Disqus - Latest Comments for adambird

Re: Tommy Godwin was a lunatic - Bird Stream

adambird — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 05:11:46 -0000

Thanks Mark. You're right, I was bloody minded as well :)

Re: Excellent 3 minute pitch - Bird Stream

adambird — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 12:55:53 -0000

Haven't been able to find slides. Suspect they were just supporting images rather than anything too detailed from what he was saying

Re: The Broom Wagon Is Upon Us

adambird — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:06:04 -0000

Thanks Mat. we had a go

Re: Only Entrepreneurs Can Lead a Start-Up Community

adambird — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:34:45 -0000

I'm not responsible for the web site and not sure who is I'm afraid. I'm just filling the role of advisor on certain elements and good citizen at the moment.
Please email me: adam dot bird at gmail

Re: Who do you recommend for two-way SMS in Australia?

adambird — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:28:17 -0000

Esendex of course Ewan. Our Melbourne team would be happy to help 1300 764 946

Re: Cutting Rapha oversocks - Bunch Rides

adambird — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 07:52:20 -0000

Recommendation from Tim of VC Bread & Bitter (http://app.bunch.cc/clubs/V... is for the Prendas alternative. Half the price and already cut and stiched http://www.prendas.co.uk/de...

Re: iPad day is coming this Friday — are you in?

adambird — Wed, 26 May 2010 12:27:07 -0000

Looks like Thursday is the new Friday for me. According to TNT mine's in Nuneaton for delivery tomorrow.
Model: biggest, baddest available
Network: Vodafone, because I guess I'm getting old.

Re: It’s LOL over folks – Popjam finally deadpools

adambird — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:39:37 -0000

What I love about being an entrepreneur is that the products, services and business models that I conceive of never finish off in the form I originally intended. Everything has to be tested, iterated, adapted and improved to find that magic ingredient that gives it a life of it's own.

Sometimes you find that magic before it's too late, other times you don't.

Many, many companies, large and small, release many, many products that die without trace. I understand that the Japanese model for releasing new retail drinks products is to launch loads of variants and see what works.

If you liken an entrepreneur to a corporation then Alex Tew Plc has just tried a product that didn't take hold. Just the same as Cadbury launching an ill-received chocolate bar.

It's not failure, it's business.

Business is testing, trying, innovating and seeing what sticks.

The joy and terror of being an entrepreneur is that it's your rear on the line when it flies or dives.

To take that leap takes a lot more guts than required by a sector product manager in a multinational.

All hail pushing the boundaries and entrepreneurship.

Without us the economy would never stand a chance of escaping it's current toilet-bound predicament.

Re: iPhone’s single-task operating system renders it a poor man’s Nokia

adambird — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:15:11 -0000

Nope, I love my iPhone but boy does it have it's limitations. 'Waiting for the technology' has been a life's occupation. Real shame the iPhone isn't going to change that soon.

I am on the verge of switching to another device, can't face Blackberry and can't face the Nokia menu structure. Maybe Android is the next frontier?

Re: “We f**cked it up”: Lack of media companies buying startups is Europe’s achilles heel says Hommels

adambird — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:22:54 -0000

It concerns me when people try and equate the US and European markets. The US is truly one market. Europe is a collection of smaller markets, each of which can have a very different culture. Depending on the service your business is providing this can require very different approaches.

In our experience, having launched our service in the UK, Spain, France and Ireland so far, the 'one size fits all' approach really doesn't cut it. You have to have a local tailored offering to be truly successful. Which entails a significant investment that a start-up trying to prove their business in many cases will find it too hard to make.

This makes for a very different investment opportunity. The opportunity in the EU to de-risk a super-scalable business is greatly reduced in comparison to the US.

VCs and acquirers are understandably looking for the biggest wins for the lowest risk. The US market is far bigger than any one European country.

As Europeans, I would contend that we shouldn't be trying to ape the US and dream of the apocryphal gold-paved streets of Silicon Valley.

Instead, we should focus building businesses that are suited to the markets we operate in. That way we generate real and realisable value for our shareholders.

Re: The iPhone-powered heads-up-display Google Map for cyclists

adambird — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:51:24 -0000

I love the 'rob me'/'rain on me'/'crash on top of me' positioning of the handset. I'm guessing you could also catch up on episodes of Lost while you're cycling. Commuter carnage!

Re: Thoughts on O2's iPhone 3GS offering

adambird — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:46:02 -0000

Excellent commentary. The notion of a business having to make money, even if they are a big-bad network operator is notably missing from many articles from many 'thought leaders' in this space.

I don't think that the WHO have designated the iPhone as fundamental to living quite yet. So, until they do all those whinging about 'excessive charges' for this and 'outraged at pricing' for that have the oldest option in the free market book, ie don't buy it.

I'm pretty non-plussed about the new phone which is exactly why O2 have decided not to offer me an incentive to prolong my contract. So, I'll make do. Well, actually I'll probably try and convince my wife to ditch her BlackBerry for a iPhone 3GS and then convince her that she wouldn't make use of the extra battery life as much as I would.

Can't help but cast my mind forward to next year now, just so long as the battery lasts out.

Re: Thoughts on O2's iPhone 3GS offering

adambird — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:46:02 -0000

Excellent commentary. The notion of a business having to make money, even if they are a big-bad network operator is notably missing from many articles from many 'thought leaders' in this space.

I don't think that the WHO have designated the iPhone as fundamental to living quite yet. So, until they do all those whinging about 'excessive charges' for this and 'outraged at pricing' for that have the oldest option in the free market book, ie don't buy it.

I'm pretty non-plussed about the new phone which is exactly why O2 have decided not to offer me an incentive to prolong my contract. So, I'll make do. Well, actually I'll probably try and convince my wife to ditch her BlackBerry for a iPhone 3GS and then convince her that she wouldn't make use of the extra battery life as much as I would.

Can't help but cast my mind forward to next year now, just so long as the battery lasts out.

Re: ArrivedOK tells your friends/family when you… arrived OK

adambird — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:21:00 -0000

your Mum obviously never asked you to give her '3 rings' when you got there.

Re: Will SMS ever become mainstream for small business?

adambird — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:49:57 -0000

I think what you\re seeing is the mainstream adoption of SMS as a business communication tool. The challenge is that on it's own it's not enough to warrant investment in a PC with Internet access.

My local bike shop has the facility to send text messages out from their till system but because the till software vendor has put a crazy price on the messages, hoping I guess to try and make some extra money from the service, they don't use it. Instead the junior mechanic is instructed to type out reminders on his phone if he has any left on his bundle.

I, as you know, am a huge advocate of the reply path. Using virtual mobile numbers pays huge dividends in customer service. It's also a very, very cheap way for call centres to handle customer enquiries,

System receives a message from customer, automatically sends a message back setting their expectations 'Thanks for your message. One of our team will contact you within the hour'. Customer goes about their business. Call centre staff can call or text the customer back when ready to help them.

It smoothes out the call centre traffic spikes and means the customer isn't stuck in hold-music-hell

Re: Nott Tuesday was rocking into the night

adambird — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 06:31:47 -0000

Thanks for coming Ewan, you went down a storm.

It was so well attended and people are gagging for the next one on March 10th. Just need to find another speaker that can match up to you ;)

Re: Twitter Follow Overload

adambird — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:39:23 -0000

I am part of it, and will continue to be. I haven't worked this long at it not to see the day when the operators finally give us what we need.

This also precipitated my FoM summary blog post, at last, so thanks: http://www.adambird.com/200...

Re: Twitter Follow Overload

adambird — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:11:35 -0000

I appear to be one of the crowd, and there was my Mum telling me all these years that I was unique ;)

Thanks for a great presentation at FoM (in spite of your BT Openzone travails) though I think someone else might have said that already.

Question for me is how do the mobile operators relinquish their stranglehold over the value chain which is standing in the way of the vision. I can't blame them looking nervously at their shareholders and what happened to the fixed line ISPs and saying "but of course we wouldn't throw away value like that". Problem for the rest of us, is that's what precipitated the last Internet boom.

But then, it's that kind of challenge that gets entrepreneurs up in the morning.

Looking forward to the new slidedeck.

Re: US aggregators stunned at Verizon’s $0.03 MT transaction fees increase

adambird — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:21:51 -0000

There is a positive. This should make spamming people with marketing nonsense less viable.

The success of SMS is founded on it's ability to allow people to communicate. Having people broadcasting indiscriminately, ie not communicating but telling, devalues this service.

I'm comfortable that if someone wants to send me a message it's going to cost them. It makes them consider whether it's really worth both our whiles sending me that information (ultimately I'll be paying). That way when I receive an SMS i can be pretty sure it's going to be useful/of interest to me.

Marketers trumpet the fact the 90%+ of SMS messages are opened and acted on on receipt. Heaven help us if we get to the email situation where 50% of what we receive is junk. People will ignore the new message indicator and response rates will plummet. It'll take years for spam filters to find themselves into operators or onto our phones. By then then customer will have moved on.

IMHO ;)

Re: How to build an SMS notification app in 20 minutes

adambird — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:05:01 -0000

Ewan, it's a great example and something we'll certainly be throwing into the mix at our development meetings.

We've recognised that demystifying the whole process for developers is key, though I have to say we do receive plenty of plaudits for the simplicity and performance of our APIs and SDKs already.

Our developer site http://www.esendex.com/deve... has been revamped over the last few months and we've made all of our SDKs open source so it's very easy for developers to see exactly how to get the best out of our service.

We'll be launching a new web application in beta to our customers shortly and the great news for developers is that this is using the same API and SDK that any of our customers can use, giving them full access to the power of the Esendex platform.

Re: Esendex team are really, really fit

adambird — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:25:14 -0000

Mark, in the right light at a certain time of night... ;)

Re: Perhaps my iPhone 3G’s Exchange is draining the battery?

adambird — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:13:52 -0000

It sucks, it's an early adopter requirement rather than being 'the iPhone we've been waiting for'

However, it remains a lovely, lovely thing.

Re: Perhaps my iPhone 3G’s Exchange is draining the battery?

adambird — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:04:49 -0000

Exchange push has always been an inefficient process. The problem is that it maintains a TCP connection back to the server, v.expensive as must keep data link open at all times.

BlackBerry have this one nailed, using out-of-band signalling, ie a message is sent to the device over the mobile network telling it to go and get some data. That way BlackBerry just establishes data connection when needed. I suspect that they might do something funky with the data stack as well, though that is pure speculation.

I've resorted to buying a Proporta mobile charger (http://www.proporta.com/F02.... Keep it in my bag and I'm never far away from a top up. It does my Nokia as well.

Re: The SMS Text News newsletter, coming (soon) to an inbox near you.

adambird — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:51:44 -0000

Excellent, SMSTextNews the way you want it, feed, email, browser, etc.

Re-reading my comment, I was in danger of sounding like one those accursed valley-types for whom only tweeting will do.

Re: The SMS Text News newsletter, coming (soon) to an inbox near you.

adambird — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:56:11 -0000

I'm intrigued, what form will this take? Is email not just sooo 2003?