Put an end to New Customers Only!

Do you enjoy switching your Gas, Electricity, Car Insurance, ISAs to new providers to get the best deal?  

No?  

Have you noticed that when you look for new car insurance your own provider gives you a better deal under a new quote than your renewal? 

What if we introduced a simple new law:  

"Companies must give the same price to exisiting customers as they would for a new customer".  

Overnight this could change everything.  Companies would have to compete on value, not just short term discounting.  People would stop being ripped off by being on old accounts, policies and tarrifs.  

If this sounds like common sense to you then 'Like' this post, campaign to your MP and let's make a change. 

IBM is changing...

And for the better....
IBM has started recognising Design as a discipline in its own right - with a status on a par with product management and engineering.
I realised how much had changed when I heard that we'd added an Easter egg into one of the products.  For the old IBM that was unthinkable - I'm sure there was some sort of corporate instruction that would have forbidden it, written in foot high letters etched on tablets of granite.

People are starting to use different language to describe the products: elegant, beautiful, fun, where in the old days we'd use scalable, enterprise strength, robust - covering for the fact that using them really wasn't that easy.  

It's a big shift - I really hope we can make it stick.

And no, I'm not going to tell you where that Easter egg is - you'll have to find it for yourselves.  

Running my life

Let's take a glimpse into the future.  In order to do that, let's take a step back into the past.

In the old days (you know, before the internet) someone would send you a bill, then you'd toddle down to the post office or bank and pay it.  You'd go to individual shops and buy your veg, bits of dead animal and bread. 

Now all that's changed - I don't pay my gas, electric, telephone, broadband, tv license.  All those are paid magically by direct debit.  Do I worry about them, or even look at them?  No, they just take care of themselves. 

Shopping - well, that's been made easier too; either it's all in one mega supermarket shop, or I can order whatever I might need from the comfort of my armchair and have it arrive in a van dressed as a grapefruit.  I can order the same groceries that I did last week, at the touch of a button.

So what's next?  Today I have to arrange my social life myself.  I have to get in contact with friends to set up dates to meet on, see what new exciting things are going on and get involved. 
But I'm frighteningly predictable.  Statistically I'm just like everyone else.  Amazon can predict which books I'm going to like, iTunes knows what music I'm going to like - before I've even heard it. 

The next logical step is for something to actually run my life.  It could take a look at what exciting things I could do at the weekend - see whether my friends are busy, check what I can afford, look at how I'm feeling, do a bit of statistics and when I wake up on Saturday morning it could tell me what I should do with my weekend. 
More than that- it will know I'm going to like it.