emmaswift.com

My Yellow Pages arrived last week and I remarked to my husband that this must be being delivered more frequently, as it seemed only a few months since the last one. He laughed, and reminded me that it is just the passing of time getting quicker and quicker as I grow older - thanks!!
But it got me thinking (no, not about my age) that perhaps the humble Yellow Pages days are numbered. Yellow Pages has it's online equivalent Yell.com so who needs a paper version? Well, of course I think the older generation probably still want a paper copy. So how about allowing you to opt-out of the yellow book delivery? To me, it would make good business sense - since less deliveries should mean less cost. But would people want to advertise there still if they knew it was going out to less people? Possibly, but inclusion in the online version as well as the paper copy probably mans exposure is more. Plus they have the brand recognition to fall back on. Come on Yellow Pages - think of the good publicity it would bring - you would be environmentally friendly!
Two other points of note - www.hollandandbarrett.com - get your website sorted - I could have run a mile in the time it took for a page to upload - and when I click on a label to view (which is an idea I liked) I don't expect it to be 1.6Mb big.... optimisation required, me thinks???
Which made me think my internet speed must have been playing up as the site was so slow... but I then went onto www.beautyzone.tv (the passing of time obviously requires halting) and discovered it was fine. All the high-res clips were beautifully executed and took no time to load. The only irritation with that one was the ad breaks.... ah well, can't have everything but I learnt some great eyeliner tips!

Labels: bad, beautyzone tv, good, holland and barrett, vanity., websites, yellow pages

I was reading today about IE8 and all the controversy about the default mode which will make it behave as IE7 unless you activate the "non-default" options.
Life always seems to be like this - you want to automatically "opt-out" as the default for marketing purposes but some companies still, unfortunately, think it's a god given right for you to be "opted-in". Similarly, I had a right nightmare with my web hosting/WHO.IS to get my details removed - which, happily, has been sorted out.
Why is it that so commonly the wrong "default" option is chosen? I can't see why Microsoft have gone down this route - it is hard enough to believe that they left such a gap between IE6 and IE7 but to redevelop IE8 but effectively "switch it off" seems unbelievably silly.
I'm hopeful that they will see sense - but until then, I guess at least we know how to turn the new functionality on! Goodness knows why people bother with IE at all - give me Firefox every time.

Labels: IE7, IE8, Microsoft