The Nudge

September 23, 2009 Books, Strategy No Comments

The Nudge,  Thaler and Sustein

Well, that certainly makes you think!  The book describes various ways in which we are influenced or possibly should be influenced, but most of all it makes you think about the decisions your making (as well as making me feel bad for the lack of decision making on my part in many of their cases!).

At first I thought the book wasn’t really relevant to me and what I do on a day to day basis, however… as you read in and think about it, you can think of more and more situations where it is relevant (and you won’t stop thinking of situations where you wish someone else had read it before giving you a form).  I am a developer for a large e-commerce site and there are many situations where this has caused me to think more about the user and things like what the default settings should be in a given situation, or how we present products and information to the customers.

Well worth a read.

Broadband Tax

September 23, 2009 Random 2 Comments

They have announced that we will be getting our broadband tax over here in the UK http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/23/broadband-tax-election
Which is great, so my 85 year old blind Gran will be paying extra for another of her essential services  for no conceivable gain.  She’ll be well pleased.

I should be for the tax as I live in an (semi rural) area with a poor Broadband connection and this tax is supposed to improve it. I just know that it won’t!