The Sexy Store

There’s nothing better than running your own business – life’s certainly varied.

For instance, this month we’ve been preparing the Google Adwords campaign for The Sexy Store!

While most of my time’s dedicated to PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi Hotspots, our second business, PolkaSpots Web Solutions is growing quickly. PolkaSpots Web provides a complete online business solution from web design to search engine optimisation. We also provide a hand-holding service in case you need someone to help cut the jargon you typically get from IT companies.

PolkaSpots Sticker saves the Diary

A little off topic today I know, but important all the same. I was working at home this morning – the phone rung, it was Anthony from the PolkaSpots factory.

My diary had turned up at last in Sainsbury’s! Over a month ago, I lost it and thought it was gone forever. The staff noticed the stickers, called the office and I’m on my way to collect it now.

Good job it was plastered with PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Hotspot stickers!

The world cup and the Internet

There are mixed feelings about the World Cup in the PolkaSpots family. 40% of the staff can’t stand football: they don’t have a clue what it’s about. The rest want time off to watch the games…

Despite our feelings about football, we’ve already been inundated with calls from people who can’t watch using their laptops. It’s barely even started.

The problem? Nothing to do with the Wi-Fi – all of the calls have been related to the hardware the customer’s using. In total, we’ve wasted 4 man hours today on this – what on earth are we going to do for the rest of the competition!

Who cares about Google's photos..

Visit www.google.com and you’ll now see a massive image taking up the whole page front page – radical for a company that wanted to keep their search simple. But who actually cares when they’re in the sticky stuff right now with most of the world’s governments?

Google recently admitted that its cars used for Street View, had been collecting data from private Wi-Fi networks around the world. From the official report:

“That report, by the security consulting firm Stroz Friedberg, is now complete and was sent to the interested data protection authorities today. In short, it confirms that Google did indeed collect and store payload data from unencrypted WiFi networks, but not from networks that were encrypted.”

This is a massive violation of global privacy laws and many governements are struggling to understand exactly what they need to do about it.

I’m wondering whether they’re using the addition of the image as a way to disguise this blunder in the press…

On the phone with Talk Talk – 5 reasons to choose PolkaSpots Wi-Fi

“£21.49 a month for 8meg business broadband, telephone line, free evening and weekend calls and unlimited international calls. Bargain they said”

A friend of mine asked if PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Hotspots could do his home broadband and telephone. Of course I said, no problem.

A few weeks later I’m sitting in his house trying to get online – he’d decided to use Talk Talk – they were rock bottom cheap. PolkaSpots could not compete with the price – and to be fair, we don’t even try – we’re a business broadband provider.

Could I get online? No. We had to reset the cheap little Talk Talk Wireless modem three times. When we did connect to it, his line was running at 500kbps – more than sloooooow.

He then phoned their 0870 support line and was on hold for 45 minutes… When he got through, the support representative didn’t even understand what his issue was and told him to try again tomorrow.

Three weeks later, he still can’t use his Internet connection. He’s been on hold for hours, wasted time and money on phone calls and was once told that there was a fire and they had to evacuate the building. Eventually, he found the email of the CEO and wrote him a rant about the service he wasn’t getting. To his credit, he answered 30 minutes later. Not bad but still it’s not fixed.

False economy?

Too right – PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi is definitely more expensive than most of the dirt cheap broadband / Wi-Fi packages out there (by about £10). However, over the course of a year, we bet you’ll save time and money. Most importantly, you’ll get a service that’s guaranteed to work – if it’s broken, we’ll fix it for you too. Here’s a few reasons why you should spend that extra tenner extra per month:

1. UK based support staff who understand your issues.
2. We’re smaller and know our customers better.
3. One local rate number to call if things go wrong.
4. No need to escallate tickets – support staff with all the required tools to get the job done.
5. Specialists – we’re the best.

Life’s too short.

You never really know what life is going to throw at you do you?

I’d just turned my phone on this morning when a message came through from our Zambian friend Greg. One of his baby girls had passed away in the night.

You realise at these unbearably sad moments just how short life is. You realise how petty some of the things we worry about over here. The under 5 infant mortality rate is over 16% in Zambia – it’s 0.6% here. What a staggering different world we live in.

Greg was working at PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi to learn how to run a business and how to work with Western companies. His time has been hard and we knew he was having a hard time. We knew however that he would get a lot out of it – why does life throw these things at you when you’re least expecting it?

Our thoughts are with you and your family Greg. We’re sorry your visit couldn’t end on a better note and you will be missed by all of us.