First: confusion. Skype’s payment options are confusing, unclear, and potentially misleading in that (for me at least) it seems entirely possible for the casual purchaser to pay for two or more packages that actually cover the same thing. Skype Pro, SkypeOut, SkypeIn, etc: all with different prices, and different features included and excluded. Confusing.

Second: unhelpfulness. I use Skype call forwarding, which uses up a little of my Skype credit every time someone calls me. When my whole call forwarding package is about to run out, Skype email me (reminders are great), so you’d assume that they’d also email me when my credit was running low? No. So I find myself having to sign in to my account on a regular basis when a simple email could let me know what I need to know.

This is turning into a bit of a rant, but my basic point is this: eBay’s huge edifice of marketing and corporate structure is suffocating the innovation and freshness that made Skype great in the first place. There are too many ‘packages’ and not enough simplicity. For all the talk of revolutionising the telecommunications industry, if they’re not careful it’ll end up just another half-digested corporate buyout used by yeah, maybe a few million people, but without the freedom to actually do anything really wonderful.

It’s a cliche, but big business really can be dangerous. </rant>

Speaking of which…

Appraisals for all staff will take place any time from now on up until the end of april. Corporate team will complete 360 degree appraisals linked to competencies, and in an exiting new development, senior managers will complete 270 degree appraisals using information from their director and two peers. All other staff will have appraisals in the normal way using the existing form, but it is planned to roll-out further competencies during the year.

Hmm…

You need to work for no pay, you need to put in 120 hours/week, you need to preferably sleep under the desk and live off pizza as a sole form of nutricient. As a result, you need to abandon your family andrisk life without insurance.

Hogwash!

I sometimes think that the guys at 37signals are just focusing their attention on common sense — a good thing of course. But I’m pretty sure that there are loads of businesses out there who are already ignoring the common business myths, and I’d love to hear more from them.

Anyway, I couldn’t agree more with what’s written in the post; I see no reason why businesses need massive amounts of work — in fact, I think if you’re consistently needing to put in loads of work, then chances are you’re doing something wrong. The best kind of success and innovation is almost effortless; most of the panic, blood, sweat, and tears just gets in the way.

The new 8GB iPhone won’t cost you a penny on our £45 and £75 tariffs. And it’s just £99 on our £35 tariff and new £30 tariff.

Nice price drop, considering it cost £250 a few months ago! [via Daring Fireball]

You might wonder why a website designer would be offering hosting. Put simply, the package of hosting, email and domain name registration that I give website design clients at the moment has got a really good reaction. So good, that I’ve decided it’s worth offering the same service on a wider basis — to anyone who wants to use it.

Here’s a screenshot from the draft website to give an idea of what’s likely to be included:

Over the past few months, I’ve spoken to a lot of people who are being charged £150, £200 a year to keep their website online. In a lot of cases, the amount of work that professionals have done for the money has been minimal, or non-existant. 

Personally, I don’t think it’s right to charge that amount of money and do nothing for it. So, if I can offer the same service, for a better price, that’s what I’m going to do.

I’d love to work with a few hand-picked businesses or individuals to get the hosting rolling, before I launch the service properly. If you’re interested, drop me a line at james [at] sevenoakdesign dot co dot uk and we’ll take it from there. I’d be especially interested to talk to people who run a small business or have/want full control over a blog. Thanks.

1. It will feature 3G. That’s pretty much a given.
2. It will probably have an all-black/red/choice of colours back to it, rather than the current one-quarter black, three-quarters chrome look. I’m not 100% sure on the colours other than black, but it looks possible.
3. There will be an app store. Obviously.
4. There will be no major new hardware feature additions other than the 3G networking. I’ve seen (fake) mockups which show the iPhone V2 with a front camera for webcam chats; I personally don’t think this will happen now: the iPhone OS 2.0 will run on both current and new iPhones, remember, and adding new hardware features like this would leave users of existing iPhones behind. I don’t think Apple want to do this just yet.
5. New enterprise features have been announced — interoperability with Windows email servers, for instance (hey, it’s not a perfect world!). I’d say there’s a 75% chance of a few new enterprise features being announced next week too.
6. Special Bonus Prediction: Steve Jobs will say ‘boom’ at least once while demoing some new feature.

So there you have it, or rather, them. I won’t be buying one because I’ve got one already (wonderful piece of kit), but feel free to come back in a day or so and praise/criticise my (lack of) foresight as you see fit anyway ;)

It struck me reading this that, despite their differences, what true religion and science have in common is that they are both empirical activities. Both involve investigation, learning, and realisation — gradual, or sudden. What sets the two apart is that while science is an outward looking empiricism, religion’s investigations and experiments are mainly internal.

Just a thought ;)

I’ve never heard of the guy but his painting are impressive: I was especially drawn to this one, of Pope Innocent X. I’m not sure if he’s impatient, angry, shy, or amazed (maybe all four), but whatever it is, I love the way Velázquez has captured the real human expression. It’s a little like looking at a photograph.

I’m often deeply impressed at how good artists manage to capture human expressions like this.

Little girl runs round the corner, running a red crayon along the paper-covered wall, oblivious to changes — but not oblivious; accepting, open.

I know it’s an advert. I know it’s been manufactured, driven through focus groups, appeals to the worst in us, burdens us with attachments. I know it’s not real. But still. 

Sometimes, we think too much :)