Your Zone Friday: In the X Zone
Things we’ve done and things we like this week
In homage to the thrilling return of televisual karaoke marathon The X Factor, this week Zone is adopting a booming, OTT announcer's voice and intoning, "Over 500,000 unique visits!", "More than five million page impressions!", "12-hour dwell time!" (oh, you get the drift...) Here's this week's newsy bits (Dr) peppered with gratuitous Cowell corp references...
Three things we've done
Jerked around
If you saw the one-off al fresco cooking show Jamie Cooks Summer on Monday you – sorry, this doesn’t apply to vegetarians - will have been salivating over the Levi Roots-stylee jerk chicken and jalapeno breads. And thanks to the culinary prowess of Zone's Channel 4 Food team, the online recipe is already the most visited on the website for the whole of August.
Went ape
The BT Vision team would like to think that Simon Cowell – ex-judge, but still basically in charge - is grateful for the huge boost we gave his little show in the sparkling, new-look BT Vision email newsletter. Oh how we miss Simon's ever-changing selection of plunging V-necks every Saturday eve.
Hit the North
Zone's Coca-Cola team were working from the crack of dawn today filming at the StreetGames event in Manchester – and they sent us this photo showing our lovely video producer Jen Faichnie having a close encounter with Man City's Kolo Toure. Keep an eye on our Coca-Cola website next week for video from the event at Sportcity.
Beardstrokable infogram
This week’s data makeover
This week we asked Zone staff to name their favourite judges and finalists from The X Factor. Unsurprisingly the omnipotent Mr Cowell won on the judge front. As senior account manager Marissa Davies put it, "he no messy roundy" (we'll draw a discreet veil over her rather more, er, colourful thoughts on One Direction).
Zone hero of the week
Ladies and gentlemen, Zone are pleased to announce that we have a bonafide living, breathing X Factor ex-contestant in our midst. Account manager Gabby Golding entered the show in 2005 and 2006, both times making it to the coveted 'boot camp' stage. Not only that, reality fans, but her girl band cohorts were - deep breath - Jess and Lauren from The Only Way Is Essex! Here's photographic proof from Zoo magazine's 'The X Factor's Hottest Babes' special. That's Gabby on the right.
Geek of the Week speaks
Our tech team are on a mission to shed their nerdy reputation. We chart their progress...
This week developer Alessandro Basso has been to a festival! Well, we say festival, but we actually mean DrupalCon, the must-go event for the coding community. Conscious that this does little to shed the tech team's nerdy reputation - not least because it also involved a trip to Batman Live at The O2 Arena - Alessandro points out there was "a lot of beer". He adds, "There were even a few girls there." Small steps, lads, small steps.
‘I made this’
Zone staff share their creative moments
This week: Zone staff have been battling it out to become the master of finger-art. BT Vision website editor Claudia El Khoury's arguably controversial Hitler-finger was a close runner-up, but the winner, if only for embracing our X Factor theme, is art director Zoe Francis' Jedward-finger...
NEWSFLASH!
Zone are pleased to announce that we've appointed quadruple espresso-drinker Rob Hobson as editor of Powerade. Rob's launching the first in a series of new Powerade sites this week and generally steering the brand to London 2012 and beyond. So what Olympic tickets did he get? “Women’s judo, equestrian jumping and badminton.” How lovely.
Three things we like
The blog
Proclaimed "the Wikileaks of Pop" by The Guardian when it was first to break the news of Kate Bush's once-a-decade emergence from her rural idyll, Wotyougot is a cheeky, sharp and alarmingly up-to-the-minute source for all the pop gossip you'll ever need and more.
The tweeters
Sample tweet: "Bubbles are Full of Air! The earth is a huge bubble and we are all the people filling it with air! PlanetJeward is filled with Fun!" (Though not much washing up, if you're watching Celebrity Big Brother). A tightrope walk between the brainless and the profound.
The video
Not all of the Zone office's pop playlist is Simon Cowell-approved, you know. This week's unveiling of Flo's comeback on YouTube got us quite excited.
