Ian (Brooks 2009, private communication) wondered why it was so quiet on the internets. Today’s a holiday in the UK: traditionally it’s May Day but that’s a bit too communist for peaceful folk so we call it the Spring Bank Holiday. In Europe they also have a holiday around now, usually on the actual 1st May, called Tag der Arbeit (‘day of the work’ i.e. ‘Labo[u]r Day’) or Erste Mai or something like that.
And it’s Star Wars day, too. And as Eva points out it’s also Dodenherdenkin in the Netherlands.
So I’m just going to point to a couple of random things.
When you start talking about something, in this case social media, you start to see it everywhere. Andrew Spong invited me to join STweM, which looks kinda interesting; while there I read about Novartis and CML Earth. This appears to be a social-media type support group for sufferers of chronic myeloid leukemia. Which sounds like a brilliant notion, and a good use of SM. I’m neither patient, medical doctor nor support group so I can’t really play with the site, but this looks like just the sort of thing the tools should be used for.
Andrew (I think, but it’s not clear) gives an interesting critique of CML Earth, and anyone really interested in SM should take a look. I’ll certainly be paying close attention when I get back to work tomorrow.
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You might remember last year that Encyclopaedia Britannia decided to do something about shitty Wikipedia. They offered free subscriptions to anyone who wanted to cite EB articles on their blog. I took them up on this and it was reasonably useful. Then as the freebie ended they wrote to me offering a renewal. I tried to take them up on this, but got directed to a credit card form. Ha ha. Fair’s fair: a couple of days later I got another email saying, essentially, ‘Whoops, we cocked up there. Here, have another freebie.”
And that was good, except I was about to move halfway round the world (again) and didn’t do anything about it.
Today I got a third email, subject “Renew your complimentary Britannica Online subscription”, saying, “Although your subscription has recently expired, we would like to offer you a chance to regain immediate access to Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Reactivate your subscription now by following the steps below”.
Nice. Except they want me to pay for it.
So, do I try to find the previous email they sent, wait for another “Whoops, we cocked up there” one, or just forget about it?
There are some products that just can’t make up their mind whether they are free or paid-for. I think Biotechniques was one of these. It used to be free, then said it was going sub-only so we subscribed, but then kept getting emails offering free access. It was very galling.
Our May bank holiday is on the 18th. When I first heard of this Victoria Day holiday, I assumed it referred to the city of Victoria (the capital of British Columbia), and that every province and territory would name the day after their own provincial capital. The first Canadian I mentioned this to thought it was the funniest thing EVAH that a Brit wouldn’t know that it’s actually a celebration of Queen Victoria’s birthday.
Victoria Day is more commonly known as “May Long”, as in long weekend. A friend’s brother who used to live in the US mentioned the day in passing to his American friends, and one of them said how wonderful it was that Canada celebrates the multicultural holidays of its immigrants. Turns out she’d heard “mae-long” and thought it was Chinese.
Hahah. You colonialists.
We also have the Whit, or Late Spring Bank Holiday, later in May. This year, the Saturday of that long weekend is my official birthday party, and you’re all invited.
That weekend is also called May Two Four , referring to both the date and beer. I think that’s the phrase I hear most commonly when people talk about Victoria Day (weekend).
I’d go for the cock-up theory. For some reason, the technicalities of these various offers and freebies seem to be hard to translate into the real world. Drawing a veil over any examples too close to home, I’ll cite the Next directory, a superb mail/internet order clothes service if you have teenage daughters who don’t want to look either as if they are about to go to a formal wedding or as if they are t***s. They are always offering me free delivery and other discounts, which is very nice of them as their clothes are cheap anyway. But can they get their act together to implement it? No. After various rounds of phone calls and explanations (discount not appearing on online order, call up, am told it will be removed before bill comes through, is on bill, ring up, told not to pay that bit, don’t pay that bit, get charged interest…..etc) I just give up and pay the full whack.
I had time to write that because it is a public holiday 😉
Heh.
I just found the email where they offered the freebie, and filled in the form. So. Let’s see.
Hi Richard. Thank you for citing stwem.com. Yes, everything that is on the site is my fault. 🙂 I hadn’t noticed that I didn’t attribute posts; I will start doing so.
Hey Andrew—that’s brilliant. Thanks!