Thursday 24 March 2011

Don’t forget your birthday cakes you TWIT

Did you celebrate? Did you remember? Did you even know?

It was the 5th birthday of Social Networking game-changer Twitter this week, and I’ll bet you didn’t even have a party, did you?

Rude.

Truth be told, neither did we, it didn’t seem important enough really.

Monday 21 March 2011

It doesn't Costa lot!

Customer experience is a fickle thing – it’s tough to pick out the highs and the lows; sometimes you know full well that service could be better (say, at a Supermarket check out – whatever you do, never make eye contact!) and sometimes you know that it doesn’t get much better (in this instance, an online experience with one of the big ones like Amazon, who seem to know what you’re thinking and when you’re thinking it – has spending money ever been so painless?).

Thursday 17 March 2011

A quick reaction to QR Codes

Some of you may have noticed a new breed of barcode (albeit square)-type-things appearing in various places, on various products and in various scenarios in our day-to-day lives of late.

Quick Response, or QR codes are the latest 2 Dimensional way to access additional information about, well, whatever the QR code creator wants you to access really! A QR can be scanned by a smartphone to automatically receive text, imagery, video, sound and URLs - a mobile-friendly way to point people who are offline to an online resource.

The Japanese love them. Well I never! And they are becoming increasingly popular over here and in the U.S. But are they just another gimmick? - well no, not if you think about how they can be used:

Thursday 10 March 2011

Best of British – a blessing or a curse

So I’m sat here working, and Adele’s new song is on the radio, it’s currently number one in every country you can imagine, and for good reason - it, and the album it’s from, ‘21’ is great IMHO (see how ‘down with the kids’ I am there too? IMHO… Cool eh?).

There’s been a load of media coverage for Adele - ‘Best of British’, ‘flying the flag for Britain’ and all the other things our nation attaches to anything good, before dropping it when something bad happens – just like when Andy Murray does well, he changes, for the week of the match at least, from being Scottish, to being British, because it gives us all hope… for a bit.

So here’s the point I’m trying to make; do people outside of Britain care at all that something is British? Does it mean what it used to? Is it worth anything?

Monday 7 March 2011

2011 - the year of the mobile and bright yellow pandas!

Did you know there are more mobile devices in the world than PC’s? I’m sure you did!

Yep, 2011 will be the year of mobile and location services and apps and HTML 5 and bright yellow pandas…I guess you’ve heard most of this before (maybe not the panda part though!) Every year, the experts try to predict the big trends and they rarely seem to get it wrong - they just happen to be a year or so out sometimes! That statement would certainly be true with their mobile predictions anyway, as 09 and 10 were both going to be the year of mobile, when, in fact they nearly were. At least, that’s my opinion.

I do agree with them this year though! 2011 does seem to be the year that things are really going to take off. The big brands are on-board already and the SME brands are realising they need to do something for the mobile customer - they just need some help on what that might be.

I believe you can thank Apple for the massive drive forward in mobile absorption in 10 and 11. The iPhone certainly kick-started a slow market and added real ingenuity and style. The iPad added to the momentum and with Google (Android) and Microsoft (Windows 7 mobile) biting away at Apple’s heels with some classy stuff, the train has well and truly left the station and it’s getting faster and faster in 2011.

Add to that, the fact that Nokia has just thrown it’s full support behind Windows 7 mobile, and then there is the ever growing glut of iPod ‘wannabees’ (and possibly a real contender in there as well) and you don’t have to look hard to see a rapidly increasing market and opportunity.

Tuesday 1 March 2011

This month’s Poppy appeal

My friend Charlotte, and I hope YOU all have a Charlotte in your lives, is an idiot. But that she’s an idiot is brilliant, because if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have created this blog:

http://www.frompoppy.com/

It’s a silly blog, at first glance, and a silly idea to write to great big companies from the perspective of your female Labrador Poppy, and in Poppy’s own language too, complete with her adoration of all things ham! But look closer, look closer still, c’mon, really look – shouldn’t the UKs biggest loved (or not) brands be able to communicate with you in the way you choose to communicate with them? Through Facebook, email, phone or dogmail for that matter.