tcbutler.co.uk

The principle of receiving personalised service is great. However, it’s hard to get it right for all the people, all the time, and this was demonstrated when I went for a drink with a friend at Be @ 1 in Richmond last night.

Unsurprisingly, after slipping out of the office at the remarkable hour of 17:45, we were the only ones in there… which made the bartender’s attempts to remember our names even weirder…

“Hi I’m Roy*! How are you guys doing? What’s your name? And what’s your name? Great! What kind of drinkd do you like?”

Once the bar had filled up, Roy’s cries of “Tom mate – do you want another drink?” over the thumping music started to make me cringe. That said, the lure of happy-hour cocktails and the quality of the mojhitos was enough to keep me there for an hour and a half, so even if it was a failed experiment in tailored customer service, they still got £20 out of me.

I live with my girlfriend, and we have two alarm clocks. Mine makes a regular beep-beep noise, increasing in frequency, while her phone generally plays some ridiculous tune with increasing volume. Mine is generally set for 6.45, hers for 7.00. Mine “snoozes” at 8 minute intervals (why 8?) while hers is closer to 10. Therefore, when one combines two mismatched alarms with extreme laziness/ coldness of house, we generally spend around 45 mins each morning pressing snooze on one or other alarm clock at invervals of anything from a few seconds to 8 minutes. We get up when we’re so pissed off with the alarm clocks that we’re close to smashing them to bits.

I recently read a website which goes through 10 great alternatives to the story above. These might stand a fighting chance of getting me out of bed somewhere around the time they’re set for… which in the end would probably mean more sleep for me.

Even better would be being able to work from bed every day using my wireless laptop, but I can’t see me convincing anyone that’s a good idea. <sigh>

My latest favourite thing: SNARF from Microsoft. I was as surprised as anyone to find out that Microsoft Research had released something this useful for free… remarkably it actually works.

It scans all your Outlook mail folders (including ones which aren’t stored on an Exchange server) and attempts to work out what relationship you have with each individual (you can define many of the parameters yourself).

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I don’t use this blog enough. I’m thinking of going to some kind of photo blog, having spoken to a few friends about this. Anyway. If you’re into cats and sinks, then this will really float your boat.

Someone really spent a lot of time on that site. And they’re not (yet) mercenary enough to put banner ads on the site either – you could get a lot of impressions out of a concept relying on the action “Show me another cat in a sink!”

I’m a big fan of the ‘dancing robot’ Citroen ad – just discovered a spoof of it on Google Video.  Make sure you watch right to the end!