticed a fairly suspect looking piece of facial hair that I have recently been sporting. Do not be alarmed it is for a good cause - Movember - the chance for men to grow that moustache they have always wanted and to make money for charity!

On the left is the dream, and on the right is the reality - but there are 9 more moustache growing days in Novemeber to become Tom Selleck....

...Seriously it is for a good cause and any donation that you could make would be massively appreciated.

My Just Giving page is http://www.justgiving.com/edwardyeoman1

New Looks Best Dressed Uni 2008

The Lounge recently organised a number of in-store parties at New Look stores in 6 cities around the UK. The parties were part of the launch for their 2008 student campaign, the search for ‘New Looks Best Dressed Uni’. New Look had a fantastic response to the parties with between 200 – 300 students attending each party. Those lucky students enjoyed an exclusive 25% discount, goody bags, complimentary drinks and DJs playing tunes on the night. If you are a student and would like to join the New Look Facebook fan page to find out about future promotions & discounts then go to www.newlookbestdressed.com.

Goodbye Itunes no more Buy Buy

If you have not seen it. Then click the title of this article.

Spotify is here. It is simply the ultimate legal music application, the Itunes killer and possibly radio killer.

Every tune you could want, streamed to you. It changes how you think about music. It's no longer about ownership and having to store tracks. Its about having access to broadband and an unlimited music library at your finger tips.

Run it on your mobile, or your Mac / PC. Winner.

It's from teh guys behind Skype. You need to try it.

Wall-Painted Animation

This is a wall-animation entitled 'Muto' by Blu - a street-artist from Bologna that my Italian housemate Alessio claims is a sort of Italian version of Banksy.

Wherever you stand in the debate over graffitti as art or vandalism, you can't deny that it is quite impressive...



blublu

Busy Week

Team Rainbow had such a busy week last week - It was AMAZING!!!

Except for our daily fun & games at The Lounge we had 2 events for the SWAY Campus Tour In Association with Need For Speed and EA @ Trafalgar Square for the London Games Festival!

First LGF!

The site was very impressive, EA took over the whole Trafalgar Sq, with 2 big LED Screens, 3 tents filled with EA pods and loads of games to interact with

















I visited the LGF on a very rainy Saturday, to watch SWAY that was performing and to try my luck on the RockBand!

Even due to the rain, people took some shelter in the tents played away! Perfect activity for a Rainy afternoon!















Second : SWAY CAMPUS TOUR IN ASSOCIATION WITH NEED FOR SPEED UNDERCOVER


We launched the campus tour at a London based student night at the coolest new club Matter.







Matter was pumping with all the Hip Hop fans that came out to support SWAY & DJ PREMIER. In between the sets (& some between the sets - sorry guys) the ppl in the club came to play Need For Speed (again & again) coz with prizes like playing live against Sway and winning an XBOX 360 - who wouldn't want to....

Our Lucky winner James won in 24 sec! Poor Sway was left in the dark - but I think after his training at LGF, James will be in trouble.










Our second event happened in Norwich and was the final show for the Norwich Black Arts Festival.

OMG - What a hit!!! SWAY was amazing on stage, the crowd absolutely loved him and Need For Speed also felt lots of love with people queing up to play the game (and too meet the sexy Brand Ambassadors)









Will we be seeing you at our next events???

Catch us at:

Reading Univ - 15th November
Sheffield Univ - 18th November
Bristol Univ - 20th November
Warwich Univ - 21st November
Nottingham - Stealth - 28th November


Check out:

www.needforspeed.com

www.sway.uk.com

Context

The media want to increase their share of voice.

Increased viewers/listeners/readers equals increased advertising revenue.

Hence the media's drive to sensationalise, their incessant need to drive attention grabbing sound bites and headlines.

I get theses things, but now, right now, they are just not seeing the bigger picture. Sensationalising the economic situation does not do them any good in the long term. Their owners and sales teams need to get down in the editorial department and ask them to try to at least give some sort of balanced view. Stop spreading the gloom and panic. Actually try to make a positive supportive difference. Do it to protect your own revenue, do it to protect your own job.

So in an effort to prove a point I looked into the latest media frenzy around UNEMPLOYMENT. LONDON HIT'S X HUNDRED THOUSAND JOBLESS. JOB CRISIS. Please look at the below graph. It shows unemployment from 1980 - now.

We've just had it too good, and we love a good old moan. Unemployment is lower now than it has been for the whole of the 80's and 90's.

Don't believe the hype.

Now get back to work!

James

The Kooks are out of touch

As anyone who has listened to the Kooks latest album, Konk, will know these poor lads have not got laid for quite some time. Or at least their writers haven't. All they seem to sing about are the challenges they face with the ladies and love. If only this was true for the vast majority of today's young people. Getting sex, and consequently STI's, has in fact never been easier.

We're currently working on a number of pilot initiatives with the COI to address just this problem. We'll be posting more to the blog soon, however in short we are piloting 3 new initiatives. Each targeting a different demographic. The first goes live in about a month. We are aiming to have a genuine impact on teenage pregnancy, STI's and the use of condoms, so much more of a Street's style song.

Transpant costs or hidden costs...

...that's the question...

Especially when it comes to two industries:

• Retail Banking
• Low Cost Airlines

People often go on about Free Banking and this time last year people were worrying about whether there would ever be an "end of free banking" - but did this really exist in the first place? Banks may not charge to simply be an accuont holder, but with higher interest rates and charges for withdrawing cash, going into your overdraft etc. I personally think it's fair to say, nothing in this life is "free" - especially when it comes to banking.

On a lighter but yet more annoying note, low-cost airlines - especially certain Irish owned, micky taking airlines, which shall not be names, famous for 1p flights.

Now don't get me wrong. I completely understand the merits of advertising flights for an amazing 1p. What gets my billy is the hidden charges for thinkgs like having luggage, airport check-in, inhaling more than 6 times in a minue...that sort of thing.


I personally would much prefer to have all the charges up front when I'm booking a quick flight to Barcelona, rather than having to sit there with three airline websites up, who all charge different amounts for different things and having to create some kind of bumbling formula to discover which one will actually end up saving me money.

Something like:

(flight + tax) x (insurance/food to buy) = ACTUAL COST
________
stupid bits

Maths was never my favourite subjest at school, and I would much prefer to have it there in fron of me: £75 to Barcelona, all included. No problems, no hassle, no fuss!

Now that sounds like a deal to me.

Cheers,

Paul