Did You Mean?

Online Politeness — A Glimmer of Hope

There are lots of horrendous stories in the media each week at the moment of people suffering awful abuse on Twitter at the hands of trolls.

I’m a middle aged, middle class, white, educated guy. So the worst offences I tend to experience…

Creating Value Is Not So Difficult

Tech startups have often been accused of creating products that nobody wants or needs. It’s a consequence of product focussed teams in love with their technology and product. But we see less and less of that nowadays. Hopefully we’re entering a post-lean era, where the…

Newspaper Says “Please” To Prevent Copying

I wanted to share a story on Twitter today about a US company buying a Belgian company. The story had come to my attention in an email roundup of recent stories. But the story was on a site that people have to sign up to access. I’m already a member, but…

Social Media Is

When people ask me, “How did you meet so and so?”, increasingly the answer is now, “via Twitter”. I know a lot of the people that I follow and met many of them on Twitter first. I have a kind of a mental list of twitter folks with whom I’ve broken bread.

Looking for Problems

As startup founders you’re always reminded that the road to success is to solve a real problem.

If a never ending stream of ideas aren’t the thing that keeps you awake at night, but you’d still like to have a crack at creating your own business then how do you go…

Dark Patterns on the Rise

I don’t know if it’s because the economic pressure that companies are under, if it’s because companies don’t get it that better user experience leads to customer loyalty or if it’s because users expect so little from the web that they tolerate so much. Whatever the reason, Dark…