Recently readJeff Jarvis:
Yahoo [is] the last old media company to look at the world this way (along with all the older media companies): ‘We control content. We market to get you to come to us. Then we feed you as much advertising as we can, until you leave.’ That’s the centralized model of media. I contrasted […]
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Love him or hate him (I am as likely to be annoyed by him as I am to admire how much he annoys people), web pioneer Dave Winer comes up with plentiful gems. He’s one of those people - like many newspaper columnists and, yes, other bloggers - who you know will always be worth […]
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JP nails it, saying “Lock-ins need lock-pickers“:
Somewhere inside my head, there is no difference between my buying a song via the iTunes store and my creating a spreadsheet via Microsoft Excel.
With iTunes, everyone’s up in arms. Everyone understands that DRM of that sort is not a good thing. And people find ways of unlocking the […]
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(Look away now if you find talk about money distasteful.)
Because I am lazy and don’t trust anyone, I’m really dreading having to ship loads of stuff to the US. First there’s the hassle, then the expense, and finally the inevitable arrival of broken possessions. So I’ve decided to be ruthless in what I won’t […]
Filed under: Business, Home, Life, Treating Customers Well | 9 Comments »
Michael Jennings explains why the formerly nationalised British Telecom is such a pain in the backside here:
Yes, well, BT should have been broken up into a number of pieces prior to privatisation and then the pieces should have been allowed to compete with each other. However like with most British privatisations, the Treasury figured out […]
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As a customer and evangelist for his products, I’m pretty cheesed off with Matt Mullenweg (someone I like enormously, having met him in San Francisco when I volunteered at WordCamp) and the Automattic team for imposing the dreadful Snap page preview bug (it sure ain’t a feature) on all Wordpress.com blogs. As someone who has […]
Filed under: Blogging, Life, Technology, Tools, Treating Customers Well | 5 Comments »
Oh, man. There’s a lamentable piece in PR Week right now about blogging. I must say that the journalist in question, Peter Crush, has actually done a decent job of putting this story together, for the most part. I know smart people who read it and found it useful, and I’m sure others will, too. […]
Filed under: Blogging, Business, Individuality vs Collectivism, Life, Marketing, Media, PR, Technology, Treating Customers Well | 3 Comments »
I was supposed to spend some quality time with Adriana yesterday, not having seen her since we were working together in New York last week, but unfortunately was (am) still unwell. Well, my loss is your gain, as it looks like she finally got down to some blogging. I am always yelling at her to […]
Filed under: Blogging, Business, Friends, Life, Marketing, Media, News, PR, Technology, Treating Customers Well | 1 Comment »
Near the end of the month, I’ll be spending some time on the left and the right coasts of the US. I know that plane tickets are not an inexpensive purchase, but I’m not really willing to spend several hours hunting in order to get another £40 off or whatever. I go in with a […]
Filed under: Life, Travel, Treating Customers Well | 1 Comment »
Leave it to Adriana to nail exactly why Flickr’s enforcement of Yahoo ID sign-ins on their very earliest customers is a very big mistake. She also offers this point about ‘community’ online - one that a lot of marketers and self-described social media gurus would do well to understand:
A lot has been written and powerpointed […]
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I was invited to take a customer service survey by Marriott, owner of the Renaissance brand, which runs The Columbus hotel in downtown Columbus, Ohio. The Columbus bills itself as a contemporary, elegant hotel - and that it certainly is - with the room tariffs to match. (Especially for Ohio’s capital, which has very little […]
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Adriana has the scoop on how Microsoft’s customer-hostile business practices have provoked some Microsoft-hostile parodies - from customers - of the company’s oh-so-cringeworthy attempts to ‘embrace social media’. Forgive the awkward metaphor to come, but based on what I’ve seen over the last four years of what happens when big business try to swim in […]
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Don’t ask why I was trying to buy a bunch of stuff on Figleaves.com when I should be doing 5000 other more important things. Just don’t ask.
I shopped on the Figleaves US site, because I want my stuff delivered to the US. I put in a US delivery address, but on the payment screen, […]
Filed under: Business, Treating Customers Well | 7 Comments »
All I had to do was fly all the way to New York and buy one. Thanks to Damian for helping me test it out tonight. (The weird thing is, I got the distinct impression this iSight is one someone had already opened and returned to Apple. The sticker meant to be sealing the box […]
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