Mary Portas: Secret Shopper

I don’t usually watch these kind of things but I did find Mary Portas Secret Shopper somewhat interesting…

In this brand new series Mary Portas has changed sides. Rather than helping businesses to maximise profits, she’s now championing the shopper, and battling to get Britain’s biggest chains to put customers first.

Mary believes that Britain is cowering under a cloud of poor customer service and that we’ve never had it so bad. By using the stealth weapon of secret shopping, she exposes shoddy customer service and uses the evidence to give company bosses a wake-up call. And, with the help of her covert cameras, she’s planning to start a retail revolution.

Customer service is indeed a sham in the UK. Everything has been pushed aside for higher profit. Theres a great scene where Mary is talking to the head of pilot in front of the owner of leon. He gives all the reasons why he felt everything was going well and they didn’t need to change. Of course all the reasons were to do with expansion and profit, customer service was never mentioned in anyway.

Its intriguing because theres so many elements we’ve learned from the online world via things like the cluetrain manifesto at play. In actual fact the real world can learn a lot from the online world.

Customer is king, how sad we are for not punishing them who forget this.

Instapaper’s wireless delivery

I didn’t notice Instapaper now supports wireless delivery of epub’s.

Reading on the Kindle’s non-reflective, e-ink screen is easy on the eyes and great for longer content.

Instapaper provides Kindle-compatible files, easily transferred at no charge via USB, containing the Text versions of your saved pages in any folder.

Additionally, you can set up wireless delivery to automatically send your most recent Instapaper stories every day or week. Note: Amazon assesses a surcharge for each wireless delivery, and wireless delivery is not available in all countries.

Instapaper also provides ePub files for other electronic reading devices that support ePub, including most Sony Readers and the Barnes & Noble Nook.

Ok besides the Amazon surcharge (which doesn’t seem to apply if you have a wifi only kindle it seems), this is fantastic. I use to use Instapaper but switched over to using Readitlater. I might have to switch back? At least till readitlater enables the same feature (i and others have already suggested it)

Rights holders take down on dj mixes

I got this in my email today from Soundcloud.com…

Hi cubicgarden,

Your upload "The pulse of a nation mix" may include content that is owned or licensed by Moist Music ("By Your Side (Martin Roth Rmx)" (The Thrillseekers;Gina Dootson)) and has been made inaccessible on SoundCloud by request of the rightsholder.

If you are certain that you have all necessary permissions from the rightsholder to upload and share this content, you can submit a claim here:

http://soundcloud.com/settings/disputes/

Thanks,

The SoundCloud team

Moist Music can get lost up there own ***** and have this one. I would fight this copyright take down (the very first one I’ve personally ever had) but since I’ve all but switched over to Mixcloud.com, its not worth fighting. Either way, it was interesting to see Martin Roth himself talking about Mixcloud and Soundcloud on his tumblr site. I might have to send him a link to this post and the mixcloud/soundcloud posts.

We are certainly much better off without these stuck in the mud middlemen.

I’ve now canceled my Soundcloud pro subscription, so all my mixes will be moving to mixcloud I’m sorry to announce. Nothing to do with Soundcloud, its just not the place for dj mixes and this latest event proves it.

Erik Huggers leaves the BBC

Copyright Gareth ford williams

Yep its true the leader of BBC future media and technology Erik Huggers is leaving for a job in Intel.

We heard the news about 5pm today (Tuesday 18th Jan) and funny enough we had an informal meeting with the new director of BBC future media – Ralph Rivera, planned for 5:30pm in the Manchester office.

Although I did actually like Erik Huggers, I’m really looking forward to working under Ralph Rivera’s vision. John Linwood will now take on the Technology part of the old Future Media & Technology.

To be fair to Erik, he was actually a very likable kind of a guy. He made some very difficult decisions and brought in some very interesting people including Richard Titus, Anthony Rose, John Linwood, etc. He tended not to shy away from conflict and certainly made his presence felt when required. Erik always supported the Backstage project which is obviously now closed. But the thing which I will always remember Erik for is the look on his face when he came up to Manchester and we presented him with a Manchester City Tevez board saying welcome to Manchester, but switched Tevez for Erik. There was a certain amount of confusion but he never let on, he just accepted the gift with welcoming arms.

I do wish him well and I know he’ll do some great things at Intel given half a chance.

The first thing I asked Ralph Rivera, was about his background and the answer I got back was not just impressive but delightful to hear. Not only did he say all the right things about technology from his computer science background but he also said some great things about games and the internet. Not only does he get it, but he seems to live it. It was almost like if you were to cut him, Geek blood would pour out. So yes Erik was great but Ralph is just something else. To be honest, this is my own opinion, Ralph is exactly what the BBC needs right now. A geek running things…

Someone suggested it could be like when Greg Dyke joined the BBC. I wasn’t there for those times but I heard some amazing stories and some great projects. Bearing in mind Ralph is not the Director General of the BBC only (I say only, but you know what i mean) the director of Future Media. I’m intrigued and very excited what plans he has to shape up the BBC and take it on to to the next Decade. So excited I can’t bloody sleep…

Standards in bundles

The concept is very simple.

One URL/URI points to a series of resources which have preselected by someone else. There usually arranged in someway, to either tell a story or illustrate a point

Bit.ly for example implemented bundles back in November.

We are thrilled to announce the launch of bit.ly bundles, a new way of sharing multiple links with a single bit.ly short URL.

You can start bundling links right away! Just head over to bit.ly, shorten some links and then hit the “Bundle” button.

Its a good idea but I’d like to see some standard applied to bundles. For example it would be great if Xpointer could parse bundled links. It would be possible for browsers to support a small subset of Xinclude to give a standards approach to bundled links or heck take the XLink support in Firefox and shift it towards the purpose of bundled links.

Mobile Apps working together to better support the user

I just started using Astrid on my HTC Desire (Running android 2.2) and I’m very impressed. The thing which amazes me is the integration with Locale.

Yes it a task app but the difference is with Locale, you can set conditions. Conditions like show me this task when I’m in certain location. Show me this task when you walk into a wifi signal with a certain SSID. Show me a task when blah blah blah…

Unfortunately it seems I’m behind the curve on this one. The locale team blogged about this last year.

I put on my todo list all sorts of tasks. Sometimes they are work tasks like “fill out my expense report.” Occasionally, I add random ideas like “ask the dentist about electric toothbrushes.” More frequently I add personal tasks like “get bananas.” With Locale + Astrid, I get reminders for these tasks when I can do something about them. By tagging tasks as “groceries” and connecting the tag to a situation in Locale (for example when I am near my local Trader Joe’s), Astrid will remind me to get bananas the next time I’m near the store. In the same way I can limit Astrid’s pestering me about my expense report to times I am in the office. And the next time I am sitting in the dentist chair, Astrid can alert me to get his take on the latest teeth-cleaning gadget.

While there are many tools that provide a place to save information you want to remember, most of them lack reminders when you need them. Locale gives Astrid the power to do this in an amazingly simple way, making Astrid less annoying and much more useful.

Exactly!

So theres a interesting trend of apps building on other apps. I noticed this with Dropbox. I got a feeling that because Dropbox has been out for the iPhone for longer, there might be more tightly integration that on android at the moment. But I noticed quite a few apps are using dropbox as there syncing method instead of creating there own. Its not just syncing there’s a lot more that comes with using dropbox as the storage method.

Whats also weird is I’m now expecting dropbox syncing as standard in a lot of the apps I download. After that I’m also expecting some kind of locale ability.

In actual fact, if I was to improve Astrid, I would indeed the ability to use dropbox and create tasks using a very simple XML format. It currently syncs with Google Tasks but I’ve not really got that syncing with Evolution or anything else yet, so something else would be great.

I’ll be watching this trend of apps working off the back of other apps more closely.

What is it with White chicks and Gang signs?

Me and Sarah use to laugh our asses off at this video. Why because of the hilarity of the fact most white woman I know, when faced with a camera will pull some crazy pose and throw some kind of gesture with there hands. Why? Why oh why? Now to be fair not everyone does this but most do. Its like some kind of meme which has spread deeply in the consciousness of the woman of our little planet. To see the effects you need to breaks out a camera and ask to say cheese, bizarre!

The weird thing is, not many men know what I mean when I mention it. So for those men, here’s exactly what I mean.

I can’t work out if its a cultural thing either because I’ve known non-westernised woman to also throw a few signs when having themselves shot. What makes things even worst/sad is I’ve seen quite a few dating profiles pictures on Okcupid and many others (there’s plenty on plenty of fish, bad pun ignore me). One of the girls I’ve been out on a date with had all types of signs all over her profile pictures. I so wanted to ask her, so what the heck is with all the gang signs? Do you think its funny or something? Of course I never did, mainly because we had one date and never saw each other again (lucky escape I feel).

Of course this will be in my folder for geeks talk sexy part 2: The other half of population. Its very easy to imagine all men are weird (some more that others of course) but in actual fact woman are equally as weird. We’re a perfect fit for each other maybe? 🙂

If you want to see more of this type of thing and want to have your own say, sign up on the geeks talk sexy eventbrite page.

Verzion iPhone, the rest of the world yawns

At long last Verzion have got the iphone. So if your like me, your thinking "so what?" And to be honest you wouldn’t be wrong in your thinking. Either way, it was interesting to see the Daily Show’s take on the excitement from the states. Unfortunately Comedy Central don’t allow you to view or embed videos outside the states plus comedy central are well known for takedowns on youtube.

Geeks Talk Sexy – The Other Half of the Population

Photo credit: hoyvinmayvin

The description says: Geeks Talk Sexy is back – bigger and better!

And it certainly will be bigger and much better.

So we’re kicking off with part 2 of the sexygeek series. Of course we always planned to do more. But I got a feeling part 2 might shock people because its quite distinct.

This time its all about the female geeks, except instead of the usual discussions about woman and men which we’ve all heard quite a few times. We’ll be digging down into the deep mystery of relationships between the two.

  • How do girl geeks and guy geeks interact in the geek community?
  • What happens when we go from techy hack day to romantic hack date?
  • What are the problems we have to overcome?
  • What can we do to make everyone feel comfortable in their role?

Yes the nitty gritty or you might prefer the nuts and bolts of male and female relationships within the scope of the geek culture.

Most discussions center around woman in the workforce, as entrepreneurs, in places which were along time ago though as only for men. But there is little talk about relationships of men and woman. In actual fact I’m kind of lying. There is quite a lot information but they tend to be buried deep down in places where most of us don’t go looking. So we’re uncovering and discussing it on Friday 4th Feb at Madlab. We may also have a very special guest stopping in, so what you waiting for? Sign up now at our event page.

Disclaimer

Now I have to add the very serious disclaimer because people are going to get very irate about the whole thing.

We are fully aware that this title and concept is only a vague approximation to reality and that gender is not just binary. We are in no way assuming that there are only straight, cis, monogamous, male or female geeks. For the purpose of the talk we picked the most obvious intersection for arising problems, which is the role of women in the geek community that is usually only discussed from a professional point of view.

We hope this decision does not offend anyone (although I got a feeling it will) and that people of all genders and orientations join us for the talk. Please do get in touch if you have got serious concerns.

The whole series

I said in my new years resolutions for 2011, a lot of things regarding Take Geek Culture to new heights. We (me, Samantha and Hwayoung) have worked hard on the series and have some cracking surprises to come. I really hope people bear with us, the first one was great and we learned a lot from that one but it was ultimately very difficult because we tried to cover a load of issues in one overview session. In this one we will stick to one subject, so it will be a lot more tighter. We’re also hoping to have a special guest join us for the event, who that will be will be revealed later. To get you all started, there is this Comfort-a-Crying-Woman

Next in the series we will be exploring Gay, Lesiban, Bi, Poly, Transexual and what ever else there is. I’m happy to say we have some help from Simon Carter who has stepped up to help us better represent section of geeks talk sexy. Me, Samantha and Hwayoung are not that familiar with most of these. So to do them any real justice we certainly need help.

Of course its all about part 2 right now, so what you waiting for? Sign up now!