Urban Voodoo Machine

Saw these guys playing live today and was really blown away.  Just a great show!!

Nudging users to do the right thing!

To encourage people to take the staircase instead of the escalator, Volkswagen converted a set of steps at the Odenplan subway station in Stockholm into working piano keys. The effort is just one stunt that appears on the carmaker’s Rolighetsteorin.se or “Theory of Fun” website, which showcases efforts to get people to change by simply making things more fun.

Anyone who has read "Nudge" will recognise how important this is!

Free maps for GPS recievers

If you have a GPS reciever (not one that you use in the car, but a handheld device for trailwalking), you will find that it comes into it's own with an installed map.  Some units come with a mapbase installed, but often it is very basic (as is the case with the Garmin GPSMAP60csx).  Some have a map preinstalled, but then you have paid extra for it. With most of the devices, you can purchase and install additional maps separately.  They are available through Garmin directly or other third parties.  However, they are expensive and (in my experience) of limited use on a small display. However, there is an alternative.

The OpenStreetMap project is a wiki map project that is a free editable map of the whole world. OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth. You can download part or all of the maps for the UK for free - both with contours and providing routable maps.  The UK routable map with contours weighs in at around 250MB, but with micro SD card slots in many recievers this is not a problem.  A 1GB micro SD card will cost you less than £10.

You can download the maps from here http://sites.google.com/site/talkytoasteruk/ukmaps which also contains an FAQ and full instructions.

The instructions are straight forward and I installed it within 20 minutes on my 60csx.  The maps from what I can tell are as good as any other on the market (and these are free) and installing the maps opens up a whole new set of features on the device.  If you don't have any maps on your Garmin, I strongly suggest investigating these.  You won't be disappointed.

Geochecker

Here's another useful geocaching resource.  If you set a puzzle and want to allow finders to check their calculations, then this site will allow you to input the cache name and GC code.  It then automatically allows finders to check their location.  It generates an easier URL which you can then enter on your cache page.

http://www.geochecker.com/

It's not about the numbers. Or is it?

Here's a useful website that will take the list of your found geocaches and provide a graphical representation of the data.  You will need to be a premium member on geocaching.com to be able to run the pocket query to produce the zip file, but other than that it is just a case of uploading it to the website. 

It does seem to get overloaded on occasion and throw a server error, but I guess that is the price we pay for using a popular (and free) website. You will find it here: http://www.itsnotaboutthenumbers.com/

Once you have uploaded your zip file, you can generate various pages.  His my current summary page:

Useless customer reviews

I don't know why people feel they need to write a review of a product that they haven't used YET.  Why do people think that a review of a product you haven't used will be of any use to anyone else?  Isn't this what we have advertising agencies for?

You occasionally see them on Amazon, but this one made me smile.  It is for the review of a pair of walking boots:

"Ordered this product miday wedesday, received it Friday morning. Excellant service. Not worn the boot outside yet but it fits fine and feels really comfortable."

Having not worn the boots yet, the reviewer compelled to give it a 4 out of 5 star rating.  Thanks.  Really useful (not)!

Geocaching resources

Here's a couple of useful resources for geocaching:

Logbook templates
This page contains a number of logbook templates for a number of different types of containers: 35mm cannisters, bison tubes, magnetic keysafes etc.  Both in black and white, and colour.

Distance between two co-ordinates (long/lat)
If you are into setting up caches, there is a minimum distance between caches of 161 meters. So when you set up a potential cache, you need to check the distance from any existing caches.  Normally, this is not a problem, except in built up urban areas.  This page allows you to enter two co-ordinates and automatically calculates the distance between them.  Handy!

Multichannel delivery and customer loyalty

Yes, we have all heard how important multichannel delivery is too many organisations these days.  This is the ability to be able to deliver your goods and/or services via a variety of mechanisms (face to face, via the telephone, online etc) and to do so consistently.  It is something that has been discussed ad infinitum which makes it even more frustrating when companies still get it wrong.  Here's my ancedote from last week.....

My car insurance was due for renewal.  I took out a policy many moons ago with DirectLine.  The intial insurance was taken out online and each year they send me a renewal notice in the post before it expires.  This year's renewal notice arrived a couple of weeks ago.  All I have to do is ring up and agree the renewal, provide payment details and I am all done.  So far, so good.  However, this year I thought I would check the renewal amount (the one in the letter they sent me) with their website. Just for fun. Guess what!  The online quote was over a £100 cheaper than the renewal notice.  This can't be right, I thought.

When I rang up to point this out, I was put through to the customer loyalty department and they matched the online price.  Apparently, there is an online "discount".

How can this possibly make sense? This episode really underlines how important it is to get multichannel delivery right.  This episode was not about MONEY, it was about TRUST (my trust in DirectLine) and customer loyalty.  As a loyal customer (yes, I have been with them for many years), my reward was an over inflated insurance premium (one that was higher than the online equivalent).  Surely as a loyal cusomter, I deserve the best quote not just one that they think they can get away with.  I can't help feeling let down.  It is almost as if the company is spending all of it's time trying to attract new customers while failing to look after it's existing customers.

All I want is to be treated as a loyal customer.  If you give me your best deal, I will give you my business.  If you give your best deals to your least loyal customers (i.e. those who give their business to others currently), your most loyal customers will reward you - by moving their business elsewhere!