The Joy of Links – those XXX links in full

We’re not normally this slow on the uptake, honest, but we’ve only just twigged that each week for large numbers of you this is your first time…you know…doing ‘it’. (In our defence we have such a growing crowd of knowing regulars who come back week in week out that we’ve been neglecting the Friday links virgins – and Google Analytics shows there are lots of you, too.)

We’ve been remiss and we apologise. We have not been the sensitive links lovers we know we can be, but from here on in the lights are going to be dimmed, the muzak is going to be soft and with an experienced touch we’ll be guiding you through your first time. No more diving straight into the action, instead we are going to take our time and start the linkage only when the first timers are ready. So slip into something more comfortable and we’ll begin. We’ll be gentle, we promise…This whole Friday links blog malarkey is basically a roundup of the best web-based wonders we happened to stumble upon that week. The inclusion criteria are simple, the link has to  a) make us chuckle or render us slack-jawed with awe b) just generally be of interest to social web users or creative types c) if we can find a financial services angle then so much the better – we then serve them up as a wee Friday treat in link form. Now that we’ve got that over with, let’s get down to it.

As ever with these things it’s always best to abandon yourself to the experience and oh yes yes yes do we have some stimulating linkage to get you started; this mind blowing exposition on thinking space and ideas generation from The Economist is a thing of beauty and most definitely sits in the things that made us gape in awe category.  It is also, ahem, a very hard act to follow but we feel this web application that allows you to create your own digital handwriting is up to the task.

As the intensity of those first couple of encounters settles into a comfortable ease in the company of links, you might find yourself mucking about like a couple of school kids and giggling at, say, all the things people have been doing wrong for ages but have only just realised. Ah, the first flush of love, eh. And with that last link we are spent. Until our next meeting, then.

You log off. No, you log off. No, you log off first. Let’s log off together, on three..one…two…three. Hey, you didn’t log off. Oh you!