Apparently according to a report by O2, 9 out of 10 people who took part in their six-month trial were happy to pay for stuff using their mobile phone, instead of the traditional credit card. The technology, called field communications technology or NFC for short, works by waving or touching a mobile phone against a reader.

The technology has been tested widely across Europe and has infact apparently been in use in Japan for years now, although the take up over there accounted for less than 1% of all retail sales in 2006.

Unfortunately though the takeup here might be quite slow though due to the number of people involved in actually making it happen, and the length of time it would take to re-coup the costs and make it a worthwhile replacement for a traditional credit card transaction.

One very neat application for the technology would be paying at parking meters. You could then be sent a text message when your parking was running out. A very handy feature, although I’m sure it wouldn’t be too popular with the NCP tax collectors!

You can read the full article on the Reuters website here.

Outsourcing to India is nothing new. But today alone we’ve been cold called by 3 companies, all based in India, wanting us to outsource technical development. I’m not sure if this is good news or not really, but I do know it’s very annoying to have the same conversation over and over again! The only experience I’ve had of outsourcing to India didn’t go particularly well, so while I understand all the benefits (which I’m also continually being reminded by sales people on the phone), I’m still very reticent about the idea. That combined with my own frustrating experiences of dealing with some of the large outsourced support centres used by the likes of BT and Dell.

One thing I do find interesting is the increasing use of extremely English sounding names in the approach emails though, perhaps an attempt to sound less foreign and scary to little UK companies who might be put off by dealing with a foreign person. I’ve even had an email this week from an Indian company that are visiting the UK in the next couple of weeks and want to meet up with us to learn about “our unique India-Based Managed Service Proposition, the Virtual Offshore Development Centre”.

So Indian companies really seem to be upping the offensive… Should we, as a UK based services industry, be worried? Or should we be embracing this new pool of affordable talent and just let them do all the work?

Personally I think the time taken up today alone, trying to get off the phone to cold callers and deleting emails I don’t have time to read, puts me off the whole idea completely. But then perhaps if I outsourced all my work I’d have all the time in the world!

Bookmarks are very handy for remembering sites you like, but wouldn’t it be really neat to let your users create a proper icon on their desktop that links directly through to your website? Or even a link in the Quick Launch bar right next to the start button. Using Gears this is now totally possible as this tutorial now explains.

I’d be very interested to hear how you get on with this, what you think of Gears - both the idea and the actual reality of what Google has developed, and if you can think of any other alternative approaches for doing the same thing.

Our friends over at Wibfilm are leaving this Saturday to start their ambitious cycle ride round the coast of Ireland and in the process no doubt testing the theory that you can live off Guinness for 2 weeks!

The trip will be starting on the 11th of August 2008 and should take 14 days with on average of 87 miles a day, our intrepid explorers will be loading up their bicycles and doing their best to stay off the Guinness, whilst trying to raise the princely sum of £1500 for charity (NSPCC).

We think this sounds like a great trip and wish them all the best. If you’d like to show your support and help them reach their target, visit their sponsorship page here:
www.justgiving.com/theIrishring

Good luck guys, just remember to keep on pedalin’!

Wow! I absolutely love these new DELL computers! And I defy anyone not to think they look stunning and crave one for their desk!

Dell claim it’s their greenest, most “power-efficient consumer desktop”, as it uses 70% less power than a regular desktop and has an 87% efficient power supply. Meanwhile the packaging is made of 95% recyclable materials.

The one problem I can see though, is choosing between the 6 colour cases and the bamboo one…

Get yours here.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Friends Reunited had announced their site is now free for users - in an attempt to catch up with Facebook I presumed.

Well I’ve just seen a TV ad for the ‘new Friends Reunited’ website on ITV! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this may be a first? A community site advertising on TV? Comparison sites have been doing it for ages, because there’s direct revenue available from visitors. However with community websites, whilst visitors = popularity = advertising revenue, there’s not the same direct correlation of clicks = pennies.

So are we in the middle of a user war between yesterday’s favourite site and the phenomenon that is Facebook? Or is there no war, and just desperation on the part of FR?

Personally I think, whilst they may be able to pull back some market share, they’ve left their comeback a bit late - about 12 - 18 months too late. Every day people from classes at school are sending me friend requests on FB. Even when I think ‘that’s it, surely there’s no one else from school that’s yet to join here’ someone else will pop up. Meanwhile I’ve had about one message sent to me on FR ever. So I think FB is the place to find old friends, whilst socialising with your current ones - 2 birds with one stone (although FB messages annoy me - send me an email! Then I can ‘reply to all’ without having to log in anywhere). A quick look at the new FR home page shows quick links to ‘RAF friends’ and ‘Navy friends’, which is instantly a way to appeal to a large number of people… but I bet these people have communities on FB already.

One point that must be mentioned that whilst FR are running an ad campaign on ITV - they are owned by the TV station - so I bet they got a good rate

You don’t have to be a fan of the thunderbirds to appreciate how brilliant this ad campaign is. Using a combination of highly skilled puppeteers following choreography and clever computer work converting a digitally scanned real dancer into the image of Brains. I really love this ad; it makes me smile every time I see it. Choosing the nineties anthem “Rhythm is a Dancer” as the sound track was also a stroke of genuis!

It could well be the memorable advert of 2008 and with the imminent return of Big Brother *sigh* it’s great to see an advert which is better than most of the programs surrounding it!

Stumbled upon this post on ReadWriteWeb this morning which I found particularly interesting and had me going for a minute! I particularly like the new CPD (cost per Desire) trading model, sounds like they are onto a winner if they manage to get this project up and running!

Anyone else visit http://www.google.co.uk today and think their monitor was being screwwy?

The usually white background was black, with the text in white.

Apparently it was all part of Google’s attempt to raise the UK public’s attention to ‘Earth Hour’ and attempts at conserving engergy usage.

Earth Hour wants people across the globe to turn their lights off between 8pm and 9pm (local time) on Saturday March 29th. Cities all over the world are also holding events to show their commitment to energy conservation. http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/earthhour/

Google state on the page linked to above, that whilst they’ve ‘turned the lights out’ to raise awareness of the issue, there’s no actually benefit to giving Google a black background generally as contemporary monitors use the same amount of energy regardless of what they display.

And for all your web developers with a great idea that’ll help save the world… Google are taking suggestions for other campaigns to back/promote; just drop them an email.

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