Interesting stories this week…

On Monday, BBC News reports on a Swedish Christmas tradition whereby a giant straw goat is built in the towns’ central square. Somewhat expectedly, there is also a tradition in which arsonists would attempt year after year to burn down the goat. Impressed already? It gets better.

So far, only 10 goats have survived beyond Christmas since 1966. This year, the authorities are determined to see it through to the New Year and have applied a coat of flame-resistant chemicals on the 13-metre (43ft) high goat that is also water resistant. According to the spokesperson, reportedly said with confidence,

“No-one is going to get our goat this year.”

One more thing, for those concerned about this straw goat, visit the “goatcam”

This week, millionaire student entrepreneur, Alex Tew, is back on the scene with his latest project. His first project drummed up a lot of frenzied media coverage (and also a lot of envy).

Million Dollar Homepage was set up during his time at university, in which he offered a million pixels of ad space at a dollar per pixel, and then sold them all – the last set was auctioned on eBay. According to The Guardian, the website racked up 863,000 unique users a day during its peak. Now he’s back and has launched his latest web project – making someone else a millionaire. At pixelotto.com, ad space is on sale for $2 per pixel. One month after the ad space sells out one visitor will be randomly picked to win $1m dollars (£506,000).

The moral of this story? Use PR! As Steve Boggan from The Guardian observed after his interview with Alex Tew:

“A press release sent out by Tew was picked up by the BBC and then news of his novel idea went “viral” over the internet. The more people heard about the site and visited it, the more advertisers wanted to buy pixels.”

Without being biased… PR does work! And he’s now back on the media radar again, already getting coverage on BBC News, The Guardian… twice in fact.

Speaking of millionaires, according to the Metro, Harry Potter star, Daniel Radcliffe, joins the Sunday Times Rich List this year with a very impressive personal fortune of £14 million – and he’s only 17, which also makes he the youngest person to appear in the 2006 edition.

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