Information technology and how we use it has truly transformed peoples lives over the last 10 years. The widespread adoption of the PC, broadband internet and the mobile phone have given people a whole new way to interact with the world.

What surprises (although probably shouldn’t) is how it’s the technology guys that have pushed this change onto traditional industries. For example, Apple (a computer company) revolutionised the music industry, both with the iPod and iTunes downloads, Amazon (an online book retailer) have created the most disruptive piece of technology to the literary world since the invention of the printing press – the kindle. Google (an internet search engine) have developed a brand new open source internet browser, mobile device operating system and computer operating system (among many, many other things).

Out of the few short examples above, it amazes me how the industry leaders of 1999 have let this happen and responded so inadequately. The music industry has spent its time and money suing people who download music thinking that 1 lawsuit will stop 1 million downloaders. Perhaps it could have spent its time looking at how and why people were downloading and how it could capitalise on it, rather than how it was suffering from it.

Similarly, the film industry has been incredibly slow in adopting to new market trends. 10 years ago you had to wait months or years for a film to move from the cinema to video or TV – now it’s weeks or months. Is that all it can manage in 10 years? Let’s see the film industry itself find new ways of satisfying it’s customers by looking at the core aim of the industry, rather than being disgruntled by how other people are changing it. The consumers are changing things because the industry doesn’t.

It’s the same story with book publishers and countless other industries and products. Established players lose perspective and open the door for outsiders to come in and revolutionise their industry. Theodore Levitt wrote a fantastic article in the 1960′s about companies should see themselves in the bigger picture, and orientate themselves towards the customer and their needs, rather than the other way around. For example, oil companies should see themselves as energy companies and should be the biggest investors in renewable energy. For one reason or another, this still doesn’t seem to be happening for many established organisations. I’m not sure why – perhaps the people at the top are complacent, perhaps they’re too stuck in their ways…who knows. What I do know, is that those who can’t see change and adapt to it, will fail.

I’m glad that I’m running a young business that looks at things differently. Perhaps that’s why I look at things this way, or perhaps I run such a business because I look at things this way. Retail is moving online in a big way, and the next decade will see transformation in the way we buy and physically acquire goods and services. I look forward to being a part of that change in some way…and hopefully seeing it coming with enough foresight to adapt to it.

I wish everyone peace and prosperity in the new year.

There are a number of services which offer some great alternatives. I’ve not tried them all, indeed I couldn’t try some of them such as Spotify as they have a limited membership at the moment.

However, I have tried Grooveshark and I find it pretty cool. It plays quickly, has a nice interface and you can tell it if you like or dislike a song, and it should offer similar music that it hopes you’ll like. In reality, I’ve not tried it out for long enough to know how good it is at recommending sogns, but it’s still a pretty neat service. You can pay an optional $3 a month to remove the ads – which seems fair!

One major downside I’ve noticed so far is the management of music. Songs are not well categorised into albums, so a search for an artist will reveal more than 1 entry of a particular track, with slightly different names (ie 01 Track Name, Track Name, Traack Name etc). This is a bit of a fundamental mistake IMHO – proper management of their library would result in significantly less space on their services, and a much easier to use service.

I have heard that they now offer a downloadable desktop app to manage the process for you, and it’s meant to be a bit faster than the browser version, however, it’s not prominently advertised on the site and I haven’t tried to find it.

Want unlimited music for free, any time? Try Grooveshark.

You can find it here: yellscam.org.

It was an enjoyably easy process! I use Media Temple as my hosting service, and they offer a 1-click wordpress install! Fantastic. It’s not the latest version, but once installed, it’s a 1-click upgrade process, and a 1-click template install process! Couldn’t be simpler.

From buying the domain, to having a live working site was less than 20 minutes in total!

Once up and running, I checked some search terms – it was ranking first for yellscam.org, yell scam, yell advertising scam within 2 days!

I’m pleased to see that other terms such as Yell CEO are also ranking in the top ten already!

If you know someone that advertises on yell.com – you might want to tell tham about this issue.

Today, however, I’ve just signed into my account, and alongwith a makeover, Google Labs are now available in Google Apps – I love it! There are cool pretty useful features in there…such as a forgotten attachment reminder.

I would normally embed the YouTube versions in this post, however, i find it slightly invasive that readers will automatically start streaming that video without their consent – and in the case of the high resolution version – will use up to 50MB of bandwidth! So, i’ve ventured out and tried Google Video to host them (as well as YouTube) and have embedded the GV versions here:

Low Res Version:

High Res Version:

While there we explored the local waterfalls which were pretty amazing, had a swim in the bottom, jumped off the top, and had a rather sore shower underneath them! We also went on an elephant trek which was amazing. Although not the comfiest form of transport, definitely one of the coolest!

There are two elephants there, 60 and 65 year old sisters. They appear to be very well looked after, and get on well with their handlers who treat them with respect. They’re not tied up, the handlers don’t use whips or sticks to control them, they’re bathed every night in the river and they don’t have to work too hard. Click the photo above to see some other photos of them.

The site tells the story of Alfie Haggis, a wayward chap making his mark around the universe. The rather cool part, is that by signing up to the forum, you are able to vote on what you would like Alfie to do next. Each week (or so) a new episode is posted, based on the results of the previous week’s votes.

I think that this type of community based fiction will become increasingly popular, and hope that Space Haggis leads the way!

Firstly…i was very pleasantly surprised to find out that it looks a shed-load better in real life than it does in the photo! It is a truly great looking laptop which i did not expect!

Secondly, rather sadly, the little nipper comes with Windows Vista installed as standard. I had tried to find one with XP, but they were all considerably more expensive, so i settled for the Vista option. I decided that i would do my best to like it and settle in for the new ride. However, within 30 minutes of turning the thing on, i was absolutely convinced that i had to get rid of it! (I was asked 4 times if i wanted to give Windows permission to create a folder on the hard drive! Of course i want to create a darn folder, i wouldn’t have done it if i didn’t want to!!!)

So, i began researching how to downgrade from Vista to XP, and turns out that it’s really not that difficult. I’m now happy to announce that it is completely XP’d up without a trace of Vista anywhere to be seen for miles around!

I bought this laptop for going away as it’s 12.1″ screen and 2kg weight is significantly less than my other Acer 8104 . It packs serious bang for buck, and for it’s size, and i must admit that i’ll need some serious persuasion to not buy another Acer next time! Plus, the integrated webcam and fingerprint scanner are seriously awesome!!

It also re-affirmed my belief that Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the best actors of all time. He has an amazing presence on screen and an impressive depth of character which he rarely seems to let slip.

I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that he works as a cobbler and is a skilled woodworker. There is something very reassuring about a down-to-earth big time Hollywood actor.

Seriously though – it has been a tough few weeks. Our new warehouse opened on Monday so all orders are now being shipped from there which is great, although a lot of work to set up. The website also took a considerable amount of work to get where it is…big thank you to Callum for setting it up, setting me up on it and continuing to help throughout the process. Would i really have an internet empire (wow…that sounds cool, though a little geeky!) without him? Thanks to my faithful website testers too!

With these changes, the business direction has changed somewhat and to be able to create a competitive advantage in the market, there must be a focus on inventory management. Keep tuned for more news about that in the near future. Hopefully our new shop, combined with our eBay store, will generate more business to keep the train rolling.

It made me think that this may soon become a thing of the past. I presume the books are primarily used for reference, and therefore are somewhat a waste of space when the data is probably readily available online, and could be stored on one DVD rather than wasting a small tree worth of paper and taking up a wall of someone’s office!

I’ve also changed the way a single post displays, so that it now includes the sidebar, and enlarged the right-hand column to 500px from 470px to allow posting of Flickr photos. This was a little more tricky, so let me know if you notice anything that’s not displaying correctly.

Any comments on the new look would be much appreciated.