We spent the weekend at the Edinburgh TV Unfestival 2007, described as a “collision of TV, Internet, Mobile, Media — New, Old, Future”. It’s arranged as a fringe event to the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, organised by Ian Forrester of BBC Backstage and Suw Charman. Suw very thoroughly blogged everything that she was at, so you can read up on many of the sessions in her Strange Attractor blog entries.

Internet TV and video is a really exciting area at the moment. There’s a lot going on and it was fun to see and meet representatives of Zattoo, Tape it off the Internet, Sclipo, and (a bit of a hit here at Texperts Towers) Planet Scicast. But the best bit was just meeting so many people involved in disruptive technology and media. Traditional media are struggling to keep up with what’s happening and users are turning away from them. Tape it off the Internet’s lolcat-powered presentation put it best: “O hai TV execs, I am in ur internetz stealin ur audiencez.” And of course the mobile space is hugely significant in all this, particularly the mobile find space. Perhaps the best evidence is Veveo securing $28million in funding for a mobile video search product which hasn’t even been released yet!

It was great to meet up with old friends like ThinkTank Mathematics, and to make some new ones like Trusted Places. Pictures of the event are up on Flickr. An excellent event all round!

We’re celebrating our first week as Texperts at the Marquis of Granby in London tonight! And we’d like to invite you along. Join us there this evening (Tuesday, August 21) for a pint or two - the Marquis of Granby is at 2 Rathbone St. (click here for a map) and we’ll be there from 6:30pm to 9:00pm - hope to see you there!

If you want to know more about life, the universe, and everything Texperts-ish, join our Facebook group. Lots of insider info and friendly folks there, check it out.

175 classic black cabs will be hitting the streets of London today! The taxis are City and Soho-based cabs, which we think is an area loaded with potential Texperts fans. I was really excited by the idea of using London black cabs because it ties in so effectively with our slogan “how to know on the go.” There’s also a nice association with “the knowledge,” and with real situations that people use us for.

Our taxis will be in and around central London from now until October. There have already been a number of sightings, even though I am yet to see one myself.

Spotted one of our cabs? Let us know where…

We’ve had a frenzied few days running our guerilla marketing campaign and Ewan MacLeod from SMS Text News has blogged all about it!

Our PR team at Parys Communications kidnapped Ewan for our “light-casting” campaign. In his blog account he has fantastic photos and even a video of the evening’s mayhem. Some gleeful, evil chuckles in there!

Our mission concluded with the “word on the street” strategy. We commissioned a Yorkshire graffitti artist to “etch” the new Texperts logo onto the pavement with some clever cleaning solutions that superclean the image out of the surrounding dirt. Fantastic results in the early dawn light:

The scene: Newcastle. The time: Fresher’s week. The mission: Let the students of Newcastle know that 82ASK is here to help them with their work and social lives, everything from Alcohol to Zoology. For this, we wheel out the big guns. Forget the SAS. Forget Delta Force. Forget Jack Bauer, even. We have The Pink Ladies. Our crack team undertook a hazardous mission: go out to bars and clubs and bring the light of 82ASK into the dark. It was a tough job, but if anyone can handle it, it’s these girls:

And what a resounding success it was! The Pink Ladies did a fabulous job, and lots of satisfied new users have been welcomed into the fold. It’s humbling to be in the presence of such a force of nature as the 82ASK Pink Ladies.