I’ve just spent a happy while creating a tag cloud — a diagram of the “tags” or keywords in this blog, arranged to show the most common. It tells me (and you!) more about what I’m writing about that I could write about myself. Plus it updates itself automatically.
Vodafone only half-useful
Yesterday I couldn’t find Vodafone’s website because for some inexplicable reason I got the spelling wrong. Who knows, maybe it’s because in English the word is “phone” so I went to www.vodaphone.com.au. The stupid thing is, Vodafone had already gone half-way to solving the problem, but left me hanging.
Now I won’t get into the whole “Let’s convince customers we’re cool by using funky spelling” thing, except to say I think it’s a complete wank. As soon as you try to be cool, you’ve failed.
What’s daft is that Vodafone had in fact already licensed the Internet domain vodaphone.com.au…
posen:~ contour$ whois vodaphone.com.au
Domain Name: vodaphone.com.au
Last Modified: 16-Nov-2002 06:04:14 UTC
Registrar ID: R00010-AR
Registrar Name: Melbourne IT
Status: OK
Registrant: Vodafone Pacific Limited
Registrant ID: OTHER 056 161 043
Registrant ROID: C0754342-AR
Registrant Contact Name: THE MANAGER
Registrant Email: hostmaster@vodafone.com.au
… but done nothing with it. So, for anyone who knows how to spell and goes to www.vodaphone.com.au, nothing happens. The resulting marketing message is “We’re offline. We’re unreliable”.
Yet with less than an hour’s work, the message could have been “Hey, our name is actually Vodafone. We’ll now take you to www.vodafone.com.au.”
And if they did that, they’d even know how many website visitors they’d been losing this way.
The lesson for businesses: Where are your customers looking for you? When they go there, will they find you?
What comms? Part 1: Which network?
OK, sit up! Two things. One, the entire telephone industry is, collectively, a moron. Two, I gave away your privacy just to show you this mediocre cartoon. Both nasty.
Prevented any nasty “public health” lately?
Don’t people think when they’re naming an organization? There’s actually something called the Public Health Prevention Service! Yes, we’d better prevent all that public health…!
The First Tacky Steve Irwin Joke
Only 29 hours after the death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin comes the first tasteless joke:
When a journalist asked what his favourite TV show was as a kid, Steve Irwin couldn’t decide. He said that he liked Thunderbirds, but he’ll always have a place in his heart for Stingray.
Thanks, Richard. What took you so long?
[Update 23 January 2008: Since Steve Irwin jokes are very popular on this website, you might also want to start posting Heath Ledger death jokes. Just as mindlessly tacky.]
DCITA Conflict of Interest
Doesn’t anyone else think “Ahem, conflict of interest!” when the new chair of the federal government’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Advisory Board is one Steve Vamos, MD of Microsoft Australia? Especially when there’s no “community” representation whatsoever.