Archive for June, 2008
Firefox 3 release party… not your typical girls night out!
Friday, June 20th, 2008
There was a fire in the hole…. By that, I’m just talking about firefox’s London release party last night, which was held in the basement of the Shooting Star tavern.
(more…)
Tags: firefox 3, launch party
Posted in Events | 6 Comments »
Au revoir Typepad!
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
Typepad was such an excruciatingly painful experience that we’ve taken drastic measures and exported everything here. Hooray. WordPress is such a joy to use in comparison. We’ll be working on customising the template over the coming weeks.
Tags: blog
Posted in Announcements | Comments Off
Social Media Dinner at the Curry Leaf
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
We went to the Curry Leaf last night for a mini social media/advisory dinner to get some input on how we can make BView better. Special thanks to Maz Nadjm and Lloyd Davis who came along and imparted some wisdom. I’d also like to say a big thanks to Jim, early supporter and legendary reviewer, who also joined us.
In addition to talking about BView and tools we can add we also talked about PR, the changing role of PR and what PR means to businesses at either end of the size spectrum.
Jonathan Hopkins was with us and his general views on PR are captured well on this post on his blog. In summary: the Internet has/is changing the function of PR and those that work within the industry from an external, arms length agency to a day-to-day advisory role. This is scary for large businesses but awesome for small businesses where PR can be done more easily and more directly using sites like BView where businesses can connect and talk directly with customers. Another interesting point made was that working with the platforms now that will facilitate engagement in the future is far better than trying to work on those platforms in the future i.e. get in early and be part of the team that helps build the platforms people use.
Oh, and the food was good especially the Prawns and the Lamb Sula. The Leaf has always been a favourite haunt of ours and they have treated us well.
We’ll be having another get together soon and if you’d like to come a long and get to know us a bit better or add some ideas to the mix then contact me via private message.
Tags: dinner, social media
Posted in Events | Comments Off
We are leaving Typepad
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
Quick post to state that we are leaving Typepad as soon as we can because (Grrr):
- the support is shockingly bad
- nothing ever works the way you expect it to
- the stylesheet was a nightmare to implement
- the interface for blog editing is terrible
- the text editor creates line breaks for no apparent reason
- we have to repost everything about 3 times to get the design looking OK
WordPress, here we come.
Posted in Announcements, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Mashups/Being Digital Conference
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
I went to the Mashups/Being Digital conference yesterday. Here are some basics about conferences:
- Wear a T-shirt with you brand on it. It’s the cheapest advertising you’??ll get.
- So you attended and none of your colleagues
did? Try and tell everyone what you learned ,what happened, and any
trends you picked up on. If possible, get any presentation materials
afterwards to share around. If this fails then go to slide share as it
may have been posted there by the speaker independent of the organisers. - If you fast discover that the speaker/debate
is a waste of time then cut you losses and find someone to speak to
outside of the auditorium.
My thoughts on the conference itself?
The conference was subdivided in to rough 1 hour slots covering:
advertising, content, social, local, search, retail, identity. The format was a “speaker”? (or two) would give a presentation-based talk on a specific area which was designed to inspire a debate on the area.
I don’t think this worked. Presentations were cut too short and the debate that followed was frequently very weak. It did’??t always fail:
the identity section worked because: i) the moderator was very good and knew her stuff, ii) the panel (?) also knew their stuff at a technical and business level, iii) the presentation given was educational.
Summary
There was a faux debate around whether there were new rules or old rules for advertising. The essence of this was that context counts. Andrew Gerrard was blatant in his promotion of his own services. Shame on you. Kate Burns probably emerged with her reputation intact if not enhanced.
In the subject of identity and Open ID, Simon Willison gave a good presentation which I found educational (what I know about Open ID is not significantly better although it has helped me understand that it’s not all it is cracked up to be) and Wendy Grossman did a great moderation job truly adding value rather than just asking set piece questions.
On the subject of content the ITN representative essential stated that they were laggards in the technology space and would always be so.
Peter Miles was impressive while the service being offered by Put Place tells me the net top thin client is even more of a reality.
Andrew Grill
moderated the local section well and Tim Warr was a good speaker even if his presentation threw up more questions than direction on future tools.
The social debate was pretty poor and the panel spent a lot of time vaguely raising awareness of their own service while not actually giving any insights. Which reminds me of a post I read on Rob Hinchcliffe’s blog. I let you decide what piece I refer to.
I would rater have seen Loic Le Meur in person than a short video. Yes he is well know, yes he has interesting things to say but this was simply a means of having the conference benefit from his personal brand name.
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Free Amazon Vouchers
Monday, June 9th, 2008
Here’s the crack: since our launch we’ve seen an increasing amount of quality reviews about businesses come in from our users. Your reviews have been funny, well written, and massively helpful to people looking to make informed choices on who they do business with.
We want this culture of quality reviews to continue. So from today we will be offering £10 Amazon vouchers for every 20 reviews you make on BView. Its just a little gift from the makers of BView to give you rewards for your reviews.
So what’s the catch? There is none!Just remember your reviews should focus on the quality, reliability and value of any business. Its all about QRV!
To find out more go to here.
Posted in Competitions, News | Comments Off
Release 2.0
Thursday, June 5th, 2008
We’re always working on ways to make BView.co.uk better, and this week we’ve released a load of great new stuff for you (as the eagle-eyed will have already noticed!)
The main new features in this release include an onsite inbox for privately messaging other users and a Post board for public messages. The post board has replaced the blog function (a decision made thanks to your feedback!) Both the inbox and post board can be found on users profiles.
We’ve also given the profile pages a makeover and added an all new “I Work at” section allowing you to link yourself to your employer and tell people what you do. This will eventually help you build your networks with other users. Check out my profile to see it all in action, and while you’re there, why not leave a message on my post board or contact me and say hello?
Feedback also suggested there wasn’t a lot of love for compliments, so we’ve simplified them to Votes – don’t worry, compliments for your review have still been counted.
From these recent changes you can see that your feedback helps us to get the right changes made to BView, so keep in touch.
Posted in News, Product Updates | Comments Off