August 14th, 2008 Piers
In my emails this morning I had one from the guys at Twitter saying that they were no longer sending updates to mobile phones. I understand why they’ve done this. In the US the user pays to receive text messages whereas over here it’s the sender that pays. The email quotes that it would cost them approximately $1000 per user per year so it’s understandable why they’d shut this service off.
However, this means that this is one less way to get your twitter fix, and no real way to get real time updates if you don’t have am iPhone or a Blackberry.
Now, I prefer not to get my updates via text. I find it too distracting, although I do use it if there’s some newsworthy event on where I want to receive up to the minute info, but of course that won’t be happening anymore.
Hopefully this means that the guys at twitter will be spending more money and time on getting the xmpp feed up and running for everyone, but in the mean time it looks like I’ll be strapped to my laptop if i want to get the latest.
If anyone wants to view the content, you can view it on the Twitter Blog.
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January 23rd, 2008 Piers
I got an email yesterday from Fasthosts. Yes that Fasthosts. The tag line? “Risk Free Web Hosting!”.
Oh the irony.
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January 23rd, 2008 Piers
I’ve been looking to a way to post to this here blog from my N95 for a while and had heard good things about Wavelog (just released). I’m going to have a play over the next couple of weeks. You’ll see the results here.
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December 5th, 2007 Piers
One thing I have noticed recently is that more and more spam is managing to bypass Gmail’s spam filter and is successfully infiltrating my Inbox. Admittedly it’s only the odd one or two, but I’m sure Google used to be better than that.
Anyone else having this problem?
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September 19th, 2007 Piers
Ok, lets get the preamble out the way: iPhone blah blah Uk blah O2 blah.
Finished?
Paul Annett, over on his blog, has pointed out that even though they have been deemed great enough to be the ones to offer the iPhone (officially of course, since it’s apparently very easy to unlock it to other networks) the O2 website can’t be used correctly on (of all things) Safari, the very same browser that (wait for it) ships with the iPhone.
[Image from http://paulannett.co.uk]
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August 29th, 2007 Piers
I have 5 Pownce invites if anyone wants one. Just post in the comments.
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August 21st, 2007 Piers
… as it admits to me watching One Tree Hill, but I also love it when something as mainstream as the BBC makes a cock-up. You would have thought that one of the biggest media companies in the world would at least do a bit of research for their news. Anyone who watchs OTH would know that Chad Murrey Michaels doesn’t play Nathan…
*looks sheepish*
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August 13th, 2007 Piers
Ok, firstly I should state that this isn’t all US companies. It could well be a small minority. Hell, there are probably companies in the UK (where I’m from) that do exactly the same thing. I’ll freely admit that I haven’t done an outstanding amount of research, but I can’t be the only person that this is affecting.
The issue I’m referring to is one that I’ve seen on various websites. The one of only accepting credit cards as payment methods.
Let me start with Basecamp. It’s an excellent piece of software that completely revolutionised the way people think about project management, by making it all about communication. I think the guys over at 37signals have done an excellent job. So what’s my problem with them? I get fed up with only being allowed one project at a time. That’s the limit you can have with the free version of their software, and due to the simple fact that I don’t have a credit card I can’t use this awesome piece of software as much as I’d like to. It’s the same with all their software.
A simple option for them would be to add PayPal as an option. It can’t be that hard. I’m aware that PayPal does charge business for the use, but don’t all payment gateways?
Ok lets leave 37Signals for a moment and focus on a much bigger fish: Amazon.
Amazon have implemented Amazon Web Services, which (so I’ve read) are excellent and cost efficient ways of doing certain online tasks such as implementing file storage.
But yet again I can’t make use of these services as I don’t own a credit card.
37Signals I can forgive. They’re not a big company. It could well be fairly pricey to add in a new payment method. But Amazon already accept debit cards such as Maestro or Visa Delta. Only last month I bought the latest Harry Potter book. With my Maestro card. So why can’t I use that same card to pay for Amazon’s SSS service?
So why am I suggesting that US companies need to start thinking outside their borders? Simple really. The US is very much a credit driven culture. Most Americans I know (and admittedly that’s not many) have a credit card and don’t know many more people that don’t. Over here it’s different. For most of the people I know, a credit card is either something that you have in case of emergency, for paying for that big expense like a holiday or for when you’re putting it on the company expenses. I refuse to believe that there aren’t people like me out there who either don’t want one for reasons of their own or (like me) can’t get one for a particular reason.
Earlier I mentioned PayPal. I know that there are a lot of people out there who don’t like it because of some of their practices regarding the closing of accounts and the such like. But I like it. It enables me to be able to pay for services and items from US shops and companies online. I’m not suggesting that all companies should use them, but if they thought about making their products more accessible to people like me who don’t own this particular payment method then they might open up a completely new market that they hadn’t thought of or noticed before.
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August 11th, 2007 Piers
Web 2.0 is all around us.
But what would it be like in real life?
Check out the video after the jump (some language NSFW, hence why the jump)
Read the rest of this entry »
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