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parislemon:

I’ve always hated the use of the word “exclusive” in titles. From what I see, 99% of the time the usage boils down to one of three things:

1) The author sucks at writing actual titles.

2) The author wants their story to appear much more important than it actually is. (“It says ‘exclusive’ so it must be important!”)

3) The author is an asshat who wants to make themselves appear more important that they actually are.

And then there’s the “exclusive” that Mashable published today. A new low. While running an infographic that no one else is likely to run is technically an “exclusive”, so is, say, posting a picture of your slap bracelet collection. The usage of the term in this headline is more along the lines of “sad”.

If your story is filled with good, exclusive information, it should speak for itself. Or maybe you shouldn’t be a writer. 

Annoyances with the language in British Advertising

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There is a lot to deal with when one moves to a new country. Languages, accents and colloquialisms take some time to get used to, even when moving to another English speaking country. Moving to the US 10 years ago, I did have to make adjustments in the way I spoke and in the way I understood what others said to me. One of the biggest adjustments was the “wassup” adjustment. Took me a long time to realize that it was a greeting and not a question, and that I didn’t need to respond with a full answer. It’s similar to the “you alright?” or “alright?” greeting in the UK (or is this London only?). 

It’s taken me a lot less time to make similar adjustments in the UK, however.  But I just don’t get British advertising and the confusing (and annoying) language it uses. I’m sitting in an East Coast train on the way to Edinburgh right now, and across from me is a sign for their new first class service. The last sentence goes: it’s extra special and we haven’t put the prices up. 

“Put the prices up”?? Do they mean they haven’t raised prices or they haven’t displayed them? 

The other day, I was surfing the Sky website, wondering if I were to get Sky TV what kind of package I’d get. A little sign at the bottom of the page said something like “get £5 off when you also take a Sky phone line rental for £11.99”. (The amounts here aren’t accurate.) A phone line is a service that I purchase. And even if it was a physical product and not a service, I don’t “take” it. I pay a monthly fee for the next 12 (or maybe even 24) months for a service that I sign up for, I don’t just “take” it. What I do “take” is an extra helping of mushrooms or another slice of toast. Not a phone line service that I’m renting and signing a contract for. 

Ok, rant of the day done.

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B-schools and MBAs have been on my mind a lot lately. I wanted to see what Google would throw up if I searched for the terms “stammering mba” (without the quotes). The top results were forums where people who stammer asking if it will prove a hinderance in “clearing” the MBA. Most of the for questions seemed to be from Indians. The result that made me cringe the most was: 

Can ppl vid stammering prob can do mba..?? do company hire them …

The response that showed through on the Google search page was: u cn do it bt companies vl hire u only for operations…dont go fr marketing

Ah…well, if anything prevents a stammerer from being successful it is typing “vid” when one means “with” or “vl” when one means “will”. That’s not acceptable even on Twitter

It drives me crazy that there isn’t a standardised convention from writing numbers in the UK

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Why is it that phone numbers in the UK don’t have a standardised format? In the 9 months since I’ve moved here I’ve seen the following number formats (the number used here is the BT corporate enquires number):

  • 020 7356 5000
  • 0207 356 5000
  • 02073 565000 (mostly used for cell phones only, starting with 07)
  • +44 (0) 2073 565 000
  • 0044 2073 565 000

Whereas the US has a nice, simple format: +1 (215) 518-1384 for mobiles or landlines (this used to be my number when I lived in Philadelphia). A little simple math to compute the number of available phone numbers (as per the North American Numbering Plan) assuming numbers start at 210-110-1000 and end at 998-998-9999 and excluding the 5 billion and 8 billion range, allows for 7,888,889,000 numbers. That is slightly more than the population of the entire earth! If this is enough for the US, Canada and a bunch of other smaller countries that use it, why isn’t it enough for ~60 million people in the UK?

Also, there seems to be no single/simple charging structure to call a customer service number. Location free numbers here start with 08, and are usually 0844, 0845, 0870 or 0871. The calls to these numbers vary by the provider one has, the date and time one is making the call, and carious other minutia. And calling from a cell phone usually results in a 20p or 25p per minute charge. This is absolute craziness if you need to call Avis customer service and you’re stuck on a highway. 

Anyway, the reason I started this rant about phone numbers is that I got thinking about why we use numbers to identify a person whom I’m calling. In the age of Facebooks, Twitters and Googles, doesn’t this seem very 20th century? Why can’t I just pick up my phone, choose a person from my contact list and call them without having to have a number for them? In the world of IPv6, where every networked device can be identified anyway, if I was able to link my email address to my devices IPv6 address (or to multiple IPv6 addresses), it eliminates the need for a phone number.

This is a little bit of what Apple is doing with Facetime, I think, but it needs a big telecoms provider to get behind the concept for it to take off. How great would it be if the push came from a telecom giant in the developing world. They are already larger that AT&T or Verizon can ever hope to be – it would be a great disruptor to the world wide telecommunications system. 

Ahhh, pipe dreams.

The best beer cities in the world

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[h/t to Jeeves for sending me this link]

I was in Amsterdam last weekend and will be in Istanbul this weekend. Too bad I didn’t know Amsterdam’s beer hot spots while I was there. But I still had some really, really good beer. Since I was in holiday mode, I didn’t make much of a note of what I drank, but they were delicious.

Frommer’s list of the best beer cities in the world includes several European cities. The next time we go city-hopping, it will be to these cities.