Ever seen one of these scratch cards? They often seem to fall out of magazines or inserted into junk mail. A scratchcard I usually just throw them straight into the recycling bin. But, like the fool I am, I thought "Nothing ventured, nothing gained". I could win some serious cash here... Winner Winner Chicken Dinner! If you can't read the small print, it says... Calls cost £1.50/min from a BT landline & will last no longer than 6 mins. Not having a land-line, I went for the mobile op…
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One of the problems with creating a service which deals with elections, is that boundaries change. One year you might be in the Electoral Constituency of Woking, the next year it might be Guildford. Boundaries have to shift in order to keep each MP with roughly the same number of constituents. The work to determine how these boundaries should be formed is done by The Boundary Commission. They have produced a report to show how the boundaries will be set out at the next General Election. The…
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Like many people, I'm upset with the direction the Government has taken with regard to "ilicit P2P file sharing". They've released a document entitled GOVERNMENT STATEMENT ON THE PROPOSED P2P FILE-SHARING LEGISLATION. It's only 5 pages long, I really suggest you read it. Being part of a democracy means you're allowed to talk to the decision makers, so I called the number at the end of the document and had a very interesting call with Adrian Brazier. These notes are taken off the hoof - I …
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Just seen 500 Days of Summer - a perfectly adequate Rom Com. On the walk back, Liz and I were discussing getting divorced. For tax reasons. Neither of us could think of any tax advantages for divorced couples, but it lead us down an interesting conversational route. A fairly standard ploy in movies (and real life) is the couple who wish to marry so one of them can stay in the country. Think Green Card or The Proposal. The "authorities" investigate to ensure that the marriage in sincere. D…
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As you may recall from previous instalments of my thrilling blog, I'm trying to find the location of every polling station in the UK. This is proving to be rather tricky - if not impossible. The data aren't centrally held and, in any case, polling stations aren't announced until an election is called. So I went for the next best thing. Using the wonderful What Do They Know site to make a Freedom of Information Act request, I asked the Electoral Commission for details of every council and wh…
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Where in the value chain are you? This is a question that we're constantly being asked. When a customer is doing something, who is she doing it with? Who is she doing it for? With whom does she hold the relationship. Above all - Who Owns The Customer? This sort of thinking always bothers me - I don't see anyone as owning the customer. Yesterday, on the train home, I saw a person using Facebook on an Apple laptop with an internet connection provided by Vodafone. Who owns that customer? T…
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A small disclaimer. My mother & the author's mother are great friends. I remember going round to play with Ellie when I was 7 and she was 8 and a half. Back then she towered over me with the intellectual and physical superiority that only children recognise. I was terrified of her. Ellie Levenson has written a book about moden girls and feminism. Take a look at the cover of this book. Pink, winsome, girly. Everything that feminism isn't. Right? Wrong. "The Noughtie Girl's Guide To Feminism" …
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I'm a huge fan of TasteLondon. Their card gives discounts in hundreds of restaurants around London. It's saved me quite a bit of money and I really recommend the service to anyone who likes eating out. TasteLondon Logo There is a small problem with it, though. The directory of restaurants it covers is a fairly heavy paperback book Rather inconvenient to carry around on the off chance that you fancy popping out for some dinner . They do have a rather good website - http:…
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If you really don't want people to download your app - put as many barriers in the way as possible. BlackBerry's Facebook app is a classic example of this. A brilliant application ruined by the rigmarole of actually trying to download it. Let's take a look at what a customer has to do in order to get the app on their phone. I'm on Facebook on my BlackBerry. It's a nice experience, but I want something more. What's this I see at the bottom of the screen? Step 1 "Download an application…
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Monitoring your home or business used to mean having an array of unsightly camera feeding grainy, washed out pictures into a row of VHS machines. In recent years we've seen the move to digital pictures, infra-red beams for night vision and, most recently, viewing over the Internet. What's the next logical step? Viewing on your mobile, of course! Two British companies have come up with some innovative - and cheap - technologies to make watching over your home as simple as picking up your…
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