The Customer Comes First? December 8, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Life, Technology.Tags: Broker Assistance, Insurance, Liverpool Victoria, Tates Accident Repair Centre
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The accident occurred on September 6th when I was young and vigorous, with a full head of hair. I am writing this post on December 8th, grey, ancient and haggard….this sorry tale concerns an insurance company, the Liverpool Victoria, a mysterious outfit called Broker Assistance, employed by the Liverpool Victoria to hinder, obfuscate and obstruct assist the customer and a garage, Tate’s Accident Repair Centre in Brighton.
The Accident
One summer evening, travelling back from Plymouth, using minor roads, cross country to avoid motorway congestion. A steady stream of traffic, about forty miles an hour. With no warning, the car in front of me, a Mercedes, performs an emergency stop. I stamp on my brakes, coming to a halt about 18 inches away from his rear bumper. There is a pause, just long enough for me to think I’d got away with it and exchange glances with my passenger. A mighty crash as the car behind ploughs at full speed into the back of me. I’m shunted forwards into the Mercedes. Dazed, I stumble from my car to inspect the damage. The rear is badly dented, the front less badly. Miraculously all the lights work. The car behind is an obvious write off, windscreen shattered, bonnet folded up like an inverted ‘V’ , liquids from the engine, glass and bodywork strewn all over the road. The driver is bleeding from the forehead, his passengers are weeping and shaking, in shock.
The driver of the Mercedes, helpfully informs us she missed her turning, hence the emergency stop. I resist the urge to attack her. We call the police and an ambulance to tend to the wounded, exchange numbers and insurance details, make sure everyone is as comfortable as possible and, on the advice of the police, drive on.
Insurance
I telephone the insurance company first thing in the morning, they take the details of the accident, promising to have a replacement vehicle with me by the end of the day. My wrecked car is collected and taken away. The end of the day comes and goes. No courtesy car. I have business on the outskirts of London and go by train. I call up the insurance company to get a delivery date for the replacement vehicle. Liverpool Victoria inform me that the sourcing of the replacement vehicle is being handled by a third party – Broker Assistance.
I call Broker Assistance who tell me that the order for a replacement vehicle has been cancelled and passed back to the insurance company. I call Liverpool Victoria who tell me that is news to them. They check and respond that yes, it has been passed back to them, but cannot explain why. I talk to Broker Assistance a second time. It seems that the driver of the first car has claimed that I hit them before the third car hit me. I wonder briefly if my restraint the previous evening had in fact been the correct response. I ask Broker Assistance if they had spoken to the driver of the third car. “No” they reply, “that would be the insurance company’s job”.
I phone the insurance company again and ask them the same question. “No” they respond, sounding surprised. I ask them whether they think the driver of the first car would have been in any position to judge whether the third car hit me before or after I hit them. “We’ll ring the driver of the third car” they say.
The driver of the third car, admits liability for the accident and the insurance company phone to say they have passed the case back to Broker assistance to organise a replacement. The end of the day comes and goes. No car. I call Broker Assistance and am astonished to hear that they may be able to get a car for me “within a week”. They say they have ‘a process’ that must be followed. I breathe deeply and count to ten before telling them that is unsatisfactory and that I expect a car today. By 5pm. At the latest. An hour later they call back having sourced an equivalent vehicle from a local car hire. The car is delivered by 5pm.
The Garage
At this point, I’m mildly irritated, but pleased to have transport, even if I did have to do most of the work to get it. i wonder idly how long I might have waited if I’d just let ‘the process’ take it’s course. The phone rings, it’s the garage saying repairs will take a couple of weeks, parts to be ordered etc etc. Only slightly annoyed I reflect that I do at least have a car and that a couple of weeks is probably reasonable for the garage to do a decent job.
Weeks creep slowly by and at the beginning of the third, I phone for an update. The news is not good. It seems the insurance company too have ’a process’. This process demands that each part that is to be replaced is photographed from several angles and sent to the Liverpool Victoria engineer for assessment. This being a rear end collision, there is a lot of undiscovered damage to the chassis, suspension etc. I ask how long it takes for the engineer to assess the photographs from the point of receiving them. Three to four days apparently.
So, to put this in perspective; if the garage find a problem on the Monday, talk to the insurance company the same day, photograph and email the shots to the engineer on the Tuesday, then it might be the following Monday before they get a response. The part has then to be ordered and no work is done to the car until it arrives. The part may take a week to arrive. The car would then have to be re-assembled, cleaned, tested and so on. For one part, the whole process might take three weeks.
I breathe deeply and decide to let them get on with it. Perhaps influenced by a previous experience when repairs were not thoroughly performed, I convince myself that the garage is doing a good, thorough job and although the process is flawed, it will all come good in the end. Another month comes and goes.
Broker Assistance
Out of the blue, I get a call from Broker Assistance saying they need to have the courtesy car back. I ask them whether my car is ready. “Don’t know anything about that” they respond, but ‘the process’ dictates that they can’t insure me for longer than 80 days. I realise why they are not called ‘Customer Assistance. I call the insurance company to check. “Yes” they respond cheerfully, “three months does seem like a long time”. I agree. They will call the garage for an update.
The Garage
Another fault has been found. And is under discussion, the Liverpool Victoria advise. I call the garage. It seems there is damage to the suspension that the insurance company suspects may not have been caused in this incident. I point out that I have been insured by the Liverpool Victoria since the beginning of time and that the only other incident in this car’s history was dealt with at the garage of their choice. The car is only two years old. There is an uncomfortable silence. The insurance company give the garage permission to proceed with the repairs. They comment that if the car had not been so new they would have written it off. I comment that the age of the car is what it is. And reflect that I have paid, over the course of twenty years more than enough money to the Liverpool Victoria to replace the car myself.
Liverpool Victoria persuade the garage to give me a courtesy car, which miraculously, arrives on schedule. The original hire car is sitting on a meter awaiting collection. The promised collection time comes and goes. I check with Broker Assistance and I’m told that I’m not insured to drive the car, though I am liable for any parking tickets that are accruing. Three days late, the car hire company arrive saying that Broker Assistance had not informed them the car was awaiting collection. I wonder why I’m feeling no rage.
The Final Repair
I telephone the garage. They now recognise my voice. They tell me that the insurance company are processing the final set of photographs. It is a wednesday. Fearing another week wasted I phone the Liverpool Victoria. “Yes” they say, “this usually takes…” ” three to four days…” I finish the sentence for them. The engineer has ‘been in the system’ but has not left any comment in the ‘Action’ column. I’m actually surprised and grateful that there is an ‘Action’ column and suggest that they call the engineer. They call straight back with “Good News!” – the engineer has given the go ahead to the garage.
I’m straight on the phone to the garage. They confirm that the insurance company have given the go ahead. They estimate Friday to deliver the car to me.
Friday
I call the garage. The car is finished they say, only needs polishing and road testing. This will take an astonishing three days to complete. I should have the car by the middle of next week. I reflect that the road testing will most likely be performed by the manager, over the course of a long weekend, but bite my tongue.
Tuesday
I telephone the garage. There is a part on order they say. I point out that they had told me the repairs were complete, five days ago. “All I know is the part is on order” they respond. I get them to call the manager. “Three months is a long time” he concurs, “we’ll try our best to have the car back with you on Thursday….or Friday”
The Insurance Company
I call the insurance company and explain that I have now lost all faith in the ‘process’. There is a long pause. “Well. what would you like us to do?” they respond, sounding genuinely puzzled. “Telephone the garage?” I reply. “Tell them you are not satisfied with their performance?”
They call the garage, they get back to me. The garage are now saying the car failed the ‘Wet Test’ and that they expect to receive the replacement for the replacement part on Thursday. “Will I get my car back on Friday?” I ask gloomily. “We’ll do our best….”
Process, Ownership, Initiative
I dimly remember writing at the turn of the year, that this would be the year that customer satisfaction became important, that companies would prioritise customer satisfaction in order to retain customers. How wrong, how terribly wrong…
The individuals I have dealt with have been unfailingly polite. They are though in thrall to a process that is clearly inefficient. Nobody is taking responsibility for my case. Certain parts of the ‘process’ have been outsourced. No doubt this has saved the insurance company money, but the end result is an unsatisfactory system that allows the work to expand to fill the time allotted to it. Three to Four days to assess a photograph is ridiculous. The process is badly designed and denies individuals the opportunity to exhibit initiative. The result is at best, a shambles. The amazing thing is that the only person who has expressed surprise at how long this has taken has been a lowly call centre operative working for the insurance company. But it’s common sense isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?
Talk Talk Direct – Computer Malfunction, Be Afraid… December 7, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Life, Technology.Tags: Talk Talk Direct
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Continuing the theme of ’What Happens When It All Goes Wrong’ , this morning I was surprised to receive a letter from Talk Talk Direct, a company I last dealt with in 2001. The letter confirmed that they were setting up a new Direct Debit on my current account as per my instructions of 3 December. Except I gave them no such instruction.
Naturally I called the number they provided for queries and after 30 minutes of listening to some dreadful dirge by Primal Scream, intercut with assurances that my call was important to them and would be answered ’shortly’, began to feel well, murderous is an understatement.
This is one more company to add to the list of companies I will never, under any circumstances deal with again, unless it is to issue them a bill for my wasted time.
Digital Derelicts December 4, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Internet, Life, Media, Music, Technology.Tags: Amazon, Borders, Cory Doctorow, Digital Economy Bill, Facebook, mySpace, Twitter
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I was interested to read Cory Doctorow’s musings on the Digital Economy Bill in yesterday’s Guardian, ‘Why does Mandelson favour the analogue economy over the digital’. The Digital Economy bill is indeed as pernicious a piece of legislation as we’ve seen from the present government, but to reduce it to a simple analogue vs. digital argument is overly simplistic in my opinion. It also begs a comparison.
Disco of Doom
It is well known that business controls government in none too subtle a fashion. When push comes to shove, fear of lost tax revenue delayed the banning of smoking in public places, costing hundreds of thousands of lives as governments on both sides of the Atlantic dithered in the face of industry pressure and published falsified data designed to obscure the link between smoking and cancer. We see similar pressure being exerted on our government by the music and film industries now, as instead of embracing new delivery channels, they seek to preserve their crumbling analogue monopolies by legislation. The irony here is that the one person in the music industry who has displayed a flair for innovative thinking has chosen to use it not to promote music, but to generate vast quantities of personal power and cash. Simon Cowell, whatever else he may be is not a force for the good of music.
Monopolies
X-Factor is effectively a monopoly. It determines the number one single in a way that is unprecedented. Simon Cowell promotes the show, profits from the show, signs the acts, profits from their recordings and spits them out when he’s finished. Unpleasant as that may be, it’s not in itself any different from music business as usual. What is different is that he has found a way to use TV as both a marketing vehicle and a ‘talent’ pool. It’s not the dismal quality of the acts that bothers me – it’s the power of the monopoly. It worries me because I’m seeing it elsewhere and in Cory Doctorow’s simplistic reduction of Mandelson’s bill to digital vs. analogue I’m seeing something that worries me a lot. A blinkered assumption that Digital = Good, Analogue = Bad.
Digital Derelicts
Two years ago, I said that social software was opening up new opportunities, enabling new ways for human beings to connect, fostering the exchange of ideas across continents and cultures. I think it does deliver on all of these points, but Cory Doctorow’s throwaway remark about homeless people scavenging discarded netbooks actually stopped me in my tracks. Because the divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ is getting wider, not narrower.
We have an underclass out there who are unable or unwilling to embrace the digital world and are finding themselves progressively more alienated and more unable to cope with the simple transactions in life than ever before. Booking holidays, Banking, Borrowing, everyday activities that digitally enabled, deliver freedom of choice on an unprecedented scale to the digerati.
Paradox
So, where is the problem? Well, the problem is right there in front of us. We are creating freedom of choice in a digital world, but in exploiting our right to choose, paradoxically we are closing our options down. The digital economy is ruthless and it has resulted in prices being driven ever lower. We have seen in recent weeks, Borders the bookseller bankrupted because most people now prefer to buy their books from the supermarket at knock down prices, or from Amazon.
We have seen, as recently as this week, MySpace announce a radical change in their delivery model to enable it to retain an audience that has been stampeding towards Facebook. Bebo…do they still exist? We have a single messaging solution, Twitter, enthusiastically embraced by celebrities, politicians, sportsmen…the world. And it’s good. No doubt about it. We have new opportunities for consultancy as business strives to compete for the attention of their target demographic. While we focus on ‘leveraging our mecosystems’ © , the monoliths that make up the digital universe are getting bigger and more powerful in a way that will ultimately prove to be limiting – we are not creating bests of breed, we are instead complicit in the all conquering power of the organisations with the best business model. Facebook, Twitter….This is not always a good thing. X Factor? Big Brother? The producer of Big Brother was recently heard to say that ‘British Television has never been more innovative’. I wonder what Dennis Potter might have to say on that subject.
The Invisible Tweet
And so here is the question that irks me about the social software monoliths….what happens to somebody if they are excluded from one or other of these monoliths? That only happens to other people right? Well no, it can happen to you, or me. In fact in a small way it has happened to me. I run a music blog, Chimera Musica and have set it up to send one line reviews to Twitter. A harmless enough activity and who knows, perhaps the recommendation of a song might brighten somebody’s day. It’s unlikely to make it worse! At any rate, one day last week I was logged in to my personal account and decided, out of curiosity, to look at my music blog’s Twitter profile. So I typed the name into the search – no results. Hmmm, odd… I thought. I typed a couple of other searches – name of song and act that I had recommended – no results. It’s worth noting at this stage that these tweets do not contain a link to the blog. To cut a long story short, Twitter reserve the right to block from their search listings, any user that they suspect of anti-social activities such as spamming, from their search engines. So apparently, recommending music is deemed to be anti social….well ok, I have questionable taste, but anti-social?
The point of this is not to rectify the issue with Twitter, actually I couldn’t care less about the invisible tweets, the real point is that I don’t have a choice – there is no equivalent social network with the same reach that I could use for the simple recommendation of a song.
Monopolies come at a price. That price is nowhere more evident than it is online. As Murdoch readies himself to take on Google, one thing only is for sure. We, the consumers will end up poorer. I am now, at least as far as Twitter is concerned, a digital derelict. Look out for your netbooks…
Digitising Cover Art October 29, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Internet, Music, Technology.Tags: dbPowerAmp, EAC, flac, iPhone, MP3, MuvUnder Cover, Squeezebox, SqueezeCenter
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Such is the speed of technology that the once proud LP cover, 12 inches square, gatefold and legible has undergone miniturisation via illegibly tiny CD covers replicating cherished original artwork, to its current status as a 200 pixel square icon pressed into service as a usability aid in iPlayers, Squeezebox Duet, SqueezeCenter server and just about every mobile phone currently doing double duty as a music player.
Ok that’s a curmudgeonly take on what actually is a pretty decent usability aid and in this post I’m going to recommend some software that will retrieve the album art from the internet and insert it into your music files so that the player can pick it up and display it.
I played around with a number of different applications that would tackle the difficult job of searching the internet for the cover art, retrieve it and insert it into the ripped cd files. since I have well over a thousand CD’s converted to flac, I wanted a program that would give me these options;
- Configurable search – I don’t want the software to download hundreds of random pictures, I want to configure the primary sources and have the option to widen the search if the primary source doesn’t deliver.
- Choose Image – I want to be able to scroll through the images and choose which one to use
- Automate the inserting of the image into the flac (or mp3) file and insert a copy into the folder for the library
Of the standalone products I tried, several were iTunes focused (Tune Up, Widget Foundry Amazon Art) which is no good for me and a couple were modifications on the software used to rip cds – dbPoweramp being the best of the bunch.
Because I don’t use dbPoweramp, (preferring the freeware EAC) I needed a dedicated piece of software that would do just this job and do it well. I ended up with a Windows only application snappily entitled MuvUnder Cover. This delivers on every point, is childishly simple to use and best of all, if not free, cheap. at $14.
Squeezebox Boom! October 16, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Technology.Tags: flac, iPod, Logitech, MP3, Slim Devices, Slimserver, Squeezebox, Transporter
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There comes a time when a piece of hardware is released that is so brilliant that it has to be bought. A case in point is the new offering from Logitech, the Squeezebox Boom – a cross between the classic Squeezebox, a device that has to be plugged into a hi fi, and an eighties BoomBox – basically a portable soundsystem that supports iPod connectivity and streaming services from local hardware. This is Logitech’s second addition to the range bought out by Slim Devices several years ago.
First impressions are – it’s tiny, maybe 12″ across and has no carrying handle. The sound though is incredible for such a small device. Real solid bass, this player punches well above its weight.
For people new to the Squeezebox family, the rest of this article need not apply – simply install the server software on your wireless network, load up your mp3s or flac music collection and you’re good to go, for veterans, this is where the fun begins!
I currently run the Slim Devices Transporter for digital music, using a ReadyNas NV+ for storage. ReadyNas shipped the NV+ with the Free SlimServer software ready installed, which was a factor in my choice of Network attached storage.
Fearing a slew of rebranded releases in the wake of Logitech’s purchase of Slim Devices, I must admit to steering well clear of updating my system on the basis of ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it!’, but cometh the hour…
The latest server software shipped with Logitech’s rebranded hardware is called SqueezeCenter – so predictably, this prereqs a newer version of the Raidiator software – the management UI that sits on top of the base Debian distribution. So time to roll up the sleeves and get the hands dirty!
First task is to download all of the files needed for the upgrade. These are helpfully listed on the Slim Devices Wiki , along with links to download them from. I reproduce them here with extra comments.
1. CleanSqueezeCenter
This is a utility that returns the slimserver database settings to the default – a fresh scan of the music library re-populates the database.
2. CleanSqueezeCenter for x86 (Pro and NVX models)
This only applies to the ReadyNas Pro and NVX models which use the i86 chip architecture. NV and NV+ models use SPARC – this is important also when choosing the version of Squeezecenter.
3. Radiator (ReadyNAS firmware)- latest version is RAIDiator-4.1.6
There is a version of Squeezecenter that is supplied as part of the RAIDiator upgrade. This ships with SqueezeCenter 7.3.2. The final release of Version 7.3.3 is available here.
Unfortunately, SqueezeBox Server 7.4 (the new name for SqueezeCenter) is not yet available for the ReadyNas platform. The Logitech download pages irritatingly forward to the latest version, so it is only available today, through the beta site. For the benefit of the intrepid, I did a fair amount of research on the news groups before deciding not to install beta code – of all the betas, version 7.4.1-28862 is probably the best bet, a version which appears to have cured a nasty bug that caused a reboot of the ReadyNAS to start two instances of the server software, the first not connected to the database, but blocking the ports, the second connected to the database but unable to get the ports it needs to broadcast.
Onwards and upwards then. First task is to upgrade the RAIDiator software.
Load the admin page into the browser and navigate to System > Update > Local tab.
Click on Browse and browse to the folder you stored the files in earlier.
Select the Radiator firmware file and click “Upload and verify image…” (ex. RAIDiator-4.1.6)
Once the file uploads, click on “Perform System Update”.
Once the update is finished, go to the Shutdown tab and select “Shutdown and reboot your device”, then click Apply.
Monitor the progress of the restart with RAIDar. This utility scans the network searching for a ReadyNAS signature, when it finds it, it probes and returns with a snapshot of the status – it does not refresh automatically, so press rescan periodically.
After a couple of refreshes, the icon next to the MAC address in RAIDar will turn blue – this indicates ‘a lengthy background task is running’ . No cause for alarm – this may run for an hour or more!
Once you have reconnected to the admin screen, the next task is to run the CleanSqueezeCenter utility to prepare the database for the new install.
1. On the Admin page, go to System > Update > Local tab
2. Click on Browse and browse to the folder you stored the files in earlier.
3. Select the CleanSqueezeCenter file and click “Upload and verify image…”
When the upload is finished, click on “Perform System Update”. You will be prompted to restart the ReadyNAS – as before, go to the Shutdown tab, select ‘Shutdown and reboot your device and click Apply. Once your ReadyNAS restarts, log into the Admin page again and go to the Streaming Services tab.
If, like me you do this the second RAIDar reports the device is ready, you will be horrified to find that SlimServer has disappeared from the list of streaming services, to be replaced by ‘No Definition’… relax, this is temporary and once the new SqueezeCenter software is loaded, it will show up in this dialogue.
This gets us to a stable version of the server software, and is a good place to draw breath and check that everything is working. Preliminary tests show that the gui loads faster and is much more responsive. It has been redesigned in the interests of usability, so ‘Settings’ down in the bottom right hand corner contains most of the options with which we can break the software! The simple stuff is arranged in a short sequence of menus on the left hand side.
So that is more or less that, I’ll post any updates as they come up, but so far, so good, the system works just as well as it ever did, the gui is faster, and the new player is supported. Job Done?
Postscript
Job Done? Well, no!
On closer inspection, the Internet Radio BBC stations fail to work, with an error “Unable to play file type…”
Further research reveals that this is a known issue on the Linux platform, but very few people seem to have actually solved it. Deeper digging, in the logs identify the file type as ‘wma’ – windows media files. The Netgear forum suggests that the problem is solved in release 7.3.3 of SqueezeCenter.
Sigh…Version 7.3.3 can be downloaded here
The upgrade is exactly as before – First go to the streaming services tab in the RAIDiator menu and delete SqueezeCenter 7.3.2.
Then Go to System – update – local
Choose the image you just downloaded and update, once this has completed go to
Shutdown – Shutdown and reboot
When the system is up again, run the CleanSqueezeCenter utility, Shutdown and Reboot.
Voila!
Internet radio now works. I installed the BBC iPlayer extension to deal with the BBC Real Audio streams.
Social Media and Public Relations July 13, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Advertising, Blogs, Film, Internet, Life, Media, Technology.Tags: Twitter, Facebook, social software, mySpace, Web 2.0, Flickr, PR, public relations, End of the Line
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These are interesting times, as the economy buckles and sways under the onslaught of rising debt and falling sales, the new economy, espoused by Wired magazine back at the turn of the century suddenly seems relevant again. As traditional companies fall by the wayside, a new breed of Digital Media Agency is poised to leapfrog the traditional PR practice and take the art of promotions into the 21st Century.
For traditional PR companies, the art of publicising a brand, be it a drink, a musician or a charity, is well established. Essentially, market research gives a picture of the current awareness of the brand and of the temperature of public opinion. This is compared to the desired state for the brand and a strategy is created that moves public opinion from the current position to the would-be position. At least, that’s the theory.
Most campaigns have a certain amount in common. Traditional media such as Print, Radio and Television are used to host advertising campaigns whilst promotional slots are arranged with ‘influencers’ appropriate to the desired brand. So an interview set up with Jonathan Ross for example on prime time BBC National Television will have a massive influence on the intended audience and will reinforce the effect of a straightforward advertising campaign.
Nowadays however things are changing. It’s hard to get a slot on the Jonathan Ross show and there are only a limited number of slots available in a season. Didn’t somebody say Facebook had over 300 million users? Hang on a minute! Jonathan Ross averages only 3.5 million…. and so logic being what it is, a new industry is born.
Given those figures, a digital media campaign ought to be able to deliver unprecedented conversion rates – shouldn’t it? Well a measure of caution may be appropriate – advocacy is often blinded by a fatal mixture of naivety and hope. There are a number of very significant factors, reducing the potential of digital campaigns to much more realistic figures. For example the degree to which a large audience might identify with the brand. Is it global or niche? Is it possible to correctly identify the location of the target audience? We know that Facebook tends to attract young professionals, creatives, writers and artists, that MySpace attracts a younger audience that is interested in music and movies but within those broad demographics, how easy is it to get to the target audience?
Let’s examine a case.
The movie ‘End of the Line‘ is a documentary which puts forward the idea that if current fishing practices are allowed t ocontinue unchecked, we may as a species succeed in turning our oceans into a primordial sludge supporting only single cell organisms – within our lifetimes. Apart from the compelling nature of the subject matter, a few things make this film especially interesting.
The film has now run for four weeks in the West End of London and has been picked up by cinemas around the country, with bookings until the end of September. The cause has been taken up by mainstream mass media - the Sun, Hello and Heat magazine, as well as regional and local papers and the entire national press.
It has also engaged with the corporate world in ways no one can remember any other British film doing. The head of a major High Street presence, Pret a Manger, saw an early screening and changed his entire company’s policy on tuna.
Waitrose put backing into the making of the film and even Morrisons is now advertising some of its fish as line-caught.
The fact that the film has struck such a chord with the people and companies who have seen it has put the issues in the film on the political agenda, in ways they were not before.
This is remarkable stuff – and unprecedented for a documentary to cause this much of a ruckus. Here are some more facts.
- Facebook profile - 4,596 fans
- YouTube trailer – 41,566 views
- Twitter page – 2,225 followers
- Claim your Piece of Ocean Campaign
Notwithstanding the emotive content of the film and I’m quite sure it would have had a substantial impact in it’s own right. it has undoubtedly benefitted to some degree from a well orchestrated PR campaign based primarily on using Social Software to raise the profile of the film. How was this done?
The film was backed by a web site and merchandising, so far, so Web1.0, but where this movie moves away from the mainstream is in it’s espousal of Web2.0 sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and it’s innovative use of a web site hosted campaign that gives viewers a chance to make their presence felt. What is especially interesting is that Twitter was added almost as an afterthought – a fact which is reflected in the comparitively low number of followers.
It is possible to visualise a campaign, something like the figure here. Web1.0 technology, traditional media, funding etc all have a part to play.
The key to leveraging Web2.0 technology is in fostering a sense of community, and it is on Facebook and YouTube that viewers have the chance to make their opinions known.
It is this sense of involvement that encourages users to return and continue the conversation, and critically, to recommend the site to their friends. In this way, it is possible to encourage almost exponential growth for a message which has a universal meaning. It might be more difficult to stimulate the same degree of growth for a line of clothing or a CD, but the principle remains the same.
Twitter has a particular characteristic that gives it huge potential in this space, the character limit of 140 and the inclusion of a URL make it possible to attach a clickable link to an irresistable tag line. This is a very different notion to the idea of pirating the hash tag to insert a completely inappropriate advertisment into the trending topics. Retweets spread the link virally and the takeup, relying entirely on the suitability of the content to the task in hand could encourage users to self select – I’m reminded of a campaign that ran in the New Musical Express in the mid seventies, to promote the T. Rex album The Slider – the first few weeks a teaser campaign ran consisting of a small photograph printed on multiple pages – a rear view of Marc Bolan, unidentifiable except perhaps for the trademark curls. After a couple of pages, the photograph appeared with a caption, printed large across the photograph “Bolan’s Back”. The campaign scored a bullseye with the intended audience and the album was a substantial hit. In a sense, the same kind of opportunity is available with Twitter, a tag line, sufficiently intriuging to deliver the click through would serve to tickle the appetite of the target audience. The beauty of Twitter is that the model dictates that anything resembling spam would die a death, Twitter depends on retweets to spread the message.
The key to success in harnessing the power of Web2.0 technology is to engage the audience with a strong message, and interesting content, to choreograph the interconnectivity of multiple forms of social media in a pattern that reinforces the message, keeps content fresh and encourages the audience to revisit and to pass the message on. Blogging, Web Sites with a high degree of interactivity, Facebook, Youtube and Flickr may all have a part to play.
Tag – You’re it! May 5, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Blogs, Internet, Technology.Tags: blog, browse, collaboration, data mining, database, graze, relational, repository, search, tag, tagging, Wiki
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One of the concerns that collaborative software helps to ease is the loss of precious intellectual capital with the leaving or retiring of an employee. This is a point that is well understood but a question I am often asked when I’m talking to clients about collaborative technologies is “What is the point of tagging? It’s so inconvenient, can’t we just have a drop down menu of all available tags?”
It’s a good question, and it comes from a place which is very comfortable with slick user interfaces. People are busy, doing real work – why do they have to do this ‘tagging stuff’? It’s almost back to the halcyon days of Wordstar!
There are a number of things to think about here – not least the fact that a drop down menu of tags would actually undermine the mechanism by which tagging works. Let me try and explain what I mean.
We are creating data at a rate faster than ever before, there are silos, mines and every concievable type of repository full of data, and it just keeps on coming. We need to find data, to find the right data, fast, in order to make good decisions. Google I am told, consumes as much power in a day, feeding it’s data crunching centres as a small city does in a week…let’s consider the user for a moment….
I’m a big music buyer and one thing that I do in every city I visit, if I have time, is to visit the music stores and browse the racks of CDs and Vinyl. Often, I’ll be inspired by what I see and my mind goes off in all directions, soon the original cd that I wanted to buy has been buried in a slew of conjecture, guesswork, associations etc. I’m standing in the middle of a warehouse full of music, completely unable to recall the name of the artist or the title of the album I came here to buy.
What do I do to recover? Well, it’s pretty easy really – I have to rebuild the associations that the album has for me and just as the experience of browsing can disrupt my train of thought, so it can be used to recover the train of thought. An example might be that elusive Johnny Thunders version of Green Onions….I might recall that it was vaguely something to do with the New York punk scene of the seventies. So browsing the groups that I can recall, Television, Patti Smith isn’t helping, Patti Smith’s Gloria is warm, but not right….it’s a cover, it’s a sixties song originally….hmmm who else covered sixties tunes, New York Dolls for one…..Stranded in the Jungle, Pills, getting warmer by the second,, who was in the New York Dolls….Johnny Thunders!
Ok, so that’s a slice of my day, but the point is that the data that helped me find that particular record has nothing to do with the record itself. It’s not data that would be held in a database listing the attributes of that record – we would expect to find serial number, media, song titles, artist, maybe a picture of the cover, but there’s no way I can browse to that row in the database in any intuitive way. The data that helped was: sixties’, ’seventies’, ‘New York’, ‘New York Dolls’, ‘cover’…. good candidates for tags in fact, in an article about that particular song!
So tagging enables intuitive search and human beings love searching intuitively. We are trying to make authors of everyone, but it is impractical to perform full text searches on the volumes of data that we are now producing. Tagging allows humans to feel their way through the information overload and retrieve data that is of value, reasonably quickly.
So that is the first point, the user in the ‘browse’ case really appreciates tagging. The second point is much more direct, authors take a pride in their work and actually quite like it when people read it! Blogs being a fantastic example – we use tags to make sure that an article comes up in these intuition led searches that internet users love to engage in. It is actually in the author’s interest to be creative about tagging, it will attract more readers.
Lastly, why can’t we have a drop down menu? Well I’ve seen ‘most used tags’ listed, which goes some of the way towards meeting this request, but my thinking is that while a list of most used tags might give me some options, I’d actually like to make up my own, maybe add to the list in time?
So, in a nutshell, tagging is all about information categorisation, indexing and retrieval – it leverages the human brain as much as it does the data mining, search applications and who knows, in view of google’s extraordinary electrical consumption could even be considered ‘green’!
2009 – The Year Of The Ox January 2, 2009
Posted by Chris Wright in Internet, Life, Technology.Tags: astrology, Brian Eno, Cormac McCarthy, Facebook, futurology, The Edge, Vox
3 comments
Futurology is notoriously ‘hit or miss’, we generally fail miserably with specifics, even in prosperous and optimistic times, so in this new dawning of recession and strife, not forgetting famine, plague and pestilence, it seems more appropriate than usual to turn to the generalists for advice. We live in interesting times!
The Chinese astrologer Han Teen See has these observations on the new year:
2009 The year of The Ox will be a very intense year. The many significant incidents that occur will be sudden and deadly. The year will be filled with many more wars, military engagements and terrorist atrocities compared to previous years. Military forces worldwide will be more aggressive and active which will signify the greater likelihood of wars and military engagements in selected regions of the world……
…..People will generally be more aggressive, impulsive and quick-tempered with such behavior spreading quickly like wild-fire. Direct conflicts, arguments and disputes will occur more frequently…..
…..There will be an increase of both organizations and individuals adopting unethical or illegal methods to benefit themselves this year. It will imply that corruption, evasion of proper business practices, tax evasion and fraud will be on the rise.
Companies and businesses that have expanded too rapidly and have done so without taking into account their cash flow and resource management will suffer badly this year. Furthermore, those companies and businesses that have not been giving fair value to their customers and clients will be badly affected as well. This is because, both customers and clients alike will be more selective in their choice of products and services and will choose those that give them fair value….
And so to The Edge. For those unfamiliar with this organisation, The Edge is a forum, drawing together some of the brightest minds in a spectrum covering science, the arts, education, and asking once a year, a question germane to the time. The annual question for 2009, perhaps picking up the theme of relentless gloom and despondency was ‘What will change everything?’
Brian Eno, offers this as his answer: “The feeling that things are inevitably going to get worse” ! The point he is making, is that the history of progress has been founded on a certainty that better things are around the corner. Optimism and hope have been practically hardwired into the psyche of the western world. What happens when that optimism and hope is removed? When we start to see the walls closing in, the world shrinking? Well, in Eno’s view, something remarkably similar to the predictions of Han Teen See. The emphasis will be on short term gain, once survival becomes a driver, selflessness becomes a distant memory and in politics and business, global initiatives fail because trust will fail – the moral framework breaks down and law and order quickly follow….Cormac McCarthy – The Road becomes the new reality. As an answer to the question, Eno is undoubtedly right – this is root cause.
So pestilence and plague it is then…or is it? This is one of those points in time where we have a choice, as individuals and collectively. The choices we make today may very well set the tone for the next hundred years. These are my predictions for the year.
This is a year where the buck stops. I fear for the bio-technology industry, as an occasional investor I headed for the safer havens of mainstream technology six months ago – and still lost more than I care to admit. More than any other sector of technology, bio-tech depends on research money, government projects etc etc. It has never been profitable and in current economic conditions, unless the model is substantially revised, I expect to see the sector struggle.
Web2.0 is a set of technologies, desperately short of a profit model. for all it’s targeted advertising, has anyone ever actually bought anything via Facebook? These applications are fabulous, revolutionary even, but unless somebody works out how to make money from them, we can expect to see turbulence ahead. My tip for survival – Vox. A hosted blogging application including many of the social software favourites such as file sharing, music, photos etc. It is aimed at the smaller community, organisations and families, and in so doing provides a sense of identity that could be converted into a selling point. The difference between Vox and Facebook is that Facebook encourages mass socialisation, and in so doing exposes its members to the scrutiny of strangers. Not everybody is enthused by this model. Vox encourages privacy and this could turn out to be a differentiator worth paying for.
More generally, I’d expect to see businesses and governments start to prepare themselves for the new reality. This is a time for strong vision and fearless leadership. At government level we should expect to see an upsurge in technology mediated education – we’ve been talking about it for long enough, let’s see action! Dare we also anticipate an upgrading of the IT infrastructure such that fast broadband is achievable in every home?
The motor industry is one to watch – Toyota posted a loss for the first time in fifty years? Ford, Chrysler and General Motors had to be bailed out by the US government. The message is modernise or fail. We should see these companies ruthlessly stripped back to fighting weight, better use of technology, resulting in better knowledge retention and less waste.
I expect to see customers demand value for money – the first green shoots are beginning to appear already. I was able to negotiate a discount of 20% before Christmas, on designer clothes purchased in the high street. If you don’t ask, you won’t get. Services will be more realistically priced because there are so many alternatives. The wild fluctuations in transport pricing should start to level out – my favourite recent example being the purchase of a flight from Edinburgh to Belfast for less than £1 + airport taxes, the next day, being asked by Virgin Rail to pay more than £250 for a rail ticket from London to Manchester. I decided not to travel that day. If the UK government wants to get people to use the trains instead of the roads, then we need to regulate pricing. The excuses being trotted out by Virgin and their ilk (passengers paying for the running of underused services) are the same excuses used in the sixties, before the rail networks were nationalised. They simply don’t wash a second time. Businesses who are seen to be exploiting their customer base are at risk. That’s all there is.
In the end, 2009 is an opportunity. It’s my hope that governments, businesses and individuals start to make the right decisions, to enable freedom of movement globally, to encourage global cooperation and trust and in so doing enable a return to prosperity. It is my darkest fear that they won’t.
Meh! November 25, 2008
Posted by Chris Wright in Internet, Life, Technology.Tags: blog, Meme, Web 2.0, Wiki
14 comments
The recent inclusion of ‘meh’ in the Collins English Dictionary and the elevation of “wiki” to the Oxford English dictionary have provoked some hilarious postings on The Register. The subject of net neoligisms is one which by turn vexes and fascinates.
History tells us that the evolution of a spoken or written language is accelerated by slang, by the absorption of ‘foreign’ words into the current idiom. Over time, some of these words stick, others fall by the wayside. The continuous process keeps language alive and vital. Attempts to record a language, definitively, are by their very nature doomed to failure because existing words pick up new meanings, and new words emerge to provide more distinct or precise meaning.
The evolution of the English language can be traced to several significant stages. The spoken language in England was originally several dialects of Celtic origin. In the 5th Century, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes invaded from Denmark and northern germany, in the process pushing the native inhabitants and their languages, north to Scotland and west to Wales and Ireland. Gaelic, one variety of a Celtic language is found in Scotland and Ireland, Welsh, another variety is still spoken in Wales.
During the 600 odd years leading up to the Norman invasion of 1066, the languages imported by the germanic tribes coalesced into what we now call Old English – about half of the words in current parlance have their roots in Old English. The Normans brought French to the island and with it, a rigid class system. The upper classes and business classes spoke French, the peasantry Old English. Over a period of some 400 years, middle English, the language of Chaucer emerged – broadly, Old English with added French!
The 16th century brought the Renaissance and with it, travel – this had a profound effect on the language, new words were imported by traders and other travellers and the invention of the printing press accelerated the standardisation of what became Early Modern English.
Late Modern English has persisted from appproximately 1600 to the present day, spurred on by the Industrial Revolution creating a need for new words to describe new technologies and the British Empire adopting words from the colonies. Varieties of late modern english have evolved and cross pollinated through the power of media, so American English with its strong Spanish and French influences has brought words such as vigilante into the common language via the movies.
Which brings us to the vexing question of ‘meh’. If there were a Darwinian theory of language it would say that the words that are fit for purpose, that bring more precision, that are required would be the ones to survive. There is a very strong argument that, that has usually been the case. This is why slang has such a strong influence on language. Slang evolves, to meet circumstances which are geographical, cultural and societal at specific points in time. An example of this would be the changing usage of the word ’swinging’.
Originally ’swinging’ referred to the sideways oscillation of an object, suspended from a fixed point. In the fifties, it acquired a new meaning, related to jazz, swinging morphed into a description of rhythm – still vaguely related to oscillation. In the sixties it was used to describe a different form of music – beat, and ‘Swinging’ became an interjection of approval. A pop group ‘The Swinging Blue Jeans’ capitalised on this meaning as a means of buying instant credibility with the public. The seventies, brought with it a darker meaning, completely separated now from its roots, swinging referred to the appalling practice of wife swapping for sexual adventure that is reputed to have infested suburbia during those straitened times.
Two things are significant – the greatly reduced time span – 30 years in this case and the completely different meaning attached to the word by the end of the tie span – it is the speed of change that has increased dramatically.
‘Meh’ is a word that has not evolved so much as occured. Hijacked from the Simpsons, it has held its original meaning, and been gleefully adopted by the Nathan Barley generation as an all purpose utterance signifying boredom, ennui. Like many neoligisms spawned by the net, it serves no uniquely useful purpose and does not substantially clarify nor make more precise the articulation of that feeling it purports to describe.
Not all net neoligisms are so useless – meme, cyberspace, unfriend are all useful words which better describe something – they bring value to the language in a way which ‘meh’ conspicuously fails to emulate. ‘Meh’ is a word which is so strongly reminiscent of the utterance of a sheep that its continued usage by otherwise intelligent people mystifies me totally. I wonder about decadence at times – the adoption of useless and ultimately destructive practices. In the increasingly self referential world of new media, I see useful technologies whose advocates, in their frenetic adoption of every passing fad, are ultimately failing to communicate – the very issue these technologies are supposed to solve.
Comments in Late Modern English please!
// Credit for much of the thinking behind this post should be given to Jacqui Rowe, Mel Curtiss, Elle Gee, and Brenda McWalters whose spirited rejoinders to my flippant post on Facebook made me think!
