cubemate | Dan Ng

links for 2007-12-31

• Google Talkabout: Merry Christmas, God Jul and 圣诞快乐
  Via PSFK. Real-time translation in chat by Google.
  (tags: translation realtime chat google bot)

Orange You Glad You Don't Have Orange Broadband?

Greetings from Ohio.

I haven't been posting regularly from London for a few months now because my Orange broadband service has been out at home. Incredibly, it costs me 50p a minute to call their technical service line and I've called about fourteen times totalling up to about 70 quid ($140 USD). (It also has the effect of looking like I've been calling inappropriate pay lines regularly.)

Each time I call the Indian call centre, some very well-trained person reads through a script, and listens carefully to my problem and then 'escalates' my case to a 'field team'. Of course, that extra time spent doesn't hurt them too much because I'm paying them the equivalent of £30 an hour for the privilege. In fact, they refuse to call me. They keep telling me to call them back to check on the non-existent repairs because they make money from each bloody call.

I would quit, except that the cancellation fee is the balance of my contract (about £120) and I just won't give them the satisfaction of getting money for nothing. I've asked them to stop billing me while I'm waiting for my line to get fixed, but they won't. I'm paying £20 a month but they will refund me, in theory, when it's all fixed, for what I've paid them and for what I've paid to BT for the technical support calls.

I suspect that the problem is that Orange still pays British Telecom for access to their residential phone lines. Orange probably doesn't maintain the lines and when something goes wrong, they are at BT's mercy. In other words, I think Orange is just a call centre in India and a billing centre in Slough. There's nobody with an Orange jumpsuit (think: X-wing pilot) running around fixing lines. It's all a sham.

There are not enough polite words in the language for me to warn people away from Orange Broadband. It is a good service when it works, but the moment something goes wrong, you end up paying for it, quite literally. And you could be out of commission for months, with no resolution in sight.



If anyone from Orange UK is reading this post, here's a hint: don't bother advertising underneath customer rants about your poor service delivery. (Click on image to go to the original negative reviews.)

My Location is Now Their Location

Google have gone and done it - they've put mobile phone tracking out there in the world of everyday users. This is big. Now we've got to face facts: a mobile phone can betray your location (and this isn't just a hypothetical or paranoid idea anymore).

Recently the Federal Trade Commission in the US decided that the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google could go forward, brushing aside concerns about invasion of privacy. To them, their legal responsibility was the protection of markets in the interest of competition. I'm much more concerned about the protection of our individual privacy.

So why does it matter if Google can read our e-mail, or track our web surfing, our movements by mobile phone, and our search histories? At worst, they'll serve a few more targeted (and perhaps creepily handy) ads, you might be telling yourself.

Ask yourself this - if an advertiser were to deny you a preferential rate on a house loan, or a car loan, would it matter? If a potential employer knew that you had a medical condition would it matter? Google doesn't necessarily know this type of information about you now, but it very well could. It already reads your Gmail and could pick up e-mails about a medical condition. It could see that you've been searching for debt counselling. It could see that you've been visiting a casino or a doctor's surgery in your spare time. None of this behaviour should affect the way that companies treat you.

While companies acting on privileged data on people's buying habits or medical conditions could be breaking the law, if you sign a particularly bad End User Licence Agreement (EULA) for your Google services, you might be granting them the right to use all of that data as they see fit. That car you need to get to work might be harder to come by. That job offer might mysteriously disappear.

Could Google do it? Let's put it this way: the Google cluster has been downloading and indexing the entire internet for years now. Do you believe that they couldn't?

"Is your cellphone company more evil than evil?"

links for 2007-12-30

• The Year The Industry Broke - News Story | Music, Celebrity, Artist News | MTV News
  Via Russell Davies.
  (tags: 2007 copyfight riaa music business)
• Eighty Things to Watch in 2008: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
  Via Ed Cotton. Poor Benazir Bhutto died before we could watch her in 2008 and I've already committed Facebook Suicide, so not a bad list. It's an old trick of fortune tellers - predict a lot and some of it will inevitably come true.
  (tags: predictions 2008 JWT)
• YouTube - Net10 - Agent
  "Is your cell phone company more evil than evil?" In light of years of terrible service from every phone company I've ever used, yes. Great idea and clever execution.
  (tags: cartoon cellphone advertising)

links for 2007-12-29

• Where Hip-Hop, Martial Arts and Chess Meet
  "Hip-hop is a battle game," [RZA] said. "Chess is a battle. Martial arts is a battle."
  (tags: hiphop RZA WuTang chess)

links for 2007-12-28

• Fountain of Youth? Go Wash Your Face
  (tags: antimarketing skincare)
• Same Small-Car Stew, Stirred and Reheated
  When I moved to the UK I was surprised when I saw a European Ford Focus - well-built, a good drive, and a best seller.  Now whenever I return to the US I'm again surprised by Ford's unwillingness to use the European version at home.
  (tags: Ford Focus automotive)
• Google Public Policy Blog: Analysis: The FTC clears our acquisition of DoubleClick
  Surely the FTC has a responsibility if not a mandate to protect the public as well as competition. "Privacy not a part of the merger review. Though we strongly believe in protecting our users' privacy, the FTC clearance decision reaffirmed the law..."
  (tags: Google DoubleClick merger privacy FTC)
• Weblogs rack up a decade of posts
  Via Matt Jones.
  (tags: bbc blogging history)

Happy Christmas from Tribal and DDB London

Animus / Animal at Flickr

The year's almost done, but not without noting some of the hectic going-ons at DDB UK. We hired in the illustration collective Peepshow to do up our reception (photo above, with more available here and here.)

We also sent out a matching Peepshow e-card to our DDB London clients. The money we saved in postage went to supporting Earth-friendly cork farmers through our clients WWF.

The Local Shops of Paddington

The Local Shops of Paddington from Dylan Harrison on Vimeo.

I've been moonlighting.