How to win at Chat Roulette
We recently launched a meaty new blog dedicated to rediscovering true, beardy manliness, launched side by side with the French Connection's Spring/Summer 2010 menswear campaign
To get the ball rolling, we've set up a little competition.
You might've heard of ChatRoulette. It's a bit like Omegle.com, the live instant messaging service that hooked you up to another random user for one-on-one chats. Only Chat Roulette has webcams.
So we're challenging men to venture into the dirty, smelly swathes of ChatRoulette to find a woman. And seduce her. The best man wins £250 to blow at French Connection Man on a decent outfit to seduce real ladies in the real world.
Poke becomes RFB&H
RFB&H?
(that's Roope, Farnhill, Beech & Hostler to you)
When we heard that all the Poke partners were stealing away for a whole Friday to Iain's wedding, it seemed only right to celebrate. And what could be more appropriate than to relive the golden days of New York's ad-land with a tribute to the utterly irresistible Mad Men.
This seemed to involve raiding a lot of cupboards for vintage dresses, twinsets & pearls, bow ties, braces and a lot of stiff whiskey. All topped off with a little chain-smoking, casual sexism and a classic typewriter.
Well, any excuse.
Welcome to Santa's Lap. Do not move.
Events would not be the same without Stuff Club creating a childlike-joy-inducing object of entertainment. (You might remember the Quick-Draw Saloon back in July, also courtesy of Stuff Club.)
For Christmas, we were presented with Santa's Lap, an oversized pair of legs that dish out 'naughty' punishments and 'nice' treats. Upon setting yourself down on Santa's knees, you are rather alarmingly told not to move while a naughty-or-nice-ometer decides your fate.
The results are posted for all to wince at on www.naughtyornice.tumblr.com.
Hacked
We were on lock down here at Poke while all chaos ensued during hack day. Enter 24 hours of sweat, tears and custard pies.
Here’s a round up of the creations:
The Holy Sandwich www.theholysandwich.com: A never-ending stack of user-generated sandwiches.
Egg Watchers www.eggwatchers.com : An egg timer that sources decent YouTube videos of exactly the right length you need to cook your egg. (Notice, reader, how we steered away from the “eggactly” pun. It wasn’t easy.)
That’s a Cappuccino www.thatsacappuccino.com: Campaigning to make Britain’s coffee better with a nice, simple thumbs up or down.
Tracka2 www.tracka2.com: A high-fibre cereal bar with a GPS tracking device buried in it, so you can track your “load”. Delightful.
Al Pieda www.al-pieda.com: A Saw-style ‘death mask’ that releases a custard pie on the face of the wearer on the receipt of one million clicks on the Al Pieda website.
TasteBuddi www.tastebuddi.es: Randomly generated sweet and savoury food combinations for the more adventurous palate.
The Holy Sandwich took the judges prize, winning a five-course meal at the Chef’s table at Corrigan’s. The second prize winners, with the largest volume of traffic, will be announced in March.
Big thanks to Russell Davies, Nic Howell and Yotam Ottolenghi, the discerning judges who gave up their afternoons to be pitched bizarre ideas by sleep-deprived, over excited Pokers.
Poke Hack Day
From tomorrow lunchtime we're shutting the doors for 24 hours to encourage a bit of rapid R&D. We're holding our first version of a 'hack day'.
The whole company is being split into small teams and we're being given 24-hours to create an online thing. The over-arching theme of "food" has been provided, but within that theme we can create anything. It could be a new bit of technology, a service, a blog, a channel on YouTube, whatever, as long as it's broadly food related.
A team of guest judges will award a prize to the best team. A second prize will also be awarded in March to the team that's generated the most unique views of their 'thing'. Sound simple(ish)?
The idea is to push people to be as resourceful, entrepreneurial and hacky as they can - each team will have £100 in cash, and nothing more. Who knows what will happen, maybe we'll create a bunch of amazing things. Or maybe we won't. Whatever happens we'll remind ourselves of some useful stuff about doing things fast, cheap and dirty.
We'll share what's come out it on the blog...
Freaky Friday
It's Halloween tomorrow and the Foxes have weaved their magic on our our loos once again. It's all gone a bit horrortastic, in a wonderful, Hollywood kind of way. Every loo's got the treatment this year, so there's no place to hide.
We'll leave you to work out which one matches which film, but clues abound if you look carefully.
Quick Draw Saloon
I think it's fair to say we were quite badly behaved.
Highlights were:
'Elf n safety
- We can have plastic gun's right ? It's a cowboy duel.
- No guns... There'll be children present. Not with the current climate.
- Well, we'll use bananas in our holsters instead ?
- No, you can't use bananas, people might be allergic to bananas
- ....... ?
The contraband booze boxes wrapped up in brown paper and marked "Hat Box", "Box of Moustaches", "Pony food" etc ;)
A lot of people not realising the 'cold tea' was in fact Jack Daniels despite it being in a Jack Daniels bottle.
Being allowed to legitimately shout out disgusting swear words at the top of your voice through a loud speaker at a baying crowd ( Adult's night )
Lots of parents forcing their kids to play repeatedly, to get as many 50p shots in as possible before home time. ( Family day )
Mr(s) Simon Waterfall in a corset and yellow high heels.
Chris being helped into his chaps by two twin cowboys.
'Slut in a bin' incident - Our saloon whore getting carried away in the role. She made 20 quid for 'services rendered' and lost it down her cleavage.
Will Dogg's five year old nemesis who kept coming back and whopping him at pictionary
The dubious and controversial drawing of 'Berlin'.
People queuing up thinking we were the actual bar.
Branding a bare arse.
V&A Village Fete this weekend
Some good news and some bad news.
This weekend is the V&A Village Fete - hooray!
It's the last one - boo!
Make sure you come down. It's always a lot of fun. This weekend it's the grand opening of Stuff Club's Quick Draw Saloon. Imagine a twisted game of Pictionary set in a Rowdy Wild West bar and you're some way there. Add in a branding iron, sheriff's badges and deadly marker pens and you're getting even closer.
For more about the V&A Village Fete click here.
For more about the Poke Quick Draw Saloon pop back soon.
