Providing Receipts via Email

I’m reading an interesting and strangely inspiring article on creating a well thought out store by Robert Scoble. I really like the following example from Apple stores. If you have a gmail account and don’t delete emails you’ll never lose this receipt:

Copy Apple and get rid of checkout lines. I hate standing in line at BestBuy. In fact I’ve walked out more than once leaving my purchase right there. That’s lame. Apple’s employees walk around with little computers in their hands. They ring you up right there without making you stand in line. They email me my receipt. Forcing paper on customers is totally lame, especially in this time where we’re supposed to be conserving paper.

via What Microsoft Can Learn About Retail from Apple and Best Buy | Robert Scoble’s innovator’s and geeks’ blog | Fast Company.

Douglas Adams Quote

I do like this Douglas Adams quote from a Tech Dirt article I read. Generally speaking its true. Hope I don’t fall into the trap though:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

25 Things About Me

I just wrote this for Facebook. Given that I’ve put some time and effort into it, I’d just as well post it here too.

Here’s 25 things about me:

1. I was born with one nut. So too was someone else in school. Strangely, he got loads of stick for it and I got none. I’m to old to care about it now so knock yourselves out. For the record, I’m now fully armed and operational in the man sack department. When I was a kid, I had an operation which rescued my stray ball.
2. I’m a very shy person and it pains me to publish this list.
3. I feel guilty over the daftest things. I remember as a kid, me and some friends broke some bird eggs by mistake. I think I went home and cried to my mum over it. I haven’t changed much, although I can hold back the tears better now.
4. I’m really anal with copied media. I won’t watch copied films, I won’t listen to copied music. When I say “Oh, I’ve got that album!” I want that to mean I took the time to buy and own it. Nobody gets me where this is concerned.
5. My folks never hit me as a kid. I was ruled by the word “disapointed”. To this day I still fear disapointing my folks.
6. Glastonbury may only be on for 5 days a year, but its been home to so many highlights in my life.
7. I love music in an indescribable ways, but I’d still give it up to keep Becky (I would resent her if she made me choose though )
8. As I get older, I’m appreciating family more and more.
9. In certain ways I’m lazy. I think that ties in with my love of technology.
10. On New Years eve this year I wore tights to keep warm in a very cold London (and as a joke with Becky). Ignoring the technicallities of it all, its probably the most liberating thing I’ve done to date. Including it in this list ranks 2nd. My cross-dressing days end their though.
11. Contrary to the usual pattern, the older I’m getting, the more left wing I’m getting.
12. Old people who whinge about young people annoy me. I don’t class myself as young, so its not a defensive thing.
13. I’m classist in the sense that I’ll forgive someone who’s working class for doing something, but dispise someone who’s middle class for doing the same thing.
14. The most exciting album I’ve heard in the past couple years is Of Montreal’s Skeletal Lamping. Prior to that it was Modest Mouse’s “Good News for People Who Like Bad News”. Finding the next one is what keeps me buying music week in, week out.
15. I’m a news-junkie. For me, watching news is no longer watching other people’s lives. Its more like fiction where no-one gets really gets hurt (<Loud Homer Simson Whisper Voice>I realise they doooo</>). I think my junkie tendencies come from missing 9/11 take place live on TV. I don’t want to miss the next big event.
16. I probably surf the net more on my Blackburry than I do my desktop or laptop. With that in mind I want an iPhone.
17. I seem to do most of my thinking walking to and from work. If I did as much thinking sat at a keyboard, I’d have a frequently updated blog.
18. After years of thinking, as it stands the tunes I want played at my funeral are Arcade Fire’s “My Body Is A Cage” and The Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize?”. If I was pushed for a third – right here right now – I’d say Pixies’ “Monkey Gone To Heaven”. The title speaks for itself. Curse you all if it doesn’t happen. A bonus would be having Gogol Bordello’s “Gypsy Punk” album played at my wake, with people being in the right spirit to dance and drink to it. That only happens on TV though.
19. I’ve probably spent more time in my life thinking about what songs to have played at my funeral than any other subject. I won’t even be there to witness it.
20. The thing I love most about technology (ignoring the fact it saves me time and effort) are the possibilities it brings. It gets the creative juices flowing just thinking about it.
21. At the time, I was the first person I knew who had the Internet. Dial-up and Amiga didn’t really do it justice. Firefox, it wasn’t.
22. More often than not, I’m not overly fond of my job, but when its good I really enjoy it. I’ve never had that in any other job, so I think I’m on to a good thing.
23. I now understand why the media keeps on barking on about young people having disposable income. I still don’t regret not saving mine when I had it, no matter what my mother says.
24. I can’t wait to have my baby in my arms. Can’t explain why. Just cause.

25. Despite what everyone says to me, the day will never come where I actually appreciate getting ID’ed. It also seems possible that the day will never come that I don’t get ID’ed.

Teletext Search is Embarrassing

Any company worth their salt now-a-days have someone searching the blogs and twitter for mentions of their company. Its with that in mind that I write this.

A few months back Teletext finally launched a search feature on their web site, and with it they made it possible to find old reviews, interviews and news from Planet Sound. The prospect of this thrilled me. Their reviews mean a lot to me, so when I’ve bought an album I’m always keen to see what they thought of it. Same goes if I’m thinking of buying an album.

The theory is great. However, the search is so poorly designed/executed that its practically unusable. I’m not expecting Google, but they’ve made two big mistakes that could easily be fixed with a tiny bit of investment:

1) I wish they’d aggregate their results! What do I mean by this? Check out this search for Elbow:

10 results, all for the same ruddy page. The only difference that I can see is the date, sometimes only seconds apart. Couldn’t they group all those together and select the one with the latest date? Unless I’m missing an important detail (given that I don’t work there, that is more than possible) it seems such a simple thing to do.

2) On the left hand side they offer the chance to narrow your results down by feed. The problem is, they only seem to offer two options (today that’s Sport Betting News and Weather). Would it kill them to offer a few more? Even if its at a high-level (eg. News, Sport, Entertainment, Weather etc) it would make life much easier searching it.

As a developer, it hurts and baffles to see something like this being released, especially by a company that’s home to so much great content.