2008 April Archive at Deadpoet’s Cave

Monthly Archive for April, 2008

Paul Scholes, he scores goals!

Published

acroamatic

on Wednesday, 30 April 2008

in Sports

. 0 Comments

Scholes, he scores goals

Well, just one last night - his first in almost a year, but an important one for Manchester United.

Another game which United did not control, although the players did not give away the little possession they had as easily as they did in the first leg.

On one hand, I felt it was an underwhelming performance. United fans have been pampered with attacking football throughout the season. Lately, there have been lots of draws, a couple of narrow wins and that unfortunate debacle at Stamford Bridge.

On the other hand, United are back in the European Cup final! Restricting Barcelona to no goals over two games takes some doing. So what if the match stats look damning?

Moscow, here we come! Bring on Chelsea or Liverpool.

Unrelated note: If Thaksin sacks Eriksson, he’s nuts. Owners and fans don’t give managers any time to build a team. Good luck to the blue half of Manchester.

Photo from The Times.

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New customer service paradigm

Published

acroamatic

on Tuesday, 22 April 2008

in Musings and Tech

. 3 Comments

On the bus this morning, I remembered reading about customer service in yesterday’s ST. The main thrust of the article was that Singaporeans love to bitch and moan about things in private, both online and offline. Not many want to make a stand by sending in an official complaint or take their grievances up to CASE.

Must a complaint be sent through official channels before it is acted upon?

No doubt most blog owners consider their blogs their own personal sphere. Those really paranoid about privacy will have totally private blogs. The rest are at least vaguely aware that anything they say there can be surfaced elsewhere. It’s probably a “it’ll never happen to my blog ‘cos I don’t say anything of public consequence” mentality. So, those who complain on their blogs never expect anything to be done about it.

This is an opportunity to surprise customers!

There are many tools to track mentions of your product/service(s). Google Alerts is a good place to start. Subscribe you your company’s name or some other relevant terms. Let the complaints and compliments - bloggers do give praise when its warranted - go straight to your inbox.

The rest, as SDU once (in)famously proclaimed, is up to you. =)

Do note, if your product/service name is too generic, trying to track online mentions might be tricky.

Photo by Michael Porter, from here,
reproduced under a CC by-nc-sa 2.0 licence.

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Not since 1965

Published

acroamatic

on Tuesday, 1 April 2008

in Singaporeana

. 3 Comments

If Melbourne is to Australia,

and London is to UK,

is Singapore to Malaysia?

Sorry, Metblogs, not since 1965. Or do the people at Metblogs know something that we don’t? Hmmm…

Thankfully, it’s not Singapore — China!

UPDATE 18 April Micamonkey highlighted this to the powers-that-be at Metblog. It’s rectified!

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Today EasyReader - Not so easy

Published

acroamatic

on Tuesday, 1 April 2008

in Media Watch and Review

. 0 Comments

Today has to be commended for providing readers with so many ways to access their newspaper.

There’s the physical copy, available from MRT stations in the morning, and 7-Eleven and Cheers outlets in the afternoon.

If you can’t get those, there’s a $10/month subscription. Get the paper delivered to your doorstep every morning. (They claim the money is entirely for delivery.)

They also provide two online versions - text only as well as a full PDF version. It’s really nice to be able to see the whole newspaper as it appears, context, photos, advertisements and all.

Besides the full content, you can get headlines via email or RSS.

And all these for free!

Now, there is one more way to access the paper online: EasyReader.

While this is to be commended, it leaves a bit to be desired. (It’s beta, but I’ve tried lots of beta software which is a lot more stable.) I won’t go into the download and installation woes I experienced on the first day it was announced, since they’ve apparently been solved.

The good: It provides all the articles with colour photos, no ads included. It loads fast too.

The bad: The first issue is formatting. As you can see from the screenshot at the top, the words of the article are both above and below the photo. Just a tad difficult to read. Increasing the font size doesn’t help.

There also seems to be a bug. If you minimize EasyReader, it becomes a tray icon. If you try to maximise it, you get this:

It happens every time I do it, so it’s definitely a bug.

Last problem: there’s no Mac version. *growl*

Finally, something that is not good or bad. I wonder what the notes function does. I created a note on the page. Will I have access to it in the future? How do I keep track of the notes I’ve written? Can I share the note and the relevant article with others? Now, that would be really sweet.

Providing a free copy and providing unfettered access to the paper online are probably the key reasons behind Today’s high readership, second only to ST. That and the fact that their journalists are as good, if not better, than those at SPH.

It’s early days yet, but I appreciate all the ways that I can read Today. EasyReader, I’m sure, will improve over time and close the gap to ST’s readership. Just don’t get rid of the PDF version!

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