Oh I crack myself up, I really do.

With the aid of this awfully easy plugin to implement, you can now point your mobile/cell/psp/bacon butty browser to The Tinbasher and get a passable reworked version of it on your phone.

In other words, it doesn’t take an eon to load. Plus, when it does load it doesn’t look like it’s been in a car crash.

I don’t want you thinking I’ve done this to be part of an expanding mobile web or to make it easier for you to view this blog whilst travelling home from work.

Absolutely not.

It’s just that we’re in the middle of a cold snap over here and I’d rather not stick my head out from under the duvet.

Here’s to bone-idle blogging.

UPDATE: There’s a bit of trouble at the mill, so I think I might just wait until I upgrade to the latest version of WP to sort it all out. There’s no point breaking it twice is there?

Many moons ago when my blog gills were infinitely greener than they are now I managed to get into a little discussion with GM’s head marketing mullah, Michael Wiley, about the various merits of their Smallblock Blog. (Read here.)

I’ve remained sceptical about the prozac-infused nature of GM’s blogging ever since.

And so, it seems, is Tom Rapsas at DM News.

Running on fumes. I hate to pick on GM. My family drives two GM cars. But its corporate blog appears little more than an extension of the marketing department, churning out a one-way sales spiel that I fear few listen to (see fastlane.gmblogs.com).

GM uses several bloggers, and a recent look showed a variety of stories. There was advance word on three new Saturn models. There was a blog on a recent TV appearance by the CEO. In short, it was good news all the time. But in the same period I read these positive blog entries, mainstream press suggested GM was going through its biggest crisis ever. In a span of about 10 days, the company had offered buyouts to 100,000 hourly workers to try to avert a strike. There was the announced layoff of 500 white-collar workers. Then there was a massive accounting restatement that cut the company’s debt ratings and sent its stock plummeting.

As this news came out, I kept visiting the GM site, waiting for any of the GM bloggers to give me insight into what was going on. But the good news blog entries kept coming. It was as if the bloggers were living in a bubble, oblivious to the negative news all around them — the reality almost certainly being that someone from corporate squashed the idea of dealing with these issues directly.

Not only does ask the right questions of GM’s blogs but he then goes on to do a compare and contrast with The Tinbasher whilst throwing quite a few salient pointers for any other prospective corporate bloggers out there.

You don’t know how you’ve made my day, Tom.

There are one or two sites languishing in the bowels of Tinbasher Towers that I intend to give a mention to in the near future.

I don’t want anybody thinking I’ve been deliberately avoiding them or just downright ignorant.

Here’s one for all those of you who come here fully expecting to garner some useful information about sheet metal in its various guises as opposed to meandering bollocks about how I got dry humped by a German doctor.

Sheet Metal Guy now has a blog, which I suggest you read if you prefer your sheet metal actually about sheet metal.

You’d better believe it you bastions of blogdom - sheet metal officially now has its own niche.

Who’d have thought it?

It won’t be long before we can start having our own little summits y’know.

Ingo Haupt is conducting a study on Business Blogs as an instrument for consumer loyalty.

In other words it’s a blog study for an end user perspective to see what blog readers/participants/call ‘em what you will think. Which, at the end of the day, is mostly what it’s all about.

As Ingo puts it:

The purpose of my research is to learn what quality aspects of business blogs are most important for consumers and how companies can use their weblogs to create and strengthen consumer loyalty.

You also get put in to a draw to win one of three $25 shopping vouchers - that’s $25 more than anything I’ve ever been bribed with for doing one of these things.

You can take the study itself by clicking here.

And you can follow the progress of the study by clicking here.

I’ve just had a spam shower, the like of which I haven’t seen I first started blogging. It’s been a two hour blitz of bollocks which I can’t work out as to why.

My SK2 spam settings hadn’t been changed, but trying to stem the flow on this one resulted in cranking up every setting until it slowed to a trickle then finally a stop.

So, if you’ve been experiencing a spam-storm of late, please let me know. And, if your comment doesn’t appear to have come through due to my spam-storm blitz, let me know about that too.