Life in .... the fast lane?

I'm in rant mode right now, so apologies to anyone straying onto my blog in search of tech analysis, science evaluation, Sci-Fi concepts, comedic inputs or another poke at Amazon.

I've just completed the weekly shop at ASDA (the UK arm of Wal-Mart) and, because our shop this week was small, elected to use 'the fast lane'.

Now I love technology, and I can see the benefits to the consumer of reducing the weekly shopping bill, but I'm not sure I'm up for the price. Like many retailers ASDA have chosen to provide more self-service tills than staffed tills. The idea, I assume (in the heads of the gurus who decide these things), is to reduce the staff levels by making the customer do the checking out, after all we happily fill our trolleys ourselves, have done so for years. But fast lane?

For those yet to use one of these shopping options, here's how it works. First, place your basket alongside the scanner or, for larger shops there are conveyor belts running up to the scanner. Yes, you can do the big shop yourself too. Then press the screen to start. Now there's an added complication because here in Wales there's an environmental charge on bags to encourage us to reuse them, which most of us do most of the time. England has this on her horizon. So I advise the terminal that I've brought my own bags. Then, and only then, can I put them on the exit platform where I pack the bag. Forget and put your bag down early and you'll get automated invective remonstrating you that an unauthorised object is in the bagging area. Unauthorised? I'm shopping, not attempting to overthrow the State.

So now the fun starts. Scan your first item, or at least attempt to. My view is that the staffed scanners are more capable than the customer ones because when I've located the bar code I have to offer it up to the scanner window (either or more likely both as there are two) then jiggle the product about until the scanner recognises it. If you do this close to a staffed till you will notice they will have scanned between three and five items while you've been doing the baked beans hand jive. Sure, the paid operatives will be more experienced at scanning, but they just seem to slide each item in approximately close proximity to the scanner for it to record the item, but not for us mortals.

Even if you manage to scan as fast as the experienced shop assistant, you will still be quite a way behind them in the scanning stakes. Because the professional scanners can scan subsequent items while the previous item is still in their hand, and certainly before you've bagged it (another task us customers accepted without a moan years ago). Not the fast lane, mind. That is programmed to not accept your next item until the scanned item is bagged and weighed. So no matter how slick you get, you still need to load the bag. And do load it carefully, the software does seem to be rather picky, shopping every third or fourth item, stopping until one of the assistants nearby come to your rescue, unlock your screen and allow you to continue. Obviously if ASDA and the myriad other retailers jumping on to this bandwagon wanted to provide lots of staff they'd just open more staffed tills. They don't, so you may find the staff sorting out your issues are very busy, so the shopping handbrake is often on more than it is off.

Then there is the tricky issue of alcohol. Go through a staffed till and one glance at me with my grey beard and worn looks suffices, the operator confirms I'm over eighteen (just) and off we go. In the alleged fast lane I need to wait until the overtasked staff member can get to my checkout to confirm that I'm old enough to be her grandfather. And then there's paracetamol; a recent government decided to lower suicide rates by limiting the sale of these popular painkillers to people aged sixteen and over and to a maximum of 32 tablets per pass through the checkouts. They probably anticipated the arrival of the fast lane, as I often think about taking a few packets of tablets after being told off by a computer for putting unauthorised items in the packing area, have tried to scan each item at least five times, and dared to try and buy something alcoholic.

So, you finally get all of your shopping scanned and there is the little issue about payment. Quick tip here, the only quick part of this tale as many other shoppers gave come and gone through the normal lane while you've tried to buy a dozen items using the alleged fast lane. Use a card. Credit, debit, playing, birthday, whatever. Just don't try cash. They take cash, of course, but notes find themselves dragged in and pushed out several times before being accepted. Nowhere near as slick as a till operator taking the tenner out of your hand, reading out that the bill is nine pounds and twenty pence and slipping the eighty pence change into your hand. Once the tenner is accepted by the machine it goes into a trance as it decides on how to pay you back. Then it drops your eighty pence change eventually, advising you that notes are dispensed below the scanner. What - bloody - notes?

So you stagger out of the supermarket with your dozen items. It is now dark ( it was morning when you arrived) and, because you've been parked for more than three hours in the supermarket car park your car is clamped. And because you only popped in for a few items you realise that the one item you needed isn't in your hand. So you turn around and re-enter the store. It's one item, you could afford to try the slow lane for one item. Please.

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Was Black Friday Treasure Island - or Jekyll and Hyde?

Robert Louis Stevenson is famous for the novels he wrote, including 'Kidnapped' 'Treasure Island' and 'Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde', which are all available as free eBooks through the likes of Amazon (although they will let you pay someone - presumably Stevenson's estate, but I'm not convinced - a small amount.  You take your choice, but legally the book is out of copyright). He also displayed an interesting approach to birthdays by gifting his to the son of one of his acquaintances. He reckoned that he was too old to be celebrating birthdays and felt that two birthdays for a child was a better use of the day. Of course he was a famous author and presumably had a comfortable lifestyle, so was prepared to forego the annual receipt of birthday presents. I don't know if he took what appears to me to be an obvious extension to his gesture and stopped buying presents for all and sundry - after all, without a birthday there would be no need to reciprocate. Let's call that rule one.

Of course this was before the consumer boom that fuelled the credit crunch, so perhaps there wasn't the same imperative to provide presents costing an arm and a leg for everyone he knew. Also he seems to have retained his rights to Christmas presents.

As we approach the holiday season, having witnessed Black Friday in the UK being imported by ASDA, the UK arm of Wal-Mart, I guess we haven't lost our appetite for consuming totally, austerity or no. We have had Black Friday in the UK for some years, but predominantly as an on-line experience. To my knowledge this was the first time a major retailer in the UK has run a Black Friday promotion. At my local ASDA I witnessed a lot of large screen TVs being pushed out of the store by people with grins almost as wide as the TVs they had bought. I also read about arguments and even fights breaking out in some stores as stocks ran low, apparently a phenomenon also imported from the US on Black Friday. I'm sure that wasn't the publicity ASDA wanted but overall I suspect it's here to stay and I'd be very surprised if other high street retailers didn't join in next year.

Maybe with more choice the apparent need for violence and abuse won't be as great but somehow I doubt it. I'm not sure what Robert Louis Stevenson would have made of the spectacle, watching people who normally shop courteously becoming so aggressive. Perhaps there was more in Doctor Jekyll than meets the eye, maybe Black Friday is the secret mixture that turns nice people bad? Maybe RLS might have given his Christmas away as well as his birthday if he witnessed last weeks events.

I don't know if giving Christmas away is a viable option - I like to consume as much as the next guy and Christmas day provides an opportunity for the mutual exchange of gifts. But birthdays - perhaps he had a valid point there. Kids get more out of them, or at least should do, than adults. Here's my view on gifting birthdays, especially for those of with birthdays not in January and December. Why those two months? Well I've a few young relatives with birthdays reasonably close to Christmas and I reckon they are most likely to have a reduced birthday gift allocation due to the proximity to the big day. It must be especially difficult for those who are born on December 25th. My guess is those who have birthdays adjacent to Christmas probably deserve to hang onto theirs longer.

So here's my extension to RLS's idea. Those of us above a certain age gift our birthday to a child. I would suggest that initially we choose kids that we think deserve a second birthday, that is, kids we like. Next in the hierarchy should be the kids of parents we don't particularly like - well it's a big sacrifice so we might as well get some personal satisfaction - or Schadenfreude- from the gift. In fact reverse those, my inner B L O'Feld is grinning at the mayhem gifting birthdays will provide. And let's not forget rule one from above - eliminate the need for reciprocation and we might actually be able to accommodate the increased costs from Black Friday as we buy bargains we never considered buying in the first place, preventing those 60" plasma screen grins turning to half inch pursed lips when the credit card statement arrives in January.

Maybe it will be antidote to the mixture that created Mr Hyde?

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Shopping in the internet economy

Over the last few weeks in the UK there have been a number of high profile high street shops closing their doors, or at the least having to open the back doors to the accountants who administrate failing companies.

Some of these have been predictable and others less so.  I don't think anyone who spends more than a few minutes thinking about these things would be too surprised to hear that the latest victim of the extended financial crises, Blockbuster, is in administration.  I think the biggest surprise is that it took until 2013.

Blockbuster was a breath of fresh air for most of its short life - it took video, then DVD rental out of the local amateur market and put it on a professional footing.  But in recent years there has been a number of challenges it seems to have ignored.  First off, there is the challenge from terrestrial and extra terrestrial TV - Sky have led the field in this and forced everyone else to raise their game.  However it was the slow burn of Lovefilm from about six years ago that will have put the nail in the coffin for Blockbuster, especially once it was bought out by Amazon.

Lovefilm gets the whole package right - no fees for keeping a film longer than agreed, you just  don't get a replacement until you return it and anyway, you're paying monthly whether or not you take a film or ten.  And add to that the increasing amount of content you can download without waiting for the postie and you have a compelling reason not to bother with Blockbuster.  Clearly Blockbuster didn't take this challenge seriously, otherwise they would have set up a competing service.

Other recent victims have included Comet, a major electronic goods retailer, and HMV, probably the only large scale music and DVD retailer in the UK these days.  Both companies tried to compete with the on-line onslaught and included internet stores of their own, but ultimately they are competing against some of the most cash-rich companies in the world, not all of whom are renowned for paying their corporation taxes.  I'm not suggesting that if the likes of Amazon didn't avoid taxes then Comet and HMV would've prospered but at least one part of the playing field would have been relatively level.  The other significant loss on recent days has been Jessops, the photographic chain.  They fell foul of being the go-to place to have cameras demonstrated before we all nipped back home to buy our preference on the internet.  For that abuse of their service and expertise we have lost a valued institution.

However Amazon didn't get it all its own way in recent months as other UK retailers did buck the trend and showed growth. Significantly some of the bigger UK supermarkets, which have incidentally elbowed into Comet and HMV territory in recent years, also did well, as did UK Argos group.  The glue that holds these together is the fact that they all have significant brick and mortar stores, internet presence  and critically they have merged these together.  The supermarkets have apps that let you shop on your iPad and they will deliver to your door - Asda, the UK subsidiary of Wal-Mart also allows the customer to pick their shopping up at the store after ordering it on-line and that is proving more flexible than waiting in for a two hour time slot.  Argos will deliver large items, but their biggest success has been around their click and reserve service. Find what you want on-line and they will tell you how many of each item you have chosen is available in your local stores and will let you reserve it for free and without commitment for up to forty eight hours.  Pop along to the store at a time that suits you, quote your reservation number, pay and leave.

So what is the future?  Well, the British high street has been changing for some time and the internet is only a part of that.  I believe that we will need to expect to see most high streets less populated by shops, more leisure orientated in the future.  The high street bulging with every shop under the sun is a relatively new concept - many high street shops were originally town houses that have been converted - some may revert to their former use.  We may start to see town and city centres with spaces to sit and surf, using free WiFi, or to read a book out of the rain.  The current trend to fill empty shops with charity shops and cheapie shops isn't sustainable or desirable - let's have less shops, but ones that sell stuff that's unique, different and perhaps a little too bespoke for the likes of Amazon to muscle in on.  Keep the general store if the economy supports it - the proximity of the local supermarkets will dictate that - and tidy up the spaces in-between.

For the rest of the traders, well it seems clear that you have to embrace the internet.  But don't discount a high street presence; like Asda and Argos you can have your brick and mortar stores and your on-line store co-exist nicely.  In fact I would suggest that is the way forward.

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I can be followed on Twitter - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

Why not take a look at my books and read up on my Biog here

Want to see what B L O'Feld is up to?  Take a look at his website here

Worried/Interested in the secretive world of DLFs?  Take a look at this website dedicated to DLFs here, if you dare!

Last Chance for Christmas

Still looking for that elusive last Christmas present?  Well, if the target of your generosity is a reader then now is the time to consider the options.

I'm wasn't going to look at mini tablet computers in this posting, but if your budget does stretch that far then I guess the choice is between the iPad Mini, the Kindle Fire and the Google Nexus 7.  The Apple's the most costly choice out of the three, but you probably knew that already.  It's getting mixed reviews, largely because its screen is 'only as good as the iPad 2 screen', the screen on arguably the most popular variant of the full sized tablet.  My view is that is if the recipient is already embedded in Apple technology then this has to be a contender.  After that its between the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7.  Google have just raised the bar by upping the memory to 32Gb on their flagship model, but pricewise these two devices are running neck and neck.  Behind them is the Nook HD with only 8Gb of memory and an almost unknown market presence in this country.  For those prepared to tough it out until Christmas Eve you may find the Nook being discounted.  Of course, if you're spending this kind of money you may want to make sure the gift can be returned in the case of multiple tablets being bought for the same person - in the  UK most high street retailers will issue a gift receipt that will allow the recipient to return the item for a full refund until mid January.

For dedicated eReading devices the choices are bewildering.  As I pointed out in a recent blog entry, dedicated eReaders are past their peak, being usurped by the rise of the multi-tasking tablets.  However, right now, there are so many new models on sale in the UK it is inconceivable that some of these won't be discounted.  So if your in the market to buy one for someone, waiting is probably as smart as it gets.  They're not going to run out and they're not going to rise in price.  Choose a price point and stick with it, but be prepared to shop around the various brands.  Unlike tablets, the dedicated eReaders tend to be stuck to one eBook store, although most use the same format of book (EPUB) which is readily available through Smashwords, as are Kindle format books.  Again, gift receipts might be a good idea in case of duplication.

If your gift options don't run to a bit of technology then consider vouchers.  Apple do them for the iBook store (strictly for anything on iTunes, but if the recipient is a reader then perhaps it will be used for your intended purpose).  Amazon also do vouchers, which like the iTunes vouchers can be bought in stores around the country or can be downloaded to your own computer for you to print off.  Add a fancy card, a nice message and your shopping is done.  The only limitation with this is that the voucher can be used against any Amazon purchase - or put another way, against anything that can be bought on this planet.  So don't get too excited if your intention is to persuade your recipient to download that book you've been raving about.

If you do want to gift 'that book' then you could try Smashwords - they have a gifting option, read about it here.  The only downside I can see with the Smashwords version is that the gift will be emailed to the recipient the second you pay, but I guess you can do it on Christmas day.  If you're stuck for books to gift, may I suggest you cast your eyes to the top of the this page - all six books are listed on Smashwords and are currently $0.99 each in my December promotion.

If eBooks are too radical for the target of your generosity then print books are still available and, heck, may be for a few years more.  Just don't let anyone know I said that.  Again, all those books at the top of this blog are available from your local Amazon outlet and are printed to order.  Better be quick, though, because it can take a couple of days from placing an order to Amazon and the Post Office getting it to your front door.  I don't think Amazon supply gift receipts, but trust me on this one, I doubt your present will be duplicated (I've seen the Amazon sales figures for my books!).

Enjoy the holidays.

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I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

Why not take a look at my books and read up on my Biog here

Want to see what B L O'Feld is up to?  Take a look at his website here

Worried/Interested in the secretive world of DLFs?  Take a look at this website dedicated to DLFs here, if you dare!

iTunes Under Threat From Google

It's been a heck of a few weeks in the tablet world, what with the launch of the iPad mini, Google upping the spec of the Nexus 7 to 32 Gb while dropping the price while announcing the launch of the Nexus 4 and 10, while in the UK we've seen Barnes & Noble announce that their Nook HD tablets are coming in November too.  Their e-ink devices are here already and on display at an Asda near you.

But it's not all about hardware, right?  Apple wouldn't be anywhere now if it hadn't been for an inspired piece of vision by Steve Jobs and his team with the launch of the iTunes product which complemented the classy looking MP3 players Apple were touting a few years back.  Without iTunes, the iPod would have been just another MP3 player, without the iPod, iTunes would have been a solution looking for a problem.  The other, major, piece of vision at Apple was to license the dock side of their connector to anyone who wanted to make an Apple compatible device, meaning that the market could fill up with cheap to expensive, sassy to ugly, docks without allowing anyone other than Apple to make a device capable of docking with them.

Anyway, history will show that Apple did it right, playing the perfect long game that has one major limitation - it is built around Apple.  Sure, I can load iTunes onto my PC and use it to play MP3s as my default player, but I'm fairly certain that will be a stretch on my Android devices.  Picky of me, maybe, but there are a squillion or so Android devices in use worldwide and about to swell with Google's launch of the Nexus 4, 7 & 10 et al.

About a year ago Google launched Google Music in the US and it has been fairly well received despite Google's insistence on messing with the name on a few occasions. Well, they are launching it over here in the UK soon, on November 13th.  In addition to the usual music buying opportunities they are adding a very useful cloud based experience that could be the model for the future.  You can upload songs in your Google library for free and then they are stored in the cloud and are available for any of your Android devices you are linked to. Not just a few songs, mind, but 20,000 of them.  Here's where it gets better.

If you try to upload songs that Google recognise, and given that they've just signed up with Warner this week to complete their tie in with the majority of music distributors that may be a given, then they'll just add those tracks to your cloud.  In software terms they simply associate the file with your Google cloud space with the metadata of your songs, so they don't have to squander terabytes of storage on multiple copies of the same file, they just have to allocate a minimal amount of data to show that you are entitled to stream a copy from their master archive.  Neat, eh?  And of course, the metadata should be all correct - no more mistyped titles annoying the hell out of everyone.

And if you have an iTunes account on your computer when you connect to Google Music, then the content of that account is also game for allocating to your Google cloud space.  So Apple have done the spade work and Android reaps the benefits.

Rock and roll on November 13th!

--------------------------------------------------------------

I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

Why not take a look at my books and read up on my Biog here

Want to see what B L O'Feld is up to?  Take a look at his website here

Worried/Interested in the secretive world of DLFs?  Take a look at this website dedicated to DLFs here, if you dare!

Nook eBooks On Sale in the UK

I posted a few days ago that Barnes & Noble were launching in the UK in this article.  There were two flies in the ointment at the time of writing that post, the first being that the B & N book-store hadn't been launched in the UK, the second that the more interesting models weren't currently on sale.

Well, since that posting events have continued apace.  In the last day or two the UK book-store has been launched, quietly and efficiently, on this URL.  It looks like the full library of books that are available in the US are listed here, as far as I can tell.  I'm certainly aware that the full Smashwords catalogue has been ported across, including my own books.

From what I can see the search engine is slick and intuitive.  More importantly, the company has announced the device line up, which is pretty much the same as I suggested a week ago, but has added two important extra pieces of information.  The first is that the two tablets in the range, the 7" and 9" Nook HDs, are now slated for launch with a firm date: 22 November.

The second piece of information released today is that in addition to the stores named as stockists for the Nook product range in my earlier blog is that Asda, the UK subsidiary of Wal-Mart, has taken the range on.  As has been noted by Mark Coker, CEO of Smashwords, this is a big deal.  Selling eReaders via book-stores seems to be a sensible way of working, but really only works for those who frequent bookshops.  In reality, bookshops can be daunting places for non-bookish types, whereas Asda is the port of call for millions of people in the UK weekly.  Plus, let's not forget that some of these devices will appeal to a lot of people as a classy Christmas present.  It isn't the only eReader Asda are selling - they already sell the full range of Kobo eReaders and tablets plus, on-line at least, they also sell iPads and the Nexus 7.  Hopefully they will stock a number of tablets and eReaders in-store for customers to feel and play with.

For me, the most interesting of the tablets is the 9" Nook HD - I need to explore the spec in more detail and the ominous sounding 'from £229' doesn't fill me with competitive confidence, but on pure looks it wins already.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

Why not take a look at my books and read up on my Biog here

Want to see what B L O'Feld is up to?  Take a look at his website here

Worried/Interested in the secretive world of DLFs?  Take a look at this website dedicated to DLFs here, if you dare!