In an orgy of nepotism and fraternal pride I managed to persuade my colleagues to knock up a blog to cover the progress of my youngest brother Jonny Malbon as he sails single-handed, non-stop and without assistance around the world in the ‘Everest of the Seas’ the ultimate ocean race, The Vendee Globe. The race starts at lunchtime on Sunday. Jonny will set out at the helm of the 60 foot Artemis - a brand new, super-powerful 60 foot racing yacht - along with 29 other sailors/boats (7 in total from the UK) to cover the 28,000 miles from Les Sables D’Olonne in Brittany.

Around half of the 90 day voyage is spent in the Southern Ocean as the boat loops round the bottom of the world passing South America and Southern Africa before heading back up to France to complete the circuit. The Southern Ocean is one of the most extreme, scary, hostile, lonely and freezing places on earth, with icebergs, storms and freak waves coming at you from all sides for about six weeks. You’d have to be utterly insane to do this, and judging from Jonny’s interview by Will Greenwood in today’s Daily Telegraph (in which he talks about the hallucinations he experienced during his solo training sails) he’s certainly qualified in that category.

Never one to pass up the opportunity to experiment with stuff, we’ve set Jonny up with a Twitter account and he’ll be Tweeting as he goes. Twitter is actually the perfect social tool for this: the satellite comms system onboard Artemis is vital for receiving weather reports and acts as an umbilical chord in the outer space he’ll be sailing through at bottom of the world. He won’t be surfing the Web much. He’ll also be quite busy dodging icebergs and dealing with ‘the voices’, so we’ve set him up with a Twitter Mail account. He’ll be able to fire off bursts of up to 140 characters that will appear in his Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/VendeeGlobe) as well as the sidebar of his blog (http://jonnymalbon.com).

Artemis has an official site at ArtemisOceanRacing.com but the blog will be written by friends and family - mainly my Dad who would in any case have been spending the next 90 days plotting the boats progress on Google Earth and scouring the Web for news. Now he’ll be piloting a blog with his mates. I hope it becomes a useful place to bring together coverage from all over, and Twitter should bring Jonny’s experience right onto our desktops in a raw and real way.

We’ll be running our own experiments as the race develops. Go and follow Jonny on Twitter and we’ll keep you updated.

In this week’s New Media Age this week (6 November issue), Steve Richards the MD of Yomega has written a letter titled ‘BA shows brands the way to use social media’. It’s a very nice letter in which Steve says:

“British Airways’ foray into social media underlines the appeal and potential of these channels for mainstream brands. UGC gets its fair share of damaging headlines, but BA’s Metrotwin initiative grasps the value of social media at a strategic level, underlining the BA brand as digitally astute and accessible and instilling a sense of community amongst its customers.”

Thanks Steve. We salute you right back. With competitors like you, who needs friends?

This man here is called Leon. He’s ace, but sadly he’s departed.

God, I’ve wanted to do something involving this stary thing for ages. Now Amnesty have done it in a worthy cause. (I wish I wasn’t so shallow).

Focus on the red cross for 30 seconds. Tilt your head back and stare at the ceiling, slowly blinking your eyes. (Hint: click the image and load the full size image. The one below is too small)

My brother sent me this cool site that lets you upload a photo of yourself, fiddle with some controls, and create a weirdly nostalgic portrait of your changing face across the decades. Check out what you’d look like if you’d been in The Ice Storm. Complete with a period soundtrack. (I used my fave avatar to add to the confusion).

Found this on the entertaining Urban Prankster website. The Tag a Dummer campaign and website is a response to war, soaring gas prices, impending economic collapse and environmental disaster. It’s a parody on the real Hummer website and urges visitors into direct action, albeit a teeny weeny bit illegal.

Hmm. That should satisfy the lawyers…

The site provides a template of different size ‘D’s (PDF) that you download, cut out and glue adhere to the vehicle tank-like hulk in question, turning the word “Hummer’ into “Dummer”, whilst out walking your dog. You then upload photos of the ‘tagged’ vehicle to a shared space to encourage other eco-warriors.

If it wasn’t so illegal, that would deserve an award.