Gareth Jones

I got a phone call this morning from Joanne Bailey from Public Service Review. She told me about their publications and how the latest edition would be focussed on Michael Gove, the current UK education secretary, and how he wants to improve attainment levels in schools for maths and science.

Apparently, Learnalot had been flagged up in one of their meetings as a company that might be able to help Michael achieve this goal. How flattering. She explained how they would like to feature an article on Learnalot that would follow Michael’s piece and asked whether I’d be interested in that – to which I naturally replied yes. She then told me that “of course” this would come at a cost – £2,396 plus VAT in fact – and that the article would be written by us and not them.

So, I was basically being asked to pay for advertising space in their magazine, which made it expensive irrespective of their subscriber list, but as the magazine seemed like a high-quality publication and the claims she made of their subscriber list were impressive, I still wanted to know more about them before turning them down. I said I was interested but that I would need to check a few things first, and she said that they would send over the agreement. Slightly concerning was that she then asked that I sign the agreement immediately and return it to them before she went for another meeting – which was in 5 minutes. I wasn’t about to sign over nearly 3 thousand pounds in 5 minutes, so I said I’d return the agreement after checking that everything was alright first and not before.

Joanne took from this suspicion that I wanted to see some examples of previous editions first to reassure me of the quality of the magazine. This seemed a little pointless really since by her own account large chunks of it had been written by third parties, and in any case it wasn’t the quality of the magazine that had my alarm bells ringing anyway.

Still concerned by the request to agree within 5 minutes, I got in touch with Laura at Hamilton House, our PR company, and asked them what she knew about PSR. In the meantime, I received a copy of the proposal from them with a note along the top asking me to email the signed copy “straight away”.

In the meantime I Googled the company and found this page, a blog from a guy named Andrew Jaffe and a load of comments from people who had all experienced the same thing. It turns out that this stories about short deadlines and meetings is something that PSR like to use a lot! I forwarded the link to Laura who then called me and kindly suggested getting in touch with PSR on our behalf to find out more about them and their subscriber list. She too was concerned about this “straight away” business and told me that she had never heard of a publication asking for such immediate commitment before. She also thought the piece was expensive – even for a glossy magazine.

Laura got back to me within minutes and said that Joanne had given her some information, but not the specific information that she had requested: namely the all-important breakdown of readership. She suspected therefore that the readership was not at all made up of the maths teachers that I was hoping to reach, and without a definitive printed statement of the readership it was difficult to consider otherwise. Laura also said that she had found Joanne somewhat difficult to deal with.

As soon as I got off the phone with Laura it rang again. I answered and it was Joanne. Joanne claimed that Laura had been very rude to her, which I really didn’t believe. She also tried to nullify Hamilton House’s concerns over her worrying need for immediate agreement and their expensive pricing by suggesting that she didn’t like their website.

Attacking the website and approach of a company one has chosen to work with is a rather odd approach, and overall I was unable to work out how that was relevant. The remarks about Hamilton House’s website were also made despite Joanne’s claim at the beginning of the conversation that her internet access was down because of a virus. In all, this did nothing but confirm beyond doubt that I needed to give Public Service Review a wide berth.

Update: Here’s another link that contains some useful information on Public Service / PSCA.

Read more…

Having already convinced four family members to sign up to one of the offers that Vodafone’s UK Deals Team is offering, I’ve decided to write about them on my blog so that even more people can take advantage of what they have to offer.

I got the HTC Desire with 300 minutes, 3000 texts and 500mb data on a 24-month contract for just £20/month with the phone itself costing me £55.

If you look at what the competition is offering, the same deal would cost £30/month at the Carphone Warehouse (although the phone would have been free), which over 24 months means that I’d have paid £185 more overall – including the cost of the phone.

It’s a similar story at Phones4U where the same deal again costs £30/month although the duration of the contract is lower. However, all is not as it seems. While Phones4U would claim that an 18-month contract is better than a 24-month alternative, in this case it simply isn’t. Allow me to demonstrate:

£30/month for 18 months and a free HTC Desire = £540
£20/month for 24 months and an HTC Desire for £55 = £535

At first glance Phones4U looks only slightly more expensive here, and if you speak to them on the phone they make a big deal about it “only” being an 18 month contract. However, for that you’re actually getting 6 months less service, and to have a working phone for the same length of time you’d need to extend the contract by another 6 months which would cost an additional £180 which brings it up to the same cost as the Carphone Warehouse. No-one only needs a phone for 18 months, and that’s what they’re relying on here to make their deal look more attractive. It doesn’t take much to see through their false logic though.

You could argue that with Phones4U you’d be getting your upgrade 6 months earlier than you would with Vodafone, but the £185 more that you’d be paying for a phone that works for 24 months would cover the price of an upgrade from Vodafone (for a similar phone) over 3 times over.

Vodafone’s UK Deals Team is also offering the HTC Legend on a similar contract for just £15/month (which is the one my father and two of my sisters have taken) and they have lots of other deals for different manufacturers as well.

We’ve put together a behind the scenes blog for Learnalot at http://blog.learnalot.co.uk, on which we’ll be posting related news, announcements and resource previews on a pretty regular basis.

The blog has only just been set up, but we’ll be adding content to it regularly so should have some interesting content on there soon.

We’ve also set up a Facebook page and a Twitter account to make it easier for people to discuss the portal, its resources and to contribute their ideas both while the service is in development and when it goes live.

DCOMsoft have very kindly offered a free copy of the SWF Protector 2 software that I reviewed earlier today, to be given to the winner of some kind of competition. I’ve never held a competition on my blog before, so bear with me on this one. Ok, so…

The word “obfuscate”, as defined by Chambers Free English Dictionary, is:

1 to darken or obscure something.
2 to obscure something or make it difficult to understand.
3 to bewilder or confuse someone.

So, keeping with the theme, what’s the most bewildering or confusing thing that’s ever happened to you, or that you have ever inflicted on someone else? It can be on any subject – doesn’t need to be related to writing code or anything like that – and be no more than 500 words. It’s not an easy task, but then this prize is worth £40 so I don’t think I’m asking too much of you!

The best (most interesting or amusing) account by 12pm GMT on Monday the 12th of April gets a free copy of SWF Protector 2.

My girlfriend will be the judge, so you can be assured that the results will be totally fair and impartial. The judge’s decision is final and there are no cash alternatives to the prize. The winner will be announced right here.

It’s here at last -  Mercury 1.0 launched today!

For more information either check out the launch post at Quak Multimedia or check the Mercury website directly, where there is even a demo of the software showcasing some of its capabilities.

Mercury is viewed as a live product that will evolve and adapt over time with the needs of our clients, so this won’t be the last time I mention Mercury on this blog I’m afraid!

As well as the software itself, we’ll also be offering a development service where we will either help clients develop their eLearning or develop it all ourselves for an extremely competitive rate.

Any questions? Feel free to ask.