My old BlackBerry started developing some interesting new habits - namely you would click on one option and it would jump to a different one. This meant that it constantly wanted to make an emergency call rather than unlock, deleted emails rather than reading them and other enormous fun. Anyway, got a whizzy new one now with GPS (neat), and all sorts of other features that you will never use. 

Actually the GPS is rather clever, now I've worked out how it works. I asked it to tell me where I was and it was spot on. Looking at the options, there was a "local search", so I typed in "pub" not expecting it to be intelligent enough to recognise anything quite so useful. Gosh, it came back with a list of the ten nearest (seven within less than a mile - this is England) and it shows me where they are on the map. I am almost impressed. 

Of course, being a geocacher I actually want to put in some coordinates and be directed to that place, so I have investigated bits of GPS software for exploiting the built-in GPS. Unfortunately the ones I have found so far assume that I live in the colony the other side of the pond. They also, as far as I can make out, lack that nice simple function - tell me where I am and let me enter some coordinates of a place I want to go to. Doesn't seem a lot to ask? If anyone knows of a simple, intelligent, useful, non-monthly subscription piece of GPS/geocaching software for the BB, please let me know.

The other problem is that it doesn't work! Emails are fine, but appointments are useless. If I set up synchrnoisation to Outlook I get a message about the appointment, but no option to accept/decline/tentative or whatever and it only synchronises when I attach it to the laptop - useless. When I choose wireless BB sync, I get the entries in the diary but no invites and option to accept/decline etc. What am I doing wrong? Or rather what are the manufacturers doing wrong? 

Last but not least, just read an article about people using BBs, phones, laptops etc. when someone is presenting. Should this be banned, or do I simply assume that because I am such an incredibly engaging, fantastic speaker than the problem won't arise?!

Not long now till the fun of UserWorld in Lisbon.

Again, for those of you, who have spent the last few months on the Northern slopes of Mount Everest, we run a big event for our users twice a year - once in the land we colonised across the pond many moons ago (and then you chucked us out, and our tea in the harbour, which I thought was a bit rude, and frankly your teabags have been pretty rubbish ever since!) and once over the other side of the Channel in a place they call Europe. 

We have now got the vast majority of the sessions sorted out for you, so that you can plan your schedule, and I am very glad to say that we have 3 times the number of customer sessions we had in Prague last year (up from 11 to 33) and the number of external speakers has also gone up from 17 to 42. Our intention is for you to hear from your peers about the business issues they had and how they went about solving them, plus sessions on burning issues like Virtualisation, Data Centre Automation, Green IT, Best Practices like ITIL, CobIT and ISO 20000, and of course the latest details of the solutions you have kindly bought from us, with an opportunity to meet the guys who designed them and wrote them.

Shout if there is anything you'd like to know. Hope to see you there.

I did my first flight from the new Terminal 5 last week. For those of you. who have spent the last few weeks in Outer Mongolia, this is the new terminal at Heathrow, which cost enormous amounts of money and opened with a series of glitches, delayed flights and lost luggage.

Being an experienced traveller, I assume that planes will be delayed, luggage will go missing etc. and treat it as a bonus when things actually go right! However, T5 has been a bit beyond that so I took hand luggage only on this trip. The Terminal itself is frankly a terminal, or to put it accurately a shopping mall with planes attached. The surprise was that it was actually two buildings joined by a little transit train, which means it takes ages to get to your gate - be warned. Being positive, security was amazingly fast and I was through in two minutes, which must be a record and the lounge was very comfortable.

The classic cock-up came on the return journey. As an aside, I detest compact digital cameras with just a screen on the back and no viewfinder. I cannot see any joy in trying to compose a picture by staring at a screen, which you can't see in daylight - seems a fundamental design flaw to me. Well, some brilliant spark has done exactly the same on the payment machines for the car park - you insert your ticket and are then presented with a screen, which appears to have black text on a dark grey background - DUUUUUH! In fact, every time a car drives out, someone comes out to help! Now there's a brilliant use of technology. 

Some of you may remember a thing called the BMC Churn Index, which we ran in Europe a while ago. It was a study to see why customers "churned", i.e. why did they change their suppliers for banking, phone, utilities etc. The index demonstrated very clearly that whilst financial incentives may be attractive in the short term, they were definitely not the correct way to build a long-term viable business model with customer retention.

We have now run the Index in the Asia Pacific region, and in this podcast you will hear me discussing the results with Professor Adrian Payne from the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. You can find the podcast here. Hope you enjoy it.

Yeehah, yippee and all that sort of stuff! I have finished writing my first novel. Now comes that part of the project we all know, where you try to persuade other people that they should invest in it, so I am contacting publishers and agents to see if I have any luck.

Anyone know an agent?

The book as I have said before is based round geocaching, a hobby to which I introduced some of our Bulgarina partners last week. I don't think they quite believed that a grown man walked round the streets looking for little plastic boxes, and then when I found one there was a fight to see who could find the next one!

Reminds me of that first ITIL project!

The last few - enjoy

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On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone box told a worried operator:"I haven't got a pen, so I'm steaming up the window to write the number on."
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Tech Support:      "I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop."
Customer:             "OK."
Tech Support:      "Did you get a pop-up menu?"
Customer:             "No."
Tech Support:      "OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?"
Customer:             "No."
Tech Support:      "OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?"
Customer:            "Sure. You told me to write 'click' and I wrote 'click'." 
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Tech Support:          "OK. In the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you see the 'OK' button displayed?"
Customer:                "Wow. How can you see my screen from there?"

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Caller:  "I deleted a file from my PC last week and I have just realised that I need it.If I turn my system clock back two weeks will I have my file back again?"
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As promised, some more crackers:

Caller:          "Does your European Breakdown Policy cover me when I am travelling in Australia?"
Operator:    " Doesn't the product give you a clue?" 
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Caller (enquiring about legal requirements while travelling in France )"If I register my car in France , do I have to change the steering wheel to the other side of the car? 
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Directory Enquiries
Caller:               "I'd like the number of the Argoed Fish Bar in Cardiff please."
Operator:          "I'm sorry, there's no listing. Is the spelling correct?"
Caller:               "Well, it used to be called the Bargoed Fish Bar but the 'B' fell off."
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Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.
Operator:        "Woven? Are you sure?"
Caller:             "Yes. That's what it says on the label; Woven in Scotland." 
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Magic

Apologies if you have heard some of these before, but they are classic. I will do one or two a day to make you laugh.

Customer:     "I've been ringing 0700 2300 for two days and can't get through to enquiries, can you help?"
Operator:     "Where did you get that number from, sir?"
Customer:     "It was on the door to the Travel Centre."
Operator:     "Sir, they are our opening hours."

Caller:          "Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?"
Operator:     "I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand who you are talking about."
Caller:          "On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that I need to unplug the faxmachine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack before cleaning. Now, can you give me the number for Jack?"
Operator:     "I think you mean the telephone point on the wall."

I've read a couple of things in the papers this week, which disturb me somewhat. Ignoring the fact that 98% of what you read in the papers is probably untrue and/or inaccurate, let's go for that litlle 2% kernel.

• Apparently they are getting very close now to allowing the use of mobile phones (what you Americans call cell phones, although they probably wouldn't work in jail) on aeroplanes. Now that is my vision of hell - stuck for ten hours next to some tedious git , who spends the whole time shouting down his phone. In the Far East I have noticed that they put their hand over the phone and try not to disturb you. How kind. Over here, unfortunately it seems to be a desperate bid to annoy as many people as possible with inane useless conversations, that are meant to show me how important you are. Nope, wrong. Just shows how stupid and selfish you are.
• There is also apparently a new disease called Nomophobia, which means you can't stand to be without your mobile phone. 13 million Britibns fear being out of mobile phone reach. Hey, just lean out the window - you'll hear the other bloke shouting anyway! One in ten say they need to be contactable at all times because of their jobs. This is true of a few truly important people. The rest - get real.

Which all raises the question in my mind about what is actually important and what isn't. Sit back and think about your life and decide. In my case, family and health come way ahead of anything else (except perhaps my golf swing?) Now do the same thing for your business services. Might change the way people view you if you get your priorities right.