The little red light

Anyone else got a blackberry or similar phone with a little flashing LED when the phone wants attention? You know the one, the little light blinks on and off when you have a new Email, or SMS, or IM, or something. Do you find yourself looking at the phone, waiting for the light to come on, and jumping on the phone when you see that little light blinking on and off?

I am starting to feel like I have been trained like a puppy, looking for the light and jumping on the phone to check what message may be waiting for me, its time to change!

Looking for the light is not helping anyone, and responding quickly is doing nothing but generating another Email in return, I am not actually achieving anything productive in this behavior.

So its time to get smart, time to turn the little red light off! Lets see what happens without being a slave to the little red light for a while, I figure not a lot, the world will keep turning, I will check Email as and when I need to, and everything will be fine :)

9 Reasons why lists annoy me

Grrr, everywhere you look now days there are lists, lists about this and lists about that. The 50 greats apps to change your life, 26 reasons why I brought an iPad, 32 reasons not to drink your own urine. Lists, lists, lists, so here is another list, 9 reasons why lists annoy me.

1. They are everywhere!
2. They generally have no thought put into them (like this one)
3. Who cares what you think?
4. No context, its just a list of stuff
5. Why are these things on a list, and not others?
6. Why the arbitrary number? How come its 10 things, and not 100?
7. Are they in order of importance, or is it just stuff?
8. Why are you the list authority?

9. Why is you list any better then someone else? What was your research methodology?

Next week I will post my shopping list, it is about as useful as any other list out there you will read today!

The beauty of data

So much data out there, but waht does it all mean, and how do you understand it? This is a good TED presentation to start to get a view of what can be done (and to view some data in a different light).

The periodic table of visualisation methods is also a fantastic way of trying to work out how to display the data you have in a meaningful way.

Fast food fail!

This is a great site. This guy has gone out and purchased fast food, then taken photos of it and compared it to the ad's.

Its been done before, but on this blog he has gone out of his way to try and make the actual food look as good as possible, and, he has professional equipment to take the photos with, check it out.

Why is a better deal so hard?

Over the last two weeks I have been able to reduce the cost of our telecoms bill by $50 by hunting around on the providers web site for better offers, and ringing up and threatening to leave unless I get a better deal.

Now I can understand why they just don't drop the price everyone pays for their services, it would cost them considerable revenue, but.... I am now conditioned to look for a better deal on a regular basis.

Rather then trust my provider, I now expect that they are not providing me the best deal that they can, and thus my level of loyalty to them is a lot, lot lower then it used to be. I actually don't feel better now they have given me better deals, I actually feel like they have been ripping me off in the past.

Rather then make me want to stay with them, all they have done is make me want to keep looking around for better deals, and eventually move. The new provider may be no better, but at least I wont have this feeling that I am being ripped of by them when I first move across.

So I am not sure if this was their intention when I rang up looking for a better deal, but it is how things have worked out, so why not just look after your customers all then time? Not just when they complain? and have they actually achieved anything other then making me an unhappy customer who is now ready to jump ship? I suppose I am at least still a customer, for now.

Facebook by the numbers

Interesting numbers around facbook usage here. Amazing the sheer scale of this site, would be good to see what sort of infrastructure supports it!

Never buy another Holden!

Our current car is due to be replaced in a few months time, which gets me thinking about what our next car will be. After having two Holden commodores, I know what the next car won't be at least!

The first car had issues, but they were a few years ago, so I will concentrate on the current (4 year old) cars experience as to why I will never purchase another Holden.

1. Poor pre sales service. Guys, I am still waiting for the brochure I requested online 3 and half years ago, and the "contact me" option on your web site seems to have gone no where are all.

2. Delayed delivery. You were happy to take my trade in, then delayed the delivery of my new car, twice!

3. Extremely poor service staff. At two different locations I encountered rude staff. The vehicle was not returned after servicing at the agreed time, with the agreed work done. There has not been one time I have had the car serviced that I was even satisfied, let alone, happy! Come on, when I tell you the break light is out, and on the report you tell me there is nothing wrong with is, yet I can show you (by pushing the break peddle down) that the break light does not work, I question your ability (and if you even care).

4. Recalls, recalls, recalls. Lost count on the recalls the car has had. But even more then the recalls I had to complain about about some aspects of the poor quality of the vehicle before it was repaired (even though Holden knows of the problems). They only seem to recall on safety issues, other issues (like not being able to start your car) don't seem to be a concern until the customer gets upset.

So lets see, that poor pre sales, poor post sales, poor customer service, and extremely poor quality, can't think of anything good about being a customer of Holden at all!

I did think I may by antother car from them if it was not built in Australia, but that may only solve the quality of the car issue, not the rest of the problems with the business!

So I am now thinking about a Japanese or European car, any ideas?