The moving finger

My mum and dad got a new puppy last night.

(note: not actual puppy - although I’m told she looks just like this…)

Her name is Peggy, and she’s a West Highland Terrier. I don’t know much more because mum and dad were too busy laughing at her various antics to be able to talk clearly.

I’m looking forward to meeting her.

and that’s all I’m saying on the matter.

(picture brought to you by The Newspaper Clipping Generator)

Belief in God is much lower among academics than among the general population because scholars have higher IQs, a controversial academic claimed this week.

From the Times Higher Ed Supplement

My favourite bit of the article is this comment

David Hardman, principal lecturer in learning development at London Metropolitan University, said: “It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief. Nonetheless, there is evidence from other domains that higher levels of intelligence are associated with a greater ability - or perhaps willingness - to question and overturn strongly felt intuitions.”

As the Reg says

Next week: exclusive Reg research reveals the link between obesity and love of cake.

Now let’s just wait for the Theists to come out shouting…

It’s an ancient Roman Gaming Die - Historians still don’t know what game it was used for…

I’ve got a few ideas…

Hârnmaster anyone?

(The die was on sale at Christie’s)

There’s a very interesting article over at the Atlantic Online, Is Google Making Us Stupid? which raises some questions about how our interaction with, and use of technology can not only change the way we work with information, but also how we process it - in essence changing the way we think.

This isn’t actually a new phenomenon - When we began to use written texts much more heavily for information transference, over the spoken word - it freed the audience to begin to use the information in non-linear ways. In essence it became much easier to see that B did not have to follow A.

The article rang a bell with me for two reasons, firstly, like the author and many of the people he interviewed I was a voracious reader who quite happily devoured long, complicated books, or articles in a single totally absorbed session.

The difference is - despite spending at least as much time online enmeshed in the internet as any of the people in the article - I still read that way. So *I* haven’t experienced the sense of losing that ability to concentrate he describes.

The second reason is to do with that fact that - as a professional writer - I know how much the internet has changed my work, and to some extent my life - I don’t have to remember the pithy quote, the fun fact, or the relevant statistic - I can look it up, anywhere, anytime. That means I have much more time for actually constructing an interesting and well written piece… But - I no longer rely on my own ability to remember things - and how can I tell if the information I find is right?

What do you think - is the internet changing the way you think? Is it better or worse?

Is Google making us stupid?

Jagermeister has denied any association with a renegade topless dwarf, as scrutiny over alcohol marketing reaches fever pitch

From Adnews

But I really just wanted the excuse to write a headline containing the words “topless dwarf”, finally fulfilling one of my journalistic ambitions.

My Friend Mikal is a Google Star! (about 11th in the Misc category.)

This is very cool for me.

Why? Because I was recently involved in a court case because I “unlocked” a locked pdf and extracted the data. This meant we could run an analysis of the data provided to us and ‘prove’ the other party had broken foreign ownership rules.

Which meant I had to testify to the unlocking of the pdf… The conversation went something like this…

Lawyer dude: “So - you unlocked the pdf”

Me: “Yes.”

Lawyer dude: “How did you know the pdf could be unlocked?”

Me: <thinks - if you can lock something it seems pretty obvious you can unlock it you idiot> “Umm well pdf is an open standard and I have a friend who has written his own pdf interpreters so I knew the locking mechanism didn’t have to be obeyed by all pdf interpreters.”

Lawyer dude: “…right…”

<pretty obviously this guy doesn’t understand what I’ve just said>

Me <smiles helpfully>

Lawyer dude: “Did you have other experience in unlocking pdfs”

Me: “Yes. Occasionally at a former employer.”

Lawyer dude: “Excellent, you had prior experience.”

Me: “Yes”

Lawyer dude: “And would you describe this friend of yours as an expert?”

Me: “Yes.”

… Now I’d be able add “He’s a Google Star!”

Analysing graffiti as a marketing campaign

Go on read it…

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or you’re not in Australia) you’ll be aware of the media frenzy over Bill Henson’s latest exhibition.

I’m not going to comment on what I think about Henson’s photography - but I was vastly puzzled by the results of the Daily Telegraph Poll

If they’re not art or porn - what are they?  something to do with muppets?

For a variety of reasons I’ve been thinking a lot about Executive Briefing Programs this week. For those of you who aren’t familiar with them and EBP is one of those things where Company A invites its most valuable customers (usually on a 1-to-1 basis, so you’ll have a bunch of people from Company X) to a day of presentations about how Company A can help Company X.

When I first encountered the concept I assumed it was just a very fancy product demo or sales pitch. But it turns out - that yeah - while Company A will almost certainly make more money from Company X as a result of the EBP, if you approach it like a sales presentation you won’t get the full value out of it..

Essentially it’s real-world proof about the supremacy of the 4Cs of marketing over the 4Ps

The 4 Ps are the traditional way of looking at Marketing

Product: Defining the characteristics of your product or service to meet the customers’ needs.

Price: Deciding on a pricing strategy. Even if you decide not to charge for a service, it is useful to realise that this is still a pricing strategy. Identifying the total cost to the user (which is likely to be higher than the charge you make) is a part of the price element.

Promotion: This includes advertising, personal selling (eg attending exhibitions), sales promotions (eg special offers), and atmospherics (creating the right impression through the working environment). Public Relations is included within Promotion by many marketing people (though PR people tend to see it as a separate discipline).

Place: Looking at location (eg of a library) and where a service is delivered (eg are search results delivered to the user’s desktop, office, pigeonhole - or do they have to collect them).

As you can see - the 4Ps tale a very product focussed way of looking at the issue. The 4Cs take a more customer centric view…

• Place becomes Convenience
• Price becomes Cost to the user
• Promotion becomes Communication
• Product becomes Customer needs and wants

Modern marketing thinking says that if you take a customer centric view - you’ll be more successful - and the EBP experience would seem to bear that out. Traditional sales presentations are not particularly effective - but there’s pretty solid research that shows a good, customer focussed EBP can reduce the sales cycle by about 3 months - and identify, on average, 2 solid opportunities for up sell per meeting.

Now that’s measurable return on investment