PingFM

OK so when a team of developers claims to be powered by " folk music and sugar-free Red Bull" it generally does not engender confidence, but Adam & Sean over at pingfm (http://ping.fm/) have both a great sense of humour and (sorry guys) a better product.

The basic idea is that you can enter your status and ping it out to multiple sites. This is so simple you can type "off to lunch" and automatically update over 30 social networking sites including the three top sites, twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Now that’s impressive, but when you figure out you can send that ping from over ten different methods provided by the developers its fantastic. This includes the main IM clients, email, SMS iPhone and WAP.

However, I am not the only one that loves the product, other developers do as well. This means that people such as twitterfeed (http://twitterfeed.com/) will take this blog entry, shrink it create a link to the original article and send it to my ping account (more 3rd party apps listed on the site and in Wikipedia) . Ping will then take this and ping it out to all of my many social sites so my 2 followers [ :-( ] can actually choose on which of the social sites they are linked to they want to read this from. Also my favourite WM6 client ceTwit (http://www.kosertech.com/blog/?page_id=5) will send direct to ping just I case I forgot to send the message be fore I left the office or after I am at the Bar (must remember not to do that again). This all meets my cardinal rule of data being "entered once correctly at the source". Bonus points for anyone that knows where I stole that one from, but you will first have to admit you follow my ramblings.

OK so it is free and it is beta so it has a few issues. However, the ping team have the fervour of people truly passionate about what they do and the system has only occasionally been down materially (i.e. more than 2 mins) and then they kept people updated on twitter (http://twitter.com/pingfm). As I work in pretty much every time zone I tend to notice other people that do the same and these guys really burn the midnight oil when there is any sort of issue.

You can find some more information over at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping.fm) or go over there and sign up for an account and start pinging (http://ping.fm/)!

Oh as well as text they also support pictures and have me convinced they will support video soon.

I now just have to hope they are making enough money to be happy and not have to sell the tech to someone that is not as passionate as they are!

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Technology

Well I do not generally repost other peoples stuff here but this one sort of blows your mind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

 

 

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Zones

So what is a travel zone?

 

Well in Belgium that depends on the bus! Travelling from same point A (airport) to point B (hotel) but before my normal time (see why below) and got a different bus (same bus company). So it travelled the same route (slightly more stops) but the cost was doubled????  Apparently the zones are not defined by minor things like geography, but by the bus company deciding how may zones the bus travels through. So as this bus route had more zones I paid more, sort of made sense. Checked up that it was not a wayward bus driver being evil to the Brit, but that is basically how it is here!

Of course I would have been a LOT more upset if I had of been paying London Bus prices, where it costs you comparatively large amounts of money just to get on the bus!

 

OK so the reason I left early is because I got bonus points….

I am doing some SOX acceptance testing, you know 5 mins to do the test 3 1/2 hours to document the test!

The bonus points relates to while running tests last night I managed to kill the whole system (killed the App server). Probably a sad indication that it is the most fun I have had on project this week :(

 

I gave up at that point and went back to the Hotel

 

You name it we break it!

 

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Trains subsidy and service

Well the article on the BBC yesterday (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7897903.stm) and today's Journey on Thalys brings a few comparisons to mind!

 

I agree with the BBC that I as a tax payer should not necessarily be subsidising people that travel on the trains and that that cost should be borne by the travellers. As a long-term London resident I remember Ken Livingstone's finally deemed illegal "Fares Fair" policy where I was forced to subsidise all of the people that commuted into London.

 

However, they did not cover the difference in service which is also huge. As I write this I am sitting on Thalys (minimally subsidised) using my free Wi-Fi for a 2 1/2 hour train journey that cost me under GBP100 for first class. For this I get automated seat allocation, clean, uncrowded trains with staff whose English is better than my French. A recent UK train trip of similar duration was no where near as attractive. My 2nd class ticked was more expensive, only partial seat allocation and double booked to boot, oh and no Wi-Fi. On pointing out that they had multiple reservations for the same seat the line I got was that a "ticket does not guarantee at seat". On asking if as seat reservation (that they charge for) guaranteed a seat I was told to find another one. OK yes at that point I got a little stroppy (well a lot stroppy to be honest) asking which persons lap I should sit on as there were over 30 people standing in that carriage already. I also refused to allow the staff member to leave until they had provided me with written confirmation that they had double booked my seat and there was nowhere to sit so I could obtain a refund for gross misselling. As which point giving up on threatening to call the transport police I was upgraded to first class. The weirdest thing was that half the carriage clapped as I had overcome this jobsworth (oh its more than my jobs worth mate). I have no idea if this is a damming Indictment of the rail company or a commentary on the repressed nature of the British public.

I lived in California for quite a time and expect to pay for service (20% tip is the norm), but unlike most Brits, I will complain about bad service. Before one of co-workers comments, yes I do stroppy and pain in the ass rather well.

 

So I will continue to try and avoid travelling on British trains where ever possible. I will also add Thalys, like Eurostar to my preferred method of travelling.

 

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Further Ed

Well for those of you that are reading this because I am some mad brit wandering around the world breaking things, rather than actually knowing me, I am a bit of an education junkie.

 

I sort of decided when I went into full time education to do my MBA, that it was kind of fun. And no that was not just for the cheap student union beer as one of my friends states. As all of them are business related (no catapillar counting course in Antigua) they are tax deductible and give me something to do when I am stuck in the hotel on projects where there are no other away from home consultants to bitch about the client with :)

Obviously any course that requires I physically rather than virtually attend is a nono, with the exception of my CPA which I did in a one week immersion in between roles. Great for passing exams, but terrible for actually remembering anything long term!

After being quite lucky and getting home most nights for a while, I am now back on the road and the bug has bitten again.

 

Now I like being a mine of useless information and the different hats (accounting, business & technology) gives me some great insites to clients issues and methods to reslove them. It may not get the company clients (as I don't use most of them professionally, it make me look too "ivory tower"), but it generally does make the client come back again.

 

This is a personal itch that I have to scratch and previously only had one instance of entertainment from it. This was in a project steering comitte where I was being paid to shift the lines of business into new metods of working by the CFO that I had worked with at a previous company. One head of business cut me off in the middle of a presentation saying it was irrelevant and what would a techie know about it! Golden rule number one, if you are going to slap someone publically, make sure you have a bigger stick. So realing off ALL of my qualifications and the relevant University (I do love the top school researchers and staff to discuss issues with so they are worth the extra money) it was quite fun to watch them wilt and refuse to answer my question about their qualifications.

So I have just had another instance of fun. After applying for another ourse, I had the dean of admissions no less, phone me up to ask me why I wanted to do the course. Now for anyone that has had an interview with the dean of admissions, this is generally not fun and I normally have "discussions" around how I am going to complete a course sucessfully without atending enough of the lectures. But this call was completely surreal as the dean was completely obsequios. I still do not understand why, but it was really nice for the shoe to be on the other foot for once.

 

Was ther a point to this, I do't know I can't remember. Oh well time to go and break something!

 

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Belgium Planning

Ok so planners are not my favourite people at home due to lots of "issues" around my extension. However, they look absolutely fantastic compared to some of the Belgian ones.

 

The one that drove me crazy today, is my bus stop! Now this is on a major 4 lane highway where even the Express bus to the Airport (where I currently work) stops as it is the entrance to a large business park.

 

So You have a nice bus shelter on a concrete base for which I was glad as it was raining this morning. What drove me crazy was that there is actually no way to get to it except walk in the road (no) or walk on the grass (read mud) as the pictures show.

Joined up planning, I think Not.

 

I did get a message about moderating comments when I logged in today and accepted them all (honest), but I am getting errors both with IE7 and Firefox updating the site? Your guess is as good as mine!

 

Oh and YE HA I actually have a follower for my rabid ramblings.

 

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Belgium Planning

Ok so planners are not my favourite people at home due to lots of "issues" around my extension. However, they look absolutely fantastic compared to some of the Belgian ones.

The one that drove me crazy today, is my bus stop! Now this is on a major 4 lane highway where even the Express bus to the Airport (where I currently work) stops as it is the entrance to a large business park.

So You have a nice bus shelter on a concrete base for which I was glad as it was raining this morning. What drove me crazy was that there is actually no way to get to it except walk in the road (no) or walk on the grass (read mud) as the pictures show.
Joined up planning, I think Not.

I did get a message about moderating comments when I logged in today. I accepted them all (honest) but cannot find them after Explored died on me with "malformed request". Hopefully they will turn up somewhere!

Oh and YE HA I actually have a follower for my rabid ramblings.

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New Hotel

Well I found the new hotel last night so did not wind up sleeping at the office (Its happened a few times)

 

It is a nice little place with breakfast included located in a nice residential area. The only down side so far is that being residential, there is nowhere to eat locally and the hotel only serves breakfast.

www.hobbithotels.be

 

Oh well hopefully I will not be so tired tonight and I can find some where!

 

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Bad Service = Bad Decision

Well I really do not like the logistics part of this job at times.

Despite my older posting:

http://randombusinesstraveller.blogspot.com/2009/01/brussels-apartment.html

 

I have wound up with a "discussionette" with the company. This revolved around two areas. Firstly guess what, rental came up due for march and they had doubled their price :( Secondly as this followed a week where my room was downgraded, but I was not refunded (i.e. overcharged 100 Euro) the difference in room rates.

I have had a discussion both with the property manager as well as the company owner/CEO to which I got the Belgian equivalent to the Gallic shrug.

Now this type of behaviour in a service industry is bad business. During a global recession it may be close to suicidal, as customers do have the ability to go else where.

 

Guess what I can save money, by staying in a Hotel for four nights a week rather than paying for their apartment and this is exactly what I have done.

 

Not the outcome I wanted, as I liked the apartment (when I got the one I paid for), but not enough to pay well above the market rate.

 

Hotels, operate on a form of CVP costing. i.e. they have high fixed costs but once they have covered them the rest is pure profit. This is why the key measure in a hotel is its occupancy rate. So the apartment, could have done a deal with me and got a guaranteed contribution to their fixed costs for the next six months. They chose to follow the commodity pricing route, which if they are regularly going to have 100% occupancy rates is the right choice. However, I as someone who can read the reports on travel and tourism, think they just threw away guaranteed income against wishful thinking.

 

Oh well at least I saved some money!

 

 

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Smoking Ban

 

OK so can someone please explain to a dumb Brit, why our federally minded friends in Belgium have imposed a smoking ban in public places UNLNESS you happen to be in Brussels?

 

It was a real blast from the past last night going into a bar with a local friend and having to cut your way through the smoke to find the bar!

 

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Internet Shopping

Well and inherent issue related to what I do is the general inability to go shopping for presents.

Ok true international items like jewellery I have found all over the world, much to my wife's (I Hope) pleaser.

But where you are looking for a specific item, even if you have a local store, you have very little time at home to actually go, browse and buy. This is before you get to the sometimes horrifying premium you pay for this level of distress purchasing.

Of course the answer to this is internet shopping. However, the big problem for this is that the business model that allows some of these people to offer exceedingly good prices on such a low margin also makes them unable to offer any sales support.

This means that when your lovely purchase dies, sometimes getting it repaired is [designed to be] nearly impossible so you give up and just buy a new one. Of course if you are [not a business] in the UK and are not completely crazy, you brought your goods with a credit card.  This means if it all gets too crazy, you phone the credit card company and they legally have to sort it out or refund you your money. This is not to say they do not need to be reminded of the law every so often, but legally THEY are selling you the goods on credit and they are legally responsible for the transaction. <rant off>

 

I have had two experiences recently that bear mentioning:

The first was with www.amazon.co.uk.  Now having brought a semi expensive electronics Christmas present for number 1 child, it proceeded to die before the new year set in. so the process was as follows:

1 fill in form at site

2 Receive replacement goods within 2 working days (along with stern warning to return defective goods within 30 days)

3 Receive information on printing label and collecting courier company

4 Call courier company and arrange collection at my convenience

5 Receive email from Amazon stating goods have been relieved and RMA is closed.

Now that is a grown up company with high tech logistics that you normally pay a [small] premium for, but still less than a bricks and mortar shop. Guess what, I have spent a lot of money there and will continue to do so.

 

The second one was more surprising and therefore more pleasing. The same child having saved up all of their Christmas money and some other cash, decided they wanted to buy a [very specific] fender guitar. Now I was involved in this transaction solely to enter a credit card information. So after a few checks on the site and the [small] company (www.PlayRecord.Net) I entered the relevant credit card information and the guitar arrived.

The look was exactly what no1 child wanted unfortunately the sound was not. As it was still the holiday season I was home and the online store was now closed, I took it to our local friendly music store for a check. (They did not stock the very specific guitar and could not get it within the time required by no1 child) The result of which they agreed that either the guitar had never been setup correctly or had met some misfortune (not physically apparent) since it was set up and gave me a price to remedy the issue.

As this had been my first purchase from the store it was with some trepidation I contacted them by email and explained the issue.

There response was unequivocal. They (along with me) were surprised that the fender had obviously failed quality assurance, but told me to have the guitar adjusted locally and to send them the bill. I have just received the refund for the (not cheap) setup of the guitar to my credit card.

Not only was this done without any begrudging of the cost, it was done with an air of surprise and apology that I had to go to any effort.

Guess what next time any of the kids want something musical (don’t ask), I will be straight off to www.payrecord.net to get both a great price and fantastic service. A shame more businesses cannot follow their excellent business model!

 

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Computers at Brussels Airport

Well a funny incident at duty free today.
The whole computer system went down, resuling in long queus. The funny part being the staff running around grabbing the baskets from people in the queues then running around the shop to get prices and codes.
The whole effect was reminiscent of the keystone cops and anyone that was not enraged was rolling around in laughter.

Sent from my Windows Mobile® phone.

Business or Pleasure schizophrenia

As social sites proliferate am I really the only person having this issue?

 

I work as a professional and so reputation and references are key to my employability. The problem with this is it means I am trying to maintain two very separate personalities across various social sites. One is a trustworthy professional that should be allowed to spend millions of dollars worth of company money and the other is a baby brother of an ever so slightly kooky family spread out across the world.

 

My personal mantra is I do not care about a persons race, creed, colour, gender (born or current), religion or sexual preference. I just care about if they are "good people" or not. This position has made me very lucky with my friends who have to make some effort just to talk to me occasionally. However, professional services is often about perception, especially in an area where you may be controlling significant volumes of the companies money and trying to deliver a specific business benefit that is sometimes intangible.

 

Security is one side, either all of your passwords are the same or like me you use  a tool such as Roboform (http://www.roboform.com) to generate and track all of you different passwords and identities. (I must write something on their 2go products and the joys of U3)

 

The other problem is you start to get a bit confused as to who you are today. Also with so many sites I use like twitterfeed and ping.fm updating multiple sites, I am thinking I need to get out my drawing tools and create a network diagram, just to make sure none of my rude or unprofessional PERSONAL replies, end up on my business social sites.

 

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London Has Snow Vancouver has Fog!

This came to cheer me up from a friend in Vancouver

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Eurostar Again

Well the buses a all cancelled today in London. Trains are already cancelled or expecting severe delays. Many schools are not opening.
BUT Eurostar for Brussels left on time!

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Rip Of Roaming

OK so I will admit that I am currently somewhat addicted to my windows mobile phone.

 

But with my current gig in Brussels, especially as it is fixed price, I have been looking at mobile roaming for voice and data.

 

An excellent resource is http://www.roamingsims.com/ for voice calls. The general principal being that if you have an unlocked phone you can use one of these services to receive your calls for free.

Of course as a business person with all of the business cards (hopefully) floating around the world, changing your phone number twice a week is impossible. The simple thing being before you swap your SIM's just divert your "home" mobile number to the roaming SIM. This works well. Of course this means your mobile operator is not making a fat profit for allowing you to use your phone abroad, which despite the EU's intervention on roaming tariffs they still do. Also it does mean you will burn minutes as you will pay for the call to be forwarded. But as you should be making less to no outgoing calls this should be ok as long as you manage it.

Now do test this out but some of the tricks used by the mobile operators are:

Forwarding your number to another mobile is mysteriously (on page 9872) not covered in your inclusive minutes

Forwarding suddenly takes a long time with a "we are now forwarding your call" message appearing from nowhere.

Your forwarding suddenly gets "reset" to Default

 

Now of course none of our mobile operators would undertake such anti-competitive and illegal actions by design [ :) ] So to check up on these "accidents" I just call my home cell from the office first thing in the morning. If one of these overnight "accidents" has happened, you just put in your home SIM, cancel any diverts and then enable the diverts again. All if fixed until the next "random accident"

 

One of the other things with using one of these SIM's is as the generally have no data connection, you do not have applications phoning home and running up obscene data roaming charges. (don't get me started ) All I generally do is plug my phone into my laptop and it piggy backs off the back of the laptop and syncs everything it needs. All of my replies etc get synced when I get to the next location. This may all sound a bit difficult (and yes I am a bit of a closet techie) but my last client happily (?) paid my data roaming charges as I wandered around Europe for them. with a GBP 1k data roaming charge not being unusual, a little but of difficult is worth it on a fixed price job. Besides what else do you have to do in the evenings???

 

I may rant some on our friends the banks next time. It irritates me that I get paid in Euros, have expenses in Euros, but have to pass everything through UK banks and get ripped off with fees in both directions. Now when I worked in the US getting local Business and personal accounts (with required web access) was no problem (OK other than ID they understood), and moving cash was super easy with my friends at sterling exchange (http://www.sterlingexchange.co.uk/). But doing the same in the Euro zone at any reasonable cost is impossible.

All sensible suggestions gratefully accepted

 

 

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