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Wealthy California enclave moves towards Big Brother
Those familiar with the Bay area will know of the moneyed enclave of Tiburon.
Located on a peninsula north of San Francisco the town of 8,500 has one of the highest per capita incomes in the Bay and one of the lowest crime rates. It's the home to more than a few celebrities, including Britain's Robbie Williams, and has preserved its isolation with just two roads leading in and out of the community.
But the recent murder of resident Joan Rosenthal, only the fourth homicide in 40 year, has prompted the community to use computers to protect the locals. The town has voted to spend around $200,000 to install cameras on the roads leading into and out of Tiburon which will ID any vehicles coming into the community and checking the licence plates against a database of stolen or wanted vehicles.
The move has caused a certain amount of fuss in a state where privacy is seen as important, with some residents invoking the image of Orwell. Yet the move is popular overall.
Some safeguards have been introduced. The data will be wiped after 30 days and will only be available to local police.
It's interesting that the cost of systems like this has now fallen to the extent that towns can afford to set them up themselves. With crime rising expect to see more areas taking the law high-tech.
Best Buy to storm Blighty's stores
Now that Circuit City is gone, Best Buy's ruling the roost in the consumer electronics superstore field here in the US. Now the company is betting it can do the same in Europe, and particularly in Britain.
The company has a five year plan to build 100 stores in Europe, with four fifths of them in the UK and the first two planned for Thurrock in Essex and Southampton next spring. Electronics sales have held up well in the US and with its relative control of the domestic market Best Buy is looking to expand.
However, in the UK it is going up against a similar, if smaller, rival in Dixons Stores Group (DSG), which owns Dixons, PC World and Currys stores, along with Advent computers. DSG has a commanding position in the UK electronics market and is the company to beat if Best Buy wants to get established.
The biggest winner out of the deal is the anachronistically-named Carphone Warehouse, which will source and provide the retail expertise in the UK. In May 2008 the company got £1.1bn from Best Buy in exchange for a 50 per cent stake in CW's retail arm and the high square footage of the new stores means the the company will be set for growth.
Having visited the US chain's branches I'd say Dixons has something to worry about. Best Buy is looking to recruit around 8,000 UK staff (500 in the next year) and will be giving them something Dixons does little of - training.
All the new recruits will go through a nine-week academy programme, dubbed the 'Blue Shirt Academy'. This is where Best Buy will attack DSG, because while the British company may have great high street position and distribution efficiencies, its customer service is dismal. Tech knowledge among staff is incredibly poor and is focused on pushing particular product lines rather than customer need in my experience.
The kind of service you get in a Best Buy in the US is rather different. The staff are slightly more clued up about technology and have more choice in what to offer. They ask questions other than, "Would you like the expensive and largely useless warranty with that?", and while the Geek Squad IT repair team has its faults it beats anything you'd get in PC World.
That said it's possible the American approach will not work with Britain's surly and cynical recruits. Company spirit and enthusiasm of the American style, where staff have to sound like they really care if you 'Have a nice day', could be difficult to reproduce.
Best Buy had reportedly been planning a launch in time for Christmas when it made the CW deal last year, but has delayed and reduced its initial investment plans. This may be down to staffing issues, but also because the company wants to get it right.
When Web 2.0 goes wrong
Of the many reviews sites online that the Web 2.0 explosion has spawned Yelp is one of the most popular here in the US and it's growing in popularity in Europe.
The site is simplicity itself. Users write reviews of local shops and services, either anonymously or using their Yelp profile. It works pretty well, there's some astroturfing from businesses looking to up their own credibility but when you've got a couple of hundred reviews for something it's difficult to outweigh bad reviews with phony ones.
But it appears there might be a downside to this. One San Francisco user is reporting that a bad review of a bookshop led to some increasingly annoyed messages from the owner.
""You are too much of a pussy to come in here and speak to me directly. Goodbye pussy boy and I will be contacting your employers," was one of the messages (the whole set can be seen here).
However, the situation got rapidly worse.
The user, Sean C, told V3.co.uk that he received a knock on the door of his home and opened it, assuming it was a next door neighbour. An strange woman tried to push her way into his house and after a serious struggle he got her out of his home and called the police.
"It's definitely the craziest thing that has ever happened to me.
"I have a handgun in my home and she is lucky that I wasn't armed at the time as things might have turned out very differently for her. I'm just glad that nobody got seriously hurt."
The woman has since been arrested and Sean has successfully obtained a restraining order against her. Nevertheless the exact details of how she managed to get his home address are unclear.
User generated content is going to be key to the future of sites like Yelp. While in the past there have been reports of people acting badly over reviews this is the worst case I've come across.
This won't of course stifle sites like Yelp. However, questions need to be raised about the true level of anonymity posters can expect from sites like this.
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