Microposting(s) for November 18th through November 22nd

These my micropostings and bookmarks – November 18th through November 22nd:

• EtherPad: Realtime Collaborative Text Editing – Neat. Basic, but neat. I love SubEthaEdit (from Coding Monkeys) for its stripped-down text interface (like TextMate with colour) and co-editing, but find the sharing limited (eg bonjour, owner has to initiate the share).

  GDocs in the main collaboration tool nowadays, but the gWord app is far clunkiers that the gExcel version (where you can see all cursors and editing in apparent real time).

  This promised network + syntax highlighting + real-time-co-editing + neutral server and versioning.

• Christmas starts early as M&S and Debenhams launch sales | Business | guardian.co.uk – A fair article that notes the extent and depth of discounting on the high street. Clearly, it’s sensible to clear stock before Christmas at 20% off rather than having a stock mountain in January that you need to discount by 50% or more.

  However, this activity has two downsides:
  1) customers now see 20% off as a starting point for discounts and 10% not worth raising an eyebrow for; and
  2) customer realise just how much crap there is in shops – undifferentiated tat clogging shelves and also their houses!

  The challenge for retailers is not to out-macho the competition (the “beggar thy neighbour” approach) nor to try and bring cash forward, but to re-connect with customers on two bases:
  1) good, useful, desirable, quality goods, well priced, and
  2) the sheer joy of shopping – ‘retail theatre’ or entertainment if you will.

  Undifferntiated, mediocre rubbish is ever and always the same – irrespective of apparent discount.

• RC TRITEC Ltd. : Super-LumiNova® – In case, like me, you were interested in more detail on Super Luminova ‘luminous’ markings on watches… ta-daaa.

  A gentleman should always be familiar with the different colours, namely:

  C1 Colour “C1” for white
  C3 Colour “C3” for yellow
  C5 Colour “C5” for greenish-yellow
  C7 Colour “C9” for blue-green
  One night, in the dark, I’ll ponder why the C7 is called “C9”.