A brief encounter with @vodafoneliveguy :

[Michael Coulter]

@vodafoneliveguy kicked off his UK-wide tour today in a rainy, but welcoming Edinburgh.

I set up a meeting via Twitter, and had coffee with him in that centre of the Edinburgh Social Media universe, Centotre, to see what I could wheedle, wangle and, (something else that starts with 'w' but I can't think of right now), out of him.

First things first; he looks just like he does in the photos.

He wasn't in disguise, as I'd earlier thought.

And he was in turns; polite, evasive, charming, secretive, funny and mysterious. (At first he'd only give me his name, rank and Netbook serial number!)

But as we chatted he eagerly fired up and demo'ed the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook, which I have to admit was very cool.

It's got the technology of one of those usb mobile broadband dongles built in, so you don't need an, er, usb mobile broadband dongle plugged in.

It genuinely is a classy bit of kit, and with the demise of the 12" Mac PowerBook, attractively portable to this wrinkly old Apple die-hard.

He also showed me the gps gizmo which automatically talks to his Vodafone handset and plots his location on GoogleMaps. ('Beam me up Scotty': Appropriate enough as we are in Edinburgh.)

Tomorrow he'll be over in Glasgow, and will then continue his journey south. His full itinerary is here:

While I think on, I must stress that I have no official connection with this concept, but in the interests of full disclosure I do know, have met and like enormously the digital agency that came up with the idea.

A few weeks ago on one of my regular trips to 'swinging' London, (to buy some new flares, tank-tops and cuban-heeled boots), I met up with a lovely bloke called Flo Heiss, Creative Director of the digital agency Dare. And although we didn't discuss LiveGuy during our chat about social media, I did consequently email a (hair-brained) suggestion or two, unbidden, to Flo about the project.

However, the ideas weren't used, mainly because of technical reasons; i.e. they were rubbish.

But as I knew @vodafoneliveguy was in Edinburgh today I sent him a direct tweet offering to buy him coffee and have a chat, as I wanted to blog about the idea. This being the case, I felt it would then be a bit spivvy to try and get a Netbook out of it, and so kept my hat firmly out of the freebie ring.

You can follow @vodafoneliveguy on Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube and Picassa.

I hope it goes really well, and I wish everyone who joins in the search for him best of luck.

But I would suggest you try something other than the inviting him for coffee route.

Been there, done that, didn't get the Netbook ;-