simonb.com: blog

Ever seen this on a menu?

"15% service charge not included"

Who exactly does this serve? This message is all about the service provider and nothing to do with customer service.

The service provider is essentially saying:

"Not only are you paying for our goods but there's an extra fee for the privilege of paying us money."

Or

"We like ripping off our customers."

Or

"The people who made the menu couldn't multiple by 1.15."

These lines about service charges leave a bad taste in my mouth. This is unfortunate as they're usually found on menus; always in very small…

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I've just discovered The Guardian series Disappearing Acts. A series of reports presented as an audio slide show covering skills and professions that are... disappearing. Marvellous stuff: stonemasonry, calligraphy, silk ties... Well worth a look.

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It snowed yesterday in Shanghai. Snow is a tricky subject for photography - it moves too fast and the autofocus doesn't see it. The two above are about the best of a few shots out of our office window. Done with manual focus and shutter speed priority.

In other news the temperature in Shanghai is predicted to go form -7 to +20 C. Spring is just around the corner.

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The Guardian have a map of teen pregnancy rates in the UK. The place I grew up - North East Lincolnshire, formerly South Humberside, formerly Lincolnshire - has been highlighted on the map for special mention. Not in a good way.

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An ice cream shop made the best pistachio ice cream around. It was the only flavour of ice cream it made. For years it sold well but one day sales started to decline. Some of the customers told the shop owner they should think of serving different flavours. But pistachio had sold well for years so the ice cream shop continued to make only pistachio. The ice cream shop told its customers that if they didn’t buy more pistachio ice cream, the shop would go out of business and they'd never again taste their pistachio ice cream. Some of the…

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I previously wrote about the BBC Video Firewall which seemed a bit strong for R&D videos. Well, the lads at BBC R&D have put some of their videos up on their new web site. On their web site the videos are viewable outside of the UK. The same videos on their blog are not viewable outside the UK. Ah, platforms. The interesting ones are about the move to London from Kingswood - embedded below.

Before

After

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Dan Chung (The Guardian and DSLR News Shooter) has shot a video of the Zhongguancun gadget city in Beijing. He shot the video to test his new Canon 550D cameras. But it is of interest to a geek audience because it shows what China's gadget/electronic markets are like. They're huge multi-floored malls in which you can get everything you need to satisfy your inner geek.

The video is embedded below from Vimeo.

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Shanghai's bizarre weather continues Shanghai Daily is predicting this winter will be the longest this century. I can believe it. It is currently cold, raining and thundering outside.

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According to the China Daily an average of 2.1 billion SMS messages are sent per day in China. Imagine the infrastructure required to support such volume. The monitoring systems must be huge! Gotta go and delete some junk Chinese SMSs from my phone...

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A new book shop sprang up on Fuxing Lu last week. This book shop is a little different, it sells by weight: RMB 11.8 per 500g. Another example of content being regarded as free in China. The other obvious example is DVDs. The costs are based on the media not the movie. That is, DVD-9 is more expensive than DVD-5.

In a country which keeps a tight control on (official) content, clearly content is regarded as having a value. The power of words and images etc. But at the same time it is considered to be of zero value -…

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