Josh Russell

On Friday I had the honor of being the special guest on episode 17 of the Mobile Industry Review podcast.

Mobile Industry Review Video 17 from Ewan MacLeod on Vimeo.

It was great fun, we spent a few hours in Covent Garden putting it together, and generally being geeks in public. Which in this case was great fun :)

I got to talk about the start of the upcoming Brighton Tuttle Club (Social Media Cafe), and a little about the future of tracking offline to mobile conversions and location specific behavioral patterns. Something that I’m really interested in at the moment, and will happily talk about, come find me at the weekly Tuttle!

Seriously, WTF?

What you see above you on the left is a feature listing for the “Dolphin” set of tariffs from Orange. On the right is the “detail” of those tariffs. Do you see the problem?

I want:

• unlimited mobile internet
• unlimited anytime, any network texts
• 600 anytime, any network minutes

Is that £30 or £35?

Not to mention that the tagline at the top reads “..weekend..” texts. Gah!? (Oh, and the typo on the left-hand £25 too, “unlimited anytime text”, not “texts”, oh no). And why do they repeat themselves directly under the same copy?

I lack any confidence in these people. And I haven’t even touched on bloody “fair use” clauses.

Now I suspect that the confusion may be because I’m an existing customer, I’m logged in, and it’s showing me the relevant content. That’s no excuse for contradictions. I also suspect that these prices may reflect different contract lengths. However, there is no mention of that. Plus I already have a contract, and do not need to extend it to change my tariff.

Send them (and all the others (and all the banks)) to the School of WTF, and get them to make sense. This reinforces my theory that most businesses make their money by confusing the customer or taking advantage of ignorance or stupidity. This is why we don’t like you. Are you listening?

Get a QR Code reader such as Kaywa and point your phones camera at:

(if you don’t have a QR code reader, get one! or go here in your mobile browser for my mobile photos)

You can make your own QR codes with WinkSite (cheers Pete) or Kaywa.

Your friends Flickr on your mobile courtesy of f3.dashlabs.com, you can enter your Flickr email address and then bookmark the result on your phone. Or point your QR Code reader at:

Disclaimer: I’m a co-founder of Dash Labs.

Robbie has a knack for taking a simple idea and implementing it to perfection.

McFly spared some time for us for this special mobile shoot of them performing their new single in support of our JoinUp campaign.

Exclusive McFly Video - Baby’s Coming Back from JoinUp2007 on Vimeo.

Update 10/05/2007: here’s the original concept video.