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#bassfriday – 27th August

jasonbell — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:40:45 +0000

Bass Friday seems to be getting popular on Twitter (#bassfriday), so for the both of you I thought I’d list them here instead. One list of links saves having to trawl through stuff. You can click on the titles if you have Spotify.

Patrice Rushen – Forget Me Nots

“Ready” Freddie Washington, just got to love him really.

Suzanne Vega – Blood Makes Noise

Off 99.9F degrees, Bruce Thomas providing a line that does wonders while Suzanne sings through a mega phone.

Level 42 – Coup D’Etat – Backwards Mix b-side

Could have picked one of thousands but picked this one. The version on the World Machine album has the full lyrics but just never quite gets there. This version which ended up as a B-side to the 12″ of Something About You provides a lot more tension.

Propaganda – Duel

Okay, first things first. It’s not a synth bassline, it’s a real bassline. A Wal to be precise…. tuned down as the song is in Eb.

Primus – Jerry Was A Race Car Driver

Take the bassline from Elephant Talk by King Crimson and use a six string fretless instead of a Chapman Stick…. Les Claypool did publicly nod that he loved Tony Levin’s tone on the Stick but didn’t want to spend the time learning it.

The Who – My Generation – Artificial Stereo Version

John Entwhistle. Need I say more?

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – New York, New York

Doug Wimbish – journeyman bassist and one of the nicest blokes I’ve ever met.

Marcus Miller – Teen Town

The old Weather Report tune (Jaco Pastorius’ trademark lick) but slapped instead. Everything says it shouldn’t work as it’s pure sacrilege but it actually works really well. There is a live video on YouTube as well.

Béla Fleck – Blu-Bop

Jazz and Bluegrass is an odd combo but Bela likes to break boundries. So the Wooten brothers, Victor and ahem Futureman rip the rulebook and did for several albums later.

Sheryl Crow – Everyday Is A Winding Road

This is actually a sparse tune but that bass is really heavy in the mix. I’ve played this live quite a few times with folk over the years, all good fun.

If you want the whole Spotify playlist you can click here.

I was about to do a Groupon type thing but…..

jasonbell — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:06:51 +0000

Warning: this post may not go down well with some of my #JFDI cohorts….

It’s been a funny old week. Too much pen to paper, not enough on the early morning juice (I missed every 5am alarm apart from today, which shouldn’t be a problem but it seems that some of my Twitter followers set their alarms by my wake up call) and a lot going on elsewhere.

One thing that kept coming up in conversation was a Groupon type site for Datasentiment as part of the product offering. A nice idea and actually very easy to copy and inititally an easy instant revenue generator. Then this morning I stopped because of two reasons.

1. I’ve already got four products that need my attention.

2. I’d pee off retailers in the long run.

First things first Datasentiment exists to promote customer loyalty to the retailer. Groupon doesn’t do that in reality. It promotes new customer generation and at the cost to the retailer. I appreciate at this present time you need sweetners to get customers through the door but for some the economics just don’t work out.

Okay, here’s a real example (I did some sums).

The dance studio in New York has a deal on for 5 classes for for $39, reduced from $150. A saving of $111. Not bad at all. So far (at time of writing) 375 people have signed up for the offer which is great. I’m sure it would have taken some doing to generate $56,250 of revenue. The offer is on though so that’s now slashed down to $14,625 that’s been generated.

For the customer it’s all well and good. Pay the money, print the voucher and boogie x 5 can ensue.

For the retailer…. time to count the cost.

Firstly the fee to Groupon. Depending on where you read it’s 30% or 50%. For this exercise let’s go for the former. So 30% is $4387.50 leaving the retailer $10237.50, or $27.30 per customer. For the pedants in the audience (me mainly) you could go as far as saying that it costs $5.46 per customer per session.

With this sort of deal there’s actually a good chance of retaining the customer, I think it’s a good fit. But these are few and far between. There are variables we don’t know, the cost of acquring the customer and then the cost of the product to the customer I’m sure would come to more than $5.46 per session.

I would also wager that the retailer is making no real profit, nor really gaining a new customer. The majority of users to Groupon aren’t brand loyal, they’re coupon loyal constantly on the hunt for a good deal. Fair enough, can’t complain with that. This level of deep discount creates a dangerous starting point for a relationship with a customer though.

There’s a ton of competitors now and I wondered about a more local version but I’d suffer the same problem. So I’m more bothered about maintaining long term value for customer and retailer, that’s what I’m about.

So the question remains, what about Groupon. Aggressive mapping out of territories, acquisitions and the like. A huge valuation and an awful lot of staff. Is it a case of a very bright shining star that will burn out brightly? Keeping in mind other high profile sites like Yelp are now planning the same.

The blurring of loyalty and friendship.

jasonbell — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 23:41:47 +0000

The fight of 2009/10 was MySpace vs Facebook and it was easy to see who the winner was there. This season 2010/11 it’s “which ‘check-in’ app will win the war: Gowalla vs Foursquare”.

Both companies are working hard with local retailers to grab deals and offers as folk check in. Your friends are your friends, but what to do when this happens….

So let me get this straight, a large retailer wants to be my friend. I don’t think they do really. Friendship and loyalty are based on a first encounter, a positive transaction. A big (or little for that matter) retailer requesting friendship with no reason of foundation is just wrong. Now, on the other hand, I might be in and out of Littlewoods so I wouldn’t mind them being my friend at all, as long as the offers are right.

When it comes to the data the retailer doesn’t really know who you are, it’s the app provider who knows who you are so the retailer can’t really send you anything that personalised. What’s happening here is basically permission based marketing. You’ve added me as a friend so I can market to you. It’s the one thing that pisses of the Facebook generation.

There’s a better way, I’m just not saying what it is yet…..

Work hard, play hard.

jasonbell — Sat, 22 May 2010 08:05:42 +0000

I can imagine the productivity of most companies on a Friday afternoon will start to tail. Even more so in the tech sector when we saw Google’s home page.

Learning Pool has a pretty manic schedule but it’s done with humour, got to have a laugh. In one company I worked for me and mate use to have an array of acoustic guitars, basses and mandolins for the occasional lunchtime bluegrass jam.

I just wonder how much fun Google had putting all that together

Let’s have another look at those Limavady job figures….

jasonbell — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:24:02 +0000

For anyone that’s known me for a long time, you’ll know that I had a blog called thisislimavady.co.uk. Each day I’d look at the total job figures and the figures for Limavady.

Now I saw a tweet this morning saying that the number of job opportunities had risen….. So…..

Jobs available 5/5/09 – 1400

Jobs available 5/5/10 – 1354 (down 46)

Jobs in Limavady 5/5/09 – 14

Jobs in Limavady 5/5/10 – 9 (down 5)

The main concern now if the effects of the coming weekend. Over three hundred houses go up for sale in Ballykelly. An entire community arrives en mass. Will this create a tipping point to increase the sales in the Limavady area?

Guy Kewney – you will be missed.

jasonbell — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:14:44 +0000

I heard the news of the sad passing away of Guy Kewney. For us thirty somethings who read Personal Computer World and Computing (when the jobs section at the back was thick, pre JobServe) Guy was a weekly source of wisdom.

Bootstrap diaries: There are 24 hours in a day.

jasonbell — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:10:19 +0000

How you chop your day up is really up to you. If you are putting your startup together while holding down a job or doing freelance work then your time is a) limited and b) incredibly precious.

My good friend Simon Keen has been trying to get me into the ways of working in the early morning. The reasons are simple for me. Firstly, I work better in the mornings I’m a morning person and secondly, I do need some family time. So first things first.

Early bedtime……

As Simon is working on something and I’m working on something it makes sense to encourage each other to get up at 5am. We will then hold a quick call on Skype at 5:30, gives us time to wipe the sleep from our eyes and get a coffee down our throats.

Two and a half hours clear work, plus I’ve got 40 mins on the bus if I need to do anything urgent.

When I get home from work my brain is foggy…. I need rest and there’s some wallpaper to go up.

Let’s see how this week progresses.

Fanboxes – considered evil, please move on.

jasonbell — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:33:00 +0000

The time is nigh, the tipping point will occur soon when social media will create more link bait and spam than actual content. This is starting to be seen on Twitter quite a lot now, pointless retweets from bots, follows from bots and now the hacked account direct message fiasco….. we’ve given an inch and the others have taken a mile.

The “fanbox” is something else that’s a bit of a circle vulture as well. It’s a self serving tool for two sets of users. Firstly the likes of the issuing site (Facebook for example) who are wanting to drive traffic back to their wares to justify the advertising revenue costs. Secondly are the “fans” themselves. What I’ve noticed though is that these “fans” aren’t really fans. Most of the time these “fans” are desperate to be noticed to so they’ll join anything to get noticed. Fanboxes merely spread the thin veil of nonsense even further.

In our social media quest to be noticed users have wanting put their name to anything to be noticed. Yes the power of social networking is great, mighty and all that but it’s starting to water down to the point it’s nearly a homoepathic treatment.

And how to you truely measure the returns from these fanboxes anyway? If someone adds you on a networking site it’s never mentioned (most of the time) where the referral has come from. No one I’ve come across anyone asking to link with me and leaving a note, “Hi, I saw your profile on the fans of solenoid relays, you seem like a cool kinda guy. I’d like to add you to me network.”

Fanboxes only work if you truely are a fan in the first place. I personally believe they don’t create a lot of traffic to you or your brand. Perhaps it’s now time to take stock, think responsibly and see where all of this is going. If it carries on this way social networking will be 1% useful and 99% useless.

Girls, Rock ‘n’ Roll & Design……

jasonbell — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:27:00 +0000

Unless your head is stuffed in a vat of marmite you may be aware that Build Conference is going on in Belfast today. I’m not at it…. no need for me to be at it, I’m not designery.

Andy McMillan just posted this on Twitter.

“Girls, Rock ‘n Roll & Design” — Ryan Sims, describing the typical web designer lifestyle at #buildconf

Which now explains everything in webdesign to me. It’s like being in the band, everyone wants to be the lead singer so they can be at the front, pull the chicks and get all the glory The real work comes from the rhythm section at the back, the bass player and the drummer (or programmers as I now know them) who just lock in, get on and don’t make a fuss.

And for the record, 24 years of bass playing and the only people I got to wanted to talk about effects pedals and the strings I used (long shiny ones).

It all makes perfect sense to me now…… (yes it’s all tongue and cheek).

Andy’s put on a brilliant conference, well done mate.

Does Social Networking cost the British economy £1.38bn?

jasonbell — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:14:00 +0000

The Telegraph reports that social networking is costing the economy £1.38bn.

I’m always bemused by these sorts of figures but there’s so many strangled routes on how to get to the big numbers. How does a survey of just over 1,300 works get to £1.38bn (apart from long multiplication and is this the US or UK version of a billion?).

So a company loses 40 minutes a week per employee to social network, much lower than I expected.

A number of local companies asked my opinion on such matters. My idea was to limit access during the working hours and release the Facebook IP’s over the lunchtime period. So you could do your thang before 9am but then it was blocked until 1pm where the flood gates opened until 2pm then it was back to the grind until 5.30pm. I’m not even claiming that to be my idea, it was just sensible.

As for the company content, it’s really up to the company to put together a policy of nominating one person to Tweet/Facebook on behalf of the company and make sure it’s in the job description.

Giving customer service via Twitter comes with it’s own set of challenges. As it’s a service in realtime users expect responses in real time. The classic 24 hours to reply (as in the days of email) doesn’t wash anymore.