Just to let you all know that due to our huge workload and the deadlines we are meeting by the end of December, our Blog is going to be snowed in this Christmas! Our next entries will be posted during the first week of the New Year, when we return from our Office Winter Break. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and the best of wishes for 2008! 
The latest campaign that we have been working on for 118118, with PR agency Resonate, is Caroloke! Aiming to resurrect Carol singing in the UK, 118118 runners are hitting the streets of London and recording the public singing carols. For every video uploaded on to the site, www.caroloke.co.uk, 118118 will donate £1 to the NSPCC this Christmas. Off the back of our campaign, ITN recently broadcast the following footage:
Whilst the coverage of chimpanzees being smarter than humans is actually distorted (gasp, not FOX news?!) it remains a certainty that any of the chimps from these tests [http://tinyurl.com/3935bm] could never work for a certain telecoms provider in London (the clue is in the blog image). For legal reasons I cannot (yet) name the total idiots who managed to wipe out our phone lines and internet within 24hrs so let’s just refer to them as S*itfire.
The issue arose when some plonker at S*itfire processed the transfer of our phone lines to our new Soho pad. Normally not an issue but when they do it 3 weeks early, without an exchange at the new office, you can see the start of the problem. Then, said plonker loses our phone numbers and instead of call forwarding sets up call redirecting (the irritating voice that tells you to dial another number). A few hours later and the internet goes down too. Inexcusable. Infuriating. Made even more so by the fact that our Account Manager at S*itfire realised the mess and then decided to avoid all calls from us throughout the rest of the day. The icing on the cake had to be when they stood their ground and said it was our fault and that we had given them instructions to do so… and they had the proof! A fax with instructions. It was indeed a fax but the “instructions” we had allegedly written were not on our copy of the original but handwritten (by them) on the fax.
Apparently, they are working around the clock to resolve the issues but let’s see what happens. There are a few interesting points that come from this:
1) They have most certainly lost the contract for telecoms infrastructure for Neoco – so any recommendations gratefully received.
2) Amazingly BT have been great so far (touch wood).
3) Apparently they do not actually have chimps working at S*itfire… just very good human impersonations of chimpanzees.
The “Auntie” of information online has finally lifted up her skirt for us to have a look and the view is… well, a little disappointing. The BBC site has looked the same for years now and a redesign was definitely on the cards - what with the focus being on 800×600 resolutions when the UK average is now (at least) 1024 pixel displays.
The new homepage design allows users to customise their content and experience. The interface is simple and clean, adding (or removing) articles is literally a click away. Large ‘EDIT’ buttons signpost user interaction and for those new to the interweb this is probably something that feels very empowering, but the fact is that this is nothing new. In fact it feels like the whole thing is just a prettier iGoogle with a BBC logo. Which is why it is so disappointing. The BBC could have made a real statement with this and instead of just keeping up with the Jones’ (or Google and Yahoo!) they could have moved beyond them - winning them a lot of plaudits in the process. The now design just feels like a ‘me too’ solution. Yes, the BBC do have a lot of users who are less savvy online and they do not want to alienate their audience but I really do not think this would have been the case. A fear of losing this audience and being derided for wasting tax-payers money has lead to a ’so-so’ middle of the road solution that just brings them inline with so many other information portals.
The next part of the project is going to be interesting though, how will they roll out the new design? Will they produce several interim designs that slowly evolve the existing design to the new one or will there just be a switch over? Again, it feels like the quiet introduction of the homepage - even as a Beta - reeks of unsurity and a lack of confidence. The BBC is one of the great bastions of information and the redesign should have been an all singing, all dancing party but this was more of like afternoon tea at aunties (with her new kettle).
This week I found a really cool site, freerice.com .
The site’s aims are really simple: to provide English vocabulary to everyone for free and to help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. It does this through a really fun and simple game - you are tested on your vocabulary and for every question that you get right, 20 grains of rice are donated to the UN to help end world hunger. The advertisers on the page foot the bill.
So far I’ve raised 840 grains, see if you can beat me at www.freerice.com.
We are really excited today as we now have the keys to our new offices in Soho! Our move should be complete by Christmas and we can’t wait to set up our new two-storey home
