I’m still here! Just not had much time to post. 2010 is drawing to a close and I still haven’t done that thing that someone asked me to do…

I leave you with a little poem for the modern networker.

Ode to the networker

We all ‘network’ with someone we’ve never actually spoken to, give them a call soon and wish them a happy new year.

Your website deals with a lot of potential customers for you. It’s the passive salesman standing out of the way of the customer, but always there when needed. It’s very easy to forget about him and ignore the people he’s dealing with.

DON’T!

I just unsubscribed from a newsletter after seeing a fantastic example of a company with poor understanding of their audience. (at least the online marketing team)

The company in question I use to buy car parts; brake pads, calipers, spark plugs, timing belts etc. for the rare car I have. They are a nationwide company and very popular for the DIY amateur car mechanic, of which I am one.

Today I received their newsletter of offers, the first in 3 years of my dealings with them. The featured “grab my attention” article forcing me to open the email, wasn’t about squirrels chewing through brake lines, or budget vs branded air filters or the benefits of winter tyres, it didn’t introduce me to a new technological advance on biofuel engine conversion possibilities or a spark plug revolution. The article instead used 6 paragraphs of prime “let’s show ‘em what we got” newsletter space to tell me:

How to check your oil level.

I would guess that 90% of drivers know how to check their oil levels, so the 10% might be worth aiming for…  However lets go back, this is a company selling car parts, not air fresheners and baby seats, but wishbones, utility belts, distributor caps and suspension struts. Of the 10% of people who don’t know how to check their oil levels, how many are realistically buying these parts online?

If this were Halfords, or a similar high street car bits and bobs for your every day driver, then educating the 10% of people running on low oil will make them a small fortune, but this is a company who focusses almost entirely on selling parts to DIY mechanics. Any diy mechanic who can’t check the oil level should not be allowed within 10 miles of a motor vehicle.

Your website is a salesman, he should be completely up to date about your company or business, he should have all the information and be able to give it at the right time. If he is trying to educate people, make sure his information is tailored to the people standing in front of him. Don’t alienate 90% of your clients to attract the final 10% who wandered in by accident while looking for Homebase. Alienate the 10% and keep your 90% of good, quality, loyal customers coming back.

I will continue using this car parts company, they are good at what they do, but they’ve lost the ability to market to me despite me being their perfect customer.

Web marketing is fairly unique to offline marketing in that the technology and trends are changing constantly. Audiences move from site to trend by the time a campaign hits the last one.

April fools day coupled with the random 1-2-1 webcam website chatroulette provided a great opportunity for one soft drinks manufacturer to show that they are indeed looking into these new crazes.

ChatRoulette provides an interesting platform and who knows what the potential is here. This is however a very slow and narrow market especially for someone like Dr Pepper who rely heavily on volume rather than quality sales, would someone be able to use the same platform for quality sales?

This video however is topical, has been well edited, it has elements of the reality ‘hidden camera’ which has always been popular. So may well go viral. I’m assuming this was the goal of the campaign from the get-go.

At this time, the video has been seen only 27,000 times but it has already surfaced on viral sharing websites so keep an eye on it.

No amount of Jargon-free sales pitches will ever truly get across the benefits of working with Zako Media. But for a REALLY dumbed down version. I turn to my old friend XKCD who help keep me sane in times of computer trouble, car trouble, dog trouble… well general problems:

I don’t do this often but I’ve just had an interesting discussion with DRT Auto used car sales and servicing company in Clydach Swansea. A brief history; I saw DRT Auto advertising a few cars on ebay and decided to pop up to Clydach and see what used cars they had in stock. A rather nice Mazda MX6 caught my eye and we started it up and made the basic checks. I spoke to the owner who seemed very defensive when I asked about his returns policy/warranty. He told me outright, they’ll bring it round, I’ll go for a drive and if anything’s wrong, he’ll give my money back.

The day came and DRT autos did indeed deliver the car, pointed out the absence of one brakelight and then left… no test drive, no checks, no nothing. I sorted out the insurance and went for a quick spin around the block. (I’m not used to manual cars so didn’t put any pressure on it.). I picked up Yovina in it, dropped her off and picked her up the next day. Looking outside the window, I noticed a large puddle, after investigation it was spewing water from the water pump. Driving it in this condition will damage the engine, so it’s housebound. Also checking through MOT rules (which is due shortly), the handbrake cable was dangerously loose, one other rear light was missing, and the drivers seatbelt didn’t retract smoothly… After an MOT check, all 4 brakes needed new pads, 2 needed new rotors, and the ABS was failing somewhere causing the warning light to come on. Also one of the suspension struts had failed and the steering had excessive play. This combines made it unfit for purpose under the sale of good act. It also makes it dangerous. Non-essential problems include interior boot light full of water, the heater blower and a/c didn’t work. While minor issues, they did advertise it with A/C. This will be too costly to repair given the value of the vehicle and the complete lack of pressure in the system.

I called DRT Autos straight away and started with the Water pump which they said they would sort. 3 days later, I called them back and they now want to charge me for the repair work and part!

After research, selling a vehicle in this condition is illegal and I am fully in the belief that they are completely liable to repair these issues or offer a full refund. They unfortunately aren’t liable for the heater resistor pack I bought, the Haynes manual or spare bulbs, nor are they liable for the Air conditioning, the water pump nor some of the many other issues this car has. I will be contacting Trading standards in the morning because DRT Autos is not conforming to UK law, have given me a rather expensive and dangerous oversized paperweight when I asked for a car, which I could drive, road worthiness should have been assumed. Trade Centre Wales have just been fined £5000 for a similar case.

In the meantime, I have no car to speak of and am fuming. I have places to go and more importantly, Yovina needs to get to work every day!

*UPDATE 9th March 2010*

Phoned the garage back, I’ve decided to get them to do the work paid or not. If they do charge me, and it wasn’t just an error, I will then go through trading standards. I spoke to the same guy who said the mechanic had a heart attack and is in hospital so they probably can’t do it this week… Part of me wants it to be true so that they’re not just making excuses, the other part doesn’t because well… heart attacks aren’t good. He also told me it should be ok to drive provided I keep topping up with water… do I believe him? Given the MOT failure, this is illegal advice. Posted this question on an MX6 forum so will see what the replies are.

*UPDATE 10th March 2010*

Had a missed call at 8am this morning from DRT Auto. I called back mid afternoon and spoke to the same person as yesterday. The guy who suffered the heart attack is back at work today. (In the days of the credit crunch, I doubt DRT Autos offer sick pay (although I could be wrong) so a speedy recovery is essential.) The person I spoke to said he would come round after work to have a look at it… 20:16pm he’s not arrived… 11th March – Still heard nothing. Will try calling again but keep getting engaged tone… This blog is currently top in Google for ‘DRT Autos’

*UPDATE 11th March 2010*

DRT Auto Mechanic with a heart attack is off again. He offered to come by tonight but I arranged to take the car to their garage tomorrow at 11… At least there I can’t get fobbed off or ignored.

*UPDATE 18th March 2010*

I went in last Friday, the heart-attack mechanic had a look and confirmed it was the water pump. I mentioned the ABS light (which is an MOT failure and potentially dodgy brakes) he just swore about his own nightmare with these and says it’s pretty much a gamble when they come on and off. I tried to explain mine was always on but he went back to another car he was servicing complaining that the water pump replacement was going to be a hellishly long job.

The boss came wandering over and asked if he’d ordered the part, I said I have no idea, he wandered off, came back and said they’ll call me in a couple of days to collect and repair the car… almost a week on, I’ve heard nothing…

*UPDATE – 29th March*

DRT auto still don’t have the part. I phoned Eurocarparts (5 mins from Clydach) and they said they would have one the following day. Indeed they did. I now have a water pump and various other parts needed to make this car roadworthy and legal. The ABS brake problem I’ll need to head to a garage for, as with the brake fluid leak I can’t find. I frankly no longer trust DRT Auto to fix so I have been advised to keep all receipts for any parts and labour and Trading standards will hopefully be working to claim as much back from the garage as possible.

When I first visited, the mechanic (the one who later had a heart attack) complained of people braking into the grounds, smashing windscreens etc. I have a feeling I know why, they probably sold them a car too.

*UPDATE – 10th April 2010*

It’s official, I sent the car in for an MOT. Rear brake disks excessively pitted. Excessive play in steering system, Serious leak in 1 shock absorber leaving it with negligible damping effect, parking brake recording little or no effort, ABS faulty.

I found the brake fluid leak and tightened a bolt to keep it contained. I have also given the seatbelts a good clean to aid their retraction so these managed to get through. Alarmed at everything else wrong with it. Drove in with MOT report he booked me in on Monday to repair and booked an MOT on Tuesday.

*UPDATE 19th April 2010 *

Brought car in to DRT Autos in Clydach as requested on the Monday for repair. He sent me to the cafe to talk to heart attack guy for costings… At this stage I don’t care about prices, I just need this done before I commit suicide. We walked back up to the garage and he made a list of parts. He then sent me home and said he’d order the parts in and give me a call then started whining about their incompetent suppliers… deja vu here, we’ve done this bit with the water pump… They still don’t have one of these in the garage, I asked. I guess we’re missing the MOT booking tomorrow then Dave? 6 weeks and counting. Still no water pump, and quickly losing my sanity!

DO NOT USE DRT AUTO IN CLYDACH, THEY SOLD ME AN UNROADWORTHY VEHICLE ILLEGALLY AND HAVE BEEN NOTHING BUT TROUBLE EVER SINCE

*UPDATE 18th October 2011*

DRT Autos have changed their name a few times but still never got back to me. I paid for the repairs with other garages namely Mitch’s Auto services who did a fine job on an exhaust when the rust bit through and DL motors who helped with CV boots and my last MOT. These have both been brilliant. DRT Autos it seems are still trading, the names appear in comments from other unsatisfied customers below. I can’t accept liability for these as I have not dealt with David at DRT since.

I should also add that Trading standards is a load of poo. I spoke to the CAB who basically told me ‘Buyer Beware’ and that even if I did win in court, I would have to give the car back before they owed me a refund and even then they could delay payment or claim poverty so I would be without car AND money. Consumer protection when buying from dealers is on paper only and doesn’t really exist.

I occasionally watch these ‘customs’ docusoaps on TV where they send drug sniffer dogs into airports and cut open children’s books to find stashes of cocaine in the cover. It’s all fascinating stuff, and it’s amazing to see what people try and get away with.

I’ve always wondered however, what happens if they get it wrong? What if they cut up an expensive camera only to find it filled with the usual set of electronics, or deface a child’s toy to find it completely empty or harbouring a little sand from the beach?

Today I found out, they just put the pieces back in the box and deliver it. A friend returned a USB 3G modem and cable from Australia by post. Thankfully the modem survived, but the cable is unusable:

There were no stickers on the package, no apology, no £5 cheque for a replacement cable, just a broken cable and bits of surgically removed plastic! I don’t know if it was done by UK or Australian customs, I don’t know why, they didn’t even bother to properly reseal the package, it was just stuck down with the same glue Jen used to package it to start with and dropped through my letterbox by the postman.

I hope this doesn’t happen too often, think of those children opening a stuffed bunny birthday present only to find it had been decapitated by some overzealous customs official.

Thank you whoever you are, for not cutting up the modem and various other things I have posted from abroad. Next time, a little post-it with a handwritten ‘Sorry’ would have been enough for something of this value. At least that way I’d accept it’s part of your job to destroy other people’s things.

After buying a tripod for the animal rescue video project (more on that later), I decided to experiment. This is my first attempt at a virtual tour. If I can perfect the technique, perhaps we can offer it as a service. For the time being however, there are too many niggling problems at the moment.

Not bad, but could be better. Click and drag image to view. (may take a while to load on slow connections)

Some people have commented on my use of ‘coffee expert’ mentioned in blogs, business cards and website. I once worked as a manager of a coffee shop in Hemel Hempstead. My proudest achievement there was trebling the coffee bar turnover by arranging outdoor seating with the council, at the time it was strangely unheard of, at least we were the only ones doing it.

Anyway as part of my training I had to learn everything there is to know about coffee from it’s origins right through to taste variations of different beans, altitudes and even soil types. After what was a surprisingly interesting course, I could make an educated guess on the regional origins of any unblended quality coffee from just one sip.

The ‘serving suggestions’ part was a much shorter course unfortunately so we never covered coffee art. Check out below, it’s much easier than it looks, I’m going to try some!

Google have been approaching the social market for some time, rumours have spread about the potential to buy Twitter, at one point Facebook were also eyeing up this microblogging platform before taking their own steps and adapting their news feed into a media rich frenzy of status updates, chipmunk videos and people finding strange objects in their farms.

Today Google have launched Google Buzz, it does everything the ‘better’ facebook version does but has the portability of Twitter, it also allows you to integrate all your existing social networking activities into one including Google’s own profile pages. Finally with Gmail integration, it’s easy to keep up to date without an extra window. It works on iphone and android mobile devices out of the box. so head down to http://buzz.google.com and watch the official Google Buzz video below.

So far I’m following just a couple of people, none of whom have actually made their first update, it’s a little quiet but as Google have a huge number of subscribers already to it’s other services, who knows where this will end up.

Will it replace Twitter? Not yet, Facebook tried and haven’t but there is potential for it to grow quickly with it’s subscriber base so watch this space.

Google talk hasn’t replaced Live Messenger, Google voice hasn’t replaced Skype, Google Docs hasn’t replaced MS Office and Google’s Chrome hasn’t replaced Firefox. However Google Mail, Youtube, Google Reader, Google News, Google Maps, Google Skymaps and Google Search have all rocked the world. Perhaps I’m sceptical about Google Buzz, but only time will tell.

Well it’s happened again and inspired me to write a short blog. Digital photographs (including scanned, downloaded, stolen from Google images and digital cameras) are known as bitmaps. ANY TIME a photograph or video (different to some line drawings, see later) reaches the computer screen, it is converted to a bitmap (if it wasn’t one already). A bitmap is a grid with a finite number of pixels (digital cameras are measured in Megapixels (10M, 5M etc.), computer screens are also, 1024×768 etc), each pixel is assigned a colour. When these tiny pixels are zoomed out, shrunk down to individual points, the squares appear invisible and we see a complete photograph of a tree/landscape/dog/your mum.

When we zoom into the bitmap, these squares will become larger and detail in the photograph is lost. There is no way to magically split a pixel out into it’s composite parts, it is a single colour and nothing more, the information isn’t there to enhance! A low quality image or video will ALWAYS BE a low quality image or video.

I can’t blame you for thinking it is possible. I mean Hollywood shows this happening all the time, but it is physically impossible with today’s technology. Even future technology will not be able to improve photographs and videos created with the old technology. It’s IMPOSSIBLE.

Scan back to the start of the film… enhance the image. See the guy in the blue coat on the floor in the reflection of the computer screen. Enhance it, turn him round and lift him up so we can work out how tall he is. Look, can you see what he ate for Breakfast? Check his stomach contents, looks like it came from McDonalds on Regent Street at 11:02-11:04am this morning, lets go speak to Magda who served him to get an ID.

It’s just NOT possible!

The exception comes with some digital line drawings (with or without colour) but not all. The rule of thumb is, unless a graphic designer has issued you with a vector format file (Illustrator, Fireworks, Some PDFs etc.) then it’s probably not high enough quality to enlarge or print in high quality. Most images from your old website will be shrunk to just the right size for the screen, generally these can not be enlarged, printed for publication or improved upon, including logos. These would need to be retaken, redrawn or the original obtained.

Tomorrow’s blog: Time Travel – why a new website and graphics cannot be designed, built and tested before last week.