adrideo

Swept away in an online spring clean

nobody@vox.com(Chris Jackson) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:58:05 +0000

This will be my last post on Vox. I just posted the following on my new blog at adrideo.com

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Since July I've been posting some pretty random ramblings over at Vox. I was just experimenting really - both with blogs as a medium, and with the platform. I decided pretty quickly that I like the medium, but that Vox is not for me.

Finally I got round to tidying things up. From today a few things are changing:

* The blog has moved to adrideo.com, my own domain. I'll be the 2nd user of Ashok's blogging system. What I lose in features I gain in control and openness. Ahhh, much better already!
* I'll start writing about media and technology. This is my main interest, but writing about it was not compatible with employment at McKinsey. My past employment there still affects what I can write. There's more in my declaration, linked from the bottom of every page.
* I'm committing to post much more frequently. I'll aim to post about 5 times most weeks.

I want to move properly, but it'll take a while to get all the old posts across from Vox, and I will not be able to get all the comments out of Vox. Sorry about that.

In due course the media technology posts will take on a life of their own, but for now it is mixed in with my more general ramblings.

Finally, bear with us as we get a few extra things working here. There are no feeds or images yet, but they'll come soon.

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British Airways American Express Card

nobody@vox.com(Chris Jackson) — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 01:15:18 +0000

The BA Amex card is a great deal. The mile per penny spent reward is normal, but the 'two flights for one set of miles' voucher issued for every 20 grand spent is an unusually valuable perk. This is especially true for those in the corporate world, who spend lots in expenses on their cards, and also have lots of airmiles.

For example, the spoils of my two months working in San Francisco could have bought me two free first class trips for two back to the city again. That's about 40 thousand pounds worth of tickets.

The problem? BA have recently started surcharging for the use of some credit cards on their site. And yeup, you guessed it. The BA Amex card is one of those surcharged. I'm having a day of travel planing and have used the BA Amex card on every site I visited - except ba.com

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Brighton makes the West End look dull

nobody@vox.com(Chris Jackson) — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 21:54:26 +0000

Brighton yesterday was a shock. So many nice and interesting little cafes and shops. I moved to the West End to be in the centre of things, but sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by nothing other than cheap sandwich bars for wage slave.

My fav yesterday was Nia - near to the perfect cafe. A cooked breakfast was very good - from thick toast and bacon to a very tasty sausage and tasty mushrooms and tomato. Ashok reported good things about the vegetarian breakfast, but was less impressed with the coffee. We were back for a very late lunch, when I had an unusually lean piece of pork belly. Atmosphere was people working and meeting in a relaxed way, with untreated tables, interesting music and free wifi, with candles in the evening. So many good points. I can think of only a few places that live up to these standards in the west end of London, and none that feel so lived in and relaxed.

Never thought I'd say it, but maybe I need to move.

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Cheep, cheerful and mine

nobody@vox.com(Chris Jackson) — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 21:45:29 +0000

yello mello

I know, they're a bad look. But I love them, and I go through 3 or 4 every day. Nothing else will quite do. Nothing, that is, except really expensive ones. And they get lost, just like the cheep ones.

Image found here

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Businesses that care

nobody@vox.com(Chris Jackson) — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 21:31:43 +0000

It makes such a difference when a business really cares. Sitting in the cafe at La Fromagerie today reminded me of this. Everyone is passionate about the food they make and sell. One shop assistant explains to a customer how to make a better confit de canard, another explains to a new staff member why their veg really is the best. When my simple boiled eggs come the waitress smiles as my eyes light up. The cafe manager is just as pleased today to hear that his cappuccino is perfect as the first time I told him. And I tell him every time.

These people are exceptional. But more exceptional is the inspiration behind the place. I do not know Patricia Michelson well, but I have seen what she does to shape her business. The original branch of La Fromagerie was round the corner from me when I lived in Highbury. With a much smaller staff, Patricia showed how it should be done. She trod a careful line between giving great service to customers and making sure her fabulous food got a good home - no mean feat with some who frequent Highbury! Her book is a joy. It absolutly exudes passion for the topic. You can still see that passion first-hand if Patricia is in, or otherwise on many of the food labels, which she hand-writes.

How far can such passion stretch? Not far, in my opinion. For example, I'm sitting in a Caffè Nero. Their website boasts that they are "the largest independent coffee retailer in the UK, with over 290 Caffè Nero stores from Brighton to Glasgow". In their early years the places felt very much alive. By the time I discovered them they already had 4 or 5 stores, and I imagine the early customers were already complaining. Now I'm only here only because they are slightly better than Starbucks, and have a good deal on Wifi.

Anyone got an example of a big business that manages to keep the passion alive?

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Coffee annoyance

nobody@vox.com(Chris Jackson) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 12:30:59 +0000

I drink my coffee black, except maybe the first cup of the day. I recently started drinking it long. Feel my pain:

me: an americano, please
them: with milk?

Not once, always. Everywhere. Even in places that claim to be Italian. I imagine this must be the customer's fault. I'm just surprised that there's any middle ground between the so-cool 'can i get a latte/cappuccino' crew and the so-straightforward 'white coffee, love' brigade.

So, I have a new approach:

me: a black americano please
them: sure. any milk?

Grrrrrrr. The milk marketing board has won!

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Openness

nobody@vox.com(Chris Jackson) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 12:32:47 +0000

Web 2.0. What a bad term. I'll leave aside the irritating buzzzzword screech this phrase makes. The idea that the Internet develops according to an ordered, linear, numbered set of releases is quite stupid. Still, it seems to have gained traction, to the point where people who have never heard of 37signals, or flickr or even gmail want to know what this new version of the web is all about. I was asked this question by three separate clients in the final months of 2006. Each would be interested in investing time, money and their company's content or data, if only they could understand the opportunity. The danger is that they get told something stupid. Round corners and AJAX are the main benefits, right? Well, they're nice to have, but neither change the way the world works.

The big thing that is happening on the web is openness. This is not new, and is intuitively obvious to anyone who has been thinking about or playing with the Internet for a while. In brief, the cost of transmitting information over the Internet is next to free. Information therefore tends to travel freely between different parts of the Internet, once a pipe has been set up for it to flow down.

Luckily, there's an army of modern day plummer to make this happen. These are the kind of people who wrote and give away things like wikipedia (the site that's killed the traditional encyclopedia) and Apache (the software behind 60% of the world's web sites). Because these people are advanced users as well as providers, they'll tend to do what ever is in users' interests. That's generally to make the information flow.

The big online players have largely responded by opening the boundaries between their business and other online players. A few months ago I heard the statistic that more than a third of Amazon, Google and eBay's revenue comes via other web businesses in their affiliate network. They also release a lot of data to this network of affiliates to help build their business. For example, an Amazon partner can put prices, reviews and descriptions of the Amazon catalogue on their own site, as long as they direct some of the trafic they generate back to Amazon. I'll bet there's much more of this to come from the Semantic Web effort that Tim Berners Lee has championed, or possibly related informal efforts such as Micro Formats.

A business wanting to get ahead on the web - to 'move to web 2.0' - could do much worse than create an affliate network and share data with them. If they do as well as the online leaders it could mean a 30% revenue boost. But the real reason to start working like this is for the experience.

If the semantic web really succeeds, much of the valuable social data these companies hold (data on our opinions, usage and friends) is likely to become shared and public domain, rather than in silos owned by the web companies who helped us encode it.

That much openness would change the way things work very significantly.

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A very Dutch networking opportunity

nobody@vox.com(Chris Jackson) — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 01:45:07 +0000

I've got 20 mins spare while changing planes at Schiphol. I've also got a long list of exciting things. Things I would love to do, but know I will mostly never get round to. One small task is to get some new business cards. Imagine my delight to see a machine offering cards for a euro. Even if they're terrible this has to be a good deal as a stop-gap. Gotta love the Dutch taste for value. It's matched only by my own taste for actually doing stuff off the confounded list.

I spent 10 of the mins typing in my details and choosing the simplest possible design, trying to minimise the likely hideousness. Then I hand over my precious euro!

"Thanks for your order" shouts the screen in bright Dutch orange. "Ready in just 20 mins". Oh well, I think. It was too much to hope for, and get ready to find my plane. "Now printing" shouts the screen. "Card 1 of 100". Wow, I thought to myself, "1 euro buys 100 cards?" Just then card-number-one appeared from a small slot at the bottom of the machine, followed swiftly by card-number-two. The cards come thick and fast, filling the slot. I take the first wad and run for my plane. As I look back the cards are spilling out onto the floor, with no option to cancel the printing. I'm half expecting a few visits to my site from Dutch people who can't understand how someone could waste 50 whole euro cents. So now you know...

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The cook-book for me

nobody@vox.com(Chris Jackson) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 22:30:41 +0000

Just bought McGee's On Food and Cooking - it's the physics and chemistry of cooking, without a single recipie. Tell me the facts, and leave me to create!

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Party!

nobody@vox.com(Chris Jackson) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 22:26:47 +0000

Mulled wine and mince pies round ours tomorrow from 7pm. If you know where that is you're welcome!

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