August 2007 Archives
Robert, this is really interesting stuff, shut up and let the guy answer the question:-)
Wow, comments are pouring in on the old is BT still shit? post. One guy even gave an update twice today.
Could BT have a class action heading its way? Does anything actually happen when you write to Ofcom?
I wonder... oh, and I love that graphic from the Ofcom site. At first glance I thought it meant download the podcast of complain to Ofcom how very hip;-)
You know, I was gonna comment on the Skype blog Heartbeat (no, not on the bit where if they had decided to use computers equipped with a proper operating system their crash and subsequent total meltdown wouldn't have happened in the first place) (and no, not on the bit where for the same reason they can't manage a reliable single-customer view grrrr) no, I was going to comment on the email I received earlier today:
As a goodwill gesture to all you faithful Skype Pro, Skype Unlimited, SkypeIn or Skype Voicemail customers, we're adding an additional seven days to your current subscription, free of charge. And even if you didn't miss out on using Skype last week - you can still have a week free on Skype, on the house!
So my first reaction is that
- customers that aren't those listed above can just fuck off
- a customer worth building a relationship with is one that commits to a financial transaction with your brand. Gosh, how 80/20 nineteen-eighty-seven of you...
But then I thought to myself, you just nicked the nine quid I had in my account three weeks ago. True, you did explain that you had to, and you did make it theoretically easy for me to protect my dosh while giving me ample and repeated fair warning.
But you know what, if you clean out the balance in your customer's accounts that's all they're gonna see.
Come on, this is sooooo not a modern approach to marketing. Your empty gesture has left me with exactly the same balance I had just before your meltdown--zero.
Niklas Zennström, you're a smart guy, my guess is you can do a lot better (and you can start by giving me my money back)
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>> Claude VonStroke : DJ/Producer/Owner
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another mind-mapping explanation
Dans la série c'est fou ce qu'on mange mal à Paris je vous suggère d'eviter à tout prix la brasserie "Paris Orléans", Porte d'Orléan à Paris.
Le Paris-Orléans (Brasserie)
2 Rue De Patay
75013 Paris
This is kinda interesting. The folk at Google Groups have built in a dynamic email masking system as part of their service. The protection takes the same format as the email masks people have been using for years, techniques such as writing "at" instead of "@" in the address or inserting the string [NOSPAM] and so on.
Google has decided to visually suggest an antispam measure by inserting "..." in the published email address and then linking the string to a kaptcha interface (see above).
I like the idea, I'm not 100% convinced this isn't a little confusing for the novice user but I guess time will tell. Still, I love the idea of starting an interface from an element the user has created in the first place.
Do you work in an office? Look around your floor, on any given day, how many of those sharp-suited and VO5-ed younger people are interns. Or roughly, what percentage of your co-workers are contractors, interns, apprentices or full time employees?
This is a poster for a big French building society which is blowing it's trumpet and claiming that its employment practises are going to build a richer, healthier, more stable society.
The claim that they are so proud of is that last year they signed up more long-term interns (under-paid, over-qualified young people who work without job security sometimes in rolling internships that can last years) than they did full-time employees.
Last year the bank took on almost twenty-thousand cubicle-fillers of which only seven-thousand got a full-time contract. And they're proud of this!
Talk about legislation back-firing. The charges sociales imposed by the French government have created a company culture where the long term strategy is to shift all risk on to individual contractors and get rid of all employees.
Can you say sustainable?
Supporters like Loic are pleased as punch about Sarko, but it'll be interesting to see if he can make any kind of difference to this. Being a card-carrying member of La Gauche Antilibérale I am naturally suspicious of big business and my guess is now that they have collectively tasted freedom from any kind of social responsibility it seems unlikely they will return to the old days.
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having the garage checked for asbestos dust
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having the garage checked for asbestos dust
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multiple simultaneous responses from a single ajax call
Well, I didn't have the camera with me but this morning we put the pedals on the bicycle and Clemmie pedaled away. She can ride a bike, yay!
It's great, actually, because I've been feeling a bit like I've been letting the side down in the parenting department. All the travel to France and the doing second projects on weekends means I haven't been able to spend as much time with Clem and Hal as I'd like to. So knowing she can swim a length of the pool no problem and ride a bike makes me feel a bit like I've helped some:-)
Clementine, il s'est passé quelque chose d'abominable aujourd'hui. Je te l'indique ici pour quand tu reliras ces pages, tu t'en souviendras peut etre...
I was working with a colleague this morning and she pointed at the table next door. "Look at what those guys did with the bread, it's a great metaphor for personalisation" and well, she's right of course.
I kept thinking about the photograph today and actually, you can interpret the image in terms of value co-creation (ok, a bit of a stretch but cut me some slack, it's just a bread basket).
For starters, the table is the value co-creation network. The network interacts with its environment (the sun on the térasse, the neibouring tables and chairs) and the customer interacts with it to create value.
The two guys have adjusted the table itself, the chairs and when the food comes (from another participant in the value-creation network, the chef) they decide on the way they will eat it. By customising the table to support the two glasses of beer and the breadbasket they have added value to their lunch beyond the 13.5 euro price-tag (and of course, that's without counting the value in their meeting in the first place which is probably the most value-intensive part of the network).
