One small step for Facebook, one little hop for retailers...

I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I said Facebook has changed the way people interact. Its lure has evolved by the convenience of communication. In recent years email revolutionised the way we communicate, followed by mobile phones and text messaging. Facebook married all of those things and more, and just happened to be the social network people agreed to stick to, such was the autonomy of the social web at the time. If Facebook were created today, I'm guessing it would be one of many networks that could interact. That's a whole other blog post though.

This morning Facebook is launching ‘Places Deals’ in the UK and Europe. Facebook users will be able to get discounts and special deals in shops, cafes and restaurants by checking in on Facebook Places on their smartphone. Now, I've used Places before to check in to a rugby match. I was interested to see if anyone else would see me there and check in too. There were a couple of people as it happens, although that was as far as my interest in it extended. What Facebook has done with Places Deals is to make this feature meaningful. If you check into a cafe you might get a free cup of coffee. If you check into a clothes shop you might find big discounts. Retailers might give money to charity whenever you check in.

The more cynical amongst us will probably assume this is yet another grab for our privacy, that there will be marketing lists everywhere being padded out with shopping trends. Who knows? Maybe? The less cynical will think that maybe retailers are just wanting to explore an evolving avenue of marketing and getting its consumers to spread the word amongst their friends. Yes, more likely.

I can't see this taking off overnight. However, I do see it as a small but significant step towards marrying our online social connections with a real, monetised world. Yes, there are other companies doing this. But the fact that Facebook has thrown its hat into the ring means that millions of people are going to find it harder and harder to separate their online and offline worlds.

Does the guitar capo bring us closer to God?

Before we begin, the capo used on a guitar should not be confused with a high ranking member or the mafia. Although that capo can shorten things it generally isn't guitar strings for the purposes of making sweet music.

You have to love Wikipedia. Is it true? Who knows! Probably! Am I going to quote it? Of course! According to the people's encyclopedia a capo is "a clamp-like device used on the neck of a stringed instrument to shorten the strings, hence raising the pitch...Various styles of capos use different mechanisms, but most use a rubber-covered bar to hold down the strings, clamped with a strip of elastic or nylon, a metal clamp, spring clamp, or screw clamp."

The guitar is an amazing instrument. With an instrument like, say, the piano, most of the workings are hidden away. You press the key down and it makes a sound. Next time you're next to a piano, open the lid and take a look. You'll be amazed at the science of it all. The guitar, however, wears its heart on its sleeve. The 'science' is there in all its simple glory, right in front of you. You have to be a scientist to play a guitar: you have to understand the principle of shortening a metal string to raise the pitch, to know how hard you strum affects the rate of vibration. So to be an amazing guitarist, you can't just be very creative. You have to have a certain scientific acumen that walks hand in hand with creativity. If I was on Twitter typing this (140 characters? eek!) I'd probably add a tag saying #scienceandcreativitybringusclosertogod, because those kinds of guitarists generally produce technically correct, logical and ultimately emotive music.

Blimey I do ramble on don't I? This was going to be a short post about how the capo makes my life easier by giving me more options on the guitar. The simplicity of its science makes it a doddle to use and you can be playing in keys you wouldn't have considered before. However, I've got to the end of this post thinking that maybe it isn't the capo that is a wonder of science, it's the guitarist. Happy strumming everyone.

The Times paywall...the answer to the publishing problem?

In my humble opinion, the publishing industry has been in trouble for a while. People thought that with the launch of the iPad everything would change over night. Of course, it didn't. The evolution of technology is just that, a slow rethinking over time of how science can help is in our everyday lives. As technology catches up with our great ideas, more sophisticated gadgets and machines slowly emerge, driving down prices of previous iterations. What's my point? Well, the publishing industry has been waiting around for technology to emerge. The Times has finally picked up on the fact that it's not necessarily what you read their newspaper on, it's about usability.


Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object. One big problem has been that people are used to reading newspapers. We've grown up learning how to handle and fold, to avoid getting the ink all over our fingers. Another problem is that when the internet was born, newspapers decided that putting their content online for free was a good idea. Such is the evolution of man that barely a decade later we can't believe the publishing industry are going to charge us for said content, even though we've been paying for newspapers all our lives. Disgraceful!


Or is it? Let's remember that it's not really about the content. I have tried roughly four gazillion RSS reader apps for my iPhone, plus various newspaper apps, and on the whole they have been disappointing. By charging for content, the Times has been able to clean up it's act instead of relying on dwindling subscriptions to fund a low budget website. The website looks like the newspaper, and that for me is the biggest selling point. The evolution of the newspaper layout has taken hundreds of years to perfect, and it's now online. 


The first time I logged into thetimes.co.uk I felt immediately at ease, like I had been reading this website all my life. Because I had. So publishers, your content is fine. The key to your success is usability. Sort out how to put your readers at ease and you'll find yourselves back in the game.