I love quirky promotional items, and even more so if their eco friendly. These fun little printed pen pots, would look great on a contemporary desktop and will add a little character to a dull office.

These branded mini recycling bins are themselves made from recycled plastic, so they promote recycling and our eco friendly in themselves. These promotional desk top items are ideal if you’re prone to gathering rubbish on your desktop like myself. Plus a matching pencil sharpener is also available too!

I think these eco promotional gifts would work particularly well for councils in particular, as they will be seen to be doing their bit for the environment. If you require a quote, visual or sample of these promotional wheelie bin pen pots, contact the friendly team over at Gift Selection, who will arrange it for you.

The godfather of software Microsoft, has revealed plans for a new search engine, which it hopes to rival Google’s dominance of the market. Their new service entitled Bing will begin this weekend, and is planned to be fully operational worldwide by next Wednesday (3 June).

The search engine is said to help people find information in a quick and effective way, with a developed index making search results more relevant to the needs of the consumer.

The new Bing service will feature a regularly updated homepage, and will have a split search broken into categories, such as shopping, travel, news, maps and videos. Industry insiders don’t see Bing as replacing Google by any means, but they do think it could benefit shoppers when comparing items and travel planning for example.

Experimental marketing people Closer, created a novel campaign to promote the new Doner Kebab flavour Pot Noodle, with a Chilli Challenge where the public compete to win their very own Pot Noodle belt! This sounds like a students dream, which I guess is the whole point.

If ‘the slag of all snacks’ takes your fancy, then the plastic pot will set you back around £1.01. By merely adding boiling water to the pot, you will be magically transported to the tastes and smells of a late-night trip to the kebab house.

The Pot Noodle marketing manager Cheryl Calverley said: “This is a true celebration of the coming together of two food titans to create ultimate man food. The live environment gives us the opportunity to build on the ATL story and give our consumers the chance to sample the product for themselves.”

If you like hot drinks, then it’s a safe bet to say you’ve drank out of a printed Sparta mug in your time. Promotional mugs are everywhere, with a branded Sparta mug being the most popular of them all.

Having a Sparta mug printed for marketing purposes is a popular choice for any number of businesses. However if your looking for something a little different, why not have your promotional Sparta mugs glazed for a bigger impact.

The Mugstore offer the best prices on glazed Sparta mugs, so get in contact with their friendly team for information on what is possible and pricing.

Promotional Sparta mugs are available in a large selection of attractive colours, and are highly customisable. Promotional Sparta mugs are hard fired for increased durability and therma-glazed for razor sharp colours. Our printed Sparta mugs are both dishwasher and microwave safe.

If you’re business is looking for some printed or engraved pint glasses, then The Mugstore has recently re-vamped that section of the site, making it much more user friendly.

Printed pint glasses will add a touch of class to any hotel, bar or cafe. While an engraved pint glass works well for special events, and could even become a collectors items. The Mugstore can supply every kind of printed pint or half pint glass you could wish for.

Traditional printed conical or tulip pint glasses are there, as well as more European style branded lager glasses. Having your corporate pint glass, printed with official measurements or arriving in special presentation box is no problem. If you have a particular branded glass in mind, then contact the friendly team at The Mugstore who will be able to help you out.

Since 1995 British goods sold in Europe have had to display metric weights and measurements. But imperial versions were also allowed in Britain under a deal in 1999 to calm the anxious British public, who didn’t want to loose their quirky measurements.

Controversy reached its height when the ‘metric martyrs’ lost a battle to trade only in pounds and ounces. Steve Thoburn, who unfortunately passed away in 2004, was convicted in 2001 for selling bananas by the pound without giving their metric equivalent. However rejoice as the British pint is free from the clutches of Europe and is here to stay. Cheers!

Leading market research analyst Mintel has shown that sales of ethical clothing have more than quadrupled in the last five years, reaching a healthy £175m in early 2009. If your business has cottoned on to the trend of organic and ethical clothing, then ecoproducts2order has a range of quality items.

The market for ethical clothing is going from strength to strength, as consumers continue to seek out clothing that takes into consideration the impact of production and trade on the environment and on the people behind the clothes we wear.

My particular favourite is the promotional organic baby clothing!You may be surprised to learn that regular cotton accounts for only 3% of the world’s farmland but uses a massive 25% of the world’s pesticides. Also organic cotton is gentle to the environment as it takes less fuel and fewer green house gases to produce it.

Promotional organic clothing is a great way to market your brand, in an ethical and effective way. Whether your looking for promotional organic caps, hats, T shirts - what ever it is ecoproducts2order can source it.

Liverpool’s new stadium could be named the ‘Carlsberg Anfield’ as the scousers American owners need to get back into the red. Carlsberg have been sponsoring Liverpool for a record 18 years, but seem ready to take things to the next level, by having their whole name emblazoned across the stadium!

Liverpool FC will be following in the foot steps of Arsenal, who sold the naming rights to their stadium to Emirates for a whopping £100m, over a thirteen year period. There may be significant fan backlash on the cards, but for the that kind of money, it may be difficult to refuse.

Gareth Roberts, UK director of sponsorship at Carlsberg, told The Independent that a re-naming deal would be “part of the discussion” but that there had been no certain decisions. Realistically for the new stadium to be built, it was always going to be a case of naming rights being sold to the highest bidder in order to secure some funding for it.

If you ask me I don’t think Carlsberg Anfield is that bad a name anyway. What do you think about the potential re-brand?

As the well documented MP expense row continues, many peoples blood is still boiling over tax payer money being spent on everything from trouser presses and sanitary towels, to chandeliers and moat cleaning. As a nation we are understandably shocked to discover our MPs were routinely expensing claims for gardening services, swimming pool maintenance and interior decorators.

All this political sleaze has inspired me to have a little luxury of my own, and go for a corporate golf day. If your business is looking to invest in some promotional items for your next corporate golf trip, then Gift Selection is one supplier who had a full range of printed goods.

There is everything from promotional golf tees, to printed golf umbrellas to fit all budgets and tastes. They even have personalised awards and trophies, which are ideal to give out as fun prizes for your next corporate golfing event. If you require a specific promotional item to do with the world of golf, let the friendly team know at Gift Selection, and they will source it for you.

 Prodir pens have for a long time been popular promotional writing instruments, with pens2order being a leading supplier of them. Recently however Prodir have brought out a range of pen books, to compliment their existing range of pens.

The unique integration of a writing instrument into a notebook is what makes the Pen-books from Swiss quality brand Prodir so attractive. And the Ticino-based company has, during the last few months, continually developed their range even further. The most recent innovation is the models with a hard cover. Not only is the material of the cover new, the personalisation concept is also fresh and original.

This new Prodir product features blank pages in a notebook with an inserted Prodir promotional pen. This new pen-book is a unique item which is the ideal dialogue product for events such as: shareholders’ meetings, staff trainings, product launches, seminars, press conferences – the list of events for which Pen-books are ideally suited is endless!

Plus each of the three available formats (small, medium and large - A4) has the individual silhouette of the selected ballpoint pen precisely stamped into the pages. If you would a quote, sample or visual of the new Prodir pen books, then contact the friendly team at pens2order for more information.

Is your business doing as well as Tesco? Their sales have passed £1bn per week. It seems to be hated by some, but you all keep going – otherwise it wouldn’t keep growing. There are plenty of other places to buy food from, so why go if you dislike it so much? A recent survey by Brand Republic shows that the supermarket is; “valued for its competitive prices and range of products”.

Moreover, in ten years it has successfully built up a network of 1,376 stores outside the UK, which last year generated £564 million worth of profit.

A few people were opposed to large 24-hour supermarkets like Tesco, which they said took away trade from the high street and smaller family-run businesses. This is true enough, but since Tesco is the countries biggest employer second only to the government, surely the business has created more jobs then it’s lost.

The only bone I would have to pick is that shopping in markets rather than Tesco, means your groceries don’t come with all the packaging that Tesco’s produce does, however this is charge laid against all supermarkets not just them.