Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

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Sort out passports, UKBA, for the country’s sake

April 28, 2012

The news today is full of reports of 2-hour queues at Heathrow to get passports inspected.

I remember the halcyon days of international travel, back in the 1990s, when getting back into the UK after a trip abroad was a breeze. You stood in line for a few moments with a queue of maybe 10 or 12 people ahead of you. The passport official (now the UK Border Agency of course) took a cursory glance at your passport and you were in.

Back in the halcyon days of travel only getting into the United States was tricky and time consuming. Today getting back into the UK, Read the rest of this entry ?

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George Washington’s PC?

May 12, 2011

In early 2007 I decided my Windows XP Home PC had to go. But I hated Vista. I managed to buy one of the very last Acer Aspire desktop PCs running Windows XP Media Edition. I used it until two weeks ago. I always felt it was a good purchase and a good, reliable and decently performing computer.

But it started blue-screening sporadically, complaining about disk and memory errors.

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Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose

November 13, 2009

Or marketing’s just the same as it always was, despite the technology.

This post is prompted by a blog post from PRGeek (Jon Silk, @prgeek) from a social media conference today. He suggests in a recent tweet “Old media: Stick a celeb in an ad. New media: Stick a celeb on the web. Social media: Stick a celeb on Twitter.”.

My point is that although the techniques of marketing change as technology advances, the objective of marketing remains the same – it’s to attract an unfair share of your audience’s attention.

In the 17th century a row of shops would be competing for passing trade, but the one that paid someone to wear a sandwich board advertising their wares, or paid the town crier to shout about their goods, would be likely to attract more business. Technological advance has introduced print advertising, commercial radio, tv and cinema advertising, billboard advertising, the web and now a plethora of social media: The means change but the objective is the same.

Clearly the audience determines the tactics, so marketing single-dealer platforms to a universe of 45 significant investment banks requires a different set of techniques to marketing anti-virus software to both retail and corporate users (for example), but the objective remains the same. And it always will.

Originally posted on Finextra, on November 12th 2009

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The music industry must think again

August 31, 2009

For thousands of years music was a purely live experience. Either you were there to hear it or you weren’t. Excepting a few oddities, the first mechanical device capable of recording and reproducing music was invented by Thomas Edison in 1877.

So the late 19th century saw the beginning of the recorded music industry (history). Is the beginning of the 21st century witnessing its end? I think so. Read the rest of this entry ?

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Windows 7: first look – quite impressed

August 11, 2009

I have steered well clear of Windows Vista. I managed to buy one of the last PCs with Windows XP MCE installed – in fact that’s what I’m using now. I’ve advised friends, colleagues, clients and even people in pubs I’ve never met before to stick with XP and not move to Vista. It has a reputation as a memory and processor hog, and Microsoft continued to indulge their corporate passion for moving menu items around just when everyone had worked out where to find them!

So it’ll come as a shock to those of my friends who had put me down as a luddite who was going to stick with XP until hell froze over to find that I’ve downloaded and installed the Windows 7 release candidate (RC). Admittedly not onto my main machine, but onto the spare PC in my office.

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Grappling with an iPhone

July 23, 2009

Well it had to happen, didn’t it? My getting an iPhone I mean.

Here am I, a technology marketer; how could I continue to have any credibility with my peers (or even my neighbours frankly) if I didn’t get one?

I had been a loyal Vodafone subscriber (and still am for my personal phone), and have never really rated O2. Had Vodafone offered iPhone contracts then I’d probably have moved before. But when my new boss said, “You need to have a mobile device, would you like a Blackberry or an iPhone?” the choice was not hard. Even better ’cause they’re paying for it.

I’ve had my 3G S for a week now, and while I’m definitely impressed, it has some drawbacks compared to the HTC Artemis (P3300) that I have been using for nearly two years.

What’s good about the iPhone?

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