Many moons ago I worked for Royal Mail in one of their call centres, dealing with customer enquiries (read complaints). You would talk to some very strange people.I spoke with one guy who called to complain that Royal Mail was colluding with his ex-wife to run his business into the ground by not delivering his mail. He was a strange one tho not as strange as the caller who rang  one Friday night.

This caller had a very posh accent and was very worried as he had agreed to put his work’s post into a postbox outside the office. His question surprised me, “Can I post letters into any post box?” I was momentarily thrown but replied if it’s franked mail then it should go into a metered mail box but if it’s stamped then no, any post box will do. His response was more surprising, “Oh good because this one isn’t working” Not quite understanding I came out with the obvious, “What do you mean, it’s not working?”

“Well”, he said, “when I put the letters in they just come back out again!” I remember looking at the clock on the wall, it was around 6:15pm so I replied, “Is the box full? Can you see any mail inside it?” When he replied I could actually see him in my head. “I’m looking into the slot now and it’s full of letters, I think that’s why it’s not working” I couldn’t help chuckling to myself, it was probably more his accent and tone, he seemed genuinely surprised that you could post letters into any postbox and not the one closest to where you wrote it.

I read today that proposed changes to Royal Mail by Ofcom will result in a minimum 25% price hike in the cost of postage. What they propose is to abolish price controls on everything except 2nd class mail which would be set at somewhere between 45p and 55p, it’s currently 36p. I suppose a price rise is only to be expected really as Royal Mail made a loss of £120m last year on their letters business. Hopefully if they stop losing money they can improve the service. Don’t get me wrong, when it works, it works great and it does work by far the majority of the time. However, when it goes wrong…only Royal Mail could make it Kafkaesque! continue reading…

It’s been a funny week or two of late with lots of quirky stories floating around the news under the usual rubbish such as the Daily Mail trying to find a causal link between Twitter and Cancer so they can run a front page demanding it (Twitter) is banned immediately and all those with accounts get flogged to within an inch of their worthless lives. Pity all those PR ‘executives‘ who have multiple accounts!

It’s also party conference season in the UK, last week it was the Liberal Democrats (given that they are not really either of those two words it’s no wonder they prefer to be called the Lib Dems) and this week it’s Labour who will be turning Liverpool into a bit of a ghost town, other than from political groupies who will probably be fewer in number now that the purse-strings on MP expenses are that little bit tighter than days of old.

The first thing that caught my attention was  the news that Pegasus Global Holdings is building a real ghost town, called The Center, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This town will occupy an area of 20 square miles, that’s the size of Bristol and house 35,000 hypothetical people. It will resemble a mid-sized American town, complete with highways, houses, apartments and commercial buildings in a mix of old and new styles. continue reading…

Now, I know what most of you are thinking, why has Mr Omneo used a photograph of 3 very attractive ladies who appear to be naked for this post? Well, as you might have guessed from the title, it’s all to do with the new Sanex Zero% range of bath and shower products that have just been launched.

A few weeks ago I was invited along to London’s South Bank to witness a performance that could quite easily have been an entry to the Turner Prize. There, on a sunny afternoon (OK, it was sunny-ish) Sanex had set up a box with some perspex podiums in which stood 3 girls and 1 guy. These four performers were trained in the Graham Technique, moving almost in slow motion for the 20 minute performance. It was certainly an improvement on the usual touristy living sculptures that litter the streets.

Two of the girls and the guy were covered in coloured paint while the remaining girl was covered in soap suds (actually it was shaving foam but Shhh don’t tell anyone I told you!) The paint was meant to represent the chemicals that just about every bath and shower product contains and which we blindly cover ourselves in every time we bathe or shower. continue reading…

This weekend was one of those weekends where I had what seems like a million and one things to do and strangely was also a weekend where I was in the mood to do some, if not all of them. At least that’s how it was on Friday but Friday was also the day I did nothing but sneeze.

I sneezed a few times on the bus heading into work, much to the annoyance of fellow commuters. I sneezed a dozen times or so at work and then of course threw in a few more sneezes on the bus ride home.

After I arrived home and settled down with a cup of tea I thought about what I had to do. I made a list, checked it twice, checked it a third time where I scored some things off and added a few in their place. Then off to bed to get ready for the weekend of activity. continue reading…

If you’ve been reading over the last few months you’ll possibly recall my posts on the Last.fm and HP acoustic pop-up events that were held in what passed for Summer in London. I was able to make it along to see both Slow Club and Ghostpoet and in between Boxer Rebellion performed in Carnaby Street.

I’ve often wondered why I don’t hear more about gigs involving Last.fm. I vaguely recall things happening over the years but nothing regular. That could be either because there are no events happening or I’m not looking in the right places but as a long term last.fm user I would have thought they’d wanna tell me, or maybe they did and I’ve forgotten? That happens more than I can remember!

Well, from next month Last.fm are bringing Londoners Live Friday, a monthly event featuring a selection of DJs and acts who are chosen by and here’s the good bit, Last.fm users! OK, so you probably already guessed that, after all, what else is that massive database good for if not to find the kind of acts that people will want to see? If you’re even remotely geeky you’ll love the next bit… continue reading…