Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Here I sit, while outside snow is covering the UK, rendering most of the country useless – schools are closed, people can’t get into work, and we’ve run out of rocksalt because the largest mine in the UK can only produce in a week what is being used every day, as local councils try to keep the roads clear.

It’s the ‘worst’ winter in 30 years according to the press, although I beg to differ – it’s the BEST winter in 30 years! Snow may be disruptive, but it’s so very beautiful, with a white blanket covering the everyday dullness of the city, making buildings look ‘postcard pretty’ and presenting a visual splendour out of town as fields and trees proudly display their temporary white overcoats.

Happy New Year to all of you, and all the best for 2010. I’ve got big plans for this year, although I haven’t made any resolutions – actually that’s an untruth, I made one – to go swimming more often as it’s my physical therapy – but I’ve broken it already due to the fact I can’t get to the gym because of the snow! Which brings me onto what I want to discuss today – why New Years Resolutions suck, and why you shouldn’t make them!

I have nothing against planning or setting goals – these are both worthy activities that will help you get where you want to be. In fact, I insist you set some goals and plan towards reaching them – how will you know how you’re going to get where you want to be unless you have a map? However, don’t name them ‘Resolutions’! Why? Because you’re setting yourself up to fail straightaway…

People don’t generally make New Years Resolutions because they are committed to changing a behaviour, getting rid of a bad habit, or achieving something.

People make New Years Resolutions so that they have something to say when other people ask “What are your Resolutions for this year?”.

Over the years, you have probably made hundreds or thousands of resolutions that you’ve later broken… or never even attempted to keep. In people’s minds, New Years Resolutions are things you make but don’t make the most of. So what if they fail – millions of other people have done exactly the same thing… 2 or 3 weeks into the New Year, old habits reemerge and new improvements slide back to 2009 levels. Subconsciously, we know that New Years Resolutions are useless – a traditional pastime borne of the New Year, soon forgotten as winter fades into memory.

Okay so some people manage to keep their resolutions – but I reckon they’re in the minority. More people give up smoking in the New Year than at any other time of year, and hopefully many remain non-smokers forever… but the majority eventually return to tobacco’s vice-like grip and the comfort of the burning stick of reduced lifespan.

So this year, don’t make any New Years Resolutions. Save yourself the time and effort and future disappointment as you go back on your festively-induced promises.

Instead go out and buy yourself a notebook. In that notebook write down the things you want to achieve in 2010.

Once you have those goals written down, then you can start to plan how you’re going to achieve them.

Once you have your plan, start working towards your goals. Keep it positive and you’re more likely to succeed.

I hope you’re having a great snowed-in day, and let’s all look forward to a successful 2010 filled with fun and laughter (but not Miley Cyrus!)

Rob Bell

I pride myself on my knowledge of computers and the Internet – I’m the ‘go-to guy’ for my friends when it comes to PCs and technology in general. That is why I feel so sheepish while writing this. I overreached my technological abilities over the weekend, and my wallet has suffered as a result! I’ll tell you the whole story…..

Last week, I dropped my iPhone, face down, flat onto the hard, cold bathroom floor just as I was making my way sleepily to my bed, via toothbrush and toilet… Needless to say, the iPhone screen smashed – see exhibit one! I am somewhat disappointed, having previously thought it to be quite sturdy – but never having actually tested its’ strength!

Next day I was looking to see how much it would cost for the repair – finding out it’s £139.99 at the Apple Store via my local O2 shop. “£140 be damned” the tight Yorkshireman within me thought, “I bet I can fix it cheaper myself”. Some more research provided me with the information I needed – I could get a new ‘digitiser’ – which is what the iPhone glass screen is called – for £22 inc p&p from Amazon, with instructions. So I ordered it and patiently waited for the screen to arrive. When it did, I watched the instruction video a number of times to familiarise myself with the process before opening the case and getting stuck in to the process.

As it happens, at one point in the video it refers to a white clip with a black connector that has to be clicked up to release connector no 3 – however, since the video was made Apple have swapped the colours and the catch is black with a white connector. I tried to flick up the white connector which turned out to be a very delicate connector that I’d inadvertently destroyed in one foul flick! This made it really difficult to reinsert the lead into connector 3… and after considerable difficulty, when I put the phone together again and switched it on, something didn’t look right…. see exhibit two! And on top of that, the earpiece was no longer working – I could make calls but only hear them if I turned the speaker on or wore headphones…

What I hadn’t considered was that the LCD underneath was also damaged and needed replacing – plus my savaging of connector 3 meant the lead was no longer able to connect properly – so the earpiece no longer worked.

Defeated by my apparent clumsiness and ignorance, I resigned myself to finding a local iPhone  repair outlet, and took the iPhone there earlier today, where the LCD was replaced and the screen returned to normal. Unfortunately, my destruction of the connector meant that Andy (the skilled repairer who did an amazing job of fixing it while I waited) was unable to get the earpiece working as I need to get the connector replaced on the PCB (Circuit Board).

However, the phone is now in working condition once again, and looks as good as it did before I dropped it (except for a small crack in the new screen I made trying to pry it out before discovering the real purpose of suction cups!

Having paid for the repair, I’ve almost spent as much as taking it to the Apple Store would have cost. If I’d taken it straight to Andy, it would have been fixed at a lot less than the Apple store – and I wouldn’t have broken the earpiece connector!

So the moral of this tale is that you shouldn’t try to be an expert in everything (the old phrase being “Jack of All Trades, Master of None”) – my clumsiness and not-so-delicate fingers are not factors that make me an awesome technician, but quite the opposite.

My skills lay elsewhere, and it took a hit to my wallet to remind me of this. In future, I shall focus on things I am good at and rely on the expertise of others in areas where I have less ability. Learn from my mistake and you too can reduce the chance of disaster, in whatever you do. Thus endeth the iPhone-delivered lesson!

Rob Bell

p.s. The first thing I did when I got the repaired phone was to go to a phone shop and get a hard case with a front cover! Only a fool doesn’t learn from his mistakes…

Sorry for getting you all excited about my return to writing today (I’m being sarcastic, not conceited!) – my regular readers know of my ongoing health problems, but for those of you who don’t – I broke my back twice falling out of the sky awkwardly in a couple of extreme sports accidents. I’ve damaged vertebrae, discs, nerves, my hip, sacroiliac joint and various other bodyparts, resulting in my walking with a stick these days…

Anyway today is what I have come to call a ‘Pain Day’ – when my back is incredibly painful leaving me almost incapable of achieving much that particular day, and confined to my bed, blitzed my an enormous array of pain killers. I’ve managed to get onto the computer for a little while as pain killers have temporarily improved the situation, but this will have to be a pretty brief post today.

Have you come across a site called Picnik yet? It’s a very useful image editing web application – it’s easy to upload your photos, edit them and add effects then share them among your friends and social networks. It costs nothing to use – although there is a pro option if you want extra filters and the ability to upload infinite pictures. If you don’t have Photoshop, or Gimp, you’ll find this a very useful site when you have photos you want to edit eg to get rid of red-eye, or you just want to make an existing photo more fun with special effects -

Check out vampire Rob…

So get yourselves over to Picnik – you don’t need to have a Photoshop-sized budget to do great work on your photos!

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a far less pain day – I have a meal out in the evening so it better be!

Rob Bell

What do you know about Net Neutrality?

Chances are, you haven’t heard of it,or you’ve heard it but don’t really know what it is – and you know what the scary thing is? If Net Neutrality is ended, the Internet as you know it is gone forever, split into a fast lane for companies with money and a slow lane for small businesses, individuals, clubs and societies – in fact, anyone who can’t afford to pay ISPs to have their site in the fast lane. ISPs may even completely block access to sites who aren’t able to pay them.

e.g with net neutrality, Small Biz A and Large Corp B can be accessed by anyone using ISP C, at the same speed as each other.

If there were no net neutrality, Large Corp B would be able to afford to pay ISP C – so that ISP C’s customers could access Corp B’s website at the highest possible speed.

Because Small Biz A cannot afford to pay ISP C, users are not given the same high speed access to the website of Biz A, so it takes longer for users to load the page and access Small Biz A’s site – giving Large Corp B a massive advantage. Maybe Small Biz A’s website couldn’t even be accessed by users of certain ISPs.

This reduces the ability of Small to Medium Size Enterprises to compete online with larger businesses, turning the Internet into a fast lane for those sites who can afford to pay, and a slow lane for those who can’t.

Barack Obama Recognises the Importance of Net Neutrality

In November 2007, before he became President, Barack Obama gave an important speech to Google about Net Neutrality – it’s 51 seconds, so have a quick watch before you read on -

Barack Obama also spoke of his support for Net Neutrality when he appeared on MTV:

Small Businesses won’t be able to compete online anymore, Clubs and Individuals will lose traffic, members and new visitors, and You and I will have to surf an Internet dominated exclusively by massive international brands. You won’t see Blogs that are self-hosted, no uploading your pics to a site that’s currently free. It will be a bleak and frankly rubbish place to be.

It will add an additional cost to businesses, which they’ll no doubt pass on to you, so you will end up paying more to stop small businesses, not-for-profits and individuals from having an effective presence online.

It will ruin online innovation – startups often bootstrap initially, flying by the seat of their financial pants until they achieve profitability. The additional costs to be given access by ISPs and get on the fast lane would often be prohibitive – if we didn’t have Net Neutrality, today’s online success stories might never have happened. The likes of Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google and many many more might never have existed if they’d had to pay out massive amounts of money, just so users could access their sites. Imagine if you’d never been able to access Facebook, Yahoo mail or Gmail or been able to buy books. Imagine if you’d never had access to Google, or Yahoo…

Virgin Media in UK are Against Net Neutrality

Over here in the UK in April 2008, the CEO of Virgin media stated that he is against neutrality as it’s ‘a load of bollocks’, and wants to charge people for enhanced speed access to Virgin’s internet customers – in fact they are ALREADY doing deals with media companies. If Virgin are your ISP they could already be limiting your access or speeding it up to certain companies – does that concern you? I think it should.

In my opinion he has undone years of Virgin’s branding work, where they aim to be perceived as slightly rebellious and maverick, but always on the side of the customer. By coming out against net neutrality, he has shown his company to be anti-user as far as I’m concerned.They also seem to be at odds with the overall feling towards Net Neutrality – and in that way, are acting against the interests of their customers by applying speed variations – if indeed they are, as chatter on forums would suggest – do a search on ‘virgin media limiting speed’ for yourself!

It’s the one thing that’s put me right off Virgin, and I find myself surprised that any company Richard Branson’s involved with would act with such anti-progress ridiculousness!

Virgin Media’s position on Net Neutrality -

I have boycotted Virgin products since last year as a result and will continue to do so until they publically agree that Net Neutrality is the right way forward for the whole world.

I get my Broadband from BT – who say, according to the Stop Virgin website:

“… Unlike Virgin, we think the bandwidth we provide our users should be equal for all services and if services like the BBC iPlayer put too much strain on the bandwidth, both ISP’s and content providers should educate the users on that issue so that users know when and why they may have to upgrade their account for more bandwidth if it exceeds ‘fair use’ terms. We always bear the consumer in mind first and have no plans to prioritize traffic from third party companies. We welcome all the Virgin customers who left because of the net neutrality issue and offer ‘neutral’ bandwidth.”

It’s not too often I say it, but ‘good on ya, BT!’

There are lots of resources you can see via SaveTheInternet.com , YouTube and via the search engines. This 3 minute video explains Net Neutrality in some detail:

Even Ninjas recognise the importance of Net Neutrality!

That’s why it’s so important you support Net Neutrality – Net Neutrality is what makes the Internet the massively useful global phenomenon it is today. Without Net Neutrality, the Internet would suck!

On September 21st, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission in the US) Chief ‘Boldly’ Committed to Net Neutrality. In a speech at the Brookings Institution, Genachowski said the FCC must be a “smart cop on the beat preserving Net Neutrality against increased efforts by providers to block services and applications over both wired and wireless connections.

Visit Savetheinternet.com to find out more, and see how you can help make sure the Internet of tomorrow still gives you the freedom to choose what you access.

Rob Bell

Marketing is not Promotion People – Get that in Your Heads.

Promotion and Advertising are tools used within a Marketing programme when a product or service is ready to be launched. There’s lots of marketing needs to be done before that stage  though.

There are so many people around claiming to be marketing experts because they’ve undertaken promotional actions to some degree of success – that doesn’t make you a marketing guru that makes you a promotions guru.

Marketing is much more than just promoting products – it’s researching markets, identifying opportunities and problems, developing services and products to solve those problems in a manner a customer would like  setting up and testing Marketing campaigns, using above the line-, below the line- and digital- methods to formulate, execute and analyse the success of each actitivy, something that is particularly easy online given the availability of data, constantly testing and refining promotions as needed. And eventually, the product is ready to go, hopefuly with a well-armed knowledge of the new market that will allow him or her to dominate.

Market Research

A true Marketer knows that any product needs research prior to committing, here are just 15:

1. What’s the size of the market?
2. Who are the major players?
3. How competitive is it?
4. Have you done any Keyword Research?
5. What’s the customer profile?
6. What are people in the market desperate for?
7. Are there any problems there you can solve through your product or service?
8. Are you asking people in the market if they see a place for your product?
9. Would they buy it or try it out and give it a mark out of 100 for you??
10. Are you doing usability studies?
11. What’s the best way to reach your target consumers? It’s not always going to be online, many niches can found away from the computer.
12. What are the best factors to identify in order to do competitive analysis? Price, Features, Quality, Exclusivity – they’ll be different  for each market
13. Does your product represent what you want to sell to them, or what they want to buy from you?
14. How could you change the former into the latter?
15. Where can your potential customers be found?

Next time, I’ll look at competitive positioning and discuss how understanding a fairly simple topic to grasp can help you know more about your market than most others