I was sad this morning to read on Digital Spy that BBC 2W is to close. Another sad loss from the BBC cutbacks. Regional stuff is great, I hate the way ITV has lost its regional identity over the past 10 years.

Last year former Ultralab colleague Geraint Lang and I headed over to Wales to work for BBC 2W making the Christmas animation idents with some really creative six year olds. This was one of the best projects I ever had the pleasure of working on, a great end to my career at Ultralab (RIP).

The team behind BBC 2W is quite simply brilliant. A sad day for regional TV.

See the pictures and read about the 2W Christmas Ident Project.

Watch the final idents that were created by the six year olds.

As an o2 customer every year I swear I’ll leave my o2 contract for another network to lower my bills and ever year o2 convince me to stay, offering lower bills and a better monthly deal.

Every year my phone bills go up, and up and up.

This year has been no exception and I finally swore to myself that I’d leave o2 on November 11th when my Mobile Phone contract expired.

Then what happened? o2 are awarded an exclusive contract for iPhone, the new and exciting product Apple are about to release in the UK.

What is the problem? Apparently iPhone is exclusive to the o2 network, which means I’ll have to stick with o2, waiting 2 days after its launch to switch onto an iPhone tariff, exclusive to o2.

Last night Justina and I were walking along Witham high street, and I spotted the following in the window of our only mobile phone store in the centre of town:

(next to the £469 price it says ‘Any Network’)

So, lets get this right…. the above shows iPhone on a contract with Orange for £169 or £469 for the phone on any Pay As You Go network. Whats that all about then?

In this Youtube Video Steve Jobs explains (rather amusingly) the exclusive relationship with o2.

On the 02 website it says that “iPhone 8GB will be available to buy at £269 only on O2″ (no mention of Pay As You Go).

Carphone Warehouse is selling iPhone, only on the o2 network.

The UK Apple Site shows the iPhone and links through to o2 for news on the iPhone tariffs.

MacMinute lists o2 as the exclusive wireless UK carriage for the iPhone

And a little old shop in Witham high street, opened a few years ago (under a former name) by the legend that is minor celebrity Jeremy Spake claims to offer the iPhone on any UK Network?

Am I missing something here? Are other networks going to be offering up the iPhone? I should go in the shop and find out……

I love Apple short keys. Purely by accident, I discovered the following while using the free Calculator Application on the mac:

If you press and hold and then press on the keyboard you get this:

If you press and hold and then press on the keyboard you get this:

If you press and hold and then press on the keyboard you get this:

For me, one of the first rules of business is to respect competition. Competition keep good businesses on their toes.

I believe business competitors are generally nice people, they have great ideas, ambition, great people and customer bases of (repeat) clients who enjoy products or services. So to take a ‘pop’ at competition really should be justified.

This morning I spotted the following on the back of a jeep style car…

Quite frankly, the above advertisment some might find funny, I think it is full of arrogance….. it says to me “buy from us, our competition are ****.”

What the advert lacks, is justification for why the company believes their service to be superior to that of the competition. Price? Service? Reliability? Support? Awards? Track Record? Year Established?

Apart from the fascinating mental images that pop up in my mind of the group of people who sat around a table throwing ideas(?) at each other, which resulted in the above advert, the whole process raises a few questions:

• Why do people buying jeep style vehicles allow the company that sold the vehicle to place an advert on the back of the purchase?
• Why would anyone buy a jeep from a company who would want to put the image of Rhino defecation to advertise further sales?

Really makes me to run out an buy a Suzuki. Quite frankly, what a crap advertising campaign, literally.