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0800 Really, Really Free
Posted by CJD on May 14, 2013
Ofcom, who as you know, are currently on their white steed doing good deeds, are at it again.
They’re consulting on a new schema for non-geographic numbers so that it’s clearer what calls to the different number groups will cost.
The headline is that calls to 0800 numbers will be free, no matter what you use to call them with – including your mobile; which is nice.
This is very good news but you have to ask why they were allowed not to be free to start with, why it’s taken so long to do anything about it and why it won’t change for ages yet – 2015?
By the way, If you don’t want to wait until 2015 to get free calls to 0800 numbers from your mobile, here’s how you can do it from today
http://www.voipfone.co.uk/Free_0800_mobile.php
Ofcom are reviewing all the non-geographic ranges to attempt some consistency, but they seem to have chosen a two part charge, which, it seems to me, is going to result in another mess.
But more on thas later, meanwhile, this is their proposed numbering guide: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/images/consultations/nongeofigure1
Windows 8 is dead, long live Windows 8.1
Posted by CJD on May 9, 2013
The news this week is that Microsoft will revert to classic view in its next update of Windows 8. It may even…wait for it…bring back the Start button.
Well thank the Lord is all I can say.
I don’t use Windows much anymore myself but I have to help out a few people now and then with theirs and I confess to being completely lost with the new Windows 8 interface – I can’t find anything I need in it and neither can anybody else it seems.
The FT is reporting this reversal as…
“one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola’s New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago.”
…and I can’t help but agree.
I’m not sure how it happened, obviously Microsoft needed a new UI that would work with today’s smartphones and pads, but for a full sized PC we need something different – something that work with a mouse not your fingers.
Microsoft will have undertaken many, many usability testing sessions before launching Windows 8, so I can only assume that they ignored the results.
The boss doesn’t always know best.