HappyMob

2004-05-26T19:52:00.000+01:00

I've moved my blog, I'm afraid. I was very happy with the excellent Blogger interface and service. But I've joined a consortium that uses different software. New blog is at www.mobile-weblog.com

2004-05-10T12:32:00.000+01:00

I've written about Local Free Messaging before. How kids are using Bluetooth or Infrared to swap files between phones. This is normally self-produced ie photo's and things. But we've noticed it with TagText screensavers and other more overtly commercial stuff. Anyway, I've just noticed a new phenomenon. Courier file swapping. Say, A wants to send a file to B locally ie free. But A isn't going to see B soon enough. So A sends it to C who she knows is seeing B soon. C couriers the file to B, despite having no interest in the file/content himself. And don't forget, all this takes place without paying the operator. If anyone wants a copy of my (free) White Paper on Location Based Marketing, by the way, just drop me a line. It's been very well received and widely read in mobile circles. It's based on the 1500 campaigns I ran in a previous life, at Zagme. We had 85,000 opted in consumers, so the lessons were very valuable. Russell

2004-05-05T07:52:00.000+01:00

Social software is the new black, it seems. Tens of thousands are dutifully going online, completing details and posting resumes, all trying to improve their life through the art of online networking. Thomas Power, the soul of Ecademy and prodigious networker himself, claims that with networking it's quantity, not quality. It's simply a case of the more people in your network, the more money you make - and he does proffer that direct equation. In some businesses, he may well be right. His, for example! The more he networks, the more people join Ecademy, the more people pay a subscription every month, the more money he makes. And good luck to him, he's doing a great job. But for most of us, I don't buy into the argument of quantity. On one of the networks, I recently got a networking message saying "Hi, how you doing?". I assumed that this was but the opening dialogue in a short, "getting to know you" session with a view to establishing a relationship. In fact, that was it. That person could now claim me as a contact, which improved his ratings, which meant....what? Absolutely nothing really. I know nothing about them and would never refer business to them. They know nothing about me and would never know what I did to refer business to me. The other characteristic of social networks which hasn't been explored is the Exclusivity effect. While a network is small and new, it's quite easy to get in touch with anyone you want. But like the real world, real players (say, Marketing Directors of major brands as just one example) are busy people. And social networks makes them busier still by barraging them with hundreds (thousands?) of chancers, wellwishers and time wasters wishing to make contact. And so, like in the real world, they retreat behind various filters and probably leave the network altogether. If they do this, they accept that they may well be missing out on quality connections, but on balance, they don't have the time. And the truth is that human nature is such that if I'm a Board member of a Fortune 500 company, I want to network with other people like me, a few select Headhunters and a handful of other people, like maybe a few celebs from the worlds of arts or sports. I don't want to network with Tom the office boy or some wet-behind-the-ears brand assistant. That's why, in the real world, it doesn't happen. So, social networking will show signs of evolution and it'll happen soon. Exclusive networks will soon start to grow, consisting of real power players and entry for which will be high costwise and you'll have to be introduced in order to get in. And so, the online equivilant of Whites or The Groucho will emerge, leaving you outside to network with other people like you - coz you'll kick out Tom the office boy out of your network as soon as you realise which way the wind's blowing. Sometimes the new economy is pretty much like the old one. Ho hum. Just my opinion.

2004-05-01T07:53:00.000+01:00

I wrote a few weeks ago about how stupid offshoring customer facing roles is. It's just another example of Business Follow My Leader. No one thinks that the leader could be wrong. TJ's Weblog carries a story that even non-customer facing roles may be ill advised too: ".......even though programmers in India cost Bladelogic $3,500 a month versus a monthly cost of $10,000 for programmers in the United States. "The cost savings in India were three to one," Ittycheria said . "But the difference in productivity was six to one." Hmmm. As Alexandre Dumas wrote "All generalisations are wrong, including this one." So it's wrong to think that all offshoring is wrong. But there's a lot more to this offshoring business that simple cost savings. There's many hidden costs in the equation like productivity and pissing off your customers.

2004-04-30T10:40:00.000+01:00

This site is brilliant. A digital clock with a difference. It makes clock watching interesting! Now they need to make new way of making paint dry! Thanks to David Beadle for the link. And while we're at it, a genuine use for GPS - GPS drawing. Positioning meets art! Forget finding where your nearest ATM machine is and the other boring guff positioning experts talk about. This is fun and creative.

2004-04-29T09:05:00.000+01:00

Falk them. I've ranted on about spyware and pop-up ads before. At the very least it's stupid marketing and I've compared it to the former time equivalent of a fishmonger marketing by slapping passers-by with a raw fish. It might attract their attention, but not in a positive "Hey, I think I'll buy that fish" kind of way. Well, as well as spyware killers you can get pop-up blockers, such as the one free in the Google toolbar. And a hell of a lot of people are now using them. Falk eSolutions (I'm not going flatter them with a link) have come up with a brilliant falking idea. Their software detects pop-up blockers and converts the ad into a "rich media experience" - another sort of ad. What kind of idiot shit-for-brains marketer would use that? Fishmonger slaps cod into face of passer by. Passer by: I'm sorry, my good man, please don't to that and no I won't buy your fish. Next day: Fishmonger approaches passer by with poised haddock. Passer by's servant deftly steps in the way to get slapped by haddock Passer by: I thought I'd made it clear that we don't want your fish or your invitations Next day: Fishmonger loiters in room above shop and drops tuna steak onto head of passer by..... To be continued, sadly....

2004-04-29T07:45:00.000+01:00

Back in the 60's the Americans spent billion on developing a writing instument that could work in in space ie in zero gravity. The Russians used pencils. The pencil users in this case are a very clever company called Quarterscope.com. They have come up with a way of tracking location based on your position in relation to wifi hotspots. Rather than spending billions on satellites and infrastructure, like GPS, they spend nothing. They just use other people's wifi hotspots to triangulate your position. Not only is it clever commercially, but it works better too. Most people live in urban areas and GPS doesn't work very well in errr....urban areas. The thing is that your device must be in line of sight of a satellite in order to work. So it doesn't work in heavily built up areas, in buildings or in tunnels. But that's where wifi location works best, as there's a lot more hotspots around. Pure genius. Now all they need to do is figure out that what people want to use location based services for. And if anyone whitters on about restaurant and ATM finders, I'm far from convinced. If anyone is interested in this location based stuff, drop me an email and I'll send you a free white paper on location based marketing. This is based on my experience of running 1500 of these types of campaigns. russell@mobhappy.com

2004-04-29T07:16:00.000+01:00

Is the current rush to put up hotspots a legitimate strategy I wonder? Or is it another case of "business follow my leader"? The rules of this game is that one Dufus CEO in one company has a stupid idea. And everyone else in the sector assumes the thinking must be brilliant and copies him/her, little understanding that they're following a moron. There's lots of examples of this type of thinking. For instance, in the 80's lots of banks and building societies in the UK ran off and purchased Estate Agents for vastly inflated prices. This resulted in a lot of mediocre jack-the-lads getting very rich, all because of a stupid mistake. This mistake assumed that coz people saw an agent while buying a house, they could sell them a mortgage too. WRONG! Maybe something to do with the fact that the average punter trusts an Estate Agent as much as they trust crocodiles - and hungry ones at that. A more recent example is the ludicrous price operators paid for 3G licenses in the UK. Actually, in fairness, this was a "no win" situation. Even if the management knew in their hearts and brains that they were overpaying, if they hadn't got a license, they'd have been crucified in the City. And the management wouldn't have been able to hang on to their jobs to say "I told you so". There's scant satisfaction in being right if the price is your career. So are Hotspots similar? On one level, I think the answer is yes. The model assumes that there'll be hordes of us willing to pay for premium access to the net when we're out of the office or home. More precisely, they talk about data - email and internet access to you and me. To which I say - bollox. Never going to happen, not in any significant numbers anyway. Additionally, I believe that providing a free wifi hotspot will soon simply become a cost of being in business for hotels and coffee bars. Actually, as an aside, they don't all talk about data. The Cloud (who have a network of wifi in pubs) say that they have no idea what people will use their network for and it's not their job to figure it out anyway. To me, that's like building a network of railways, hoping that someone will figure out what to use them for - not even imagining (or bothering to imagine) a railway engine. So, where is the revenue going to come from? I assume it's going to come from voice calls. VOIP (or voice calls over the Internet to the uninitiated) is getting increasingly better nowadays and will continue to do so. So if you can patch calls though wifi, rather than the hugely expensive network operators, at a discount to the consumer, you could make a lot of money. With the added benefit that the brand doesn't necessarily get to pay for the infrastructure. Already there's phones offering dual access to network and wifi calls, so that must be the game plan. Or serendipity for the hotspot owners perhaps?

2004-04-28T05:43:00.000+01:00

Information overload! The Week magazine in the UK has successfully tapped into the zeitgeist. Likewise, 20 Minuten, the relative newcomer to Swiss newspapers is now number 2 in the market. Both have ridden the Time compression wave where busy people are looking for ways to cram more in, without compromising on quality. The Week has been phenomenonally successful, allowing the reader to get a world's eye view of that week's news to present an image of someone who is really on the ball in current affairs. And it really works, even if it does feel a little like cheating, at times! But the problem's getting worse. There's more and more information around nowadays and a lot of it is quality stuff. We've had websites and email newsletters for a while now and the rise of the blogs in the last few years has only contributed to the problem. No matter how ruthlessly one unsubscribes from these things, there's still too much to get through. And you still end up suffering from Infonoia - the fear that you're missing out on that crucial piece of news or analysis that will change your business/job/life. So what I want is The Week equivalent for Blogs. I don't care if it's hard copy or soft - but hard copy would be a nice relief away from the PC. But I want it to arrive every week and abate my Infonoia in a readable, enjoyable way. That's worth paying good money for! Sooner or later we'll have the equivilent of the TiVo online - a piece of software that learns what you like and unearths the hidden gems. But I think this is some way off and for the forseeable future best done by humankind.

2004-04-27T09:48:00.000+01:00

An interesting little piece if research here on Bluetooth, social networking and What's Yours Called (your phone!). While the majority of people hadn't named their phone at all (60%), of those who had, 68% had given them male names and only 20% female. The rest were Izards or something. While the research is kinda interesting on one level, I'm not sure how useful it really is. Of the 1500 people "sampled" (whatever that may mean), only 177 were carrying discoverable Bluetooth phones. And their interpretations are a bit woolly to be honest: Men may explore their Bluetooth menus, women may not. Men may look for Bluetooth as a feature, women may not. Women may not feel the need to personalise their device. Women may alter default settings to make their devices invisible. Hmmm, does the phrase "sexual stereotyping" mean anything to anyone around here? Maybe they could have asked them when they were "sampling" them? Anyway, it all contributes to the debate. And, they do note in passing that Local Free Messaging (my phrase) is going to be the next SMS as it's community based. That's how adoption happens - you get a few users, who recruit a few more and all of a sudden, you have a major trend. But the worrying thing about this for operators, as I said before, is that there's no business model. Short range Bluetooth and IR messaging is free.

2004-04-27T09:24:00.000+01:00

The Incredible Star Wars Kid is back! One of the great net phenomena of last Summer was the Star Wars Kid. Some ungainly 15 year old Canadian kid filmed himself at his high school pretending to be Darth Maul. A broom stick was his light sabre and jolly silly he looked too. Sadly, he forgot to erase the tape or at least take it home. A couple of his mates found it, put it on the net and it got millions of hits - much to the chagrin of the kid, who ended up in therapy. But it didn't end there. Other people used the basic footage and re-edited into all kinds of montages, complete with special effects and soundtracks. Just when the poor (well poor, stupid really) guy thought it was safe, someone has made him the star of a bootleg commercial for Kill Bill Will he ever live this down - the Kid, not Tarantino.

2004-04-23T06:56:00.000+01:00

World Net News has a story here about a hip club in Barcelona. Apparently, they offer VIP clients the opportunity to inject an RFID (Radio Frequency identification chip - about the size of a grain of rice) into their bodies. Various scanners within the club then read the chips, allowing them access to exclusive areas and to pay for drinks with "the wave of a hand". It's not very clear HOW you pay, though clearly the RFID chip can carry credit details. But I assume, you'd have to have further security measures (like a signature) to avoid accidental payment. If it was a simple wave, then it's riches gallery for the Club. In my limited experience, people are always waving frantically in VIP lounges. Maybe they've been subconsciously practicing :-) You can also see Minority Report eyeball waving scenario's, where drunk and stoned people have their hands waved at machines which deduct thousands of Euros from other people's bills. Anyway, so far it's been stunningly popular. The manager of the club and the whole cast of Spanish Big Brother have signed up. Nothing to do with the money then. They must just like waving. Now, here's another little tip. How long before the first RFID chip comes embedded in a piece of body art/piercing?

2004-04-20T18:42:00.000+01:00

Boing Boing reports what I thought might have been an April Fool at first, but apparently not. ShitBeGone is a loo roll brand: "Welcome to the ShitBegone family. ShitBegone toilet paper is a quality product that exemplifies your attitude and approach to life. ShitBegone is intended for your daily use. With ShitBegone's low prices and convenient online ordering, it's easy to make ShitBegone your brand." *Hope you're not reading this at mealtimes* warning! This actually follows a proud history of graphic loo paper stunts. I remember talking to one of the sales people who first sold soft loo rolls into the UK in the sixties (fifties?). By the way, will someone stop me if I start sounding like Alistair Cooke? Anyway, way back then, loo rolls were sold in old fashioned chemists (apparently) - not grocers (this was pre-supermarket days). And all the counters in them days were marble. When they started to show their wares to the various chemists, there was a high degree of scepticism that the stuff would err...make the Shit Be Gone, as hitherto, they'd used the hard stuff. So what they did was walk into the chemist and squirt a tube of Coleman's mustard onto the counter. Then they'd give the chemist a roll of Bronco (or the hard stuff) and invite him to clear it up. Of course, all it did (sorry about this) was smear it all over the place. They could then hand over the new, soft stuff to do the business and of course, we've never looked back. Added later: Gawd - turns out that it's art. Well, a genuine business, too, but an art project nonetheless. Read all about it here.

2004-04-20T09:46:00.000+01:00

There a piece on Kuro5shin about The Great White Van Scam. While there's variations on the theme, the basic idea is that one or two blokes in a white van stop you as you're passing. They claim to be electricians and they've just installed some sound equipment at a local entertainment venue and have one set of speakers they haven't used. They'd like to offload the $2000 speakers to some lucky passer by, for a silly price - $200 or whatever you eventually agree to pay. It's very clever actually and as with all great cons, it appeals to the Mark's greed first and foremost. I was stopped by a very smart guy in the car park of a DIY store recently, offering the same kind of deal, except on BMW watches. He was driving a Beemer and claimed to be a salesman for the company. Every car they sold came with a free $1,500 watch, but he had "forgotten" to deliver one of the watches when he had just delivered a car. He was on his way back to the showroom now and had to get rid of it before he returned. I asked him how he delivered the other car when he was driving this one and he looked a little flustered and tried someone else. Obviously a beginner :-) But he was very plausible. The best scam I ever heard though was in Canada. Bank robbers simply waited for the bank to shut and put an "Out of Order" sign on the night safe, with notice to use an official-looking dump bin next to it. It had a padlocks and chains and looked very secure. Then, when the retailers had put all their money in, they simply came and unpadlocked the dump bin. You have to admire the simplicity and the audacity!

2004-04-19T08:28:00.000+01:00

Apparently the average PC has 28 bits of Spyware, as reported all over the blogosphere and on official sites like the good old Beeb. Why is that important? Well, I've written about this piss-poor marketing technique before, so I won't rant on again. While it pisses me off that these scumbags put stuff on my machine without permission, I'm not going to lose sleep over it. What does upset me is that this shite screws up my PC. Last week I had to spend about 8 hours finding out why my PC had slowed to - I don't know.....something slower than a slow thing on Planet Slow - and then fixing it. And, I'm not that naive when it comes to protection - I always have Ad-Aware installed and run regular checks. Add Spybot too and you have a the kind of protection that a bodyguard team of Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis could deliver. My other real bugbear about Spyware is that it offends me as a marketer myself, that so-called "colleagues" can be supporting this insidious industry. As I've said before, go and get another career, guys! Coz you don't understand even the BASICS of marketing. Spyware is like running a TV ad in the Superbowl which then poisons the teams and takes down the TV network. Anyway, I'd like to hit these guys where it hurts - anyone like to help? It seems to me that the lifeblood of the Spyware industry is the advertisers who use them (stating the bleeding obvious really!). Therefore, if marketing people in these advertisers could be *actively persuaded* in some way from handing over their advertising dollars, it would hit the Spyware people where it hurts and ultimately, may close a few (or all) down. Now I know that there will always be the kind of scumbags who will abuse basic marketing common sense, so it's unlikely that the whole industry could be eliminated by simple consumer protest. But some of the larger, misguided advertisers would surely listen if enough people protested or boycotted their products. Has this been tried before? Is there a blacklist of advertisers who use these techniques? Anyone else any thoughts on this idea - well the beginnings of an idea anyway?

2004-04-19T08:12:00.000+01:00

Maybe the late, great Douglas Adams had it right and the answer to the secret of the meaning of life is 42, after all. The Observer featured a very interesting article of happiness. It seems that the nadir of people's happiness is when they are - 42. Basically, one starts out with great ambitions, hit 42 and realise you're not going to make, just like 99.999999999999% of the rest of humanity. After that, you just accept it and are increasingly happier as a result. "People start out in life pretty certain that they're going to end up like David Beckham or win the Nobel Prize,' says Oswald [an Economist at Warwick Uni]. 'Then, after a few years, they discover it's quite tough out there - not just in their careers, but in life. Unsurprisingly, their happiness drops.' The good news is that the downer doesn't last. According to Oswald, if you trace the trajectory of most peoples' happiness over time it resembles a J-curve. People typically record high satisfaction levels in their early twenties. These then fall steadily towards middle age, before troughing at around 42. Most of us then grow steadily happier as we get older, with those in their sixties expressing the highest satisfaction levels of all - as long, that is, as they stay healthy." Well, that's some good news for a Monday morning :-) This reminds me of two little anecdotes. Firstly, I overheard two guys in a pub: "How's the wife?" asked the first. "Disappointed." came the economic, but revealing reply. The other concerns Madame De Gaulle and Dorothy Macmillan. Dorothy Macmillan: What are you looking forward to now [on the occasion of General De Gaulle's retirement]? Madame de Gaulle: A penis. General de Gaulle: My dear, I think the English don't pronounce the word quite like that. It's not ' a penis' but 'appiness'.

2004-04-19T08:04:00.000+01:00

I came across this ad for web space on Boing Boing. Blimey - it takes you back. And it's not even 10 years old! Check out the snappy email address :-) Sun, Dec 28, 1995 Special Offer! WorldWideWeb Precence for only $250 per month ($100 setup)! * Your own unique WWW address (e.g. w3.1c4.net/www/users/j/jhs/index.html)! * 1 mail account (e.g. you@mail7.1c4.net)! * 3Mb storage space! More than enough for a modern information service. * Unlimited FTP updates and transfers. * 30 day money-back guarantee and no minimum contract. * FULL customer technical support during normal office hours! * Page Design, graphic design, and html authoring and cgi scripting is available from $50 to $125 per hour, domain name registration and maintenance is $100 per year.

2004-04-16T10:15:00.000+01:00

Here's an apparently cool idea reported on Boing Boing. It allows guns to be fitted with RFID tags so that only the registered owner can fire them. So, if you must have a gun in your house (ie you live in the US, which is clearly very dangerous, because of all the guns errr???), your kids can't kill each other or create a Columnbine-like massacre. And the big burglar can't grab your gun and shoot you. Now all you have to worry about is shooting accidents caused by you. Apart from the obvious - it's much safer statistically not to have a gun in your house at all - this kind of safety feature worries me. It doesn't take into account: 1. The ingenuity of fools 2. Chaos theory 3. Human nature Being a keen young parent many years ago I once went on a First Aid course to treat kids and babies. One of the things they taught was that accidents are part of life's learning process. They cited an example of a mum who was terrified that her kid would trap their fingers in the door one day. Her logical solution, like the RFID one, was to remove all the internal doors in her home. Sure nuff, little Johnny never got his fingers trapped. But one day, little Johnny went to play at a neighbours where irresponsible parents with DOORS and guess what happened? Yep, little Johnny broke his fingers in a door. So relying on this kind of foolproof system is like taunting a dangerous dog on a leash. You're pretty safe, but if the leash snaps, you're dogfood.

2004-04-16T07:31:00.000+01:00

The big problem with technical help desks is that they either assume you've got a degree in computer science or have an IQ of a blade of grass ("Has Sir checked that the machine is switched on?"). No, I know that some people are really stoopid - I love the (probably apocryphal - but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true) story of someone phoning up to complain that the coffee cup holder on their PC had broken. Yes, gentle reader, they had been using the CD drive to hold their coffee. Oh and the one about the lady calling from a phone booth coz her computer was about to explode - it was a Mac and she'd got one of these (rare) little bomb warnings. And someone calling to complain that the machine had stopped working and couldn't see if it was plugged in, as it as the middle of a power cut. Yes, so there are some duh-brains out there. But why don't the operators try to establish some kind of technical ability with the customer at the beginning of the call? "How would you rate on a scale of 1 to 10 in computer literacy?" for instance. Now I know people tend to overstate their ability, but you could factor this into the equation and follow it up with a qualifying question. "OK, so you know what a CPU is, then?" This would certainly save a lot of time, which is reason enough to think harder about it. But if it also makes your customers feel less stupid on the one hand and less patronised on the other, isn't that a good enough reason to look into it? My friends at McKinseys have just launched on of those bleedingly obvious reports on the telecoms industry (well, bleedingly obvious in its conclusions anyway). Apparently, people are unhappy with their mobile operators and would like to see improvements in billing and call centre operations. So maybe the telecoms industry should take note of the technical literacy issue too. And stop even thinking about offshoring customer facing operations, like call centres. I know customers are a pain in the ass, chaps - but where would we be without them?

2004-04-14T08:56:00.000+01:00

It's really hard for thirty- and forty-somethings to keep up with youth culture at the best of times. But when it comes to understanding the impact of technology on these kids, it's almost impossible to understand on an emotional level. And since most decision-makers in marketing are those very same thirty- and forty-somethings, this is a problem. And this problem's going to get worse. I remember trying to explain the text messaging phenomenon to a senior VP of marketing at a large American soft drinks bottler - I can't tell you the name, but it rhymes with Boca-Bola :-) This took place about 18 months ago, when texting was already HUGE. Obviously, this guy was bright or else he wouldn't be in that position. But he really didn't "get" what a social impact texting had already had on his target audience. He was deeply sceptical, for instance, that people would enter a competition via text message. As an aside, it's actually older marketers who have a better understanding of youth. Many of them have their own in-house research programmes, called their kids. Many a fifty-something knows that texting is the only way they can have meaningful conversations with them! So it's hard for anyone outside the Mobile Generation to relate to how central and important their mobile is these days. The biggest social crime you can commit is to let your battery die. Your biggest dating gaffe is to forget to text your loved one first thing in the morning or last thing at night. And if you do forget, you're likely to join the 40% of teens who've been dumped by text message. Their mobiles have become the focus of their lives and the primary (almost the only) way that they initiate and then maintain social relationships. Dr Eric Berne founded Transactional Analysis in the 1950's with his seminal Games People Play. I'll paraphrase and summarise a whole book by writing that human transactions are composed of what Berne called "strokes". A stroke is a fundamental unit of social transaction, which is essential to the happiness of the human. While strokes can be physical, more usually, you get your strokes by apparently banal social exchanges - think about a typical "Hi, how are you" type of street conversation and you have the basic idea. Obviously stroking can be a much longer and complex process, especially with people you're more intimate with - close friends, lovers, parents, siblings. Anyway, if you're interested, read the book. It's much more interesting than just stroking and you'll learn all about Games People Play, like "Rapo" - where a woman flirts with a man she's just met (say, at a party) and when he responds, she rudely (or even violently - with a slap) rejects him. But the point I'm making here is that for the youth of today, the mobile is the means that they get their strokes, play their life games and live their real EMOTIONAL lives. Normally when I write something like this, some academic announces a study into the area! So look out for something on Transactional Analysis in the Mobile Generation, shortly :-)

2004-04-13T20:36:00.000+01:00

I've been a little busy of late, trying to fix my various 'puters. My lappy crashed and needs tender BIOS care, which is a bit beyond me.....anyone care to help :-) Anyway, in the course of transferring files and emails to other machines, I finally got my act together on the Spam front and installed the excellent Popfile. It's FREE. You download it, do a little bit of changing account details on your email settings and you're away! All you do then, is tell it (out of recent emails) which is Spam, Work, Personal etc and it then does all the sorting for you. No more relying on 100 or so complex email filtering rules. Hooray! Then, another PC got a really annoying piece of Spyware - the sort you can't readily identify. I've used Ad-Aware before which is great and also FREE. I bet if you run it, you'll find how much shite you have on your computer will scare you. Anyway, the kind I had, couldn't be identified by Ad-Aware. And it got to the point where after an hour my PC was basically unusable as Explorer hogged all the CPU. (Sounds as if I know what I'm talking about huh?). Meaning I had to reboot every hour. This is clearly a very cunning strategy by the marketers who use the tossers who write this sort of shite. (Spyware programmes install themselves on your PC and try to pop up adverts based on what sites you visit or search for). It's the kind of cunning plan that used to be employed by fishmongers in market towns. Basically, they used to slap in the face anyone coming into town with a fresh haddock (or cod, at a pinch). They quickly realised that this actually UPSET potential customers, who stopped coming to their shops. So they were forced to abandon the technique for more conventional marketing fare. So if you're one of the marketing people who uses these kinds of technique, please stop it. Or better still, go and seek another profession, as you're no good at this job - you know it's for the best. Try something where subtlety and intelligence aren't needed. Someone's got to carry the piano - and it's you. Anyway, I can also recommend SpyBot (also a FREE download - but please leave a donation) and if you're still stuck, there's an excellent forum here www.spywareinfo.com. Post your Hijack log (all is explained) and they'll manually help you defuse the problem.

2004-03-31T09:12:00.000+01:00

Why do technologists assume that potential users are passionate enough about their product that they're going to invest slugs of time working out how to use it? Because it's true actually, but only up to a point. In the seminal Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore postulated the way that tech products get adopted. First off, you have the innovators, who lurrve new products. They're the first to get the new tech and they'll put up with all kinds of problems, just so they can be first. If you remember using Bulletin Boards, pre-web, that's probably you. They're very important. They give you early feedback and then tell the next group - Early Adopters - to err...adopt early. In net terms, these were the guys who went online back in 1996 when we had the web, but were still using 14.4 modems. Carramba, it was slow. Then follow the early majority, late majority and finally the laggards, the later group may be are going online now. In mass market terms, the early majority and late majority are where it's all at. In reality, most new tech never makes it beyond the Innovators. The reason is that each group needs to be addressed in different ways AS WELL AS having the product tailored for them. It's worse that that actually. What will appeal to Innovators will not appeal to the other groups and vice versa. So when your Early Majority jump in (if they do) your innovators are long gone. But that's fine, especially if they've moved on to another of your products. Thus you can get away with all kinds of shit with your innovators - poor user interface, crashes, unclear usability. But these have to get sorted if the baton is passed to the next group in this relay race of product adoption. By the time the early majority are in danger of buying your product, it's got to work pretty much out of the box. Despite the fact that this was written AT LEAST 10 years ago, most tech marketers just don't get it. Unless a product very intuitive to use, the mass market just isn't going to bother. Most users (and yes, that includes you) take a Ready, Fire, Aim approach to technology. They start to use it and if they can't, they may briefly consult their manual. If it's still not clear, they give up. Not many people know this, but Excel (yes the spreadsheet) can be used to add up columns and rows of numbers. Yes it's more that just a nice way to line up numbers neatly. Now this may come as no surprise to you, but guess what? If you know about that feature, you're in the MINORITY. 70% of Excel users don't know about this simple feature! And if they don't understand a simple feature like that on a product that's been around 20 years of so and is owned and promoted by the biggest company in the world, what hope is there for the rest of us? So, if you aspire to the mass market, KISS is where it's at. Keep asking yourself, how you can make it easier and simpler to use. Anyway, I was reminded of these simple truths by this story on the excellent 160 Characters. It seems that most people don't know how to use SmartPhones. While it's a blatant PR survey, plugging a company who helps explain to users how to use SmartPhones, it does ring true. I went to a presentation on MMS at least 2 years ago. The Marketing Manager of O2 said that their research had shown the importance of the handset working "out of the box". Makes sense, I thought. Fast forward to today and you still have to sort out MMS settings yourself. And they wonder why MMS isn't taking off. Well that's one reason, chaps. And the other is that it's too damn expensive.

2004-03-29T17:06:00.000+01:00

And so farewell.. And so farewell to Sir Peter Ustinov - the world is a poorer place for his passing. I never met the great man, but my friend, Simon encountered him once. Fat Simon, as he is known (self styled Walrus of Love) served room service to the great man when he (Fat Simon) was doing a management training course at the Savoy. Sir Peter answered the door and without missing a beat said "Ahh. A mini-me." Someone once asked me what Fat Simon's second name was. "Simon, obviously." I said. :-)

2004-03-29T14:54:00.000+01:00

Bunch of Tossers One of the issues that we all face these days is reputation management. In other words, how do I know that people or companies I meet online or offline are kosher and worth dealing with? Clearly, this isn't a new problem. While I haven't been ripped off many times in my career, it has happened occasionally. Here are some reasons why this might happen: 1. Ideas above their station You approach someone, in good faith, at Company X with a proposal. They respond very enthusiastically (or certainly, encouragingly) and off you go to happily develop the concept. It turns out months later, that they never had the authority to make it happen or approve such an idea. In fact, they haven't talked to anyone who has that authority. Like the Man from Del Monte, they just like to say "yes". 2. Crooks This doesn't happen often, but several times me or colleagues have been approached by crooks - usually struck-off solicitors actually. In both instances, they've been representing themselves as solicitors and a quick check with The Law Society unmasks them. There have been other times though when people quite shamelessly pinch ideas. Some companies have a culture that encourages this behaviour, others just have rogue employees doing this kind of thing. 3. Amoral Some people just don't share your value system. They just don't realise that they've done something wrong in a generally accepted business sense. This includes partners who try to cut you out of a deal. Or people who make up an imagined problem with a project and refuse to pay your legitimate invoices. These are just a few of the scenarios and in my experience, sadly, it is much more prevalent in small companies rather than big ones. Anyway, you can clearly save lots of time, money and heartache if you can avoid doing business with these people and in some instances, companies. A few years ago, I had an idea (doubtless inspired by some forgotten bad experience). It was the height of the dotcom boom and I could see that reputation management was clearly an important issue. I won't pretend that I'd thought the issues through, but lets call the basic concept "Here comes the Judge". The idea was that if you had a complaint against an individual, you could tell "the Judge" (OK, me in the first instance). I'd invite that individual to put their side of the case, come to a judgment and hey presto - anyone thinking of doing business with that person again would be warned. Business model? Hey, this was the dotcom era! Seriously, there could be registration and search fees. In relation to the thousands of pounds we could save you, it would be negligible. Hurray, I could be rich and help my fellow man. As I say, this was a fantasy really and if you start thinking, it's very difficult to make work. The first big issue is that disputes are very rarely completely black and white. There's always two sides to the argument and both might well be convinced of their innocence. While the Law undoubtedly complicates many, many disputes to the benefit of the those with a vested interest (the system, the lawyers, the judges), conceptually, it has an important role to play. It's a little naive to expect to get to the bottom of these complexities and play the jury and the judge. Secondly, there's libel. The law is frequently more about money that justice as many a rich man knows and exploits. How do you protect the site and the anonymity of the person reporting the offence? Finally, there's a marketing issue - obviously there are others too, but that's the main ones. Let's call it the Baker Street Syndrome. Anyone visiting Baker Street tube will find a little plaque on the wall saying that it was the first tube station built in London (maybe the World?). After a second's thought, you realise that one tube station is pretty useless as you need another one to go anywhere. So it is with this kind of site. You really need everyone (or a critical mass) to be on the site. Otherwise, you visit, check out a few people you think are dodgy and if you can't find them, you'll give up. Anyway, fast forward to RepCheck, a site that has actually launched the idea. And predictably fallen smack into the poo of the issues I outlined above. I couldn't find anyone I'd ever heard of on the site, including the most networked people I know. Actually, I lie. A certain Mr Bill Gates was there all right and a shite rep he has too. Apparently his software doesn't work terribly well. For the record, since we're talking legal here and the rich and powerful, I think Windows and all Microsoft products are simply fantastic, brilliant and I'm terribly grateful to Mr Gates for making it all possible :-) Anyway, classic Baker Street syndrome. Will I go back and check around? Frankly, I doubt it, unless I hear that it's taken off big time. Finally, I couldn't investigate the site anymore, as they asked me for a credit card to validate my identity. I toyed with idea before deciding nahhh...I don't trust their rep :-) Reputation management is destined to become a serious issue and doubtless, we'll see other attempts to crack this field. I think it'll more likely come from established social network software like Spoke, Friendster and Ecademy. They already have a critical mass of people, so they just need to overcome the first two problems I described (and maybe more I haven't thought about). It's not an easy one to crack by any means. But, wow, if you do, what a boon to your fellow man - as well as untold wealth all round :-) R/

2004-03-29T11:36:00.000+01:00

The New Testament's Book of Revelations says: "[The beast] causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads. And that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666." Leaving aside the fact that my new home number contains 666 (yes, honestly), am I going all religious on you all? No, but some nutters are claiming that RFID tags are these "marks" and the conspiracy theory is catching on. RFID tags are Radio Frequency Identification tags are tiny microchips you can imbed in a whole variety of things. Think Star Trek barcodes and you'll get the picture. You can use RFID tags to say, embed in the family dog, so that if Fido goes missing, he can be traced back to you. And carry his medical history, so the vet knows what to do. By the way, has anyone ever heard of a dog actually called Fido? More mundanely, RFID tags could be used to track parcels, pallets or even individual products. Or used in a credit card to carry much more info than the simple magnetic strip can. More sinisterly for big brother obsessed people (the Orwellian vision, not the TV programme) an RFID tag could also be embedded in your skin - a kind of hyper ID card that could ultimately also be used to make payments. In other words, it could replace your credit card altogether. This would be extremely convenient for nudists, as they have no obvious place to keep credit cards. A little niche, but there you go! Anyway, supposing that some government was persuaded that having ID Cards was a GOOD THING. And suppose that these then became available as a tiny RFID chip put in your say, right hand or I don't know....your forehead... at birth. Without one, you couldn't function as a member of that society and hence the concern of the errr....nutters. As Bill G says, we always overestimate technology change in the next two years and underestimate it in the next 10. So my advice to you is that we've got about 8 years to go before 666 becomes a rather important number in our lives. Hope I'm wrong on this one :-) You can read more about this at the excellent Snopes.

2004-03-26T15:53:00.000Z

A Friday afternoon riff.... Some bright spark at Waccom has invented a new word for their technology. "Penabled" apparently isn't some kind of digital porn tool but a making-mobile-easier-to-use technology. Here's a link. No, you don't wave your penis at it (assuming you have one, gentle reader) but essentially you wave your PEN. The tech's clever, but have you heard of copywriters, guys? For no particular reason (other than being Friday) this reminds me of a story about Wang, the defunct (I think) tech company, big in the 70's. Anyway, Wang is enough as a name to make a schoolboy chortle. But, it was Wang's policy to answer their phone with "Company name, location". This obviously isn't a problem if you're in Milton Keynes, as you just say "Wang, Milton Keynes". Oh how we laughed when we found they had an office in Cologne :-) This leads seamlessly on to a (clean) but very silly answering the phone message. I once had to sit in Tie Rack's Head Office (the UK based Tie retailer). The poor receptionist had to answer the phone (yes, every call) with "Tie Rack - Brings colour to your life!". While she managed a perfect sounding message, but she looked like she was going to be sick every time she said it. Finally, did you know that unlike Mother's Day (an ancient pagan festival), Father's Day was invented by the American Tie Manufacturer's association. It was designed to make them less dependent on Christmas sales - hence it's in June. If you enjoy reading Mobhappy, drop me a line or send me a story you think I'll like. I love to hear from everyone about anything - good :-) and bad :-( Have a great weekend.

2004-03-26T10:59:00.000Z

There's a debate going on about MMS on W2F kicked off by my blog of Friday 5th March (see below re the Pope reveals soaring use of prayer as consumers errrÂ…pray) Here's another point I made - no apologies for the reappearance of the Underpant Gnomes! I totally agree with Charlie's point that camera phones don't equal MMSusagee. I've taken 100's of photos with my phone and never sent one as an MMS. If I want to send one, I IR or Bluetooth to my laptop and send it as an email. I've never been in a situation where the urgency of sending the image overcame my reluctance to be ripped off by the cost of an MMS. But this is where many analysts are going wrong. They see camera phone sales = consumer desire to send pictures = acceptance of consumer to premium pricing of MMS = huge surge in data revenues = telecoms boom. I wrote in my blog a few weeks ago about thisphenomenonn, comparing it with South Park's Underpants Gnomes. They spend their lives stealing peoples' underwear. Tracked back to their lair, we find the Gnomes with a huge pile of err....Stolen Underpants. Challenged to justify this, they show a large chart on which is outlined their strategy (see below). The key to this strategy they say, is to identify what the question mark represents - "then it's untold wealth all round" Chart: 1. Collect Underpants 2. ? 3. Profit :-) Another flawed formulae is: ability to make video phones = consumer desire to make video calls = acceptance of consumer to premium pricing of data traffic = huge surge in data revenues = telecoms boom R/

2004-03-26T09:54:00.000Z

When Westerners first arrived in Australia, they assumed that Aborigines were very primitive. They pointed to their lack of technology as evidence of this fact. For instance, they didn't have fishing hooks, but just walked into rivers and speared fish. Actually, the locals had experimented with fishhooks thousands of years previously and concluded that the old ways were better. In other words, technology for technology's sake wasn’t better - unless it worked better. This is very similar. Aussie Shampoo is running a campaign on London Underground where consumers can interact by Infrared to enter a competition. Infrared? Why didn't they use SMS? Let's consider why this may have been better: 1. Posters wouldn’t need to be adapted – therefore it’s more scalable. And you could have had a lot more posters without the cost of modifying the few. 2. People know how to use SMS. 3. You can data capture their telephone number (with their permission obviously). Sure, SMS doesn’t work on the Underground, but I have no doubt that Aussie women see posters above ground too. So that leaves us with the free angle. And I'd argue that if the benefit of interaction is strong enough, 10p (or less in most cases) is neither here nor there. This smacks of a technology looking for an application, rather than any kind of leap forward in promotional marketing Having said that, congratulations to a client willing to try new things and an agency willing to sell something other than a TV campaign. I hope they’re rewarded by a successful campaign driven by novelty value alone. But medium/long term, I suspect that the technology's “measuring true ROI on posters” ability will prove that in this case, spears are actually better than fishhooks for this job. R/

2004-03-26T08:00:00.000Z

White bicycles Many years ago (20 years ago at least) I amused myself at a dinner party (well, drunken student evening with crisps) by making up a little story. The gist of this was that back in the 60's some hippy-ish local businessman bequeathed a number of white bicycles to the city of Oxford (or it may have been Cambridge - time has dulled my memory!). Anyway, the point was that if you found one of his bicycles - handily painted white - in the street, you simply took it, rode it to your destination and left it for the next fortunate beneficiary. Sadly, the experiment proved to be unsuccessful. The ones that weren't stolen, dumped in rivers or vandalized weren't maintained and that was the end of that. I'm not sure why, but this little ditty caught the imagination of the assembled students. And, much to my amusement, I heard in subsequent months, the story being used to illustrate various Truths. For instance, Hopeless Idealism, Wot Tossers Students Are and even Chaos Theory. As an aside, my girlfriend at the time used to accuse me of "telling white bicycles" whenever she suspected a fib or a wind-up. Anyway, fast forward to today and without a word of a white bicycle, Munich has its very own White Bicycles - literally. You find one, call a number printed on the side of the bike on your mobile and pay some Euros on your credit card. The company then unlocks that bike remotely (using mobile phones too, as it happens) and it's yours for the day. When you've finished with it, you leave it for the next serendipitous customer. Or if it's in a low traffic area, the company will find it with the GPS in the bike and move it to a better place. So there we are. White Bicycles 2004-style. And that's not another white bicycle story - I promise. R/

2004-03-10T08:15:00.000Z

Dumb moments in gadgetry. Gizmodo reports here the rise in the use of the TaserT26 by law enforcement officers and the army. It's 60% smaller than its predessessor and delivers a cute 50,000 volts to miscreants. Better than shooting them I suppose. But, not content with telling the assembled journalists at the press conference, they demo'd it on some poor chap. Despite what they say about live demo's, "For five seconds, he couldn't do much but scream," another reporter notes! But this doesn't surprise me! Because it reminds me of a real life incident I witnessed in the good city of Las Vegas a few years ago. It was at the huge consumer electronics fair that takes place every year. A company was exhibiting stun guns and there were actually live ones on the stand (honestly). Despite the BIG notices warning of danger, I saw a man walk up, press a gun to his own leg and ...get thrown over. At this point all the staff on the stand clustered round sympathetically while pointing out their danger notices. Anyway, the guy wandered off unharmed, if severely shaken up - these things are not toys! I witnessed the episode open mouthed and stunned (sorry) at the whole scene and especially at the stupidity of the Induhvidual (as Scott Adams calls them) concerned, which I took to be unique. But later on the same day, I saw exactly the same thing happening all over again. Admittedly with a new Induhvidual that time - no one's that stupid.

2004-03-08T19:34:00.000Z

According to Gizmodo Britain's innovative sex hobbyists have just evolved 'dogging' (sex with strangers in public places) into 'toothing', where ambitious and horny cellphone users use anonymous Bluetooth messages to scout out potential partners. From the 'Beginner's Guide to Toothing: What is Toothing?': 'Toothing is a form of anonymous sex with strangers - usually on some form of transport or enclosed area such as a conference or training seminar. 'Toothers meet by first connecting suitable equipment - such as a modern phone or palmtop computer. Users 'discover' other computers or phones in the vicinity and then send a speculative message. The usual greeting is: 'Toothing?'. If the other party is interested, messages are exchanged until a suitable location is agreed - usually a public toilet, although there are tales of more adventurous spots such as deserted carriages or staff areas. What happens next is up to you! If you'd like to learn more about 'toothing -- or just want to gape a bit at the exploits of the wireless and uninhibited -- the Toothing! Forums are a great place to start. I have to admit to being rather too busy checking out the toothing forums to comment. But I also claim that my first official Prediction has come true this year, when I wrote: "I’m not just talking about Bluejacking, where the fun is not knowing who you’re sending to and the fact that the victim doesn’t know who you are. Bluejacking has got a lot of legs yet. But sometime, it’ll change into a kind of local flirting/networking thing." Hmmmm. My other predictions were (originally on W2Forum): Well, I'll nail something to the mast - that's half the fun! 1. 3 fails to make 1,000,000 subscribers (again) Yes, I predict that 2004 still isn’t 3G’s year and is another anus horribilis for 3 itself. OK, there may be a way out for them - the service itself improves significantly from a technical point of view AND their “marketers” start to realise the difference between “features” and “benefits”. By this I mean that a feature is a characteristic of the product. A benefit is why someone might buy a service with that feature. For instance, take video calling. Video calling itself is the feature and the benefit is…..errr. Help me here. What is the benefit of video calling?? It’s never taken off with landline phones but mobile video calling is clearly different? Well, as they found out so far, video calling isn’t a killer app. Or indeed one that anyone even wants to use once they’ve tried it once. Could be that to look kinda humanoid you need to stick your hand in the air to get the camera to look down on you. If you hold it in a more natural position ie at chest level it would make Nicole Kidman look like Jabba the Hut. Oh and “your boobs get in the way” according to female pals. I couldn’t possibly comment. Viewing video clips could be cool. But I tried it once and dozed off while it was downloading….And then, there’s a bit of a dearth of content after The Premiership stuff and they’re sharing this now aren’t they? And while we’re at it, selling cheap calls isn’t going to work either other than depressing ARPU errr…depressingly. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love 3 to succeed – it’s a brave, bold move and deserves success. But blimey chaps, listen to what your marketing people are presumably telling you. What’s going to appeal to the consumer Innovators 3 so desperately need? What can you give these guys to make them proud of their new toys and show off to their mates in the pub? How do you make it cool? Cutting the price and video calling doesn’t work. And pur-lese let’s not go down the cheap video calling route! So as Graham says, a major rethink needed. 2. MMS Oh dear, this still isn’t working is it? The reason it’s not working? Well, for starters, see features and benefits above, you operator chaps. Plus the fact is that even if you: · Ignore the technical complexity of setting up your phone · Ignore the complexity of sending an MMS. · Ignore the interoperability. · Ignore pricing (35p – get outta here…). You still have problem with what to put in your MMS - sometimes called content around these parts :-) If it’s going to go mass market, people will need help in composing these things and that means a range of cheap and readily available, easy-to-use content. And that content will need to sit on their phones and be able to be previewed so that they know what they’re sending their nearest and dearest. 3. SMS Finally, a positive from Mr Grumpy. SMS will go from strength to strength. Cheap, easy to use, offering real consumer benefits. Long may it live – and it will. 4. Local Free Messaging Oh dear. More bad news for MMS. Kids are bluetoothing and IR’ing like crazy. Believe me, I’ve seen this happening and it’s my job to know about stuff like this. I’m not just talking about Bluejacking, where the fun is not knowing who you’re sending to and the fact that the victim doesn’t know who you are. Bluejacking has got a lot of legs yet. But sometime, it’ll change into a kind of local flirting/networking thing. But LFM is like a local file sharing movement. It’s free (content and messaging), it’s P2P, you don’t need special software installed (assuming your phone has the feature) and it’s cool. And kids are using it to swap their own pics, ringtones, images, wallpaper – you name it. The same way as SMS grew in spite of the operators, LFM is growing too. But there’s no revenue model for operators and indeed, no way to track how much it’s really happening. So if this is all media hype and bullshit, prove it :-) 5. Java A technology whose time has come – forget Arnie, 2004 will be The Rise of the Java Apps. And not just gaming methinks. 6. DRM If LFM is going to take off, DRM goes right back to the top of the agenda for content owners. 7. LBS Hmmm. Still hanging in there, Location Based Services? Actually with 3 starting to look seriously at this, you never know. It could be one of those benefit things mentioned above. But hey, let’s not wibble on about cashpoints and restaurant finders please. Let's have content people actually want and will value, not just stuff that happens to be there. 8. TagText OK, it’s a plug. OK it’s a blatant plug :-) But TagText is going to go gangbusters in its next iteration (and I'm not talking Bluejacking anymore either). Watch this space.

2004-03-08T19:10:00.000Z

Spam Haiku - the story continues.... Boing Boing picked up on Spam Haiku today, resulting in quite a lot more traffic. Hello :-) As a result, Allen Hutchison dropped me an email pointing out that he'd blogged the idea a year ago here. What's more, he'd invented a programme that generated Haiku automatically as it arrives. As I emailed him back: 1. Damn and I thought I was being original. 2. Damn - your idea is much cleverer. 3. But then the purist takes over as I realise your Haiku doesn't use the traditional 5/7/5 syllable pattern. :-)

2004-03-05T16:09:00.000Z

Microsoft has launched a new gizmo reported on SlashDot "SenseCam, touted as a visual diary of sorts by Microsoft Corp., is designed to be worn around the neck and take up to 2,000 images a 12-hour day automatically. The prototype responds to changes such as bright lights and sudden movements and might one day even respond to other stimuli such as heart rate or skin temperature -- to track medical problems as easily as to record a Hawaiian vacation." This is the start of a new concept that I call MyLife. It's going to be a little mindblowing for the first generation, but I predict (safe one this - we'll be long dead) that it'll soon be seen as rather boring. Anyway, the principle behind MyLife is that initially increasingly small and discrete gadgets will record our life. As in everything we see and hear (and in due course touch, taste and smell). For instance, a microchip implanted in your eyebrow would give you that within a few years. This is very Minority Report on one level. You will be able to prove that you weren't at the scene - or THEY will prove that you were. Obviously, this doesn't take into account hackers etc changing data. But to the historian, it would be fascinating to explore life as experienced by her ancestors. Imagine being able to see what like was like for a Victorian or even your Great Great Grandparents. The next stage in this process is expected to be able to digitize people's thoughts, as well as experiences. So you'd be able to ask the advice of a long dead predecessor or respected politician. So, maybe this is a sort of eternal life - or certainly a way of gaining immortality. But while it sounds pretty interesting to travel back in time in this way, if you think about it, there'll be too much data to be meaningful. If you had to choose an hour to experience life as enjoyed by an ancestor, which one would you choose and which hour would that be? And how could an ancestor possibly be able to proffer advice remotely meaningful in tomorrow's fast changing world. So other than to a few social historians and other curious people, I suspect that these reams of digital data will lie undisturbed gently gathering digital dust. Indeed, is this sort of history really that interesting anyway when you know exactly how people lived?

2004-03-05T11:16:00.000Z

This article Enpocket Mobile Media Monitor reveals soaring use of MMS as consumers upgrade to camera phones Over the past 3 months, which includes the Christmas period, the number of consumers using MMS has surged by 40%. This is driven by 18-24 year olds of whom 37% are now using MMS. The results are revealed in the Mobile Media Monitor, the latest quarterly survey of the sector from Enpocket, the mobile marketing solutions provider. Inspired me to blog this: Pope reveals soaring use of prayer as consumers errr…pray The pope announced today that use of prayer over the Christmas period has surged by 40% (base not stated). This is driven by the number of Catholics, of whom 100% are now known to have the tools to pray and who are also be known to pray occasionally. OK maybe once a year or when their lives are directly in danger. OK maybe once in their lives, who knows? But it’s obviously great news or everyone. Hurray!! These results are revealed by the Vatican’s own completely independent research company – Nothing-to-do-promoting-Catholicism Inc. Cardinal Propogando denied that the Church had a vested interest in exaggerating the number of practising Catholics: “Mama mia? Us? Have a chopper to grind? Get some sense up your head.” Meanwhile a parallel survey showed that 1175% of consumers owning an MMS phone: 1/ Didn’t know what MMS was 2/ Couldn’t get the right settings from their operator to make it work and had given up trying. 3/ Were blithely and irresponsibly carrying on using SMS – “At least it works and I know how to use it” muttered one user apologetically, asking to remain anonymous, citing fear of excommunication from their network. Seriously, there's a place for research and surveys, but such self-serving fare fools no one. And news just in: A consortium of tobacco companies has just announced that ciggies are good for you. Pass the tabs :-)

2004-03-04T17:14:00.000Z

Not sure it's quite the thing to quote oneself :-) "But the other day I blogged: There's a much derided quote by Charles Duell, US Commissioner of Patents in 1899. "Everything that can be invented, has been invented" quoth he. But while it's obviously a touch arrogant, I think there's a tendancy for most people to view their age as "the end of history". In other words, we know most of what there is to know now. But this is clearly as completely and utterly wrong as when Charles Duell said it over 100 years ago." This story reminds me of that: "NTT DoCoMo Inc. demonstrated a couple of the technologies the operator is working on, including a speech recognition system that doesn't require speech. The system, which is still a prototype, works by measuring the electrical activity in muscles that are used when a person speaks using a system called electromyography (EMG). This means the user still has to mouth the words as if they are being spoken but audible speech itself isn't necessary." Link here We ain't seen nothing yet!

2004-03-04T17:01:00.000Z

For a peice of pure creative brilliance check out this I especially like the Lennon Tribute set to Book Antiqua. A lovely way to virally spread an example of your portfolio. Russell

2004-03-04T15:45:00.000Z

I picked this up from Seth Godin's Blog. Anyone who's ever gone through the painful and/or expense of coming up with a new brand name will appreciate this. In a wry smile kind of way :-)

2004-03-03T07:41:00.000Z

Could 2004 be the start of a major cultural trend? I refer to the end of email. Gosh, I hear you say, what the hell's he talking about? How could we do without this indispensable toy/tool? Sure it's got its downsides, but obsolescence no less? But I don't think I'm so far off the mark. And, it's interesting that Microsoft have just launched their massive anti-spam stance. Why now? Why have they waited so long? I think it's coz they'll be one of the biggest losers if email goes tits up - Hotmail is worth billions. The reason I think email is rapidly approaching its sell-by date is of course, Spam. Like most people these days, I get more Spam than legitimate email. Sure, I can filter a lot of the obvious stuff out (like anything containing "viagra", "porn" and lots of more explicit words we don't need to go into). But spammers are clever coves and you just can't beat some. The whole "Create your own logo" genre, gives me nothing to filter - "logo" is a very relevant word to my business. But this morning I had 10 of these emails overnight! By the way, you might not get quite as many. But some of my email addresses have been around a long time and in public (forums and websites). So what I get now, you can look forward to soon. But that's all very well, but there isn't an alternative, is there? Well, actually, there is now. Not all in the same tool admittedly. But you can now fairly easily put together a series of tools (mainly free) that offer everything that email does, without the spam. First of, there's the excellent BlogLines. You can use this to manage your incoming news and other people's Blogs. It's actually better than email as you can plan when you want to catch up, rather than having things arrive progressively and disruptively throughout the day. And it stores it all online in a searchable format, viewable for any PC anywhere. Then there's Instant Messenger for quick collaborative stuff. And Wiki (from the Hawaiian "quick, quick"). In a nutshell, it's a composition system, a discussion medium, a repository, a mail system, a chat room, and a tool for collaboration. Increasingly used by people collaborating on projects. You might not have used it yet, but you will soon, I expect. So that covers off news, colleague collaboration and chatting/quick conversations with your network. What else do we need email and the evil of spamming for? OK, it is sometimes useful (although increasingly useless) if you want to make contact with people you don't know - chances are your email will get filtered out somehow anyway. Especially if you're unfortunate enough to be called something like Mr Cockburn or have a legitimate business in Viagra! In this scenario, I want to make contact with the Marketing Director of company X. I phone the switchboard, get his email ID and fire something off to him. But there's now smarter ways of doing this. Everyone knows that a personal introduction is worth infinitely more than a cold approach. And that's exactly what social networks like Ecademy, Ryze, LinkedIn and Spoke offer. Plus industry-specific networks like the one run by W2Forum for the mobile industry. So now if I want to talk to someone at say, Apple Computers, the chances are very strong that someone knows someone, who knows someone who can make the intro. Clearly there's potential problems with this model, but now's not the time and place. Email remains quite a convenient way of sending data direct to my PC in certain circumstances. But I can then set the filtering up so that I download only email from people already in my address book. So there we go - an email-free and spam free world. Of course, this is also a fairly substantial business opportunity for someone. A tool that combines all these tools (including email) would be a huge prize. Maybe that's what Bill's going by stirring up the anti-spam feeling. He's just ready to charge in on his whire horse to save the day.

2004-03-02T20:13:00.000Z

SmartMobs has a fascinating article here Apparently 1.2 million people in Taiwan formed a human chain of over 500km long in a protest. The event wasn't officially reported but was moblogged. It would be interesting to see the role that SMS (HUGE now in that part of the world) played in the organisation.

2004-03-02T10:37:00.000Z

I'm over in Munich for a couple of weeks and needed to hire a car. So I did a search and came up with a reasonable price. Now, I've been ripped off by care hire before, so I wasn't going to fall for their little tricks again, was I? Was insurance included? Yep, no problem there. So I decide to book. Then I checked the weather. I'd be collecting the car in the evening and driving for about 70 miles to somewhere I’d never been to before. In a temperature of –12 degrees, in snow blizzards and with 6 inches of snow on the ground. “Were snow tyres included?” I asked them. Apparently not. This would cost an additional Euro 90 - against an initial quote of Euro 475. In other words quite a lot more. Now snow tyres aren’t snow chains or anything. They are what every German car has fitted in the winter. In fact, driving without snow tyres can mean that you invalidate your insurance and you can be liable to prosecution for negligent driving. Sending someone out in those conditions without snow tyres, is like sending them out without breaks in normal weather. It’s not too melodramatic to say that it’s like sending a soldier to war without a rifle (damn – that’s OK now isn’t it Mr Hoon? Bad analogy). Anyway, it would be foolhardy to drive without snow tyres, so I had no choice but to agree to pay the extra. I then checked if other items such as steering wheel, brakes and lights were included. Phew – they weren’t going to have me there. So, I got to Munich, late at night, after travelling all day, facing a long drive in very poor conditions. Not in the mood to have a long argument over additional costs. And was presented with a bill that had increased by a further 25% (this didn’t include the additional costs of snow tyres). D’oh. Tricked again. Why didn’t I realise that they’d charge me a whopping “service charge” on top of the quote? Is it just me, or does anyone else have this problem? And has anyone found a way of 1. Getting them to stick to a quote and 2. Claiming back over-charging?

2004-02-29T16:12:00.000Z

I've written before about consumers being reluctant to embrace video calls, as people often use phones as an alibi. Well it seems someone's been listened. There's an article here that tackles that very subject. Seems 3 are looking at ways of providing callers will fake backgrounds they can use to disguise their location. Come to think of it, didn't I suggest that as a market opportunity?

2004-02-27T16:27:00.000Z

Much has been written here and elsewhere about how ideas spread (or viral marketing, word of mouth - "word of mouse" was quite cute in the early days of the web - call it what you will). But as much an writers try to analyze or make it into a science, it seems to me to be a pretty much hit and miss affair. That doesn't mean that some valuable tips can't be gained from such excellent books as The Tipping Point or The IdeaVirus. But what such analyses always seem to be missing is the elusive Factor X, that spark that goes on to create a virus where other equally good ideas (on paper, at least) wither and die. What is it about certain ideas that capture the imagination and the passion of mavens and sneezers that cause them to want to tell others about these and not others? Perhaps an unlikely example comes from the streets of New York. The New York Times today ran an article. It seems that the vast majority of the "Push" buttons for pedestrians to stop traffic at street intersections don't work. They haven't actually worked for years since the City introduced computer controlled traffic systems in the 1970's. Yet, thousands of people still dutifully walk up them and Push every day. Now, that's understandable, in a way. Except that to most of the people who don't Push, these buttons are called "Idiot Buttons" and they snicker gently when some bozzo pushes one. OK, tourists are forgiven. But how come half the residents know about the Idiot Buttons and the other half don't? This has never been widely debated or announced publicly. It's just that some people have heard and spread the idea. And some haven't. Why?

2004-02-26T16:33:00.000Z

As with all societal change, it tends to happen imperceptibly. And then you look back and remember how life was different. I heard someone (honest) talking about their "shag phone" the other day. He was a married man having an affair with a lady who was also married. It seems that one of the first heady rituals of the affair was to purchase a "his and her" pair of Pre-pay shag phones. Only they knew each other's number, so when the phone rang, they could answer in an appropriately passionate way. While much the same effect could be achieved with caller recognition (assuming they were mobile literate), there was more than just a romantic gesture involved with this behaviour. Technology still can't hide your phone bill from a suspicious spouse. And it can't hide your amour's frequently dialed number from prying eyes. Better to get a pair pre-pay phones with no incriminating phone bills or records. A small example of how the mobile is impacting on 21st century life.

2004-02-26T15:53:00.000Z

There's an article here in Tech Dirt outlining an idea that I thought had been disproved time and time again. And as we all know, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is one definition of insanity. Seems that advertisers have resorted to paying college kids to watch their ads! Maybe this is worse than insane as it's plain stoopid too :-) Instead of wasting your advertising dollars, do your job properly and work out how you can engage your customers. If you resort to blatant bribery, what do you think these kids are going to think of you and your brand? I'll give you a clue - it begins with L and rhymes with oosers. In other words, not the kind of brand that they'll want to be associated with. And maybe think outside the mantra "marketing = advertising". It may have worked 10 years ago and more - BUT IT DOESN'T ANYMORE!

2004-02-25T20:22:00.000Z

Well rustle my hair and call me Frankie... Last week I wrote about the iPod: "And shortly, I'm betting that someone will annouce an academic study relating to the influence that the music you play on your iPod has on your outlook on life/mood swings and success of otherwise. And it'll show that it does have a remarkable effect, is my bet." And this week, Wired announce it! Dr Michael "Bull is currently interviewing iPod owners about how, when, where and why they use the iPod, and how it integrates into their everyday lives. The interviews will be the basis of Bull's forthcoming book, Mobilizing the Social: Sound Technology in Urban Experience. The book, to be published next spring, will examine the impact of cell phones and car sound systems, as well as the iPod." The full article here As you will have spotted, Dr Bull hasn't quite grasped the profundity of my observations and is restricting his research to fairly superficial stuff :-) I'd feel a little more comfortable if he'd waited a few months to announce this. Then I could really claim to be able to tell the future!

2004-02-25T13:57:00.000Z

Spam Haiku - the story so far….. Originally I wrote: I've been creating a new art form as a way of trying to re-cycle spam. You know - the new kind that puts gibberish in the subject line in the desperate hope that your interest will be piqued. And actually, it means that you welcome this rubbish as it comes into your inbox. Not because you want to buy Viagra or want a bigger penis/breasts, but because it’s inspirational! The rules are simple and inspired by the Haiku: 1. It must take the form of the three line, 5, 7, 5 syllable poem 2. You can only use complete headers of genuine spam – no editing allowed. 3. Titles of Haiku must be the traditional “Re:” or “RE:” if you’re a modernist. Only my opinion though. 3. Err…. that it Here was the first attempt: Re: bore filipino balloon chalkline crabmeat eh? new revolution But since then, I feel I’ve reached a greater maturity with my writing. For your delight and edification, here’s my latest collection. I’m happy to publish others’ contributions if the quality is of a high enough standard! Re: Terry Tate is back gallop easel fanny coop Good Sense Automation RE: hath bloodstream ohmic Please update Dov's address book colette compacter (Note: if reading aloud, please spit the last line out disdainfully) Re: SEE WHO THEY WRITE TO Extra day, extra saving Air values for you (Note: hint of despair in last line for public recitations) RE: Re: lobule friedrich The Lowest Just Got Lower! enlarge_your_manhood Finally a bittersweet thought. If Spam Haiku takes off big time, it will contain the seeds of its own destruction. If spammers adopt 5 or 7 syllable subject lines so that they’re welcomed into thousands (nay, millions) of mail boxes throughout the world, it’ll take all the fun out of it and kill the new art form. Some might say: Like cherry blossom Spam haiku was beautiful And soon forgotten

2004-02-25T12:10:00.000Z

I've been playing around with Blog Lines for a few months now and have to say that I'm really impressed. It's not a perfect tool, but it does make life much easier! A quick straw poll among mates has shown that not many people seem aware of it, so I thought it would be useful to write it up here a bit. I have no commercial interest! So, first off, what problem does it solve? - always a good starting point for assessing a new product. Well, if you're a news and info junkie like me, you'll love it. It's a free bit of software that allows you to organise all the Blogs, newsletters and info sources that you regularly read in one place. The benefit is that you can now set aside time specifically to catch up on these things, rather than trying to tackle countless emails as they arrive. You just visit your Blog Lines page online and see all the Blogs you subscribe to listed in one place. Moreover, Blog Lines highlights all the Blogs that have been updated since you last visited. You just click on a Blog you want to read and the screen splits to show that Blog. When you're finished, you simply click on the next one. It's magic! There's loads of other features. It's easy to add new blogs or sources and delete them. You can browse the top blogs to sample them and then add them to your list. And you can search for new Blogs by key words and discover hidden gems yourself. It's also cool as all the Blogs are stored online. This means that you don?t have to store it on your PC and you can access the database of Blogs from any PC anywhere. And all your Blogs you've ever read are now searchable. So if you vaguely remember an article you once read, but not the detail, it's there at your finger tips. You can add any blog or website to your Blog Lines, providing they have an RSS feed. If you're not sure, just put the URL of the blog into your Blog Lines list and if it has RSS, you can subscribe. If it doesn't have an RSS feed (and the vast majority do!), you have to ask why the hell not! The only faintly un-nerving thing about Blog Lines is the icon that sits in your PC?s toolbar. Every now and then it will flash up how many new articles are waiting to be read. If you have a fairly large and eclectic reading list (like me) this can lead to a disconcertingly large number very quickly (currently 330!). Obviously, you don't need to read them all at once though (if at all). And the point is that you can manage them in away that suits you at a time when you can afford to do it. Don't forget to add http://mobhappy.blogspot.com/ to your favourites!

2004-02-25T08:14:00.000Z

The web can give you answers to almost anything these days, including if you're a man or a woman. Just in case you thought this was blindingly obvious, we now have Gender Genie. This nifty little tool encourages you to paste some of your writing and lo and behold, tells you your gender. I tried it with a recent Blog entry and yes, I'm a bloke. But in touch with my female side, of course :-)

2004-02-19T15:37:00.000Z

There's a great little entry in Seth Godin's (one of the true marketing gurus) blog about Poloroid film. Basically the idea has spread that you shake Poloroid film as it develops - even professionals do this. But it's not only not necessary and useless, but could even damage the picture. Seth's point is how did the practice take hold and spread? A great example of an idea virus.

2004-02-18T17:57:00.000Z

Every film maker knows the power of adding music to enhance the impact of the piece and moods it conjures up. Indeed, it's almost unthinkable to launch a film without a soundtrack - certainly as a mainstream film. Equally, music is used as a very powerful anchor by politicians, motivational speakers and sports events to name but a few. Indeed, it can be argued that music is a variant of a drug, albeit with no nasty side effects (that I know of!). The fascinating thing for me about the iPod and it's huge success is that it could be seen as the very beginning of an individual creating a soundtrack to their own life. We already have technology that can interupt your MP3 player when you have a phone call on your mobile. So it's not going to be a great leap forward to have it recognise when someone's speaking to you, for instance or when an important announcement is made over a PA system. Otherwise, what you hear is your music. And shortly, I'm betting that someone will annouce an academic study relating to the influence that the music you play on your iPod has on your outlook on life/mood swings and success of otherwise. And it'll show that it does have a remarkable effect, is my bet.

2004-02-17T16:43:00.000Z

You remember those errr...inebriated talks you had when you were about student age? You know the kind...."supposing like...our whole universe was just a cell in some giant's finger nail and he was...wow...just a part of a universe in some other giant's finger nail....which means wow....mindblowing!!!....every single cell in my body could be a universe in itself....hey it's my turn with that, man." What do you mean, if was just me?? Anyway, I had one of those deja vu feelings when I heard about the new Sims variant BBC link [As you'll know (skip this if you do) Sims allows you to create your own characters in the game and watch how they interact with each other] Well, now the characters you create, can create their own virtual characters in their own Sim game. That's just weird.

2004-02-17T13:20:00.000Z

Admittedly this was a small sample but New Scientist found that lies made up a massive 37% of phone calls. Consumers will resist technology that prevents them from using it as they want - whether that be video calls or Location Based Services. Obviously, I'm talking P2P here - corporate tracking services are something else entirely. However, companies will need to work closely with employees who they intend to monitor to make them accept this technology. Like sales force automation software, resistance and sabotage can be expected abd will need to be managed accordingly.

2004-02-13T17:15:00.000Z

O and there's some very amusing cards here. Things like "You make stalking feel so right" "If you ever get mauled by bears, I hope they stay away from your face, as I think you're cute".

2004-02-13T17:10:00.000Z

OK, I suppose I can't continue ignoring St V's day. Try http://www.lovecalculator.com/

2004-02-12T17:04:00.000Z

Of course, I am aware of the dangers of the budding media forore over my Spam Haiku idea. It's now being picked up by our American colleagues. Smart spammers will start to cunningly cater for us. They'll send subject lines which are deliberately Spam Haiku. So it's perhaps going to be the shortist lived art form ever. Like cherry blossom Spam haiku is beautiful But soon forgotton :-)

2004-02-11T10:41:00.000Z

I think the spam Haiku was featured on Radio London this morning - did anyone hear it on Danny Baker's show? Drop me a line at russell@mobhappy.com if you know more. Here's another for you: Re: Terry Tate is back gallop easel fanny coop Good Sense Automation

2004-02-11T10:35:00.000Z

And also on my reading list currently is Seth Godin's Purple Cow. It's a very nice summary of the latest marketing thinking. And very scary reading if you work in the vestigies of the TV-Industrial complex - like in an ad agency, for instance or for one of the big TV-advertised brands. If you can't be arsed to read the most important marketing books in recent years (eg The Tipping Point, Crossing the Chasm, One to One Future etc) this is a sort of cheat's guide. There's a lot more to it that that, of course. But his basic message is: Create remarkable products that the right people seek out. Then focus your marketing on these right people (what Godin calls Sneezers). Who find your remarkable product, adopt it and tell other people all about it. Sounds very simple, but it's actually very hard. But we like a challenge. So we're just launching TagText, which has many of the characteristics of a Purple Cow, we hope. Watch this space.

2004-02-11T10:25:00.000Z

I'm still reading Bill Bryson's excellent and fascinating "A Short History of Nearly Everything". It's a very readable summary in 500 or so pages of our knowledge of life, the universe and everything. While I've learned more than I can express, what actually strikes me is how little we really know about ourselves, our origins and the world around us. Almost nothing is known about the Earth's core, Deep Sea or Deep Space, us at cellular level or where we come from. Or why ancient man managed to settle in Australia 60,000 years ago, when it's always been an Island (during recent ie mankind's history). This was tens of thousands of years before we were meant to be able to speak and communicate in any sophisticated way. Yet some people managed to organise an ocean voyage of thousands of miles. There's simply loads and loads of things we don't understand. There's a much derided quote by Charles Duell, US Commissioner of Patents in 1899. "Everything that can be invented, has been invented" quoth he. But while it's obviously a touch arrogant, I think there's a tendancy for most people to view their age as "the end of history". In other words, we know most of what there is to know now. But this is clearly as completely and utterly wrong as when Charles Duell said it over 100 years ago. There's also a tendancy to view the whole evolution thing as steps towards producing the most sophisticated intelligence on earth (in the universe?) - us. In other words, the real point of apes was to produce us. And the point of the furry little mammals before the apes was to produce the apes that would produce us. Assuming that this type of evolution did happen, in the first place as there's still no agreed "missing link". But that's rubbish too, apparently. Man is just an accident and our ancient ancestors could have become extinct on numberless occasions. To say that evolution was aiming towards us is simply arrogant egocentricity. So what's your point, Buckley? Well, simply that we're at the dawn of technology right now, not at dusk, or even midday. More things are going to be possible than we can even envisage in the future. Wow.

2004-02-06T14:37:00.000Z

One of the common themes of technology is the assumption that just because something's possible, consumers will want it. Unfortunately, this just isn't true. Take a simple thing like 3G, for instance. Everyone's still talking about video calls as being a killer application (This month's otherwise, excellent Management Today being a case in point) . Huh? Where's the evidence that there's ANY demand for this from consumers? For a start, video calling landline-phones have been round for yonks and no one buys them. There's a few exceptions for business use, but even the corporate market has been slow to use them. Video cams on PC's must be the least used piece of domestic equipment (along with exercise accessories). OK there's a big niche market for adult chat, but for "normal" calls, it's zilch. And all of a sudden, consumers will be falling over themselves to make video calls on 3G. Why??? And with video phones, there's several usability issues too. For a start, you have to have your hand in the air (above your head) to get a decent angle. Otherwise you end up with a double chin the size of Jabba the Hutt. Holding the handset in the air is not something you'd want to do wondering down the street. I also have a theory that people use mobiles as alibis (see earlier Blog for 28 January). So you can pretend to be working late, when you're in the pub, as an example. And video calling won't allow you to do this. Interestingly, the bright boys at Nokia seem to be coming round to my way of thinking. The new 7600 (their 3G phone) doesn't support video as they're concentrating on optimising the mobile internet experience. Which is the right approach, in my humble opinion. But, I do think that there will be a growth in MobileFlashing as I have now called it. This will involve: * Obtaining the number of someone with a video phone. * Preferably they should be the opposite sex, or someone easily shockable. * Calling them (withholding your number) * Focusing your phone on your exposed genitalia, while observing your victim's shocked reaction/screams or expletives. Obviously, I'm not condoning this, but it will happen. Assuming you can find someone with a video phone in the first place!

2004-02-06T11:10:00.000Z

I've been watching the fascinating "I'm a Celebrity" this year - well, fascinating as in rubbernecking an accident :-) And I've been struck by a rather surprising illustration of branding consistency. Ant and Dec, the show's cheeky-chappie presenters always stand in the same position in relation to each other ie they're Ant and Dec and never ever Dec and Ant. Have a look, you'll never see them any other way, apart from Dec on the right part of the screen and Ant on the left. And now you even have an excuse to tune in. It's not the same without the master showman Johnny though :-) Another example of marketing genius.

2004-02-05T11:26:00.000Z

Half of UK's rail enquiries calls to be offshored to India, according to today's Silicon Hmm. What a shite idea this offshoring call centre thing is and why oh why does this ridiculous trend continue? Sure, I understand the commercial stuff behind the decision. Yes it's cheaper to offshore. And as importantly, there's the "your back room is someone else's front room" argument proposed by Jack Welch and Peter Drucker (among others). In other words, things a UK employee might find mundane and demeaning (call centre work) will be positively relished by someone in India, as an example. Now, outsourcing certain types of work to offshore facilities makes perfect sense. For instance, there's a big business in Nigeria that employes people to watch security cameras! But customer-facing (or maybe consumer facing - B2B can make sense sometimes) is plain daft. Why? Coz people hate it! Speak to anyone and they hate the perceptual delay on the line and that the operator doesn't understand the culture, the geography, the mores and social etiqette. Understandably - they don't live here, so how can they? (This isn't racist BTW, but geographist. If a person comes from India and lives in the UK, as an example, they can credibly work in a customer facing role after a while). It always amazes me the way businesses jump on these kind of bandwagons. It's like the constant flux between the need to react to local requirements and the centralisation argument of control, professionalism and economies of scale. I remember working with a well known retailer who was going through a "decentralisation is cool" phase. Which they suddenly rescinded when a local, empowered shop manager, got two strippers to take a shower in his shop window to generate foot traffic. Harry Gordon Selfridge (the ultimate showman retailer) would have been proud! His window displays used to create crowds in Oxford Street and stop traffic. He never tried the stripper idea though - at least, not in public. R/

2004-02-05T09:26:00.000Z

From Scott Adam's excellent Dogbert's New Ruling Class Newsletter (send an email saying "subscribe" to newsletter@unitedmedia.com). This is a true story (allegedly) A manager who received a new computer asked, "Don't these new computers come with CDROM drives?" I said yes. He insisted that his computer did not have a CDROM drive, but "There is a little drawer that opens at the BOTTOM of my computer, but it won't hold a CD." He had the computer upside down. I would have thought that the fact that everyone else got a "DELL" computer and his said "77ED" would have clued him in.

2004-02-04T14:31:00.000Z

According to Takeshi Natsuno managing director and founder of i-mode for NTTDoCoMo "We are looking to expand that market: we are including a bar code reader into all our new phones: my card has a bar code on my business card, and my phone or somebody else's can now scan that and store the info..think about it, the users are endless... " Moconews

2004-02-04T10:29:00.000Z

What an extraordinary thought. In Howard's SmartMobs blog he suggests that it might soon be possible to print out on the humble inkjet printer working computers, TV's and MP3 players! Blimey - need to get my head around that!

2004-02-03T10:15:00.000Z

What a great idea! The Phototag website is well, let them tell it: "PhotoTag is a small photography project and an ad hoc community formed through through the chance wanderings of transient disposable cameras. Periodically, a series of disposable cameras are labeled and released into the wild with instructions for unwary PhotoTaggers to take one picture and pass the camera on. Postage and a return address are included on the camera so that it may simply be dropped into the mail to get back home when all the film is used up." I guess it could be extended to photomessaging with a camera phone - provided that people didn't steal the phone. And that MMS actually worked across networks. And that some people could be found who could make it work. Ho hum. R/

2004-02-02T19:37:00.000Z

People are still asking me what Bluejacking is. Or just staring at me blankly when the subject comes up, despite all the recent media coverage. So, here's the skinny. Bluejacking, on one level, is 2004's equivalent to knocking on someone's door and running away, like wot we did when we were kids. The slightly crueller version was to ring the bell and run away leaving in its place a paper bag full of dog poo, which you lit before the scarper. My, how we laughed, when some grumpy old git would come outside, see no one there, see a paper bag on fire and stamp it out - getting their slippers in a horrible mess in the process. Anyway, back to Bluejacking. Bluetooth is a way of sending data from one digital device to another via radio. When "Futurists" blather on about taking items out of your fridge, thus informing your grocer that you need more of said item, they're normally talking about using bluetooth. Not going to happen, but that's another story. But the technology works fine. Anyway, one practical use of Bluetooth is to say, send someone's contact details from one phone to another. And "innovators" (marketing speak for people who adopt technological innovations first) already do this kind of thing. Then, back in April 2002, aJack (an IT guy based in Malaysia) wrote this post on Esato (a forum for errr.. enthusiastic Sony Ericsson users): I was in the bank today and was waiting for my number to be called as there was many people in the bank. Out of boredom, I did a Bluetooth discovery to see if there was any other Bluetooth device around. A name appeared on my screen "Nokia 7650" which obviously means some poor Nokia users has his Bluetooth switched on. I looked around and didn't see anybody around me using that brick... I mean Nokia 7650. I then proceeded to create a new contact in my phone which had all it's fields empty except for the first name which I gladly filled with "Buy Ericsson!" and made my R520 send that business card to the Nokia 7650 and a guy a few feet away from me suddenly had his 7650 making obscene noises in the bank. He took out his 7650 and started looking at his phone (and looking lost at the same time)." aJack esato.com posting And Bluejacking was born. If you want to impress your mates, you can point out that etymologically speaking, Bluejack comes from Bluetooth and aJack, not hijack, as is popularly supposed. Anyway, that's it in a nutshell. My personal best was to send "No smoking zone" to a large American gentleman at the next table is a restaurant. He promptly put out his cigar, causing much merriment at our table. But "your laces are undone" is always good for a laugh too. Anyway. To be really, really cool you have to do Bluejacking with images, you can download here TagText. The idea is to find a character (Tag) that you want to be you and attach them to your Bluejacks. Your Tag can be hints as to who you are, or who you want to be :-) Declaration. TagText is probably the froodiest website on the planet ie it's one I'm involved with. The definitive Bluejacking site is here BluejackQ.com run by Jellie Ellie as 13 year old girl in Surrey, England.

2004-02-02T16:21:00.000Z

Another Spam Haiku for you (if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, scroll down to the bottom of the page) hath bloodstream ohmic Please update Dov's address book colette compacter

2004-02-02T11:37:00.000Z

I'm reading Bill Bryson's excellent Short History of Nearly Everything at the moment. While it's quite scholarly, it's very readable and makes "science" very interesting - quite a shock if your last exposure was back at school. So now I know everything from quantum physics to solar flares to light speed. What's rather mindblowing is how relatively unimportant man is in the scale of Earth, let alone the universe. For instance, if the history of the earth was to be represented by your outstretched arms, the whole of the history of mankind could be eradicated by one stroke of the nailfile on the nail on your middle finger. And while we're talking light years, I came across this interesting little website: Outreach The idea is that it identifies your birth star for you. In other words, light (while travelling terrifically fast) takes a very long time to travel across the vast distances of space. So the stars you can see at the moment actually represents light that left them x years ago. If the situation were to be reversed, an alien wouldn't see us as we are now, but would be able to see historical events as they were happening depending on how far away they were. Anyway, the site identifies the star which we can now view as it was on the day that you were born. Cool, if rather useless :-)

2004-02-02T11:17:00.000Z

I got forwarded this by a friend. Normally I hate these hoax e-mail warnings, but this one is for real. Send this warning to everyone on your e-mail list. If a man comes to your front door and says he is conducting a survey and asks you to show him your cock, DO NOT show him your cock. This is a scam; he only wants to see your cock. I wish I'd got this email yesterday. I feel so stupid and cheap.

2004-01-29T17:31:00.000Z

Check out the marvelous http://www.thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com/ Maybe I have a soft spot for it as *my* wife is German too :-) If you can't be arsed to click through, here's a couple of choice morsels. His girlfriend is called Margret (from the German "M' Argr et" meaning 'to be dangerously insane'). Margret doesn't like to watch films on the TV. No, hold on - let me make sure you've got the inflection here: Margret doesn't like to watch films on the TV. She says she does, but years of bitter experience have proven that what she actually wants is to sit by me while I narrate the entire bleeding film to her. 'Who's she?', 'Why did he get shot?', 'I thought that one was on their side?', 'Is that a bomb' - 'JUST WATCH IT! IN THE NAME OF GOD, JUST WATCH IT!' The hellish mirror-image of this is when she furnishes me, deaf to my pleading, with her commentary. Chair-clawing suspense being assaulted mercilessly from behind by such interjections as, 'Hey! Look! They're the cushions we've got.', 'Isn't she the one who does that tampon advert?' and, on one famous occasion, 'Oh, I've seen this - he gets killed at the end.' We are sitting together on the sofa. I say 'Brrrr - I'm cold.' Margret replies 'Where?' What Margret and I have, essentially, is a Mexican stand-off with love instead of guns. OK, yes, sometimes there are guns too. The important thing is the mindset, though. Sure, people can argue about important issues, that's fine, good luck to them I say. But where, I ask you, are those people when you take away the meaningful sources of disagreement? Lost. Utterly lost. Let me illustrate the common mistakes amateurs might make using something that happened the other week. You will need: Margret. Me. A roast chicken. We're having tea and on the table are the plates, a selection of vegetables and a roast chicken in an incredibly hot metal baking tray. Getting this chicken to the table (see 'cloth taking-things-from-the-oven-things', above) has been an heroic race that ended only fractions of a second short of a major skin graft. Due to this haste it is, however, not sitting precisely centrally on the coaster. Some kind of weird, hippie, neo-Buddhist couple might have failed even at this point and simply got on with eating the meal. Fortunately, Margret is there to become loudly agitated that radiant heat might creep past the edge of the coaster, through the table cloth, through the protective insulating sheet under the table cloth, and affect the second-hand table itself. She shouts and wails. I nudge the tray into the centre of the coaster, but, in doing so, about half a teaspoon of the gravy spills over the side onto the table cloth. Outside birds fall mute, mid-song. Inside, frozen in time, the camera swings around us sitting at the table, like in The Matrix. 'What the hell did you do that for? Quick, clean it up - quick,' says Margret (where an amateur would have, say, shrugged). 'No,' I reply (at the moment that another amateur would have been returning from the kitchen with a cloth), 'I'm eating my tea. I'm going to sit here and eat my tea. Then I'll clean it up.' 'No, clean it up now.' 'No.' 'Yes.' 'No. I'm going to eat my tea first.' 'Clean it up now.' A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so a couple of semi-pros might have worked this up into a shouting match. But I am not about to stoop to childish name-calling. Instead I lift up the tray and pour some more gravy onto the table. 'OK?' I say, 'Now stop it. I'll clean it up after.' 'Clean it up now.' I tip a little more gravy onto the table. 'I'm just going to keep doing it every time you say that. I'll clean it up later.' 'Do it now.' More gravy. 'Now.' More gravy. This continues until we run out of gravy. I must make it clear that my actions here seemed perfectly rational at the time. I've mulled them over since, of course, and am relieved to find that they still hold up to examination - it's pleasing to know I can make good decisions under pressure. Anyway, we eat the meal from a table awash with gravy. I am happy to have argued my point persuasively. Margret has a smile fixed to her face from the belief (incorrectly, of course, but it's only her enjoyment that matters) that I've clearly done something hugely stupid that she can bring up later in any number of arguments - possibly years from now. Everyone wins. We eat, united in contentment. I clean up the table.

2004-01-28T17:25:00.000Z

For about 5 years, I used to edit an email newsletter - a kind of forerunner to a blog, called AgencyTalk. It was a little niche in that it was only for sales promotion agencies in the UK. Anyway, one of the reasons for starting this blog is that I miss sharing witty, weird and wonderful stuff with other people. When you write this type of blog, you know that it's probably never going to be in much danger of being read, but if you do - drop me an email! And in return, I'll share with y'all the secret of making real money. Like many great lessons in life, it's a parable and one of my favourite from AgencyTalk days. The Underpants Gnomes spend their lives stealing peoples' underwear. Tracked back to their lair, we find them with a huge pile of shreddies - challenged to justify this, they show a large chart on which is outlined their strategy (see below). The key to this strategy they say, is to identify what the question mark represents - "then it's untold wealth all round" Chart: 1. Collect Underpants 2. ? 3. Profit

2004-01-28T17:10:00.000Z

One of the elements I think that vendors of technology often overlook is how people in the real world actually use their products. Mobile phone tracking technology (sometime called Location Based Services or LBS) is a case in point. Many, many phone calls are actually designed to provide the caller with an alibi as to their whereabouts - the last thing they want is to tell the other party where they actually are. For instance, there's the old "working late in the office but actually in the pub" scenario. Not to mention "I'm stuck in traffic but actually still with another customer who's your major competitor" scenario. Plus a whole host of other white and not-so-white lies that make up many peoples lives. Obviously, present company excluded. And the problem with tracking services, is that if it's available, what am I hiding when I don't activate it for my wife, employer or client? Supposing they demand that I turn it on NOW? Pundits often raise concerns about privacy as in human rights/identity card type of privacy issues. In fact, I think privacy in this instance is far more about petty day-to-day human stuff, not about Big Brother at all. I think the same issue also applies to that other technological dead-end - mobile video calling. There's already a company in Japan (where else?) offering alibis via MMS to mobile phone users, where they send an alibi picture you?ve already send them (eg hard at work ain the office). So maybe there's an opportunity for a tracking alibi! Also published here: http://www.w2forum.com/item2.php?id=16441

2004-01-28T11:45:00.000Z

Public speaking scares the hell out of most people - in fact, it consistently comes up as a top phobia. Many people actually claim to fear death as much as making a speech. So I share the feelings of Queen Victoria’s first Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, when he records his huge admiration for the way Lord Aberdeen yawned twice while making his own maiden speech. How cool is that?

2004-01-28T11:25:00.000Z

I've been creating a new art form as a way of trying to re-cycle spam. You know - the new kind that puts gibberish in the subject line in the desperate hope that your interest will be piqued. And actually, it means that you welcome this rubbish as it comes into your inbox. Not because you want to buy Viagra or want a bigger penis/breasts, but because it’s inspirational! The rules are simple and inspired by the Haiku: 1. It must take the form of the three line, 5, 7, 5 syllable poem 2. You can only use complete headers of genuine spam – no editing allowed. 3. Err…. that it Here’s the first attempt: Re: bore filipino balloon chalkline crabmeat eh? new revolution Whaddya think? A certain poetry, or am I fooling myself? R/