In Neville’s words, when it comes to business cards, “The format hasn’t really changed in years.” And when the format remains the same (as Led Zeppelin might have sung in a different context), the emphasis falls on making the card stand out. Witness the success of Moo Cards or, at the other extreme, the approach taken in this video – “Your Business card is CRAP!” – (which could quite easily be straight from a comedy skit – best line: “It doesn’t fit in a Rolodex because it doesn’t belong in a Rolodex”).

I remember when I had my first Palm PDA back in the late 90s and pointing it at other Palm owners and swapping ‘cards’ over an infrared connection. The limitations of the range and the whole need to point devices at each other rather defeated the point but it made us feel cutting edge, even if we never looked at the details of the information we shared – usually because it was with a colleague we’d known for years anyway. When I got a Nokia later, I could do something similar. Again, though, it just wasn’t quite the same as handing out a card.

Neville’s suggestion seems a perfect interim step until we have a means of sharing data universally between devices on a challenge/response setting. You can imagine turning up at a networking meeting and having your phone, netbook, or whatever set up for ‘promiscuous’ sharing, letting you pass your information to everyone who wants it and for your device to accept all data into a secure sandbox for virus checking and approval. Equally, there may be times you need to approve each share – possibly when you need to send different information to different people. In effect, the sharing should be nothing more than a link which the recipient device then uses to access the information specified in the cloud somewhere.

In the meantime, I need to put in an order to Moo for some new cards and find somewhere to store my growing collection of personal cardboard.

Since my days living in north London, the mystery of the ‘Not In Service’ bus that roars past the stop at which you’ve been standing for twenty minutes or more in the evening drizzle has left me baffled. The bus has obviously not broken down and the driver is able bodied. Taking it out of service must be for the benefit of the operating company only.

Blow a Raspberry

An alternative to the ‘Not In Service’ sign, therefore, would be an image of a tongue sticking out and, as the bus passed each stop at which people were waiting patiently for their bus, it could blare out a loud raspberry from its horn. This would have the added benefit of frightening the elderly and small children, as well as simply infuriating all disappointed passengers.

People are generally not unreasonable. If the bus needs to be taken out of service. tell us why. The difference between waiting on a station for a train that is delayed and being given no information and one where the station master (remember those?) keeps you up to date with estimated arrival times is the difference between a potential riot and a calm acceptance. All customers ask for is to be treated with respect and giving them information is the simplest and most cost-effective way to achieve that.

We Can Handle Bad News

‘Not In Service’ is not information. It’s a slap. If the bus is fit to move, pick up passengers or even stop and tell people why they can’t use the bus. If not, use the sign ‘Sorry, Bus Not Safe’ or ‘Bus Needed For More Important People’ or ‘Driver Late For A Date’. Give us something on which to hang an emotional response.

When you remove an expected and anticipated service at short notice, it’s surely a given that you need to tell your customers what’s happening and why.