However, it seems new years is a completely different story, in the lead up to New Years eve (and for a few days afterwards) our ranking quite literally jumped in the Apple Appstore, after that (and some bad reviews) it’s started to fall.

Interesting stuff.  Anyway – after the bad reviews came in I’ve decided its time to get back on the App band wagon.  A new version is the works, expect and update soon!

- Jon

what_about £variable

{

perhaps £possibility:

//Code here

splendid;

perhaps £other_possibility:

//Code here

splendid;

on_the_off_chance:

//Code here

s  plendid;

}

via If PHP Were British – Added Bytes by Dave Child.

via appMobi XDK delivers free cross-platform dev environment to Chrome Web Store — Engadget.

via That truck driver you flipped off? Let me tell you his story. | StarTribune.com.

It used to be that, in a world where no one had internet or Twitter on their phones, in fact, in a world where no one had a mobile phone, that it was good enough to man a few type writers and a couple of phone lines (during office hours), and everyone would be happy. But in todays connected world, if someone has a problem with your product or service, which they’re angry (like I often am), they’ll tweet, blog, Facebook and four square about it. If that means its 6pm on a Friday, and your customer service rep has logged off for the weekend, that can mean a _long_ wait for a reply, or even worse, a long time for the social snowball to gain traction.

Let me elaborate with an example. Right now, I’m standing up on a packed train heading into London, where the air conditioning appears to be non-functional. To add to that, i very nearly didn’t get a ticket (as my ticket involves using a ticket desk, which was manned but no one was there for over 10 minutes). If I would have gotten on the train without a ticket (which was my only other option) I most certainly would have been given a fine when I get into London, despite this being clearly their issue. Could I have called a customer service line? Nope, they’re only staffed during the week, and besides, the number isn’t listed anywhere. Could I have tweeted? Yep, but the user hasn’t been active since Friday.. I have no option but to lump it, and take on the burden myself.

It’s this kindof poor service that’s made me realise, the golden rule of customer service is,

If your business is open, so is your customer service. In the above example, if I would have known I could access customer service easily and quickly, or even gained a response, I would not only feel more comfortable using the service, but I’d feel less inclined to be wound up by poor staffing levels.

This applies to websites as well, if you’re taking orders, you should be contact able for customer service (that doesn’t just mean a contact form). I know for some of you, with small businesses and few or no employees will find that hard, but simply setting an out of office to set expectations will help enormously when dealing with complaints or queries. Hiding your details (or showing that your live customer chat) is offline will not help.

So remember, next time your list your customer contact details, what’s best for the customer.. Not your bottom line, because a happy customer, is a repeat customer.

If you’re sat there wondering what the hell I’m on about, Leftronic is a online tool for creating great looking business dashboards. We’re using it here at partnermarketing.com for tracking signups and their location, as well as the current server status and number of open issues.

The class is incredibly easy to use, just insert your access key in the top of the class, pass across a stream name (string) and pointsArray (the data you would like to send), and it’ll instantly update your leftronic dashboard.

Available on my github here

1. Lie down to go to sleep only when you are sleepy.
2. Do not use your bed for anything except sleep; that is, do not read, watch television, eat, or worry in bed. Sexual activity is the only exception to this rule. On such occasions, the instructions are to be followed afterwards, when you intend to go to sleep.
3. If you find yourself unable to fall asleep, get up and go into another room. Stay up as long as you wish and then return to the bedroom to sleep. Although we do not want you to watch the clock, we want you to get out of bed if you do not fall asleep immediately. Remember the goal is to associate your bed with falling asleep quickly! If you are in bed more than about 10 minutes without falling asleep and have not gotten up, you are not following this instruction.
4. If you still cannot fall asleep, repeat step 3. Do this as often as is necessary throughout the night.
5. Set your alarm and get up at the same time every morning irrespective of how much sleep you got during the night. This will help your body acquire a consistent sleep rhythm.
6. Do not nap during the day.

I’ll write up a full review after I’ve forced myself to do this for a week (main problem is reading in bed – so I’ll do that on the sofa from now on).

via 6 Easy Steps to Falling Asleep Fast — PsyBlog.

It is a brave new world for mobile marketing, and without a proper guide, you could get lost in all the new developments. To help you better grasp this exciting industry, we have identified the 8 most significant mobile marketing trends of 2011 that are sure to change the mobile marketing world we know now.

via 8 Key Mobile Marketing Trends.

via 5 Sure-Fire Ways to Generate Leads From Twitter.

1. He’s pretty much the definition of a hypocrite..

In the intro to the show, every week we’ve heard
“I’m not looking for a sales person”
but in episode in 8
“You will all need make sales”
and then in episode 10…
“This task is ALL about sales.”

Lets not forget in tonights final,
“I’ve always preached a policy that if you start a business you’ve got to have experience in that industry”

Oh, is that right, Lord/Sir Alan? So when you started Amstrad, you had experience in plastic injection molding? and getting products manufactured overseas? I think not.
Also – you’ve just employed a winner who has a business plan for an industry you’ve never been in (neither has he). Seriously!

If I was sat there interviewing Lord Sugar, alarm bells would now be ringing in my head. Bail bail bail!

2. He’s not been _that_ successful.

Lets leave the enjoyment of the apprentice for a moment, and look at his businesses.  I’ll start by saying something that isn’t really made very clear in the apprentice, and thats that he doesn’t have that many businesses… He started amstrad (without any experience), brought a football club, runs 3 businesses with his sons (an investment firm, a private jet company, and an advertising company), and Viglen (and we _all_ know how successful that company is).

I’m not saying he hasn’t been successful, I mean, he’s loaded. He has that entrepreneurial drive that hardly anyone has (more on that in a moment), but

3. He doesn’t know when to let things go..

Remember those Amstrad phones? Remember the phones that no one brought?

And then do you remember when they kept making them?
And then released a new one?
And then ANOTHER new one, this time with an awful colour screen?  Right when mobiles are taking off? Just laughable really..

4. He’s an awful, awful example of an entrepreneur (and a leader).

At least thats now its portrayed in the series.  As I said above – he certainly has that drive to get up in the morning and start making money, but really, is he what we want people to think about when they think entrepreneurship? I hope not.  Lets take Sheryly Sandberg’s definition of well lead company and apply it here (and this is an awesome view if your ever interested in hearing her talks, I’d recommend this one), but she talks about how a vision must scale for people to buy into it.  Google for instance have a vision that they must organise all the worlds information.  Are they ever going to do that? No, but its a damn powerful and compelling vision to buy into.  Facebook is the same, giving users the power to share content..

What has Sugar done or led? What vision has he had (recently – in my memory at least), thats been worth buying into?  The answer to that question is .. nothing.

So I finish with this thought.. If I was Tom, I’d of pitched my business plan to the Dragons, because at least then, someone might have had some experience in the industry and helped build a business with you.  With Alan, he’d only be bothered about the bottom line.