Archive for change

Paying for online news? No, no, five Times NO!

Mar 27 | by Sam Deeks | business insight, change
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But is the Times plan to charge for online news really as bad as it sounds?

From June this year, TimesOnline (currently a free news website) will become two separate sites: the Times and Sunday Times accessible only to paying subscribers. The traditional newspaper market is in freefall and the move to charge directly for subscription to news is seen by many as a pivotal moment in the industry’s history.

In the 15 short years we’ve had the internet in our homes, we’ve become very used to consuming free content and somewhere near the top of the list has been news.  It’s hard enough to market and sell content online as it is but the idea of trying to sell something that’s always been free comes across as madness.

Continue Reading…

“I like to keep busy. It passes the time”

Nov 3 | by Sam Deeks | change
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Is your need to get somewhere stopping you from being here?

Richard Cooke got me thinking with a post on his i-Change blog.  He talks about how it feels to have lost the familiar milestones and landmarks of change; to be out in the featureless plains of your life.  It got me thinking about time, change and the present moment.  I answered:

“I used to wonder what would happen if I shut myself in a room without windows, or clocks, or routine or any familiar landmarks of change.

My theory was that if I removed all signs of change then time itself would become meaningless and strangely elastic. Who knows?

But maybe that’s a bit of what happens when we move out of the routine landscape of change (school runs, workdays, weekdays and weekends…) – when we move from one stage of our lives into another?

You asked how people deal with this lack of the signs of progress. At the risk of being philosophical (lols – hey, you DID categorise this post as ‘Values and Philosophy’)…

I remember once someone saying to me “I like to keep busy, it passes the time”. Duh? To what? Death?

I’m really not in a hurry any more to be anywhere other than here and now, in the moment. I used to be, but not so much any more. It’s not always easy, but the result is that I don’t worry about change or progress because I’m not so attached to getting from somewhere to somewhere.”

Life, the Twitterverse and Everything

Nov 1 | by Sam Deeks | change, history
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“I love this tool for cleaning up follower issues. Cannot live without it”

Saw this comment in a Tweet just now. The words “Can’t live without it” keep ringing (or is that ‘twinging’?) in my ears. This person is talking about some bit of software that let’s them prune their follower list…or something. Which is kind of amusing since most people using Twitter seem to be in a hurry to get as many followers as possible as quickly as possible.

Its not just the crazy sense of perspective in that Tweet. It also reminded me how self-referential the Twittersphere has become; how obsessed with itself and technology it is. And how grand it’s sense of it’s own place in history and its power to shape current affairs and even democracy itself.

Twitter is fascinating to watch, for sure. I read in the paper today one of the founders likened creating Twitter to putting a bat and a ball into a jungle clearing and hiding while the natives invented baseball.

Have people really reached a point where they can’t live without it? It looks like some have. Personally, I’m teetering at a point where the prospect of stopping using it is almost as attractive as using it, as I did with Facebook some months back.

Student debt poll

Aug 25 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, change, critical approach to online media
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The TimesOnline’s ’student debt’ poll: annoying for all kinds of reasons

beerandsmoke2“Would you pay an extra penny on income tax to subsidise students?” asks the TimesOnline in this worst-of-all-kinds-of-survey.

Why is this so annoying?

Firstly, because the question is pretty meaningless.  If you don’t think so, then take it seriously for a moment and try to answer it yourself.  Yes?  No?  It depends…?

It’s annoying because the issues of student debt and the way that education is funded are far more complex than this dumbed-down, ‘web-friendly’ question implies.

Secondly, because I’m not prepared to talk about subsidising education until we talk that other big student expense that never gets talked about: alcohol and drugs.

But guess what?  When did you last hear ANYONE honestly account for the part that alcohol and drugs played in their ‘£15,000′ overdraft?  Funny isn’t it?  They don’t, ever.  It’s always ‘tuition fees, books, rent, food’.

Booo!  Party-pooper!

In case you think I’m being fuddy duddy, I’ve been there and done it myself.  First as a student at university (where I spend a healthy amount on drink and drugs) and secondly as a university lecturer (where – like most, if not all of my colleagues – I also spent a healthy amount on drink and drugs).

So it’s not about a moral highground.  It’s about honesty.  In answer to your question, TimesOnline: ‘No.  I’m not prepared to subsibise ongoing cultural denial about the trouble our education system and our students are in with alcohol and substance abuse.’

Now, which box should I tick?

The Venus Project: Beyond Politics, Poverty and War….

Aug 23 | by Sam Deeks | change, critical approach to online media
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Picture 2

..but not Shopping, ok?

The Venus Project claims to be “a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture.”

Top of the drop down list of ways to ‘Get Involved’?  Why, through the Store of course, where you can purchase DVDs and other Venus Project goodies (including T-Shirts).

Sorry if I this sounds critical, but is there anyone else out there who thinks that the first thing we might need to lose in a total redesign of our culture is our attachment to selling each other stuff?  Hmmm?

Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe social media and online shopping can fix the world.  What do you think?


Can’t drag and drop widgets? That’ll be WP Shopping Cart messing things up, then

Jul 29 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, blogging technique, change
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WP Shopping Cart (Ecommerce) plugin and WP 2.8 don’t mix

Picture 2..but you’ll only have found out the hard way.  Like I did. Probably the first time you came to drag-and-drop widgets after upgrading (reluctantly if you’re anything like me) to Wordpress 2.8.

I’ve ranted about the enslavement to upgrades that you’re forced into when you start blogging (or making sites) with Wordpress.  No sooner than you get used to one version, some unknown entity decides its time to upgrade.  If you don’t things gradually stop working on your site.  Or your clients’ sites.  But even if you do, things inevitably and suddenly don’t work too.  Why? Because the people who make the free plugins you’re so dependent on haven’t caught up with the Wordpress upgrade.  They either haven’t had time, or worse, can’t be bothered since no-one’s paying them to keep up.

With Wordpress, things go down like a line of dominoes.   Just now, I noticed that the widget that comes with the WP AudioBoo plugin wasn’t showing on my homepage.  So I replaced that plugin with a more recent one.  Then I went to the widgets dashboard and tried to drag and drop the AudioBoo widget into my sidebar only to find I couldn’t.  Further exploration revealed I couldn’t drag or drop anything.  Ah. New problem.

Next step, Google and search for ‘can’t drag and drop widgets in WP’.  That led me to a number of threads in the Wordpress Codex where people had upgraded to WP 2.8 only to find themselves unable to drag and drop widgets.  10 minutes later, I had worked out that it was the Ecommerce plugin from Instinct Entertainment (!) that was messing up the drag-and-drop function in WP 2.8.

A few people offered crude, temporary work-arounds.  None of them solved the problem and all of them required a level of php expertise that would kill off all but the code-obsessed developer.

My solution? Lose the WP Shopping Cart plugin since I’m not really using it.

And where does that leave me? Stranded between WP Shopping Cart 2.5 and 3.7 and WP 2.8 and 2.8.2 with no real confidence that anything will ever work properly and a growing sense of the stupidity of the whole, idiotic endeavour.

I’ve really, really had enough running just to stay still.  It’s insane – a modern madness that I want no further part of.  There. I’ve said it. :-)

East Midlands Trains customer service: Rachel’s not happy

Jul 4 | by Sam Deeks | change, feedback
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Rachel Elnaugh isn’t happy with her automated response from East Midlands Trains customer service

Former Dragon Rachel Elnaugh booked a discounted First Class ticket on East Midlands Trains only to find that she couldn’t use the First Class lounge.  It seems her First Class…wasn’t really First Class when it came down to it.

She tells on her blog how she complained to EMT – only to receive a bland automatically-generated customer service email.  You know the kind that begin ‘Dear Rachel Elnaugh’ and end ‘I hope you find this information useful’.

From a business perspective, selling ‘First Class’ tickets that skimp on the first class benefits and leave customers with a bad taste in their mouths isn’t a great move.

Failing to communicate properly with the resulting unhappy customer is an even worse move.  Businesses seem to forget that by the time a customer is into complaint mode, they are hyper-sensitive to the quality of customer service.

It follows logically that if there’s one place to invest in the best communication skills it’s the customer service people who deal with complaints.

Perhaps it’s the ‘monopoly’ mentality of rail franchise holders that makes them think they can ignore the public’s desire for good customer service.  The reality is that falling customer satisfaction levels is one compelling reason for DfT to withdraw a franchise.

Meantime, in the absence of a genuine listening ear, people – like Rachel – will continue to resort to social media to air their frustration.  You’ve been warned!

Wordpress 2.8? What was wrong with 2.7.1?

May 26 | by Sam Deeks | business insight, change
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Who actually decided there has to be a Wordpress 2.8? And why, exactly?

evolutionI often wonder who it is that decides there has to be the next version of something and more importantly, when.  Heck, I’ve only just managed to upgrade to Wordpress 2.7.1 with its attendant joy of re-learning everything plus finding out (the hard way) which plugins no longer work.

So who is it that decides there has to be a Wordpress 2.8 and when?  And, come to think of it, why?

Look, I’m no luddite.  But the difference between evolution and upgrade-mania is that evolution happens s l o w l y.  Nor does it happen just for fun or simply because the universe’s techies need to solve problems that don’t actually exist.

Why couldn’t we have planned upgrades? Hmm? Say, once a year on the same day?  Then, we could all look forward to it together and perhaps even declare a national holiday.

Upgrade Day: a whole day off to sort out all the chaos created by the latest upgrades.

The end of Woolworths

Dec 29 | by Sam Deeks | change
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Mrs. Kau snaps the end of Woolworths in Tavistock

Shall I text her back and tell her to bid on the letters from the Woolworths’ name?

Its funny that in our culture, we’re not used to ‘the end’ of things. I’ve often wondered when will this building or that bridge stop being? When will this town no longer exist? When will the last car drive on the last road?

Because, odd as it all might seem to us, it’s all fleeting in the long run.

What’s even stranger is how much it all mattered while it existed.  People gave their lives to Woolworths, got upset about it, lost sleep over it, got angry with people in it…

And now it’s history.

Woolworths clearance: is this going to be a familiar sight in 2009?

Dec 29 | by Sam Deeks | change, news
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How many high-street businesses will follow Woolworths into extinction in 2009?

Tavistock, Saturday December 27th 2008. Woolworths. Just about everything has been sold off – including paint-splattered plastic chairs, shelf units, brackets, pinboards, crap used tools, boxes of random screws – even the store’s christmas decorations.

We visited out of curiosity. It’s not often you experience the end of something like Woolworths. It has an air about it that’s hard to describe. It’s not just that the place is being stripped bare. The people are too. You notice how they look and ask how they’re feeling – and they tell you. To hell with the company and the boundaries of ‘professional behaviour’ and ‘customer service’, they’re all gone. What’s left is people.

And you can’t help notice the things that stubbornly refuse to sell – even now, right at the end; even marked down by 80% – the plastic fake security cameras and the naff wrestling action-figures.

Who will go next in the new year? What will happen to the people who were part of these businesses? And what will fill the gaps they leave behind?

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