If you watched Tuesday’s BRIT Awards you’ll have noticed an interesting clash of styles near the start of the show.

Adele took to the stage, dressed in black, with the lights down low and accompanied by only a piano. She stood on the spot and sang a song she’d written herself. There were no dancers or costumes – just one woman baring her soul and displaying her incredible talent for singing.

It was one of the highlights of the night and almost moved host James Corden to tears.

“You can have all the pyrotechnics, the dancers, laser shows you want but if you sound like that, all you need is a piano” he said.

Adele’s performance was followed by Rihanna who delivered the complete opposite.

She performed a medley of songs all of which were written by a team of producers. She had a dozen dancers, a light show, a backing track to boost her vocals, a steel drum band, and she prowled and gyrated her way around the stage. There was also a bonfire in the middle of it at one point. And half way through she made a costume change.

Two very different approaches, both brilliant in their own way. But how are Adele and Rihanna’s styles represented on their official websites? It’s likely each picked up new fans on Tuesday night – so what’s in store when they get there?

www.Adele.tv has a mood in keeping with her BRITS performance. It’s simple and minimal. No frills. The splash page is relevant with quick links to get hold of her new album and another if you want tickets for her live shows which have just been announced.

There is an argument in web design circles that splash pages with heavy sales messages should be avoided but this has to be balanced with the need to anticipate what visitors want from the site and make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for.

Inside the main site the plain black and white theme continues with content spread across 3 main columns.

I like blogs and it’s always a shame when they’re buried in a hard to find sub menu. Adele’s blogs are well written, funny, and interesting and it’s good to see them given a prominent place. It’s content fans can only get from her official website so they’re right to make the most of it. It builds that feeling of a relationship between fan and star.

The middle column is official news and this is where the record company makes sure fans know what’s going on with release dates, ticket sales and special performances, competitions and events.

The third column is more interactive with a box to sign up to her mailing list, links to Adele’s forum, and her Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and iTunes Ping feeds. No matter where you click on the site this third column remains in the same place and that box to sign up for the mailing list never goes away.

There’s clarity and accessibility to this site and it’s clear someone’s looked at all the content available, chosen the best and given thought as to how it should be displayed throughout the site.

Pictures are well organised and a good size. There’s original content and insight into Adele’s life. I get to see special video clips and I feel I’m rewarded for visiting the site.

One thing very few celebrities get right is providing a means for their fans to contact them. They’re never going to give out their home address and mobile number, right? Well, Katy Perry did give out a phone number on her site a couple of years ago and invited fans to call and leave her a message.

I doubt she ever sat and listened to the tens of thousands of messages that were left but it was a nice, original touch and certainly of more interest to her fans than Adele’s “Contact” page on her site which looks like this…

I think everyone with a website should think very carefully about the “Contact” option.

Getting it wrong – and it’s the only area of Adele’s site where I think she has got it wrong – and it changes the whole perception of the site. I’ve gone from thinking this is a personal, intimate, revealing site that Adele herself is involved in, to wondering if it’s actually all about the record label and the management and there’s no way to get close to Adele herself.

Even saying “Adele’s e-mail address is….xxxxx, but she receives a great many messages and can’t respond to them individually” and THEN listing PR, management, and booking contacts would demonstrate that they’d at least thought about what the fans expect from a “Contact” page. They could also explain that Adele DOES interact via Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s an example of a business getting it right. The Glasgow Rocks basketball team on their website…

Perhaps you have a view on how to handle the “contact” option – share your thoughts in “comments” at the end of this blog.

Now let’s check out www.rihannanow.com

I’m expecting big things after that BRIT Awards performance. I want fireworks! And although there’s more action than on Adele’s site, it’s not what I was hoping for from Rihanna. I expected more sizzle than this…

There’s not much going on at all. In fact some of the sites made by her own fans are better than the official effort. The first thing that catches my eye is a giant sign up form for Rihanna’s newsletter. Down the left column there’s the official news feed which consists of PR type material flagging up awards she’s won, upcoming performances and sales figures.

It’s like an official news feed with a decent design budget and some extra stuff thrown in.

There is nothing on the entire site that even gives the suggestion that it’s come from Rihanna herself. There’s no blog, no diary, no message to the fans.

Even the audio player which streams her songs is so tiny I almost missed it, squeezed in as it is between the newsletter sign up form and a long list of box ads for her new album, an offer she’d doing with Kodak, her embedded Twitter feed and a link to lyrics for her songs.

The whole feel is impersonal and there’s too much of a sales message.

This mention of her fragrance is typical.

Things improve in the “Images” section with high quality well organised pictures of Rihanna on her travels round the world and a great section featuring shots of her fans.

Unfortunately the community feel doesn’t go any further because the “community” page on the site simply says “coming soon”.

This is another mistake lots of businesses make with their websites. I don’t care if something’s “coming soon”. If it’s not available now it’s no use to me. Better off not mentioning it until it’s ready and working. You get one chance to make a first impression. If you insist on mentioning something that isn’t ready yet tell me when it will be – and be specific.

In the modern digital world “coming soon” is worth nothing whether you’re an international celebrity or a business covering a small corner of Scotland. I’ve seen too many examples of things “coming soon” which never come and the phrase has no meaning for me.

Perfect example – that blog I wrote 3 weeks ago comparing football clubs’ websites – I highlighted a competition section on www.hibernianfc.co.uk which was “coming soon”. Guess what… it still is!

After a spectacular performance on Tuesday night Rihanna’s website doesn’t do her justice. It’s impersonal, there’s no wow factor and it’s too commercial. Her website creators haven’t considered what people want or expect when they visit her site.

Adele and her team clearly have. The site is in keeping with her identity and something simple like prominent blog posts deepen the relationship between artist and fan and will get me visiting again to see what she’s saying again.

If you’ve got a business website ask yourself if you’re a Rihanna or an Adele. If you offer a sexy, glitzy high impact product then your website should reflect this. If you’re simple, reliable, high quality then the site should leave visitors with that feeling.

Ask yourself “Is the site doing what visitor’s expect?” and if there’s anything you should change to make it more relevant and to deepen the connection with your customers.

Now – imagine you’re a web designer (maybe you are!) and you’re given an unlimited budget to create a new official site for Rihanna – what would you do and how would you make sure it reflects the performances she gives on stage?

Let your imagination run riot (maybe she’ll read this and give you the business!) share your ideas in “comments”.

Football clubs, the web and social media. What can we learn from them? How does your team fare? And is there any correlation between the quality of the team’s on-line presence and their performance on the pitch?

Football’s been in the news all week so I reckon it’s a good time to investigate how the SPL clubs are performing in the on-line world.

Every team has a large community of fans who follow it. You’d think that would be the perfect starting point for a successful social media strategy!

So who’s taking full advantage and what can we learn from them?

Watch the video clip to find out more…

So who is at the top of the on-line league?

Excellent
Motherwell, Rangers and Celtic belong here.

Celtic beat their Glasgow rivals in the style stakes. www.celticfc.net  is beautifully designed with large high quality pictures given the space they deserve. Celtic lead the way for Scottish football on Facebook with a link to their official page which has 34,716 people who LIKE it. Video clips from press conferences are added here, the club responds to tabloid rumours and Celtic’s Facebook is moderated meaning any inappropriate material is deleted. They say Twitter is “coming soon”.

I’d give Rangers www.rangers.co.uk  the edge for content. Fans can sign up for a weekly e-mail from the manager, and a video clip started playing immediately when the page loaded giving me a preview of the next match. A cluttered design means they might not get the credit they deserve and the SPL champions are missing out by not having an official Facebook presence. An unofficial Rangers page has 54 thousand LIKES but a lot of abusive content.

So the Big 2 can learn from each other, and we can all learn from Motherwell.

They bring it all together very nicely. Great design, good content although someone needs to persuade new manager Stuart McCall to do a weekly blog like his predecessor Craig Brown did.

The Fir Park side do something clever with their “Latest News” section. Each story gets a one paragraph outline. To read the full article you need to register for free. It takes seconds but there’s a range of optional questions which give the club powerful information about who’s using the site. They can capture this and turn it into targeted marketing.

Motherwell clearly have a strategy and things they want to achieve on-line. Their Facebook has 3,831 LIKES and there’s a Twitter feed which follows other people and interacts with them. It has personality and there’s even a Flickr feed embedded on www.motherwellfc.co.uk which means fans who take their own pictures have them featured on the main page.

Good
Well done to Hearts and St Johnstone for thinking about their communities. www.heartsfc.co.uk includes a section for “new fans” (Motherwell do this too) and www.perthstjohnstonefc.co.uk has an area for Polish supporters.

I get the feeling from Hearts’ page that the commercial team have the edge over the content providers! The advertising and promotion just feels a bit full on with box adverts breaking up news stories after a single paragraph and this takes away from what is some pretty good content. Although there IS an official Hearts Facebook page, there’s no obvious link to it from the main site and this could be costing them followers.

St Mirren suffer from limitations in site design but are ahead of the game with social media and all the teams in the SPL provide full match reports with high quality pictures from all their games.

St Johnstone’s “newspaper” style site is one of the most innovative designs in the entire league. It’s brilliantly thought through and a great example of how to do things differently. Making the site look good and easy to use has clearly been a priority.

Hamilton also deserve praise for innovation at www.acciesfc.co.uk Although I wonder if the down to earth domain name and unusual look of the page might make some people wonder if it’s a very professional fan page rather than the official club site. But it’s sleek and minimalist and very easy on the eye and if it could be livened up a bit with some social media it would be right up among the best sites.

Aberdeen have a particularly strong “blogs” section with some excellent writing. It’s buried away in a sub menu and I reckon if they made it more prominent and tied it in with social media they could get some great comments and debates going and people sharing them throughout the wider internet.

Hibs promise a competition section “coming soon” and helpfully type out full quotes from managers and players in news stories. This means fans who don’t want to pay for the premium video subscription content can still at least read exactly what was said.  

Could Do Better
Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Kilmarnock and Dundee United all suffer from the same problem – design limitations on the main site.

I found the pages looking dated and difficult to navigate around. This took away from some good content. All 3 had strong match reports with high quality action pictures from the games.

Dundee United also have a superb weekly e-newsletter which fans can sign up to. It’s brilliantly put together but if you don’t know it exists it’s hard to find it on the main page. It has a box linking to it but I’m not sure tangerine and black are the easiest colours to read on a computer. However, anyone considering an on-line newsletter would get some great inspiration from the way they do it at Tannadice.

Killie and Caley need to find a way to get the action from their games transferred to their home pages. Every match report has great pictures within it but the site design needs to adapt so this hits the viewer in the face when the page loads.

Of course fans want results on the pitch rather than fancy websites and perhaps it’s no co-incidence that these clubs are higher up the SPL table than some of their rivals with better websites. Maybe they’re deliberately putting a bigger slice of the budget towards the team itself.

If that’s the case all the more reason to invest in social media. Even after investing some money in training and time to manage the page it’ll still be cheaper than paying for a re-built site and the way the web’s going it could end up much more effective.

Killie in particular have a thriving unofficial Facebook page where 2,711 fans post news articles, make comments and share pictures and memories. They’re missing out by not even linking to it from their main page.

Action points!
The NS Design door is very much open to any SPL club (or any other organisation or individual) who’d like to discuss how to improve their on-line presence through a better website, or improved social media strategy.

Gary and the team would be delighted to chat with you.

But here are my free, handy hints to each SPL club on things they could do straight away to improve their on-line league position…

Rangers www.rangers.co.uk – get an official Facebook page, moderate it and link to it from your main site.

Celtic www.celticfc.net   – get on Twitter and use that big Facebook community you’ve built up to enhance your content with official blogs and podcasts.

Hearts www.heartsfc.co.uk  – cut back a bit on the commercial content and give the good stuff room to breathe.

Kilmarnock www.kilmarnockfc.co.uk – some action pictures on the front page and consider giving that unofficial Facebook page some official recognition – or at least a link.

Inverness Caledonian Thistle www.ictfc.co.uk – same as Kilmarnock and think about explaining what fans get when they sign up to the premium subscription service. At the moment there’s no explanation until after I click “Register”.

Motherwell www.motherwellfc.co.uk – very good as it is but ask that new manager if he’ll do a blog!

Dundee United www.dundeeunitedfc.co.uk – make the e-newsletter stand out on the front page of the site. It’s excellent but too hard to find.

St Johnstone www.perthstjohnstonefc.co.uk – Top marks on a great layout but make the audio clips in the news articles more prominent and consider reaching out to the 2 thousand or so fans on the unofficial Facebook page.

Aberdeen www.afc.co.uk – Do more to promote your blogs. There’s some very high quality writing there and it’s buried too deep in the site.

St Mirren www.saintmirren.net – With Motherwell, the only other club on Facebook and Twitter but the Buddies need to realise it’s a 2 way street! Don’t just use social media to issue news stories and alerts, think about engaging with the fans and talking back to them. Follow some people on Twitter and try to give it some character and personality.

Hibs www.hibernianfc.co.uk – Get the fans more involved and think about social media and more interesting content.

Hamilton www.acciesfc.co.uk – you’re much higher up the on-line league than the SPL table! Could you integrate the high quality pictures into the match reports rather than keeping them separate? And dip your toe into the social media water!

Now, play the video clip for my closing thoughts…

Thanks for reading and as ever, I invite you to post your comments below. It’s all about opinions so have YOUR say now! Have I been too harsh on your favourite team? Maybe there’s another football club or sporting organisation doing great things on-line that you want to highlight. How do you feel about clubs keeping their best content back and making fans PAY for it?
 

Well we are down to the final twenty four hours of our annual Twenty Four Days of Twitmas promotion. We have to say that we’ve been delighted by the levels of participation across the board – as well as the prizes that were donated for the cause. There really was something for everyone.

Last weekend on Saturday – Abica Telecoms offered up a Bottle of  Ten Year Old Glengoyne Single Malt Whisky – which went to  a rather delighted @steve5424.

Sunday, a personal favourite of mine, was a proper Scottish Tea Break goodies from the newly-launched KILTR.com – a networking site for Scots home and abroad. The goodies included some caramel wafers, tea, shortbread and a limited edition @kiltr mug too!

On Monday, the kind folks at the Renfewshire Chamber of Commerce, offered the choice between bottle of Johnnie Walker or a Chivas – but halfway through the day, they decided to offer them both! The Chivas went to @BraeScotland & the Johnnie Walker: @globalaudit.

We followed up the festive Spirits with one for the golf lovers out there! Up for grabs, thanks to our friends at Pro Shop Direct, a pair of FootJoy Golf Shoes worth more than a hundred pounds!  These went to a very happy @dsparks83, followed by the mid-week Twitmas giveaway of a £25.00 voucher to spend at Gifted People. The winner was @deepfox who may put it towards a “microlight experience”!

The penultimate day of our promotion was one especially for the ladies  - an Arbonne Seasource Detox Spa Express Set worth  a hundred pounds. Heavenly luxury.  This was won earlier tonight go by @janicepattie.  A special thanks to @thejaxxstar for donating a very popular prize!

The Final Day – Day 24!

As it’s our last day, we have two prizes – one little and one  rather massive one.

As a result of our last day of work in the office,  in a bid to tidy all our desks, we uncovered  a selection of sundry items to be given away a “booby prize”…(pictured below).

As you can see – it’s probably the best booby prize of all time, including – a big Cadbury Roses Tin (granted there are only three chocolates left), a SpidaTrap.com baseball hat, the only book of numbers you’ll ever need (well, if you live in Glasgow South), an NSDesign mug, a 2011 calendar, a copy of Essential 80s Pop Music (a random trivia book written in 1998 by yours truly!) and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc wine (and amazingly we’ve not opened it!) Just to name but a few!  So a few real goodies, and a few things thrown in just for fun!

And finally….

We have arguably saved the biggest prize for last – a week’s accommodation at Les Grands Arbres in France.  Exclusive use of the beautiful “Le Pommier” studio cottage (self catering) for any week between January 1st and the end of May 2011 (to be mutually agreed between the winner and Les Grands Arbres)!  It’s a superb prize, and we’d like to thank Irene and Jim, the owners of Les Grands Arbres for donating it to our Twitmas initiative.

The final twenty four hours of the Twenty Four Days of Twitmas 2010 begins at 8pm tonight (Thursday 23rd December), and we’ll be closing the entire event at 8pm on the 24th.

The first randomly-selected winner will be announced at half eight and will pick up the “runner up” prize.  Following that - the overall winner of the accommodation in France will be announced!!

Remember to follow us on Twitter for all the instructions about how to enter, and best of luck to everyone.  Thanks again to the 1000′s of people who have taken part over the past 24 days – we hope you had as much fun participating, as we (and our generous clients) had running it! Merry Christmas to everyone, and here’s to #24Twitmas!

Thea
x

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of social networking phenomenon Facebook, was announced as Time Magazine’s Man of the Year last week, becoming one of the youngest people ever to hold the title.

Time said the honour had been awarded for Zuckerberg’s achievements in ‘connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives’.

It’s a pretty fair assessment of Facebook’s development over the last couple of years, and 2010 alone has seen Facebook reach 500 million users, helped in no small part by the now Golden Globe-nominated movie The Social Network. It’s also the year Zuckerberg has become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire and pledged a huge amount of his fortune to charity.

Still there are some who say this is a political decision and that the true ‘Man of the Year’ should be Wikileak’s Julian Assange, who won the reader’s vote for his role in release of top secret US diplomatic documents. Assange has certainly been high-profile, notorious, and thought provoking, but have his actions influenced the lives of 500 million people globally? Time thinks not.

Of course, the full consequences of his recent actions remain to be seen, and this time next year Assange may well have succeeded in redrawing the political and legal landscape, making this a very different discussion.

Whichever man you believe to be the true winner – the debate surrounding the award shows how the ways we are influenced are changing, with this year being the first award given to a key player from the dotcom industry.   On a personal note, I don’t mind waiting a wee while longer…

Happy Friday everyone!

Well, we’re down to the final week of Twenty Four Days of Twitmas ten-day mark promotion and as we intimated in last week’s round up at the , it’s exceeded our expectations.

Over the weekend we decided to cater to the kids. Saturday our friends at stonzewear.co.uk gave us some cosy Mittz to give away. Congrats go to @laylalovesruby who snagged them.

On Sunday, some precious little penguin shoes (pic right) were featured from the newly-launched popitin.co.uk.

Well done to @EmmaReid01 who walks away these little cuties for her own little cutie, Declan!

In order to beat the January work-out rush, on Monday we teamed up with Pro-Life Fitness to offer a three-month trial at the Paisley-based gym. It was @HazelAngelstar who’s ready to take action with that membership trial. Way to go Hazel!

Tuesday it was more yuletide alcohol up for grabs – this time, courtesy of  the friendly connoisseurs at Alexander Wines. A very happy @ali_hutch won the Parxet Cuvee 21 Cava Brut on offer!

For Wednesday, we had not one, not two, but three prizes up for grabs from Scottish outfit Fortune Favours the Brave. We asked our followers to pick their favourite t-shirt and three lucky winners did and won!

Thursday was another unique prize up for grabs from Glasgow-Chauffeur.com. Basically we gave away luxury transport (for up to four people) for one night on the town driven by James, a private chauffeur, in his E-Class Mercedes.

Plus James kindly offered 25% off on any booking through his site which quoted #24Twitmas too!

Congrats to @DFScot for riding away with our Personal Chauffeur, James.

Due to the success of our Twenty Four Days of Twitmas promotion, James has decided to  extend the deal to all NSDesign customers through until New Year for all of you to take advantage of it. (Open to all of our customers within a 30 mile radius of Glasgow).

Don’t say we’re not good to you all!

Day 17, today, is our “Work For Free” day. As we arrived to work this morning, Gary has doled out a variety of projects ranging from website audits, SEO advice, basic logo creation and more..  we’re still working through as many as we can as I type!!…

Over the weekend look out for another bottle of Glengoyne, 10-Year Old Whisky and a “Scottish Tea Break” package from Scotland’s  very own, brand new, social networking site for business.

We’ll kick of the final week with even more brilliant prizes to hand out – another quality dram, some golf merchandise, and finally one person will truly be celebrating on Christmas Eve when we giveaway our final prize -  a week’s holiday accommodation in France!

So, make sure you’re following us on Twitter, and stay tuned in to be in with a chance of winning one of our fab freebies this final week of Twenty Four Days of Twitmas - Twenty Ten!

Have a great weekend! Wrap up! Stay safe!

It’s day ten of our Twenty Four Days of Twitmas promotion. We’ll tell you one thing, the snow has not dampened the excitement or the success of this year’s festivities. As was mentioned last week in our Friday re-cap, the kick off totally exceeded our initial expectations.

Over the weekend it was our turn to give away three domain names on Saturday, and Sunday was a business hosting package including a domain name too! Our congrats to: @TcNisbet, @cobbiecollinge, @sjwmobile and @UniformCentral respectively.

Then week two kicked off with a case of wine – 6 bottles of Oglio Wine courtesy of our good friends at Entourage. Well done to @Gr3ant who scooped this festive prize.

Tuesday it was a unique gift from local photographer Marc de Ridder who gave away a one-hour photoshoot won by @Clyde_Broadcast.

Wednesday was arguably the most unique offering for the promotion so far – 6 prize packs from SpidaTrap.com – which contained not only ten actual spider traps (yes really), but also a SpidaTrap.com baseball cap too. Those goodies went to @silverburnlive @young_matthew @bigste78 @buddybanana @therossmcl @easydees. Well done and enjoy your spider-free homes!

On Thursday we had two, £25.00 vouchers  up for grabs courtesy of our friends at Lounge at Largs and Room at Largs.  @robajob99 & @ThirdSectorLab were the winners of these delectable prizes.

Today, as it’s Friday we’ve got something for all you Rockers out there! It’s a Rock Radio Prize Pack with such rockin’ goodies as a  t-shirt, notepad, stickers, and key ring too.

Looking ahead to this weekend, we’ve got a couple of giveaways just for the Kids, which will be perfect for the winter weather! 

Finally just as a reminder, next Friday (day 17 of Twitmas!) is our Work For Free Day. What that means is that each year, for one entire day, we offer our complete range of services at no cost – including website advice, SEO, logo creation, social media consultancy and more.  Get in touch now to take full advantage!

Well it’s been an amazingly exciting week as we kicked off our annual Twenty Four Days of Twitmas.

I think it’s fair to say, that the response has far-exceeded our expectations already, and we’re only on day three!

Just to recap what we’ve given away so far…

Day One – Wednesday we launched with two exclusive bottles of malt whisky – a 13 year old bottle of ISLE OF ARRAN and a GLENGOYNE  to from our friends at Straight from the Cask.  After hundreds of entries it was @taxikevin who won the “ARRAN” & @_Natalie_P wins the “GLENGOYNE”. Well done!

Day Two – After giving away the whisky giveaway, we thought it would  be somewhat fit to offer a Hangover Duvet Day Cure on day two courtesy of  our friends at Maia Gifts in Glasgow. Congratulations to @LauraFDesign – she’s the winner of the “Hangover Helper Candle” & a “Scottie Dog Hot Water Bottle”. That’ll keep you warm during these seemingly arctic days.

Day 3 – We’re nearly done on today’s festivities! Today we’re giving away something quite fun: six courtside tickets to see the Glasgow’s very own basketball team the Rocks. If you’ve never been to a professional basketball game you might just be surprised at what a B L A S T it is – especially viewing from the courtside seats!

On the way this weekend, the fun won’t stop! In a more low key fashion we’ll be giving away some of our own goodies here at NSDesign.

Of course, we have many more great prizes for Monday and the rest of the week so stay tuned and be sure to follow us on twitter to keep up with all the action.

Excitement is reaching fever pitch here in the NSDesign office. It’s  been pandemonium as we’ve been running around trying to score some fantastic prizes to give away on Twitter in this year’s “Twenty Four Days of Twitmas”.

The fun all kicks off  again next week – Wednesday 1st December!!

For those of you who’ve not heard of it, it’s when we, (with the help of some of our esteemed colleagues and clients), give away a variety goodies every day in the run up to Christmas.

This year, there really is something for everyone – free domains and web hosting, funky gifts and gadgets, event tickets and some alcohol for your yuletide celebrations.  We even have one truly grand giveaway – a week’s accommodation in the most gorgeous cottage in France!  More on all of these in the weeks to come!

Each day our giveaways will come in a variety of forms. Some days they’ll be straight forward @replies that win, other days it will be pub quiz type questions, still others it’ll be a treasure hunt through our client’s websites.

To be in with a chance of winning, you’ll need to be following us on Twitter (or the #twitmas hashtag!) where each day we’ll have different routes to win.

Roll on next Wednesday – let the festive fun begin!

Earlier this week, I remembered why I try not to visit the Apple Store very often…  having gone in for “just a wee look”, and walked out with the new AppleTV2 and having upgraded my iPhone!

Ok – being honest, I did actually plan to do these things at some point, but the Apple Store (and it’s brilliant staff) have a habit of encouraging you into these things..  that and the products are so seductively sexy you just need to have them.  There was also another very good reason for me simply having to upgrade my iPhone 3G to iPhone 4 – my wife got one before me, and being the true geek in the family I couldn’t be outdone for too long

So… here’s just a very short review of both these new toys:

Apple TV

The new Apple TV is tiny, and the box it comes in is tiny, and (having played with the old Apple TV) you can’t not be impressed by how tiny (and sleek) it really is.  That is until you realise that the tiny box doesn’t contain an HDMI cable to plug the thing into the telly!  Bit of a failure on Apple’s part to not make this clearer on the box, or for them not to mention this when selling it to me…  However, a quick steal from the SKY HD Box, and it was up and running.  Configuration was easy, and now have all my music, films, podcasts etc all streaming to the HD TV in the living room.  Add to that the “Remote” app that allows you to control the appleTV (and Itunes on your computer) and it all works very well indeed!

Apple iPhone 4

Not that I really needed the new iPhone (my iPhone 3G has been doing me just fine), but my reasoning behind buying it was as follows:

1. I was out of contract (with O2) so I *could* upgrade
2. I was nearly using up all my 16GB storage on current phone
3. My wife got one last week and that annoyed me

The truth is – other than it being far prettier than the old one, the new apple iPhone isn’t a massive improvment in my opinion.  Yes, it’s got new things like “facetime” (apple’s version of skype video), and includes a little compass so I know which direction I’m going in, as well as a much improved camera and new video camera (HD quality)..  but apart from that – if you’ve already updated your software to V4 on the older 3G (or 3GS), then there’s not a great deal to benefit from.  The battery (not that I’ve had time yet to fully test this) is supposedly a lot better (which wouldn’t be difficult!) which will be a bonus!

Did I really need to upgrade, probably not, do I regret paying £299 – no, especially when I’ll sell my existing iPhone 3G for approx £160.  Have I restored my position of King-Geek in my household..  (was there ever any chance of losing it?)….  Now who want’s facetime!

It might have had over 4000 unique visitors in a few days, and generated a serious bit of buzz on Twitter, but our Social media experiment based on a spoof website for the Papal Visit, hasn’t gone down well with Paypal.

The site in question can be found here – www.paypalvisit.com (be quick, it’ll be gone soon!), and as explained on an earlier blog post  it was simply a bit of fun, combined with a test of Twitter’s capability to turn “nothing” into something Viral!

However.. just days after it went live, we received an official email from “EBay Enforcement”..  A summary of which is below:

PayPal, Inc. (“PayPal”) does not permit use of its trademarked name PAYPAL in a domain name. 

Such use is in violation of international intellectual property regulations and the trademark laws of many countries worldwide

Additionally, arbitrary use of the word PAL in a domain is problematic if the connected website is used in association with a business making use of PayPal or operating in the same sphere of business as PayPal.

While PayPal respects your right of expression and your desire to conduct business on the Internet, PayPal must enforce its own rights in order to protect its valuable and famous trademark. For these reasons, and to avoid consumer confusion, PayPal must insist that you not use the domain name for any purpose, do not sell, offer to sell or transfer the domain name to a third party, and instead simply let the domain registration expire.  

eBay Inc.
Legal Department

Rather than just “do as we were told”, we actively tried to engage with Paypal/Ebay and tried to clarify that the site was not a phishing site, nor a spam site, not trying to rip off Paypal (or the Pope!) in any way.  It was just a bit of fun, and we pointed them to the blog above!

Unfortunately, they didn’t change their opinion, and came back with:

While we have no desire to interfere with your legitimate business purposes, we cannot allow the use of a domain which contains the registered PayPal trademark, which could lead to confusion or dilution of the PayPal trademark itself.

The content of the site should not contain any unauthorized use of any of PayPal’s Intellectual Property such as trademarks or copyrights. The site currently contains the PayPal Logo, which is not allowed.

So I’m afraid that the site as we know it will vanish into cyberspace history. Yes, we could modify it, change the domain name, remove the branding that is “based on” the Paypal logo etc etc etc, but really what’s the point.  It was an experiment based on the “here and now”, and it’s perhaps fitting that it ends just as quickly as it arrived.

A few comments from Twitter:

always new the Vatican never had a sense of humour

I would take them on Gary – the publicity would be massive – the legal costs would not be low though – bummer. Lol

Ridiculous, as you were providing them with free publicity! At least Catholics saw the funny side when Ebay didn’t.

Pathetic response from PayPal, no sense of humour, but then not surprised as they have the worst customer service on Earth.

fwiw, you have legal protection for use of the name there. Arkell v Pressdram is probably rather relevant.

Oops! You can’t use the word Pal?! Crazy.

Nice one Gary, maybe it’s better than it dies in this furore, at least you get some exposure out of it! idiots!