Daniel Bower

Getting on a bus to find out that your Oyster card has run out of money is an honest mistake....

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:20:27 +0100

Getting on a bus to find out that your Oyster card has run out of money is an honest mistake. However the bus driver can’t just let you on, you could be chancing it. Now you’re 10 minute late - and that assumes there is a place you can top up nearby .

There is a simple solution to this. Install Oyster card readers at bus stations. Not one that allows you to top us as well - that would be costly - just a reader that displays your balance or the status of any travel card you may have.

It’s a time saver, and likely to reduce the number of angry confrontations with drivers.

"I do prefer to criticise things from a position of ignorance."

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:37:52 +0100

“I do prefer to criticise things from a position of ignorance.”

- Alan Moore talking about his distaste for the film adaptations of his novels.

I think I like him more now.

I made it! screenshotsofdespair: via Daniel Bower

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:42:26 +0100

I made it!

screenshotsofdespair:

via Daniel Bower

"We’ve got easy navigation on the new website. It’s fast and convenient."

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:38:21 +0100

““We’ve got easy navigation on the new website. It’s fast and convenient.””

- UX according to Steve Wynn.

Needs sound.

Reading the web: why Instapaper is a feature and not a product

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:16:00 +0000

I was one of the early Instapaper enthusiasts. I showed it to friends and regaled them with its ease of use, explaining how perfectly it sat into the ebbs and flows of working on the Internet. No longer should you feel the need to read everything sent your way, instead just mark it with Instapaper and come back at a more convenient time. It is a brilliantly simple idea and to paraphrase my colleague Humso:

Simple things are among the most complex to master.

It stretches beyond just the idea too. The execution is wonderful. It looks great, works on multiple devices and even gives you that warm fuzzy feeling - that only great UX does - when you realise for the first time that you can tilt to scroll. Despite this however I contend that Instapaper is nothing more than a superb feature. It’s not a product. And here’s why.

Friends of mine will know that I have a distaste for RSS readers. Reading shouldn’t be reduced down to a number of unread items, it’s not email, you’re more emotionally involved with it than that. Similarly you shouldn’t feel the need to read everything. I can’t remember the last time I read any magazine or newspaper cover to cover, I cherry pick the stuff that’s important to me and avoid the rest. “Personal magazine” startups like Flipboard and Feedly solve these problems elegantly by ditching unread labels for recommendations and algorithms that push the content they think you’ll like to the top, while still allowing you to subscribe to more sites that you’re ever going to read in one sitting.

Unsurprisingly Instapaper is built into both Flipboard and Feedly. If I don’t finish reading an article inside Flipboard I can send it to Instapaper to read later. And therein lies the problem. I want to read in Flipboard not Instapaper, and what’s more I want to be able to send articles I see in my browser to Flipboard so I can read them there as well. Instapaper would make a wonderful additional feature to either of these products but it’s not a product in it’s own right.

So what happens next? I think Instapaper has a few options:

Become a full reading experience not dissimilar to Flipboard or Feedly. This would certainly take the most amount of work and puts them up against some well funded and well established opposition; however it’s the only one that leaves them in control.
Sell up. Instapaper would be a great addition, as described above, to any of the reading services out there. Futhermore Marco Arment is clearly a really talented guy who probably has a ton of other ideas up his sleeve making him a great addition to any product team - assuming he wants that of course.

There is of course a third option, and that’s to do nothing. However following that course would see Instapaper left behind by other more fully formed reading experiences, and that would be a terrible waste of potential.

Bowerland

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:17:12 +0000

Bowerland

"The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet..."

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:35:00 +0000

“The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment.”

- We, the Web Kids by Piotr Czerski and translated by Marta Szreder

littlebigdetails: Vouchercodes- On the unsubscribe page the...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:16:46 +0000

littlebigdetails:

Vouchercodes- On the unsubscribe page the background & editor’s avatar turns from a blue (sunny day) background to a rainy day when unsubscribing from all newsletters.

/via edg

Guess who! Maris? Amazed that this is only season eight!

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:38:10 +0000

Guess who!

Maris?

Amazed that this is only season eight!

A Tale from the Recruitment Front Line

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:38:00 +0000

Have you ever been lined up to do an interview and have the candidate not show up? It’s a normal occurrence: candidates get cold feet, they renegotiate with an existing employer or take new position elsewhere. While it’s frustrating that all the preparation you’ve done has gone to waste, in the end you can forgive someone for focussing on what’s right for them. You wouldn’t be so happy if you’d discovered an altogether more devious reason behind their no show.

About a month ago we (VoucherCodes.co.uk) received a promising looking CV via a recruiter for a PHP role we have going. Now before you roll your eyes and tell me using a recruiter was my first mistake allow me to defend our position. This recruiter is good. In fact he’s placed a few people with us in the past, has always sent good candidates, and unlike many “technical” recruiters, he knows his Python from his Javascript. Anyone who has run a small company will tell you that a good recruiter is worth their weight in gold. This CV ticked loads of boxes: good work experience, strong academic background, projects that were sizeable and complex. Naturally we told the recruiter to get him in.

About two days before the interview the recruiter calls me and says he’s having trouble securing references for the candidate, indeed the HR department of his last job can’t find any record of him. When confronted about this the candidate said he was using a different name on his CV (middle not surname) and that was probably why. Alarms bells ring. The day before the interview came and the recruiter hadn’t been able to get hold of the HR person again so we agreed to proceed with the interview nevertheless. Unsurprisingly, he never turned up. Some chancer trying to get an interview on the basis of a fake CV? It’s a classic right? Wrong.

Fast forward to the present day and we’ve taken on another recruiter to help us out. The market feels really tough, but usually picks up in the new year. Get fit, get a holiday, get a new job. People are pretty predictable. The same new recruiter sends over a CV that looks good and we line the interview up. Then the day before the interview we notice something is amiss. The new CV we’re looking at and the dodgy one we had a month back have some similarities. Similar work history and career objectives, in fact there was a whole chunk of it that was exactly the same. We call the recruiter and ask if he’s confirmed the references. He’s not, and as you’ve probably guessed, when he asks HR they’d never heard of him either.

We were stumped. Something dodgy was happening and we had no idea what. It couldn’t have been just the same guy trying to chance it with a slightly different CV as his ethnicity had changed from one CV to the next. This isn’t Face/Off, you can’t do that. There’s no reason the recruiter would be sending them to us, it’s wasted his time too.

Then it dawned on us. “They” was actually one person, a recruiter, and they had never planned on turning up for the interviews in the first place. This mystery recruiter sends bogus CVs to other recruiters in the hope that they’ll be accepted for interviews. If they do they get the name and address of the business looking to recruit and that means a new lead for their own business!

I can’t begin to imagine what sort of job satisfaction someone gets from pretending to be someone else. From making up an employment history, setting up fake email addresses and probably even going as far as to do fake telephone interviews. I feel sorry for them.

It is however a remarkably devious bit of lead generation that demonstrates perfectly how fucked up that industry is. And despite claims that the Internet has liberalised the recruitment market in reality it’s done nothing of the sort. The quicker someone develops that killer recruitment business the quicker all of us will stop wasting our time.

Photo

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 19:44:29 +0000

Ian Barber is the unfortunate victim of the BBC’s strict...

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 17:09:36 +0000

Ian Barber is the unfortunate victim of the BBC’s strict captioning policies.

WhaleSharkMedia (that's us) announce a new round of financing

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:17:42 +0000

WhaleSharkMedia (that's us) announce a new round of financing

The World's Best Bars 2011

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:33:04 +0000

The World's Best Bars 2011:

Great to see Lounge Bohemia get a mention, but also surprised the Zetter Townhouse didn’t make it.

Black Lilli

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:19:00 +0100

Black Lilli

Photo

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:30:00 +0100

Dennis and the Rosedale Chimney

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:18:00 +0100

A few weekends ago some friends and I decided to tackle the the North Yorkshire Moors during a two day trip from York to Robin Hood’s Bay and back. For those of you who have ever done been to the Moors you’ll know that it’s pretty up and down, and for those who have ever cycled it you’ll know it’s a gruelling as they come.

Of all the ascents we tackled none were more difficult than the infamous Rosedale Chimney which is 1 in 3 in parts as it snakes up the hill. Not wanting to be outdone we decided to have a crack at it and despite falling off my bike once as a car came a little too close to me I actually managed to make it to the top.

Problem: there was no one to take my picture. Some of the gang had already whizzed back down past me, and some didn’t make it up. Enter Dennis Marshall who was kind enough to take a photo of me and note down my address in London.

When it arrived in the post a few days ago it brought a huge smile to my face. Not only did I now have proof that I’d managed to ascend the Chimney, but it reaffirmed my belief that there are people out there who are willing to go out of their way to help a complete strangers.

Thank you Dennis, your photo is now sitting proudly on my sideboard and the certificate you wrote out alongside it.

We’re live in the app store and climbing the charts fast!

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 18:20:24 +0100

We’re live in the app store and climbing the charts fast!

At a friends house this weekend I came across this wonderful...

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:02:32 +0100

At a friends house this weekend I came across this wonderful photo from the Tour.

It’s from a series called ‘An Intimate Portrait of the Tour De France: Masters and Slaves of the Road’

"The memory of bad quality lasts longer than the shock of high prices."

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 10:17:14 +0100

“The memory of bad quality lasts longer than the shock of high prices.”

- Put This On