Posts by Category: opinion piece

It’s my party and I’ll talk if I wanna!
Bizarre March 17, 2009 posted by
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British Telecom Sucks – how not to do customer service Part II

OK, so here’s an update on the sorry state of my non-working BT landline as featured on the Ferret yesterday. Having done that blog post, I sat around for a while trying to work out how to get around Catch 22 and get someone to listen to my problem, and finally decided to resort to desperate measures. Here’s what happened: At around 5.30pm I decided to go direct to the top, did a Google search and came up with the CEO…


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hmm..interesting March 16, 2009 posted by
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British Telecom Sucks – or how not to do customer service

Updated here British Telecom is a good example of a company which has such a lousy reputation for the way it treats its customers that people set up websites to moan to the world about the awfulness. Despite the company trying to shut down dissent (see the furore caused a few years ago with the company stifling btirelandsucks.com) sites like btcomplaint.com still manage to get the word out, although judging from a recent post, the telco does absolutely nothing about complaints whatsoever even…


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hardware February 6, 2009 posted by
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Netbooks, shmetbooks – fresh from the spade’s a spade department

Aw c’mon people, these things – and by things I mean products like the Asus Eee PC1000HE and similar – are not netbooks, OK? They are laptop computers, or portable computers or notebooks. But they are not netbooks. Can we all stop falling for the marketing trype and try and get it right? If it comes with a decent size keyboard, a 10 inch screen, a 160 GB hard disk, 1 GB of RAM and Windows it’s a laptop. I mean, good…


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Bookmark This! January 30, 2009 posted by
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The dangers of social networking – Mr Calacanis’ very thoughtful post

Jason Calacanis has penned what I think is one of the most thoughtful and insightful posts on the current obsession with social networking and web relationships that I’ve read to date. If you are at all interested in the future of this small ‘chosm -which is what it is of course, very small in real terms – we call the Web, then I strongly suggest you read it. I won’t go on about it, but it’s a sobering viewpoint that we…


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opinion piece January 20, 2009 posted by
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Credit Crunch Report – Welcome to the New Age

It’s pretty clear now that we’re heading for the mother and father of all recessions. There’s acres of newsprint and online discussion about the whys, wherefores and such, so I won’t repeat it, but I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what I believe this could mean for our gadget obsessed, consumerised world in the near and not so near future. Of course it’s not the end of the world and we will survive, however it’s…


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future tech January 16, 2009 posted by
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Palm Pre – the secret behind that flashy interface…

The new Palm Pre has been getting some big love from the media since its launch at the CES show, with some good early coverage online already. I thought I’d have a little sniff around too, to see whether it’s really as ground-breaking as everyone is saying, and I did discover something interesting. The thing that’s wowed most people about the handset is the interface, with things like multiple live windows running on screen for each program running in the background. It…


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opinion piece January 13, 2009 posted by
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9 Days! – a random glimpse of my life with Windows Vista

I think I’m starting to understand why Microsoft is rushing to release Windows 7 to the public. Day 1. Dec 17th a) WiFi disappears for no reason. Refuses even to restart with the disable/enable trick, needs reboot. Did it crash? USB also fails to restart after sleep. Have to unplug the USB cable and replug it in to restart all the USB peripherals. b) Notice that I’m getting around 816 kbp/s off my 20 Mbps broadband connection on the Vista notebook….


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Gadgets October 7, 2008 posted by
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Logitech’s fatal mouse flaw – or why involuntary double clicks are a real pain

I’ve had three of the Logitech Revolution family of computer mouses now, and I’m rapidly building up a love/hate relationship with them. On the one hand I love love love that free-wheeling mouse wheel, it makes browsing so much more pleasant and easy. On the other hand, every single one of the darn things have decayed rapidly on me, with the result that they deliver unwanted double clicks from the left hand button as it wears. Every one. Same fault. And…


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huh..? September 18, 2008 posted by
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The big question no-one is asking…

I’m sorry to interject something mundane here, but I’ve just got to ask this simple question which everyone seems to be ignoring – Where have the $2–$3 trillion in funds that governments around the world have pumped into the financial markets gone? We certainly haven’t received them, have we? And the banks are still failing. So where exactly has all this money gone? I’m genuinely baffled. Tags: financial+meltdown, subprime+crisis, money+as+debt


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opinion piece September 17, 2008 posted by
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Chevy Volt revealed – OK, so what bright spark…?

OK, so they’ve finally revealed the Chevy Volt electric hybrid car, which is scheduled for delivery to a salivating public sometime in 2011. At a $40,000 price point. I just have a few points to make here: A lot could happen in 3 years. Perhaps even a massive recession or a runaway inflationary boom induced by desperate global governments. Or something. Three years is a long time in Japanese development terms. Toyota is not sitting still. What on earth makes GM think they can…


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opinion piece March 31, 2008 posted by
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Calls to boycott Amazon over greedy, bully-boy tactics on POD

original picture I’m a fan of the company, so count me stunned that Amazon is about to destroy the print on demand business by forcing writers and publishers to use the expensive Amazon owned BookSurge POD service. Those who don’t will not be able to sell their titles through the Amazon direct service (only via the 2nd tier marketplace). This seems to me to be a disgusting abuse of Amazon’s market position and just plain nasty greedy. Sure people can sell their book elsewhere, but the main…


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Mobile Tech March 13, 2008 posted by
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The whyPhone

Just sent back my loan iPhone after a few weeks use, and to be honest I was happy to see it go. I found it a bit underwhelming actually (in fact it stayed in the box towards the end of the period). Why? You need to charge it every day? Wow, how quaint. Very unimpressed with the feature set. I use my Nokia 6110 a lot on my travels, and often have the GPS running alongside the MP3 player and Fring for…


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future tech March 11, 2008 posted by
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The End of WiFi Hotspots?

Johan Bergendahl, a senior exec with Swedish mobile phone giant Ericsson, has come out and said what I’ve been saying for years, that WiFi will shortly be replaced by cell phone broadband technologies such as HSPA and beyond. It’s really a no-brainer. WiFi is an incredibly frustrating technology once you start moving away from a limited number of environments like airports, offices and home networks. Try getting a WiFi signal in a car on a motorway for example. At the end…


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hmm..interesting March 10, 2008 posted by
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Social Networking is just CB Radio?

Cringley reckons that social networks are just a new version of the CB Radio fad. Destined to crash and burn as he puts it. And to be honest, I have to agree with his central premise, which is that they don’t supply *enough* real value, long term, to survive, in the same way that Geocities faded away because of user apathy. The only thing I would say is that the vertical networks like LinkedIn do offer value for job and…


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