A few years ago, Johannes Haushofer published a CV of failures. In it, he lists all the grants he wasn't awarded, positions he didn't get, papers rejected. I think that people need to be more open about failure. None of us are perfect - despite what our social media presence says - and all of us suffer rejection. But, by being open and honest about it, we make it easier for others to realise that they're not alone. In that spirit - here, in no particular order, are the recent jobs which I…
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Earlier this week, I blogged that some people were too stupid to use QR codes. I concluded, by saying You’re not too stupid to understand how to make effective use of QR codes. The “commandments” are mostly just common sense. Use QR codes wherever they seem appropriate – but make sure that they’re scannable, work for everyone who scans them, and lead somewhere useful. Y'see - I don't think people are too thick to use QR codes. Most of the time... My Isle Of Wight There's a new campaign t…
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HTML is a complex beast. Especially when it comes to languages. I don't mean the difference between English and French but between UTF-8, Windows-1252, and all the other methods for encoding text. When it goes wrong, you can come a cropper - take a look at this advert for the BlackBerry. Somehow a character has crept in to the text which can't be rendered by the browser. BlackBerry? Advert? Immediately, one gets the sense of a poorly tested advert - one which probably goes to a dodgy s…
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What Are Twitter Favourites? Twitter allows you to mark certain posts as favourites. You may do this for a number of reasons - because you thought it was funny or interesting, because you want to reply to it later, or as a general bookmark feature They're Private, Right? Wrong. You can see any Twitter user's favourites - even if they've protected their tweets. You can't see the tweets of protected users. Here are my favourites http://twitter.com/edent/favorites You can also see who has m…
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I know a thing or two about mobile websites. The last 4 years of my life have been spent obsessing over them. I wouldn't claim that the sites I run are the best in the world - but I've picked up a thing or two about how a successful mobile retail channel should work. Nokia's Ovi gets everything wrong. I'm going to show you 25 easily avoidable mistakes in the new Ovi Store. Here's how to make a successful downloads platform: Make it easy for your customers to buy things. ...er.... …
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I try so hard to like Nokia. Their hardware is second to none - but when it comes to software and services, they haven't got a clue. They've just announced a new app store - Ovi Store. This is to replace the broken mess that is Mosh, N-Gage, Download and the current Ovi. Why do I get the feeling that there are several fiefdoms within Nokia all working against one and other rather than working together? So, let's take a look at the new service. Nokia Ovi Store - Wow! Wow... just wow. A b…
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