Ernest Hemingway is not for everyone. It is hard work to read his novels. Not because of the language used, but because of the language not used. The books are deceptively short, and the style is sparse. Because so much is left unsaid in his writing, the reader becomes a participant in the creative process, […]
Category Archives: real world
What I learned from running a million metres in 2017
I’m not usually one for life changing New Year resolutions. There are a few reasons for this, but the overriding one is that I can’t be bothered with them. I’m not immune to self-improvement, but the whole concept of “it’s this year, so I’ll change that” doesn’t really appeal. That said, last year I set […]
Orange Customer Services: Unhelpful, Rude, Arrogant
Orange Customer Services are unhelpful, truculent, dishonest robots with no concept of customer care. They’re not my favourite people at the moment. In addition to the above, I’ve found them evasive, uninformed and unempowered, and the experiences I’ve had are of a team who are de-motivated to the point where they treat customers as an […]
Conversion Friendly Web Design
There was an interesting story on The Independent today that cited a study about how badly designed websites have cost businesses around £500 million in sales over the past 3 years. At first glance, that’s a statistic that makes you think that the phones would be ringing off the hook at design agencies around the […]
Why Fake Reviews are a Bad Idea
Behavioural research is big business. Every year, millions of pounds are invested in customer research ahead of product launches. Focus groups, customer panels, beta tests are all used, and all have a place in the product development cycle. The more a business knows about how the market will react to their product, the better they […]
news and privacy
A while ago, I posted about the importance of privacy, and controlling how your personal information is being shared and used by the services that you engage with on line. Over the past few months since I wrote that post, we’ve seen the furore about super injunctions being played out across Twitter, and over the […]
SAScon 2011 / Social Commerce
If there was a single theme to SASCon 2011, it was the convergence of different digital disciplines. How web development skills can be leveraged for SEO, how paid and natural search can work more closely with online display, and how proper use of analytics data can inform and improve other channels. SAScon was also very […]
Abiding Themes 8 / Increasing Website Speed
Back in March when it was announced that Larry Page would be taking the reigns at Google as CEO there was an interesting profile about him in Wired Magazine that had a lot of focus on his obsession with measuring things. Google itself has always been fast, eschewing flashy design in favour of functionality, and with […]
5 reasons why your Social Media Campaign is Shit
Hey there hipster, the chances are that if you’re reading this, you’ve got some kind of internet thing going on, and you’re spending a lot of time reaching out to users and trying to get them to engage with your online presence in new and exciting ways. Perhaps you want to Identify relevant and compelling […]
Patent Trolls, Greed and Naivete : It’s Legal Season
You can always be certain that when talk turns to money, particularly large amounts of money, that interest will be piqued, and ordinarily reasonable people will start to look at where their share of the pot is. This week we’ve seen a couple of fairly outrageous claims being made about who is owed what after […]