What Is The Point?

Everywhere you go now tries to foist some kind of loyalty card , with the promise that you can earn "points". The reasons for these are to capture information about you in order to lure you into buying far more than you want or require.

There are a few that give a reasonable reward such as the 4% given by Boots and the free WIFI with Starbucks . But then you have the awful returns on Nectar and WH Smith cards.

Basicall my three are Boots , Starbucks and Tesco and I aint too keen on on Tesco!!
Also quite amazed to see that Tesco do Cars!!

Facebook and Leicester and Me

Before Facebook I knew one person who originated from Leicester , and leicester to me meant a football team who did well under Martin O'Neill and Walkers Crisps and Gary Lineker. Since I joined up with Facebook people from Leicester pop up with alarming regularity in my Facebook encounters.

I've met players of Mafia Wars ,Scrabble and now I find the guy from one of my favuorite record shops (RPM in Newcastle) hails from Leicester. The latest incident was a guy asking about a Supercharge CD who actually went to my old school , but is now Director of Physics at Leicester University.

I've never been to Leicester , but everyone I've encounterd from there have been absolute top people, which is maybe the reason I don't live in Leicester , I obviously wouldn't meet their quality control!!

Kindles and Kobos and Bright Shiny Ribbons

I see WH Smith have brought out their own eReader , the "Kobo" (did you see what they did there , the anagrammatised the word "book". Part of the promotion push is that there are a million free books . Very strange that and the WH Smith eReader on my Advent Vega came with no free books , and the obly way to get books was to buy them. In a huff I installed Aldiko and am happily working through my free copies of Lovecraft , Hope-Hodgeson , Howard and other classics.

The Kindle and it's associated free software also bost and impressive range of free books . The Kindle boast a decent advertising campaign , the power of Amazon and lots of other things going for it. The Kindle is the same price as the Kobo , so what is the Kobo's selling point , the Kindle s ubiquitous and almost becoming a generic name.



We shall see how the Kobo goes but I see the bargain bin beckoning ........

Multimedia @ The BBC

Lots of people complain about the BBC and "why should I pay the license fee when I dont watch it" (apart from iPlayer , radio etc etc. Over the years , apart from the excellent David Attenborough helmed  natural history programs (Frozen Planet is his current masterpiece) , the BBC has recorded numerous music sessions by some excellent bands .

This month has seen the release of some excellent collection from TheYardbirds , Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple , that latter for some reason incorporating CD and vinyl copies in the same box , surely you dont need both!!Though over the years I've accumulated ELO and Bowie at the BBC introduced by Bryan Matthews, and am waiting for a definitinive Half Man Half Biscuit compilation which would surely sell by the barrow load. Anyway this could be another reason to succumb to Orange's excellent Christmas Box package to get my hands on the Angle & Curve Headphones for a £40 outlay (with a PAYG phone , piggy bank and other extras thrown in).

Today I took a copy of the 40th Anniversary copy of Tago Mago by Can from the excellent RPM in Newcastle, on the player now , think the Stone Roses had been listening to Halleluwah!! . The Orange is calling harder ......

Orange Temptation

I don't need a new phone , yet. But Orange are giving away an excellent value Christmas box with any Pay As You Go phone over thirty pounds (plus ten pound top up). The blurb goes like this:

"We’ll give you a free pair of Angle & Curve headphones worth £60 when you buy any pay as you go phone priced at £30 or more. It’s all part of our Christmas gift box"


This is the power of advertising , I keep finding good reasons to go out and buy a phone I dont need. I also dont need headphones, If I did I could by a perfectly good set of Sennheiser Headphones for £20 , rather that fork out the £40 my free gift requires.

As yet I haven't given in to temptation but I have been close . This is the essence of a brilliant advertising campaign, get people to want to buy , even though they dont want to or need to .

Very good Orange!!

An Orange Widget

This is a very short post to check out widget creation , and see if I can sell the odd iPhone. I do find it amazing how Apple products are spreading  every where , every music player has an iPod dock and according to "Q" magazine without Steve Jobs we would have no music!!

Though this is at a time where Orange have just produced an excellent Muppets based Goldspot advert to promote Orange Wednesdays film nights!!

Steve Jobs - Fur Q

Q's Idiot Side Bar

I know I shouldnt have done it but I did. It was "Q" it had U2 on the cover , but it had "Achtung Baby" covered by the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode and Patti Smith , it was worth the risk right?

Well the album is generally exceelent if not exactly what expected , so that was a win.

However I then flicked through the nagazine ad came across this article titled "5 Ways Steve Jobs Changed Music" ,  Err let me stop you there , Steve Jobs / Apple have nothing to do with music , unless you count things like Garageband . Jobs was an OK guy and a master of marketing. He never produced or supported music unless it's ultimate aim was to make money for Apple.

1: He Made Music Truly Mobile: Did he well we've had portable radios since the late fifties , the walkman allowed you to take any music anywhere , mini disc and CD and micro HD drives increased that , then Apple jumped on the bandwaogon with a better looking product that still uses a non standard format for everything it touches!!


2: He Invented The Shuffle: Pardon CDs did random play , even with the 10 disc jukebox in your card . The iPod Shuffle was a masterstroke of marketing . It's hold 250 tracks that it can play in any order and you havent a clue what you are listening to and Apple marketed this as a desirable attribbute . Pure genius.

3: He Revived The Singles Market: Well only when downloads started being counted , adn I reckon Amazon and a lot of others did the same thing at the same time . Again a good marketing move.

4: He Changed The Retail Landscape: Er Amazon did that way before Jobs was properly up and running. Allowing peole to cherry pick albums , well I've been doing that from ripped CDs for years. Again nothing new and was pleased when Pink Floyd won the case to sell albums as albums!!

5: He Made Your Favourite Bands Go Digital: No he didnt , and Q still manage a cheap stab at AC/DC . Bands go digital because there is a market , End of discussion.

So basically a rubbish article about an OK guy , a marketing genius who got lucky and was in the right place and the right time.