The lovely people at Our Workshop arranged a pop-up market in London’s SE1 – perfect timing for Christmas. I bought my first ‘original’, a cute watercolour by Sheena Dempsey.

I almost feel Christmasy.

It’s quite easy to forget, well for me at least, that unless you specifically protect your feed, all of our tweets can be seen by anybody. When I tap away I imagine my wit and bad spelling to be only enjoyed by a handful of friends or associates.

This of course isn’t the case and organisations have cottoned on to the fact that they can glean a valuable insight in to what their customers and users think about their products and services through social media. Last week, whilst very frustrated at filling in time-sheets on my current employers ‘glitchy’ to put it likely software, I tweeted something along the lines of “I dread to think how much money people waste on shoddy systems and software. I’m looking at you ******” (I not going to name the company, again).

Within an hour one of their competitors had replied to my tweet, nothing derogatory, just a gentle invitation to possibly try their product. I have to admit I was impressed and if I was in any way responsible for the decision about such systems I may have tried to do something about it. Over the next 48 hours the unnamed supplier along with another of their competitors had replied via twitter and it began to get a bit silly.

Mostly because the unnamed supplier had made quite a grand statement about their product, which was completely disillusioned. And for the time that’s where it was left.

Until a few days later one of my colleagues told me how she’d heard about my tweet and that she’d been emailed by our unnamed, very worried supplier. To do this they must have had to do a little bit of digging to find out where I worked, then written an email to their contact subtly probing to see if they were going to lose an obviously valued customer.

I was a bit stunned by the lengths they’d already gone to. Firstly I do think it’s amazing that organisations are being proactive like this, using social media as part of their customer relationship model, but then I felt, as stupid as this sounds, a little preyed upon. The irony is that if they put the same tenacity into sorting out their product, I wouldn’t have tweeted in the first place. And there I was me thinking it was only @PSJF, @ViciousCraig and the robots that read my tweets.

On Saturday the 3rd of February 2007 I tried to get dressed. It was then that I realised I was a fat bastard and none of my jeans fitted any more.

I dragged my partner out for a run managing no more than 500m before I had to stop and reward myself with a sausage roll.

I still run regularly now, thankfully a bit further, with less processed meat and whilst I don’t get the same endorphin rush I used to, I do still very much enjoy the bit at the end of a run – the bit where you get to stop.

I’ve dabbled with a bit of technology to get the most out of my runs, heart rate monitors, mapmyrun.com and one of the ‘first generation’ GPS tracking apps for the iPhone, Runkeeper.

Adidas and Nike have recently launched their own training apps and having used both, here’s what I think.

Adidas MiCoach

If you want to be shouted at by a passive-aggressive liar who judging by the set-up procedure, clearly didn’t want to train you in the first place choose this app. He hates you all the way around your run and the data he gives you is inaccurate and should be taken as a thinly veiled “fuck off and never bother me again”.

Nike+

You are not worthy to be trained by this app yet it’s willing to stoop down because its cash at the end of the day. It knows it must remain your ‘buddy’ so that you continue to buy its over-priced clothing and shoes. Every now-and-then one of its mates will be ‘bought’ in eg. Paula Radcliffe, to patronise you further “Well done, you’ve beaten your personal best” croaks Paul, squat down with her knickers pulled aside.