http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog Sun, 12 Jun 2011 13:49:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The following is written entirely for the benefit of Google, and you, dear reader, who probably like me has a Secoh EL 80 15 pump or similar that has stopped working. It may have been one year or it might have been three. (That's what happened with us.) Maybe it's ... http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php/2011/06/12/secoh-air-pump-stopped-work-faults-probably-the-easily-replaced-diaphragm/ This is a repost of the post that appeared a couple of days ago over on my other blog, The Rivals, where I'm asking questions, posting stuff and so on for the book I'm writing about Microsoft, Apple and Google - to be published by Kogan Page, delivery date July. ... http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php/2011/01/27/steve-jobs-would-walk-in-say-this-is-far-too-big-and-walk-out-musicmatch-the-ipod-and-the-dell-dj-repost/ The hours after the Giffords shooting in Arizona were hardly the media's finest hour; Giffords was declared to have been declared dead at the scene, then realised not to be. I was in the US at the time, and saw the news come up on my Twitter feed. Personally I ... http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php/2011/01/13/so-anyway-those-guns-professor-spafford/ Something on Twitter reminded me of this. This was written for the January 27 2000 edition of The Independent. BY CHARLES ARTHURTechnology EditorBritain's Greenwich meridian could become the new reference point for time over the Internet, after two rival groups of British businesses resolved their differences over whose measurement they ... http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php/2010/12/20/remember-how-britain-took-over-the-internet-in-2000-by-getting-it-all-to-run-on-greenwich-electronic-time-no/ So there's lots of people reading my post about the evils of PR done badly. But who ever suggests how to do it correctly? Well, here's a start. Emails: have a meaningful subject line. Often it's the only thing the journalist will read before deleting it. Journalists delete lots of emails. Never, ... http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php/2010/11/19/live-pr-live-in-the-21st-century/ This story was first written for The Independent to appear in its 13 April 2001 edition. $2.50 for every copy of iTunes? One wonders if Apple will ever remove the facility to encode in MP3 from iTunes.... BY CHARLES ARTHURTechnology EditorAre you still listening to MP3s? Microsoft wishes you wouldn't; and ... http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php/2010/11/05/drm-mp3-from-the-2001-catalogues-windows-xp-wont-be-able-to-create-high-quality-mp3s/ Observe the trailer above: it tells you pretty much from the outset that this is a comedy - it's going to be one of those dash-everywhere-oh-my-god-can-they-do-it, rather like the last 10 minutes of Notting Hill (hope that doesn't ruin it for you). If you look an early version of the poster ... http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php/2010/09/18/terrible-trailer-great-film-le-concert-goes-against-the-flow-so-when-else-has-a-trailer-undersold-a-film/ It is annoying to see the annoying company Ryanair - whose motto I imagine to be "if they're stupid enough to fly with us, they're on a mental level with sheep and should be treated as such" - given occasional credibility over ludicrous ideas without anyone asking the straightforward question. Such ... http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php/2010/05/02/why-ryanair-will-not-implement-or-will-withdraw-its-toilet-charge-because-it-will-cut-profits/ This piece first appeared in The Independent around September 2000. Given all the talk about some handheld(ish) computer released by some company or other, I thought it might be interesting to look back on... A couple of notable phrases: "Microsoft's failure in this market is unusual.." and at the end that ... http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php/2010/02/04/handheld-computers-how-it-looked-in-september-2000/ Hot on the heels of Kevin Braddock, who posted (and then rescinded) a long list of PRs who had sent him annoying emails, I've been noticing a rise in the number of rubbish emails - badly targeted, irrelevant, trivial, stupid - that have been landing in my inbox. The cause, as ... http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php/2010/01/06/how-pr-fail-works-or-fails-to-work/