london

The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf

The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf is one of the oldest tales in England, carried parent to daughter and son for generations. Every kid agreed that the big bad wolf who broke into the first and second of the little pigs’ houses deserved the ugly ending of being boiled alive, when he tried to sneak down the chimney of the third little pig’s house.

Gruesome you’d say! Surely not what we’d teach our kids today. And The Guardian has taken this a bit further – the victims are no longer the pigs but the wolf. They’re arrested by the police and brought to justice…

The Guardian’s amazing video looks at how a story like that, maybe if it had to happen in an English suburb, would be covered by the media and how people would react on social media. People break onto the streets. Does this remind you of the London riots in August last year somehow?

(Thanks for the inspiration A.M.)

iPad 2 first sales statistics from the US

Ten days ahead of the lines that we expect outside of the Apple store on Regent Street and Covent Garden in London, we have access to the first statistics on the sales of the iPad 2 in the United States. Piper Jaffray, the investment bankers and Deutsche bank, the leading global financial services company are both reported by CNN to have found that authorised retailer sold out their stocks on the first day. Piper Jafrray report sales of between 400,000 and 500,000 iPad 2s in the United States.

The photo below shows queues reported by the Daily Mail last September, of people waiting to buy iPhone 4s “which they can sell for vastly inflated profits to customers in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia where the phone is not yet on sale”.

Is this what we should expect with the iPad 2? Here is a picture of 5th Avenue in New York on the 10th March – the launch date of the iPad 2.

Piper Jaffray are reported to have found that 70% of iPad 2 buyers were new to iPad. This is a stark reality when compared to the  23% of of buyers who were new to iPhone 4 on its launch. The same report finds that 65% of the iPad 2 buyers on its launch date already owned an iPhone.

The iPad 2 is clearly the most wanted tablet. Changewave interviewed over 3000 customers in a survey and their research found that 82% of those who planned to buy a tablet wanted the iPad. This is supported by the Piper Jaffray survey mentioned above which found that 78% of people who bought the iPad 2 considered nothing else!

Looking forward to the launch in Europe…

Cities Rating à la Web 2.0

Cities like everything, in the user-centred Web 2.0 life that you as readers of this blogpost have, deserve a rating. Easy to remember ratings, that residents, visitors and businesses that drive the economy can contribute to. Visually meaningful ratings like the page-rank on Google toolbar – just simpler!

Ratings have been around for ages and some people visiting cities check the Michelin guide for restaurants. Michelin says “Stars represent only what is on the plate. They do not take into consideration interior decoration, service quality or table settings.” And that’s exactly what a city rating should do! Forget the monuments, the stretch limos, the celebs that live in it, and anything that doesn’t do anything for you. Rate it on what it offers to make your life better at that instant. Just like thumbs-up for “like” on Facebook.

So here’s the rating key:

  • The wanna-be cities will be called WB for short.
  • The ones faring less than that will be called WC, not only just because “C” comes after “B” but also because they would share the acronymn with the bowl.
  • And then, to complete the rating key, WA cities – to mean waa’ a city!

vote now!

Start using it… comment below or on TripAdvisor and use the above measure. Just credit me, and if you make some money share it with me.

London, Paris and Rome are WA. Greetings from London!