Year: 2008

Woolworths gets defeated by homeworking mum

Woolworths have big red faces over an entry in their Big Red Book. This is their catalogue shopping service that also features online. The problem is that no-one at Woolies realised that the word “Lolita” had sexual connotations when they started selling a bed with that name. Worse still, the

Here’s a special offer: “Scam Awareness Month”…!

Today sees the start of the British Government’s “Scam Awareness Month”. Councils across the UK are backing the Office of Fair Trading’s campaign to make us all aware of “scams” that cost us dear. Shame the OFT doesn’t know about it – or at least doesn’t appear to. According to

Is it any wonder a recession is on the way? Nobody is doing any work..!

Gosh…! Is it any wonder the “R” word (recession) is now being spoken about openly. Already the US authorities have cut interest rates twice in a week in a massive bid to prevent the country falling into an economic downturn. And UK commentators are saying thinks like “when the US

“A Levels” from McDonalds? A lesson for Internet marketers

McDonald’s is one of the first companies within the UK to start offering qualifications deemed to be the same standard as at A-level. Whether you actually need such a high level qualification just to flip a burger is debatable. However the idea is that different companies start offering a variety

Societie Generale and the missing £3.6 billion

You would think that it would be easy to find the £3.6 billion missing from one of France’s biggest banks. After all it’s not a small pile of money. Somebody must be able to spot it. So where is it? What most people seem to have ignored is that if

General

How to dramatically increase your online productivity

Xobni is one of the most fantastic applications I have seen in goodness knows how many years of looking at computer software. Never before have I reviewed a piece of software either for myself or for a computer magazine and have been so bowled over so instantly. Xobni is actually

The Internet isn’t global – it’s local

People tend to work not very far from where they were born — indeed, in the UK, the average commuting distance to work is just 8 miles. Most people in the UK, live within about 10 miles of where they were born. We don’t actually travel as far as would

EMI blames the Internet – but it’s not the online world’s fault

So EMI has announced that its set to lose about 2000 people worldwide. In a major restructuring of the music company announced today, the boss has suggested that digital downloads of music are part of the problem. For years, the music industry has been telling us it is struggling against

Your online business needs insurance against problems

If your online business suffered a problem, would you be able to cope? I don’t mean problems like not getting enough traffic or not getting to the top of the search engines. What I mean is something that would actually prevent you from doing your work. What if you were

We are about to witness the death of television

Sir Michael Grade tries his best to talk up ITV, but he must know his service on the brink of doom. For several years, TV advertising has struggled. Indeed, six months ago I wrote about how television advertising was hard to come by. ITV, in it’s interim report, says that

M&S sales figures show absolute need for the Internet

Sir Stuart Rose, the boss of retailer Marks and Spencer, was on TV this morning defending his company’s fall in sales figures over the Christmas period. The High Street giant saw a fall of more than 2% compared with the same three months in 2006. Even though Sir Stuart presented

Appeared in Facebook book

Dennis Publishing has just produced “Facebook: The Complete Guide to Social Networking” in which yours truly features prominently on page 11 including a big picture of me…!