Wedge: the loyalty card
It seems my idea for a generic, small-retailer loyalty card has been launched, in the form of Wedge. In a sentence, it’s a loyalty card for smaller-scale retailers in London.
Its take-up by retailers will be dependent on take-up by consumers, which in turn will be dependent on take-up by retailers. It’s a hard one to crack. But it’s already advertising stores using the card in 134 categories, and a random click on Babies yielded 16 participating retailers. And a further seven companies categorised under Bicycles. Not bad.
iPhone 3G [S] vs. BlackBerry Storm
I’ve had my iPhone 3G [S] for eight days now. So I felt compelled to write up a comparison with the object that it replaced: the BlackBerry Storm.
There is simply no comparison. The iPhone kicks the proverbial shit out of the Storm. And this is from someone who thought the Storm was pretty good. Here’s the story.
Since returning from the States in May 2006, I’d been using MDA Varios. I got the Vario II, and 18 months later, stupidly, replaced it with the Vario III. Now don’t get me wrong: I hated the first one—with a passion. It was big, bulky, the Windows Mobile O/S was slow. Its only redeeming feature was a proper keyboard that I used regularly. But in a moment of stupidity, I fell for some sales spiel about its infinitessimally-thinner successor, and walking into the shop with my out-of-contract Vario II, I came out of the shop with a new 18 month contract and a reduction in pocket bulge indiscernible to the naked eye—courtesy of the Vario III.
This replacement device gave up the ghost thanks to the force of a 32″ TV, so I adopted a BlackBerry Storm as a temporary measure. And for the three months or so I used it, I liked it. I liked the fact that the screen gave a physical response. And the O/S was a huge improvement over Microsoft’s.
But now I have the iPhone 3G [S]. And there will be no turning back.
The user interface is simply sublime. Everything is so logical, so expected, so beautiful. There is a consistency between the way in which applications are navigated that makes everything so familiar. And, just like Apple’s computer OS, there are little touches that make everything so sleek. When you get to the bottom of a list, for example, the screen tries to go slightly further than the end of the list, before jumping back just a tad when you lift your finger—a tiny feature, but one filled with beauty.
I thought I’d miss the physical response of the Storm’s keyboard. But I don’t. The iPhone comes with a much more intuitive and intelligent auto-correct feature to cater for typos, and the fact that the “keys” on the iPhone jump up in front of you each time they’ve been hit means that you know what you’ve typed. Rarely do I need to go back to correct mistakes I’ve made. And on the few times I do, the interface for backtracking is logical and easy to use.
And, most importantly of all, you’ve got the App. Store: a wealth of applications, free and otherwise, to download at your leisure. Something that was severely lacking in BlackBerry’s RIM world.
My only gripes are as follows:
- The Google Apps Mail application doesn’t tell me when I’ve got new mail—I have to actively go into the mail app. to find out whether there’s anything new for me to read
- The Yahoo! weather isn’t particularly accurate or informative—a single icon for the day. Time to download a new application, me thinks
- I’ve not yet got my head around the tabs in Safari. All seems a bit muddled and random.
But all in all, it’s absolutely lovely. And I thoroughly recommend the Griffin Wave to keep your little bundle of joy safe and sound. £10.50 on Amazon, as opposed to Carphone Warehouse’s “£20 reduced from £27″.
Don’t regroup
What is it with people?
Phone numbers are grouped certain ways because they are. Don’t ask questions. Just obey the rules.
For mobile numbers, they’re structured such: 07123 456789. London numbers: 020 7123 4567. And for more traditional provincial towns like Halifax: 01422 123456. Sheffield: 0114 123 4567. And Freefone numbers: 0800 123 4567.
With the exception of mobiles, the first bit is obvious. It’s the bit of the number that you don’t need if you’re dialling locally. Hence why the 7 is part of the second grouping, not the first. As for the rest, it’s merely convention. Convention that’s not open to debate. OK?
Just because your number may look prettier and more memorable grouped 0712 34 567 89, don’t do it. It grates, and looks ugly. Just as you wouldn’t change the grouping of your postcode.
And if you continue to do so, you’re comparable to those twunts who regroup their car registration numbers in a vain attempt to form something that, if you squint heavily, loosely resembles their name, with a couple of letters missing. More on them another time.
Diminished responsibility
I read an article yesterday about a 15-year-old boy who allegedly beat to death a toddler girl. A harrowing tale in which the child suffered 68 separate injuries. Below is an excerpt from the BBC’s article.
The boy, who cannot be named because of his age, denies murder. The defence will say he suffered an abnormality of mind which impaired his responsibility.
Surely almost all murders require some form of mind abnormality. And given this, I often wonder about why such a defence can be used in an attempt to reduce the resulting sentence.
Charity poker: FTW
Tonight I played poker. Texas Hold ‘Em. For charity. It was fabulous.
I was playing for the Home Office–Defra consortium, joining my “colleagues” Alan, Denise, Simon and Jimmy.
Although billed as a team event, we were all five placed on separate tables, each of around eight players. There were no buy-ins. You were simply given 2,000-worth of chips and had to do your best. As people dropped from various tables, people were re-positioned to keep the tables roughly even in numbers. When the tables got light on numbers, a table closed, its remaining players moving on to the other tables, until at last there was a single table of nine players, all loaded with chips (comparative to what they had at the start of the night), and all vying for first place. It was a fight to the death, the winning player choosing the charity to which all of the donations at the beginning of the evening would go. Plus an extra slug from our hosts, Field Fisher Waterhouse.
I started a little shabbily, losing a couple of relatively big hands, taking me down to around 700 chips—a 65% drop. I rallied a little before winning a couple of big ones. And the more chips I amassed, the more power I had over other players, and the easier it was to wipe others out of the game, both on my original table and the one I was subsequently placed at.
I seemed to be doing quite well, ignoring much of the activity on the other tables, when suddenly I found myself on the final table. Nine players vying for the win. And I was second in terms of my chip-count, Jimmy, on my own team, beating me by a small country-mile.
So we played a few hands, 41 bystanders spread evenly behind us, making the act of keeping your own two cards secret somewhat of an art-form.
And the nine were whittled down to seven, then to five. Then four. Jimmy and I were still in the game, so the 10% odds of a member of our team winning the tournament at the beginning of the evening had risen to 50%. Then Jimmy went big, and lost out. A real shame and the loss of a comrade in battle. And the odds sunk to 33%. And I was our only hope.
But chips-wise, I was doing well compared to the other two. I bided my time before confidence built with a Jack and a Queen in my hands. I ante-d up, and took the betting a fair way, raising things further when a straight looked likely. The straight came off, with 8, 9, 10 appearing within the five tabled cards, and I held my composure. I bet enough to take both of the other players out of the game. And I won. With around 100,000-worth of chips to my credit.
The exhileration was immense. At first, I knew I’d taken one of my opponents out of the game, but I had no idea that the other had gone too. I’ve played poker a number of times before, but betting with my own money (usually amounting to few £10 notes) didn’t compare to betting for such a relatively huge pot for charity. Now I knew the pot was going to charity, but how I played the game determined which charity it would end up with. (As Simon pointed out shortly after the win, maybe I should feel guilty about all the dogs that might die at my expense, or all the good work for cancer research that might have been done.)
My whole upper body was sweating. My face was clammy, as were my hands. And my heart was racing throughout the last few hands.
I loved winning. I loved winning because I got to determine that the £1,200 pot (including the kind top-up from FFW) would go to the NSPCC. (Thank you so much, Denise, for offering me the choice.) And I loved winning because of the exhileration that my team-mates showed both at our individual win, and our team win. (Our team took the trophy off OGC, last year’s winners—it’s currently being engraved.)
The adrenaline was pumping throughout the latter stages, and it felt like a real sense of team accomplishment having won both the individual and overall event.
Thanks, team! And roll on next year.
How do you like them Apples?
My first proper piece of Apple kit is due to arrive on Friday: the iPhone 3G [S]. (I don’t count the iPod. Everyone’s got one of those. Or more. Even my two-year-old daughter has one, albeit my hand-me-down.)
And I’m afraid I’m guilty of love at no sight. Just reading about the product in beautifully-crafted emails, and imagining the scrumptious packaging arriving at my door, is enough to start me salivating.
But I’m worried. I’m worried that this represents me teetering, wholly unqualified, at the top of a black-run, ready to venture down a slippery slope into the world of Apple. An expensive world, by all accounts.
Yet the thought also delights me. I think I’d look great with a 17″ MacBook Pro in front of me. But my bank account would look less healthy, being £1,849 lighter. And I am hugely envious of the emotional attachment that people have towards their MacBooks. This morning, @NinaSpringle tweeted such.
Owwww taking the MacBook out to the new office! Very exciting!
And this evening, @DaveBriggs was vociferous in his anger at an incident involving his MBP.
I do not f*cking believe this. A TW*T has just emptied a can of lager into my mbp. Can today end now, please?
(A couple of asterisks inserted to protect your innocence.)
Now I too would have been pissed if someone emptied their Stella on my PC laptop (accidentally, it turns out), but I can’t help but think that I would have been slightly more tempered in my response. Only slightly, mind.
And Nina’s MacBook outing sounds more like one for her new Chihuahua than one for her new laptop. (Are we allowed to call them laptops?)
It’s a world I’d love to be a part of. But one that I can’t afford to join. And if asked “Are you a PC or Mac?” I respond reluctantly that I’m a PC. I’m not proud of it. It’s not cool. And it won’t get people talking to me at the party. But it’s the truth, and that’s the way it is.
So I’ll embrace the loveliness that is the iPhone come Friday and, for the time being at least, that will be the extent of my venture into the world of Apple. And I’ll look enviously across at my Mac-using colleagues and friends, maybe joining them when my daughter finishes university. Maybe.
Post #1,503
So. This is post #1,503. Post #1,500 was the one about the postcode data.
My 500th post (about my choosing a mobile number ending “128″ on returning from the States) arrived 688 days after the birth of Tangential Ramblings, on 25 May, 2006. 532 days later came the 1,000th post, on 8 November, 2007, an exhaustive analysis of the previous 999 posts which I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading just now, complete with amusing comments from Steve and Art.
Another 586 days later comes post 1,500 earlier this evening. Roll on #2,000. I’m enjoying it as much as I did on 6 July, 2004.
Lingerie iPhone case: anyone?
While on the phone with the Carphone Warehouse earlier in the week, the lady taking my iPhone 3G S order tried to cross-sell a Griffin Wave case. She offered to reduce the price from £27 to £20 for me, a gesture I appreciated but politely declined given that I could get the very same case on Amazon for £10.50—free delivery.
I was amused that in waxing lyrical about the case’s attributes, she likened it to lingerie. Apparently, it looks sexy but it feels like there’s nothing on.
Still I declined.
Oh. Did I mention that I’ve ordered an iPhone 3G S?
Google AdWords: #fail
I’ve received a couple of pieces of direct mail from Google recently. I have to say, it’s quite odd getting snail mail from the unequivocal giant of the internet.
Although thinking of signing up anyway, I reacted to an offer for Google’s AdWords service recently, prompted by the promotion code offering me £30-worth of free advertising.
This was fabulous. And immediately having registered using that promotional code, I received two emails: one confirming my registration, one with a further promotional code offering me £75-worth of free advertising.
On attempting to redeem this second code, I was informed it had expired. I questioned Google directly about how I might, at best, obtain the full £105 credit on offer, or at worst, exchange the £30 credit I had already redeemed for the £75 on offer. Their response was weak, informing me that the £75 could not be redeemed owing to the previously-redeemed £30 code.
So I would have been better off not getting the direct mailshot in the first place. It’s left a bitter taste in my mouth. #fail, Google.
Unzip the postcodes, just like the zips
Courtesy of @AlexPuig in Barcelona, I read on Twitter recently a post about the zip code database project. Quite simply, it’s a project that keeps the US five-digit zip code file up-to-date, providing for each zip code its latitude and longitude coordinates correct to six decimal places, the city, state and the state abbreviation. All 33,179 of them (correct at time of publishing, including the 130 PR (Puerto Rico) codes.
And quite simply, it’s beautiful. Making this data publicly available is hugely important. It allows people to do hugely powerful things with geographical data, using the currency that everyone uses: zip codes. (My only slight gripe is that it doesn’t go down to the nine-digit postcodes. Maybe the limited additional value provided by the additional accuracy doesn’t justify the hugely bloated files and additional effort it would involve.)
Meanwhile here in Blighty, there’s no such luck; nor foresight. Joe Harris informs me that the postcode–latitude/longitude file is available for download for a fee.
This sucks. People are left reliant on the likes of Google to determine postcodes’ coordinates, as opposed to having self-contained solutions. Instead, the data should be made freely available, surely making it much more useful than the value that can be driven from its sale.
The same is true of train status data. And Ordnance Survey information.
So please. Follow America’s lead. Open up access to the data. And allow people to use it in beautiful and creative ways.
(I couldn’t help but smile, btw, at the zip code download file being called zips.csv.zip.)
The iPhone 3G S: coming soon-ish
The Carphone Warehouse is guaranteeing that pre-orders for the iPhone 3G S will be delivered on 19 June, subject to availability. So if they only get a delivery of half-a-dozen, there will be plenty of disappointed punters, but CW will have upheld its guarantee.
I was all ready to make the move this evening, but the website informed me that to port my number within two days, I have to call rather than ordering online. Tomorrow, I expect. I’ll be going for the 16Gb black model, signing up to the 18 month contract.
Two things concern me about the iPhone: contact management and the keyboard. I’ve heard woe stories about the iPhone’s management of contacts, but I’m hoping that the GMail application and Google Sync. will sort all that out for me.
As for the keyboard, I’ve gotten used to the BlackBerry Storm’s SureType keyboard, and will be moving to a non-clicky, QWERTY keyboard, although I hear that more and more apps are catering for landscape typing, which is good. (I do like the “gotten” Americanism.) The fact that the key that the device recognised you as having pressed pops up is nice, and will hopefully avoid the regular back-tracking I find myself doing on the BB.
Overall, I’m pumped (another gratuitous Americanism) at the thought of at last getting one, and am glad I’ve waited until this model has come out. I’ve never been an early adopter. It’s just not in my make-up. Too cheap and too cautious.
Anyway, more on the 3G S when I get my filthy hands on it: on or after 19 June, according to the guarantee.
TfL: it’s not all bad
A lovely juxtaposition from TfL.
iPhone 3GS or Palm Pre?
I am currently using a BlackBerry Storm. In the main, I like it.
But typing is still fiddly. And I use that feature (or want to use it) enough to make the fiddliness irksome. It allows typing in both portrait and landscape mode, coming with a full QWERTY keyboard in either mode. (QWERTY is one of the slowest words in the world to type, for me at least. It should be as easy as playing chopsticks on the piano, surely.) But in either mode, even my rather slight finger pads are that bit too cumbersome to promote error-free typing.
It also has a SureType keyboard in the portrait mode, combining adjecent QWERTY keys into single keys to allow for fatter fingers and T9-style intelligence to figure out the words you want to type from the various possible combinations available.
But even these keys often result in mistakes as your finger glides over the wrong key to get to the right one. The depression of the key (it is a physical depression) may seem to be in the right place, but the trailing thumb (double-thumb typing) often makes the device think you were hitting the key to the outside of the one intended.
So I have two major draws at the moment. The iPhone 3GS. Which I assume will come with the same gripes as above but which will have so many applications that maybe I’ll forget about those foibles. Or the Palm Pre, which will have the QWERTY-style keyboard but will suffer from the same application-devoid experience as the BlackBerry.
Can anyone shed any light on how good/bad iPhone typing really is? Maybe it’s better than it is on the Storm. Maybe it’s not. I need data so that I can make an informed decision.
Re-categorising: I’m scared
I’ve been putting Google Spreadsheets posts in the All things Excel category for want of a better place to put them. Should I change the name of the category to Spreadsheets? It seems a bit like the end of an era to get rid of the Excel word. But times are achangin’, and I think I need to change with them. Thoughts?
Maps and Gantts in Google Docs. FTW
I’m not sure when the feature was introduced, but you can now incorporate maps within Google Spreadsheets, maps that display icons driven from mapping search terms (e.g. postcodes) as opposed to latitude/longitude combinations. You do so by inserting a Gadget. Thanks to Tom Viner for pointing me to this.
This is a great step forward, as you can publish the spreadsheet and put the script tag into any html page to display it there. The only issue is: it ain’t working for me. Apparently, my page is missing the Google Maps API. Google doesn’t give any insight into this error message, either in its Google Documents help or through what I thought was its rather comprehensive search engine.
It’s also got a bunch of other very cool gadgets to insert. The most useful I’ve found is the Gantt chart one. You put your MS Project data into one sheet and you can have a very good-looking Gantt chart in another, drawing from that data. Very cool indeed. There are some seemingly powerful chart gadgets too. Lots to explore.
But as for the maps, I’m flummoxed. And I don’t know what to do.
Beautiful date formats
I’ve struggled with date formats for some time now. Formats for dates that don’t need to be interpreted by computers that is, those that appear in documents. For the sake of example, we’ll use the sixth day of December last year.
While in America, I did as the Americans. Shorthand was 12/6 (or “twelve six” when voiced). Longhand, it was December 6, 2008. When combined with the year, it always struck me as slightly odd that the specificity was inconsistent from left to right: first came the month, which was then made more specific with the day. Yet at this stage, the reader doesn’t yet know the year. In the UK’s DD/MM/YYYY format, specificity decreases from left to right. Although arguably, what use is the day without first knowing the month?
The comma in the American longhand version was necessary to separate the two numbers. At first, I was uncomfortable with the proximity of these two numbers. But over time, I came to regard it as an attribute rather than a hindrance. And I came to adore the longhand variant.
(The shorthand version continued to confuse me throughout my two years there, and mentally I had to deconstruct the two numbers bleated out to figure out what they represented, particularly for days in the first twelve of the month. Not ideal, being a project manager.)
Now back in the UK, I’ve recently settled on a format that I’m comfortable with. In Excel, we’d say d mmmm, yyyy. In English: 6 December, 2008. Where the year is redundant, I simply opt for 6 December. Never should either be preceded with a jarring the. (My word do I hate that?) When talking of a month, I use December 2008, without the intervening comma—it’s too short to warrant one.
For the full variation, I like its simplicity. I’ve never been a big fan of the superscripts that come into play with ordinal numbers—when I do use ordinals, I always reject MS Word’s auto-formatting, leaving them in standard font—6th. And I feel that the comma is necessary to give some rhythm to the construct. As for the months, I feel that our Gregorian legacy is sufficiently poetic and inspiring for the months not to be abbreviated. Let’s save that crime for data files.
Relevancy and pleasancy
Do people care about the look-and-feel of search?
If you look at Google, apparently not. Its interface is very usable and intuitive. But it’s hardly visually creative is it? There is little visual separation between the various elements—header links, main results, related searches, sponsored links, footer links—beyond their relative positions on the page. No treatment has been done to indicate behaviours on hover (links are already underlined) and generally, it’s a rather flat experience.
Bing, however, is a bit richer. You’re presented with a default background image (mine is of a lovely sea-front in what might be Morocco—Agadir?), a theme that is maintained to a lesser degree on the search results page. The left-hand navigation has some colour, and the search results enjoy a very subtle treatment on hover, getting a rather odd “bar with a ball” on their right. Hover over the ball and you’re presented with a further excerpt from the destination page.
Admittedly, the vast majority of the look-and-feel draws straight from Google: all Arial; blue, clickable search titles, black summaries and green non-clickable URLs. The cached page link on Google is a soft blue, compared to Microsoft’s soft grey, but that’s the only notable difference between the rivals’ main results. (Sorry, did I say “draws straight from Google”? I meant “coincidentally shares almost all of its features with Google, having been defined through focus groups and independent design, as opposed to copying its main competitor.)
Do people care that much about the look-and-feel of search? It’s a means to an end, its main job being to get you out of there as soon as possible. So why bother stylin’? And maybe Google doesn’t go heavy on visuals out of fear for the consequences: if we add a background image or background-colour search results on hover with a lovely pastel shade, will we suddenly lose 20% of our market share?
Bing has gone some way towards making the interface pleasant as well as the results relevant. But I doubt the former will do much to attract swathes of customers. And its lack of an I’m Feeling Lucky equivalent maybe indicates a lack of confidence in the latter. It will be interesting how things play out.
Battery power
My laptop decides it’s time to call it a day when its battery power hits 16%. At this point, it automatically hibernates, sleeps, or whatever other subtle Windows variant there is. (I’m not quite sure which it does, as the screen merely goes black accompanied by an unrefined, system-type beep.) Once it’s fed and watered (not literally watered; don’t try that at home, kids), it comes back to life with everything in the state in which I left it. Which is nice.
But given that the last 16% of the battery is of zero use to me, surely it would be better to calibrate the percentages based on usable battery life, the machine shutting down on hitting zero rather than some seemingly arbitrary number greater than zero. The battery life available to me would be the same, but I’d have a greater sense of how long I’ve got left.
(As an aside, just like the battery-power icon that sits in my system tray, I like to think of the power in my battery being used from right to left, the 16% remaining in the tank at the end of a battery-heavy day being above the F1 and F2 keys, making the laptop slightly heavier on the left.)