“the best form of welfare is still a good, high paying job” — Attributed to Kennedy
Sometimes the news just seems so insane we just ignore it, but if you’re lucky enough to have more than £85,000 in savings, then remember you need to put it with different banks to have any chance of protecting it if there is a sovereign default. In the event of a country like Greece collapsing, it’s pretty likely to take out a few banks, and there’s no guarantee that the European governments will protect them.
In the event of a banking collapse - ALL DEPOSITS OVER THE £85k (100,000 Euro’s) WOULD BE AT RISK as per government guarantee limits.
Check out the recent downgrades were for the UK big banks:
Ratings agencies aren’t exactly famous for getting it right, e.g. Lehmans was A2 only a few days before it disappeared.
If you use evernote, it may come as a bit of a shock that it doesn’t support searching of handwritten notes in PDF files. Honestly, even with premium. Evernote only does it’s handwriting search magic on image files like JPEGs.
If you use a mac, you can use Automator to turn any PDF into a collection of images, then just drag those into an evernote.
Just right click a PDF, choose a destination folder, and we can create a sequence of JPEGs.
First open Automator, and choose ‘Make a service’
Then make a workflow like this:
Make sure in the last action you check the ‘Show this action’ when the workflow runs.
Press save, and give it a name like “convert PDF to images”
Now, in finder, whenever you right click a file, choose ‘Services’, then ‘convert PDF to images’ and away you go. Drag the resulting folder of images into evernote!
Is there a better way of doing this? Can we post straight to evernote from the finder?
“OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.” — Steve Jobs’s final words. (via newsweek)
(via newsweek)
1 pound slows, 1 pound sugar, 1 pint gin. I cut the sloes, so will be ready for January!
Using the iPad as a motivational tool. Every quarter I write down 3 things I want to get done. Now I stick them at the bottom of my iPad wallpaper, so I see them every day. I’ll let you know in January how well this worked, but its looking good so far! Have you any ideas for useful wallpaper?
the last words of Hunter S Thompson and other famous writers (via buzzfeed)
(via newsweek)
[video]
I have long wondered why prisoners can’t make more of a contribution to society, whether clearing rubbish or building roads. A magistrate from Hastings told me it was down to fears over health and safety, and a reluctance by the prison service to spend lots of time outside!
Well here at last seems to be proof that prisoners can help society - why can we not see more initiatives like this from all our prisons?
Letter from the daily telegraph, Sat 30th July 2011.
Prisoners at work
SIR – Ted Shorter (Letters, July 28) writes of prisoners’ idleness. Kirkham and the rural Fylde in Lancashire have an excellent working relationship with HMP Kirkham, which does not believe in idleness.
Rather, we are in very grateful receipt of a regular workforce to tackle every job possible, including grounds clearance and maintenance, decorating the community centre, maintaining street furniture and spot litter picking.
Very importantly, in the worst of the winter weather, they have come out to clear the pavements of snow and ice for residents and businesses, not only in the town but also around doctors’ surgeries and sheltered housing schemes.
The prison makes top-quality garden furniture and sells produce from the home farm at the prison shop. The prisoners are a pleasure to work with.
M. D. Barnes
Town Clerk
Kirkham, Lancashire
Wow! We made it to the legal technology place to be - OD is listed in “The Know List Top 10 shooting stars” - thankfully they avoided putting a photograph of me up there!
‘ If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system and notify the sender immediately’
‘do not use, copy or disclose the information or otherwise use it or any part of it in any form whatsoever nor act in reliance on it’
I still see hundreds of these pointless footers and it bugs me, wastes space, and takes up paper and ink when I print things.
The economist is succinct - “Many disclaimers are, in effect, seeking to impose a contractual obligation unilaterally, and thus are probably unenforceable. This is clear in Europe, where a directive from the European Commission tells the courts to strike out any unreasonable contractual obligation on a consumer if he has not freely negotiated it.”
If you do want to send something sensitive, remember that an email is about as secure as a postcard, and then use safedrop or some sort of encryption.
(via techland)
Interview with Angus Bradley @safedropdotcom MD -
very interesting it is too :)
We had a good meeting at vistage yesterday, @Robert_Craven came in and gave a talk on disruptive marketing. I made some good notes (first time taking notes on the ipad!)
Here’s some of the things that really resonated with me, I like to do a summary like this so I remember things better, hope it’s useful to you too.
‘Delighted customers are 5 times more likely to buy again than satisfied customers’
’67% of customers leave because they think you don’t care’ - I believe this stat and it’s often quoted, would love to know where it’s from though. See more here.
Financial performance is the average of Marketing performance and Operational Performance, you can’t have good financials without good Marketing and Ops. < Ok, very basic, but I found it useful, as we (and most of the businesses there) tend to focus on Ops, not marketing.
‘If marketing doesn’t generate sales, it’s just spending money’
76% of people don’t believe adverts « Mind you, that means 24% do believe, which isn’t too shabby!
“I don’t know who you are,
I don’t know your company,
I don’t know you company’s product,
I don’t know what your company stands for,
I don’t know your company’s customers,
I don’t know your company’s record,
I don’t know your company’s reputation,
Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?”
(David Ogilvy copy) . This one is getting printed out today!
Robert really pushed being ‘disruptive’ his favourite model being charge customers whatever they see fit to pay, a la radiohead. One surprise example of this was Agency Nil (http://www.agencynil.com/) What a cool model, mind you it looks like they are going to be pretty selective about who they take on.
I’ll not spoil the workshop, but a few quick wins he suggested included raise prices, reduce costs, and my favourite, ‘be remarkable’
On raising prices - If you raise prices by 10%, and lose 25% of your customers you would make the same profit. This is an interesting concept to think through, the converse being that if you drop prices by 10% you need to sell 50% more to make the same profit.
During this process, I realised that while we really care what our customers think, and want the service to work amazingly well, often the only communication they get from us is a monthly bill. This isn’t exactly remarkable, so I’m going to look at how to communicate more regularly, without interrupting people too much. I figure a once a month phone call wouldn’t upset anyone, and would help us.
What do you do to be remarkable to your customers?
“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” — Martin Luther King, Jr