I’ve just launched an early public beta of SocialSearchr.  Using a combination of Google AJAX Search and the newly released Google Custom Search the site aims to improve the quality of search results in various niche categories by including only results from specific, trusted sites. 

The first category to launch was recipe search, which only includes geniune, quality recipe sites such as the BBC Food site, Epicurious.com and others.  Other categories have followed, and each will be refined and improved over time using user feedback to hone results.

If you have any suggestions for new categories, please let me know.

Check it out here: http://www.socialsearchr.com/

Sony published their follow up to the San Francisco ‘Balls’ ad today.  Filmed in Glasgow, the new ad features a tower block getting blasted with coloured paint.  It’ll be shown on TV tonight, but you can see it online now at: http://www.bravia-advert.com/paint/thead/

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed with the end result.  When they were filming it all looked quite impressive, but it was a dull grey day and didn’t have anything like the intensity of the SF balls ad.  I thought they might’ve had a plan to sort that out in post production, but evidently they didn’t.  It was a bit of a shame really – we had a summer of brilliant blue skies and sunshine in Glasgow and they just happened to film on some of the dullest afternoons of the year.

I was there at the original filming of the ad back in July – here are some of my pics from the day…

All of my photos from the filming are online at high res here