Mike's Life Stuff

You may remember that I embarked on this programme at the start of the year, so I thought it was time to give you an update on how it's all going.

In short - very well!

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net  read more »

There was a lot of debate over the weekend on social media and the internet about Tesco entering the car market, and how that might affect traditional car dealers in the UK. Once again, some people are sounding the death knell for traditional car dealerships and the UK franchised dealer system.

The threat is real.

And until car dealers begin to think of themselves as retailers, then they may suffer real pain as Tesco and others like them start to play in their market place. Because they will play to their strengths and leave dealers trailing in their wake.

Here are three random ideas in no particular order:

Customer Service  read more »

I can't actually bring myself to write a post today about business or blogging or anything else that seems so insignificant after the events in Japan over the last couple of days.

I keep seeing that huge wave of water from the tsunami pushing cars, boats, houses and debris ahead of it.

The ocean that is my playground.

I surf and dive, swim and laugh in, on and under it every single week.

It's my best friend.

And there was my friend killing people, destroying so much of what they have built and bought.

In the space of a few moments, lives were turned upside down.

And many were ended.

Global Giving  read more »

For the last few years, my favourite sport, Formula One Motor Racing, seems to have been embroiled in two disparate battles. One to reduce costs for all the teams, and the other to make overtaking easier to make the sport more exciting. The latter has become a problem as aerodynamics have become ever more sophisticated, meaning the air behind a car is so disturbed that anyone following closely loses all the effect of their own wings.

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Sheer indulgence.

I think the noise of the Lexus LFA's V10 could be the finest mechanical sound yet created.

What do you think?  read more »

This morning I spent 15 minutes archiving unsolicited emails from SEO companies looking to exchange links with my sites.

Next I had to scan the 61 applications to join one of our forums - it turned out that every single one was spurious, asking for user names like "seobacklinkblast" as an example.

Then I went to check the public forum I moderate for a friend, to find a total of 108 spam posts, full of links, which I had to delete, and then ban the users.  read more »

Juan is the island's "UPS Guy."

He thinks I'm some kind of celebrity because I'm the only person on this Canary Island who gets stuff from The United States.

Yesterday, I heard him pull into the drive and I went to meet him at the gate. After rummaging around in the back of his van, he emerged, beaming, and shouted:

"Señor Mike! The box! Look! It has a smile printed on the side of it!"

I guessed straight away who had sent it, and I suspect you did too.

That's powerful branding.

Would you like to know why, and what was in it?

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Back in 2008, I was lucky enough to be granted an interview with Santa Claus himself. The interview was for our travel website, because it's a little known fact that an important part of his night navigation for the big Christmas eve trip involves the Timanfaya Mountains near my home.

It was a wonderful experience. I didn't mention in the original interview that during my stay in Lapland I tried Skidoo riding (brilliant) Husky sledging (scary) and fresh reindeer milk (disgusting!), but I was able to capture a little of the essence of the man and his splendid wife. I'll link you to the interview at the end of this post.  read more »

The story is more like the plot of a bond film than something that's really happening.

Huge corporation's websites being taken down by a shady group called "Anonymous."

Julian Assange being arrested in UK after an Interpol warrant was issued.

Thousands of mirror sites being set up by people to keep Wikileaks on line.

And then there are the astonishing revelations coming out on a daily basis from the leaked cables.  read more »

My daughter managed to break the "E" key on my laptop, and we were going away on a business trip to the mainland. It seemed like a perfect time to justify my long awaited purchase of an iPad.

And then I thought about it.

There were several drawbacks to using an iPad as our means of staying in touch with the business while we were away.  read more »