Leaving Tesco after 27 amazing years

This post first appeared on Nick's own blog at page

 http://www.lansley.com/?p=89 on 13 March 2015.

This techfortesco blog is no longer updated, so

please follow Nick's blog at http://www.lansley.com

Dear friends, I just wanted to let you know that Tesco have amicably accepted my request for voluntary redundancy.

After 27 amazing years of a career in computing and innovation, I will be leaving the Welwyn Garden City campus for the final time as a colleague on 13th April.

When I reflect on the last quarter century I’ve had enormous fun, from helping found and build Tesco’s online service, a founding member of Tesco’s staff network for LGBT colleagues, and helping create Tesco Labs innovation group with some incredibly talented people, to name but a few milestones.

I leave Tesco with a heavy heart but happy to be moving on to try something new. I’ll be taking a summer break with the hubby in our new seaside home and getting stuck into a few personal projects that have been neglected in recent times (including this blog!). I can’t wait to jump on our mountain bikes and explore the beautiful South Downs National Park. Time to get super-healthy by the sea!

After the summer, I want to get out there as an ‘innovation insider’ and help companies who want to start their own innovation teams, or who are struggling to get traction with innovation projects. We made R&D/innovation work at Tesco, and I can make it work in many other companies too!
A big thank you to all of you who have worked with me over the years, it’s been fantastic. I will always carry a torch for Tesco, of that you can be sure.

I’ll be announcing a leaving drinks event to my Tesco colleagues (and favourite alumni!) soon.

Postscript: If you're a fan of RSS then why not subscribe to the new Tesco Labs blog feed?

RSS: http://www.tescolabs.com/?feed=rss2
Atom: http://www.tescolabs.com/?feed=atom

Hello!

This is the final post from the techfortesco blog. Ah... but wait don't worry, this is only because we are moving to our brand new fabulous website to support our brand new Tesco Innovation Group which is called... Tesco Labs!

So for the Tesco Finest* insight into helping you experience the future, and to subscribe to our fabulous new blog, head to:

http://www.tescolabs.com

and we'll see you there. As for this techfortesco blog, it will remain here as a valuable archive of past innovation from the former Tesco.com Innovation Team, now at the heart of Tesco Labs. Follow the new Twitter feed from us at @tescolabs

So from the Techfortesco blog it's thank you and goodbye.

-

Postscript: If you're a fan of RSS then why not subscribe to the new Tesco Labs blog feed?

RSS: http://www.tescolabs.com/?feed=rss2
Atom: http://www.tescolabs.com/?feed=atom

New Year? Wow that was quick!

Good grief 2012 already..er Happy New Year!

Sorry for the radio silence on this blog recently; it has been non-stop for everyone here getting all their projects in before the IT change-freeze. The change-freeze is that magical day when all us programmers take our hands off our keyboards and let the many servers that run Tesco.com just get on with serving customers!

We then switch tack and do everything we can to support the service. Indeed in the days before Christmas many of our staff go and work in store to help our colleagues there.

My in-store job was to help run the newly installed Click & Collect service at the Tesco Extra at Gallions Reach. It's on the Thames estuary not far from Beckton - and yes it's where the large merchant ships of two hundred years had to moor up because the river became too shallow further into London.

It was a fantastic job - customers who had ordered through the online service just drove their car under our Click & Collect canopy at the time they had chosen on the web site. After an identity check, we simply loaded all their groceries from the ambient store and special chillers and freezers into the back of their car while they watched, and off they drove. Several customers on the shift I worked told me it was perfect for picking up the groceries on the way back home from dropping off the kids at school. A couple had become regulars and were known to my store colleagues working at the Click & Collect point, adding to the friendliness of the whole experience.

I took a much needed recharging holiday for Christmas and New Year, then it was a deep dive into the Consumer Electronics Show CES 2012 in Las Vegas to pick out some great themes and trends. Of course I would love to tell you about them but my employer paid for me to go and so my employer is the one who gets my report and presentations. Sorry about that!

The good news is that I can tell you about something I uncovered which caused my jaw to drop to the floor. I can tell you about it because I really can't think of a use in Tesco for it. I can also tell you about because, despite its expense, I nearly bought one even though I can't think of a use for it myself:
It is a 3D Printer.

That is, a printer that builds 3D models in plastic. It actually builds real tangible objects from scratch. You use a 3D graphics/design/CAD application to create an object of any shape as long as no one side is greater than 50cm. Then you press "Print", then you wait about 6 hours… and there it is for you to take out and hold.

So for CES, one of the printers was building a castle out of components, each component individually printed and then joined with other components like huge toy building blocks. The castle was already standing 3 foot high with walls with brick effects, a drawbridge, battlements, and soldiers (each character individually printed). As I watched, the printer was completing some intricate circular detail at the top of a turret it was creating.

The printer works using thin circular strands of plastic fed into a 'print head' which is moved by servo motors. As the print head scans across the space inside the printer, it melts tiny droplets of plastic which is deposited either on the floor of the printer or on top of plastic it has deposited previously. Thus, a model is slowly built up over time as the plastic is built up. I was intrigued how the printer could build the castle archways where plastic would have to be dropped into thin air with no plastic below it. This was solved by a simple case of the model being rotated in its entirety. So to build an arch, it is built upside down. Clever stuff!

Now I'm back in the office I'll get my usual review of the year written up soon - my what a year 2011 was! There's also been an exciting change in our R&D team which I'll update you on shortly. Watch this space!

Tesco demonstrates augmented reality with Kishino

As you have no doubt gleaned from the media by now, Tesco is taking augmented reality seriously as a great way of bringing a great experience of our products and services to customers.

Until now, a lot of augmented reality has been marketing led. The experience you get when you use your smartphone or iPad with the Blippar app and point the camera at our ‘Price Drop’ logo you’ll see what I mean. I include the logo below so you can try it on your smart phone with Blippar right now:

The first thing I thought of when I saw augmented reality in action was to consider how it might help customers visualise the size and shape of our products better. This is particularly true of products you can’t see fully-formed such as toy construction kits (for example, lego and airfix models). It’s sometimes difficult to visualise the size of a fully formed kit when its in pieces in a box and all you have to go on is the photo on the box cover.


Here is what you get if you hover an iPad 2 over the image above (click for larger version):

Augmented Reality can also solve a slightly different problem - how about TV sets where you wish you could turn the TV around so you could see what sockets are available on the back?

Problems solved - R&D and marketing teams worked with Kishino (formerly Total Immersion) who are trialling a list of TVs and construction kit products on a web page at:

http://www.tesco.com/augmented-reality

Congratulations to the team at Kishino who have done a great job - and even produced a video demonstrating how it works, available on Youtube:




So go have a play at the web address above and let me know what you think!

Thank you, Steve Jobs, for inspiring me so much.

I join many of my colleagues in being saddened to hear the news of the death of Steve Jobs last night.

Apple, through Jobs' leadership, used disruptive innovation to smash through the complexity of using mobile devices by making the utterly simple to use. For the first time, anyone - young or old - techno-savvy or techno-phobic - could pick up an iPhone and iPad and immediately 'get' how to use it. The massive complexity of the underlying technology was hidden under the covers of a simple and intuitive user interface.

The iPhone certainly inspired me to 'see' technology from a non-technologists perspective. The first Tesco-branded iPhone app, Tesco Finder, came from the R&D team as we worked through the (then) unknown process of programming for iPhone and getting it through into Apple's App Store. The app was an instant hit because, we found, many customers could use the simplicity of their iPhone to locate their nearest Tesco - then products in that Tesco branch - using the simplest of taps and swipes of the finger. We could do it because the tools to allow the simplicity of that user-interface were, for the first time, at our command.

Now we have the situation where many senior managers and directors in Tesco are using an iPad to do their job. Indeed a few have shunned their laptop in preference for using their iPad!

Tesco 'gets' mobile; we are so enthusiastic as a company about the future of this technology on behalf of customers, and the work of Steve Jobs and Apple has had a profoundly positive contribution to that enthusiasm.

Thank you, Steve, for being one of the greatest innovators and inspiring me so much.

A simple apple.com home page honours Steve Jobs today.

Tesco Triathlon app review

We've been evaluating a mobile application we set up for those participating in the Tesco Charity Triathlon last month. The app was created by mobile specialists mBlox so that triathletes could enjoy personal updates as the triathlon deadline approached. In this article, Ben Martin (who took part in the triathlon itself and raised £370 in the process!) shares his experiences with how the app - and its underlying content delivery system - worked for our event.

Ben writes:

Last month we trialled a pre-release beta technology from mBlox in an exclusive Tesco Charity Triathlon 2011 application. The application provided a method of keeping participants posted with the latest information about the event.

For this year’s Tesco Charity Triathlon we thought it would be great if the participants who attended the event could receive automatic updates about what was going on before, during and after the day. We worked closely with mBlox to create a mobile application for Android devices that could do just that.

The finished application had an HTML5 dashboard widget for uploading content (images, blog/Twitter posts, plain text and even video) that could then be sent to everyone who had the application installed on their Android device. We could even restrict the distribution to a defined location of our choice. The widget also provided analytical data reports of users who had downloaded the content and time they had spent viewing.

Before the Triathlon we used the app to send out useful information such as charity details, training tips/advice, blog entries from our leadership team, race numbers and race day details. During the event we published images of participants taking place in each of the activities and contestants could send images to us, which we could upload. After the day we sent out info on the winners, final messages from sponsors and info on the total raised for charity (impressively it was over £200,000!!).

Here’s an example screenshot taken from within the App:

The purpose of the trial was not only to keep participants up to date on the event but also so we could investigate the process of sending and receiving relevant information, and the value this would provide to the end user and to Tesco. We were also very keen to find out how valuable the analytical data was and how it could be used to improve future communications.

Sending and receiving information to mobile phones in a timely manner using technology is a research topic that we wanted to get some experience. Once we have completed the research we can think about how we might use this to incorporate this functionality into our existing customer applications or use it for our own internal communication methods. An idea that springs to mind is an app that can send delivery details to Tesco.com van drivers and we would receive confirmation on them receiving the info.

What we found out:
The application proved to send relavant information very quickly to the end users mobile device (instantly in fact) and was very reliable. It was really useful to have data that confirmed delivery of the content and even detailed when it had been read. Potentially this information could allow us to become more effective at our communication.

Another valuable learning from the trial was the speed in which mBlox helped us to deliver such a technology to market. Without their help we would not have been able to achieve this on such tight timescales due to our other commitments – thank you mBlox!

Thanks to all those who took part in the technology trial, we will continue to investigate its value and have passed on our learnings to our Mobile Development team.

7am: Social Media's Finest Hour

There's something about 7am.

It's at that time when I am still in bed with the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 sounding in the background and the smell of freshly brewed coffee indicating its presence on the bed-side table.

However the start of the 7am news usually causes me to sit up and reach for my smart phone, which has been charging-up nicely through the night.

So what do I see first? A selection of a few unread email messages, Facebook updates and Twitter tweets that came in just before 7am.

A quick glimpse of each (no more than 2 minutes in total) is all takes before getting up. In that time those snippets of incoming information have entered my waking brain which, absent of anything else to start the day, has entered my conscious thinking.

This morning - at 7am for 2 minutes - I ingested snippets of breaking tech news from Computing, New Media Age and Tech Crunch, contemplated today's London Groupon voucher, look through the Google News10 email with search results for 'Tesco', and read a message from those members of the R&D team working 5 hours ahead in Bangalore.

These short snippets of tweets, updates and email headlines continue to swirl through my mind as I stand there in the shower / search for clothes / sip my coffee. I ponder what I've learned - and I keep thinking of it randomly throughout the day. Basically this information has, whether I wanted it to or not, set my day's agenda!

I actually became conscious of the 'power' of 7am a few weeks ago when I was on holiday. Bizarrely I actually missed it! The 7am info-buzz connected me back to the world after a night of sleep. Without it my mind seemed to feel it was missing something.

I raised my awareness from 'conscious' to 'wildly aware' when I attended a Microsoft Creative Technology showcase last week. One of the presenters has a company that runs social media on behalf of several celebrities and sports-people. He spoke of the '7am broadcast' that occurs 24 times a day, time-zone by time-zone around the world. Twitter Followers and Facebook 'Like' Fans would receive their favourite celebrity's tweet at 7am. Feedback had found that this was the most effective time for the celebrity or brand to be remembered for the rest of the day.

The effectiveness of Social Media continues to fascinate me - and now it has a 'power time' of 7am. These days it seems that millions of people are experiencing that '7am' moment as they wake and pick up their smart-phone left charging by the bedside.

If they follow you - and you talk to them at 7am - they are likely to remember you all day. 7am is, quite literally, Social Media'a finest hour.

Speak or Scan - Tesco Groceries for Android launches

Please welcome the newest member of our mobile app family, Tesco Groceries for Android.

Yes, I know, you've wanted this app to launch for a long time. But the management team, designers and developers were patient, considered, and did things right so that we could launch an app to be proud of.
So take my hand and let's journey together through the delights of this android application. Would you like to be downloading while we walk? Sure, follow this link.

We start with the opening screen. with the various options for searching for products listed - including barcode scanning using the phone's camera:

However our team always likes to get better with each version of the app, so here we introduce voice searching for the first time:

Many customers of our other grocery apps love the concept of capturing their sudden thoughts of grocery products they need, even if they have no mobile signal, so here is the android recreation of the shopping list. Once you have a signal, tap what you have typed and a text search for that product will take place:

For all our customers who love to shop by department / aisle / shelf, of course this app caters for you too:

Here are your favourites - all product search results look like this, allowing you to see all products matching your search request, and a filtered view of just those on special offer. Once a product is in your basket, that same product has a green background if it appears in any search results:

Here is your basket:

...and you can choose a delivery slot at any time from a formatted view that can see up to three weeks ahead:

Congratulations are due to loads of people from the design prowess of Ribot, our fantastic new in-house mobile development team led by Hilda and Owen, and of course our amazing product owners for mobile, Annabel and Becky.

You'll find the Tesco Groceries app in the Android Marketplace, so download and enjoy!

Why losing to a womens network made me stand up and applaud

Sorry for not getting any blog posts up recently. I decided to go on holiday but the rest of Tesco decided not to pause while I did so!

Still, madly trying to catch up with projects is always 'fun' and being able to write blog posts (my lowest priority, alas) at least shows I am back on course now!

The New Media Age Awards took place last week. As you may be aware, Tesco.com R&D had been nominated for what the organisers referred to as its "Outstanding contribution to new media" with all our various projects. We didn't win, however, but the people who did win had me on my feet offering them genuine applause: The winner was "She Says", an organisation  established to encourage more women into creative roles in the digital industry through events, mentoring and awards.

"She Says" - http://shesaysus.com/ - started as a small community in London - and has grown into a 3000-member network across seven cities worldwide, and its success can be seen in the recent announcement that Lariu, one of the founders, was leaving her job to work for She Says full-time.

Why was I on my feet showing a happy 'losing Oscars' face? This is exactly the sort of thing that Tesco encourages through our 'Everyone is welcome at Tesco' work. At the head of this work is Tesco Diversity Council (TDC), a steering group .TDC is chaired by Tesco board member and Corporate & Legal Affairs director Lucy Neville-Rolfe (and I am privileged to be a TDC member) and provides advocacy to such staff networks as Tesco Women's Network (http://cr2010.tescoplc.com/our-people/inclusion.aspx) who perform a similar role to She Says but inside Tesco.

Creating a level playing field for all people is vital in our industry so that we can all get maximum access to the best talent out there. It's great to see that this work is appreciated and award winning.

That's why I had no problem losing to such a worthy contender, and why I stood and clapped as She Says took the award. Well done!

Romford going well, off on holiday now!

Romford going well, off on holiday now!

In-store 'Sat-nav' up and working now in a Tesco branch - come and try it!

We now have a comprehensive 'sat-nav' system working INSIDE one of our Tesco stores!

The new service is able to show you where all your wanted products are on a store map, show you where you are on that map, and guide you round the store to pick up your products using the shortest route.

The prototype system is installed at the Tesco Extra, Romford (Gallows Corner) in north-east London, and we need to recruit a large control group of customers (including staff) who would like to try it out on their Android smart-phones.

Would you like to give it a go? If so apply to join our control group (info below) which will assess the accuracy and reliability of the service from a technical perspective.. If you're accepted, here is what you'll experience:

1. Install our prototype app on your Android smart phone (it's not in the Android Marketplace, you'll be sent a link to download it directly and you'll need to change a setting temporarily to allow non-marketplace apps on your phone to install it).
2. Build up a shopping list on it (just like you can with Tesco Finder).
3. Send that shopping list to another customer with the same app on their phone so they can go shopping on your behalf (so I'm happy for members of a household to be in the control group).
4. Head to Tesco Extra Romford (click for map link).
5. Start the app as you walk through the front door.
6. See a comprehensive store map with all the items in the shopping laid out on it.
7. Press a button and the app will find the shortest distance between the products and create a route for you.
8. Show you where you are on the map with a blue dot with an accuracy of within 3 metres.
9. Walk the store following the route. The blue dot will move around the map as you move around.
10. If you want to find any product 'adhoc', we'll find it in the store and show you where it is on the map. 

So now we need your help. If…

1. You live or work near Tesco Extra, Romford, and
2. You have an android phone with Android OS v2.2 or later installed on it, and 
3. You're prepared to change your phone's application settings temporarily to allow installation of apps from 'Unknown Sources' just while you install our app, and
4. You are prepared to run an R&D app and accept no liability from us if we cause your phone problems (although it doesn't do anything more than require access to your wifi and location-based services on your phone), and
5. You accept that the app, being R&D, is a bit geeky but you are prepared to fiddle and play with it, and
6. You accept the system, being R&D, may just not work from time to time.

...then I would love to hear from you.

To join the control group, write to our R&D project manager Ben Martin at ben.martin@techfortesco.com with subject 'SATNAV APP'. Ben (@realbenm) has been running this exciting project from the start, so he'll look forward to hearing from you. Indeed you'll receive further instructions in a few days after contacting us. In the message please indicate what make and model of Android handset you have, and the version of Android it is running.

The service is only available publicly to Android phone owners at this time, because we don't want the app in it's current state going into the public app stores. Only Android easily offers the ability to install apps from 'Unknown Sources'.

Please note that we won't be rolling this out to customers in general for a while because we have to think about how useful it's going to be. The system involves a lot of infrastructure installation in the stores so we need to get all kinds of people involved in thinking about the customer experience. It would be awful if we did all this work but few customers really used it.

We must also see how we would put the technology into our production applications and make it really easy for everyone to use. There's also the possibility that the infrastructure is not reliable right now.

This project is in R&D for a good reason, and we are allowed to prove the viability - or otherwise - of anything we might wish to offer our customers. Sometimes R&D is close to production, and at other times it is far away. 


Apologies to other companies offering this service who contacted me after my original blog post that kicked off this project. We've had to operate under strict NDA with our chosen provider and not even intimate there was a such as system under construction. Until now!

Tesco.com R&D Day Out

Sometimes it's worth taking the team and escaping from the office for some fresh air and fresh thinking, specially when some of the extended team are joining us for the week having escaped from Tesco's offices in Bangalore, India.

The thinking doesn't get any fresher than when it takes place at TechHub London, the community office space reflecting the vibrancy and global outlook of the technology scene right on the 'silicon roundabout' at City Road/Old Street in central London. We spent the day looking through our R&D backlog and ways of working to plan our work for the months ahead.

The air doesn't get any fresher (in London) than when some of us finished the day by travelling on the London Eye (Millennium Wheel). In the photo we have, from left to right: Prasad, myself, Ben, Murralee and Sangeetha.

Yes yes we're back in the office working hard now...!

Philip Clarke blogs about 'Out at Tesco' gay staff network

Forgive me for my occasional digression from tech, but occasionally such interesting events happen that I sometimes decide to cover them here. Regular readers will know that I am a member of Tesco Diversity Council which ensures that 'Everyone is welcome at Tesco'. I am also a committee member for our lesbian, gay, bissexual and transgender staff (LGBT) support network Out at Tesco.

Tesco's new CEO, Philip Clarke, has written on his internal blog about Out at Tesco. Our network's sponsor, Dan Gilsenan, has asked me to recreate Philip's blog article here and I am very happy to do so.

Tesco is sponsoring the Family Area at London's Gay Pride festival on Saturday 2nd July 2011. I'll be there helping out with my fellow committee members so come over and say hello!

---

Out at Tesco
by  Clarke, Philip  on 18/05/2011 09:28
Category: Values
In a meeting earlier today with the senior sponsor, Dan Gilsenan, I was reminded about how challenging life can be for our colleagues in the LGBT community. The work of the Out at Tesco network has been transformational for us and we need to keep on supporting it. Dan has decided to leave to be head of M and A at Intercontinental and will be sadly missed by the network, amongst others. We need a replacement senior mentor. If anyone out there wants to act as the mentor please let Andy Higginson or Therese Procter know. The role is to act as the bridge between the network and my senior team. 
I am really pleased that the company has sponsored the Family Area at this year's London Pride celebration. I hope you all have a great day.

---

Microsoft Kinect opens the 'Recognition' door

Reading this article, on the surface you'll think of us as boys playing with toys.

The actual thing is, Microsoft's new Kinect XBox games controller offers so much opportunity in the retail and business space that we've already thought of uses we could put it to inside Tesco.

Why? Well it's the ability to program it to recognise the people in front of the Kinect device, and possibly, if my imagination takes flight for less than 10 seconds:

• Augmented Reality: Wrap clothes around the body so a customer could understand how an item of clothing looks on them.
• Recognise the 'body signature' through a mix of visual signals (and sound) and thus identify a particular person - and possibly greet them.

So here in Tesco.com R&D we're going to try and create a proof-of-concept that uses the Kinect as a form of person-recognition or play a part in augmented reality.

In its raw state, the incoming data from the Kinect device is itself fascinating in revealing how it goes about identifying body shapes in 3D. First here's Ben Martin (@realbenm) and myself standing in front of the Kinect (photo by Rob D'Amico):

...and here is what it looks like on the computer screen. Note how the Kinect has identified the two humans separately and colours them... oh wait...three humans - that's Rob taking the pic and being identified in the process! The Kinect is just above the laptop screen with a glowing red light (click for larger image).

Although not easy to spot in the photos above, notice that Rob's hand is slightly in front of Ben and his body slightly in front of my leg - but Kinect has correctly kept identifying Rob and not become confused. 

Also notice that the colours are brighter for the hands and arms that are closer to the Kinect device - that means it's detecting our shapes in three dimensions. Clever stuff! If we know how far away any pixel of the body is away from the device, we could use this information to accurately wrap bitmap images such as "clothes" around the body.

Just as fascinating is the fact that Kinect is also able to calculate skeletal geometry. In the image below, not only has it identified three separate people, but on two of them it has managed to create a wireframe skeleton, showing arm, torso, hip and leg positions and movements. Although not shown, the accuracy is maintained if one arm is passed in front of someone else's body image.

So we're up and running. Ben is going to develop this R&D project into a proof of concept which we'll install down in the atrium of Tesco.com HQ so people can have a play when he's done. It'll be interesting to see what he comes up with!

We're using a somewhat unauthorised software development kit right now but I spoke to Microsoft today and they say an official Kinect SDK is in the pipeline and will get a copy to us as soon as they can.

I get a feeling they're rather delighted with the journey we intend to take this project on...!

The Cable Guys (and Girls)

Another day in the office for the R&D and Mobile teams!

(click for bigger picture).

A photographer from The Grocer magazine was in our office during last week taking pics as part of a profile interview of Tesco.com R&D, and I insisted that the key players who had helped shape R&D and mobile join me in a group picture. 

The photographer's remit was to be artistic and not take a boring corporate picture, so I took everyone to our lab where the tech 'happens'. The photographer immediately spotted boxes of ethernet cable and the next we know we were draping ourselves in this season's network colours!

The picture you see above was taken by Doug Graves, our highly bemused colleague who works in the lab. I'm sat down in the picture (click for a much bigger version) and from left to right we have:

• Owen Day, IT Mobile Development Manager (@owenday)
• Mike Brearley, Lead IT Developer (@brearley)
• Rebecca Pate, Web Development Manager and Mobile Product Owner (@rpatey).
• Annabel Thorburn, Senior Marketing Manager with accountability for Mobile.
• Hilda Jenkins, IT Project Manager for Mobile.
• Jerome Ribot, Founder and Creative Lead of Ribot, our mobile design partner (@ribotminimus).
• Ben Martin, Developer and Project Manager in Tesco.com R&D team (@realbenm)

So watch out for a pic from the many that photographer took appearing in The Grocer soon!

Windows Phone 7 - This Week's Unexpected Joy

My Windows Phone 7 phone arrived this week in the form of the HTC 7 Trophy. After the joy of iPhone 4 and the unexpected sluggishness of my HTC Desire HD, how would the new phone stack up - and how easy is it to develop for?

In this image Nick holds his HTC 7 Trophy Window Phone 7 handset.

Firstly, the phone was easy to set up. It downloaded all the appropriate cellular settings (such as voicemail number and data connection info) from my cellular network, 3, quickly. Then it was a case of linking to my Windows Live ID / XBox Live account which I have had setup for my Xbox previously.

Next, the phone's setup wizard guided me through linking to my various email accounts and associated contacts lists, which updated speedily. Linking to Facebook was just as swift - and afterwards many of my contacts had images just as they had before on the Android phone.

The WP7 then amalgamated all my contact/friend information into a 'People' app which is easy to use and joins up Facebook comments to contact phone numbers. The linking worked well. I could take individual people I contact regularly and pin them to the home page to form their own square for quick access.

The 'home page' of the phone is a series of boxes - mostly square but some rectangular - that act as mini-screens for the apps they represent. It was easy to move the squares around, unpin them, and pin other apps from the list. The squares themselves are rarely static, instead sliding up images of friends, email counts or the weather symbol and temperature.

I noticed how speedily the phone operated, with smooth graphics and a sure-footedness when finger-swiping that was often lacking on the two android phones I have owned (Google Nexus One and HTC Desire HD). By this I mean that on the android phones, I would often have to swipe twice or more to get an icon to move to operate a function. I did wonder if this was HTC hardware, but I have never yet experienced this problem on this HTC 7 Trophy phone, so I'm focussing the problem towards android itself.

Even more interesting is how sensitive this phone is to mobile signals (from the 3 network) compared to my HTC Desire HD. Not only are the signal strength bars reading stronger but I can use the 3 network throughout my house whereas the Desire only works upstairs - and poorly at that.

If Apple iPhone 'insists' on the presence of iTunes, then the WP7 'desires' (not insists on) the presence of Zune, Microsoft's equivalent media syncing application. Unlike iPhone, the WP7 phone works straight out of the box once you install a SIM, whereas the iPhone has the stark 'connect me to iTunes' graphic and is locked until you do so.

However, like iPhone (but unlike Android) the WP7 phone cannot perform its own system updates unaided. I am impressed how Android can perform its own updates. I needed to update WP7 twice using Zune - a short February update and and a very long March update, the latter which took the phone out of use for over 30 minutes. However it was worth it for the copy & paste capability that then appeared. This morning another update arrived, which took about 10 minutes to complete.

As we know, there are a lack of apps in the Zune Marketplace at the moment, although the ones I use a lot such as eBay, Twitter and Kindle were present - oh and two Tesco apps of course! The apps that are there are useful - such as the London tube network journey planner. More apps will come (and I will help by developing myself!) - time will resolve this problem.

So to development: Oh wonderful! A download of the Windows 7 development tools and then into Visual Studio 2010 and my beloved C# programming language. Not the hugely cut down .Net Compact Framework either but a really big subset of the full Framework.  So a spot of C#, a smattering of easy Silverlight XAML, 2 minutes and I had an interactive app running in the WP7 emulator phone. Five more minutes and £65 poorer, I had joined the Microsoft App Hub application development portal which, on activation, will unlock my phone so I can test apps directly on it (much like the iPhone development system).

I did wonder if Windows Phone 7 could match iPhone and I declare them equal apart from the app count - and no need to develop using a low-down and frustrating programming language such as Apple's Objective-C - thus my "unexpected joy". I also see clearly that Android seems to need more power than the same hardware affords it compared to the other phones. 

So Windows Phone 7 is a hit with me and this phone is now my primary handset - that's saying something. Well done, Microsoft; well done!

Wow! Nominated for Greatest Contribution to New Media!

You know, just when you think that work couldn't get any more, well frankly exciting - along comes something that blows me away completely,

New Media Age have just nominated me, along with five other worthy individuals, for their "Greatest Individual Contribution to New Media" category at this year’s NMA Effectiveness Awards 2011.

According to NMA's announcement, "Nick Lansley, head of research and development on Tesco.com, is nominated for helping to push mobile to the core of the retail giant’s offering".

Now I must point out to you - as I have pointed out to NMA - that a core group of people have walked along besides - and in front of - me in "helping to push mobile". However NMA pointed out that only one name could go in for each nomination, and that the name concerned represented that group in public as far as they are concerned.

So, dear reader, if you think that our merry group of mobile creatives here at Tesco.com deserve recognition fot all the hard work making mobile 'real' for customers, then what you need to do is text "NMA2" to 82100 before 5.30pm on 6 May.  Messages will be charged at your standard network tariff.

What's that? You want to see all the nominees before you make your decision? Well of course: Click this link and you can see the shortlist, along with the "NMA number" to text if you prefer them...! By the way don't be put off by the rather smug look on my face in the photo shown on that page - that was taken for a completely different reason - instead imagine me with a surprised/delighted look instead!

Best of luck to all nominees - and, on behalf of our merry mobile team at Tesco.com, thank you NMA for nominating us for the 'greatest contribution' category. That is praise in itself.

VACANCY! Come and join the mobile team at Tesco.com

If you love what we, at Tesco.com, have created with our mobile apps (and think we could 'do better' of course!), it's time you came and joined the team at Tesco.com HQ in Welwyn Garden City.

Yes we have an amazing vacancy for a 'Mobile Product Owner' who will help shape our mobile/device offerings going forwards. It's an amazing chance to be in at the heart of what we do at Tesco.com.

To quote the description, your job will be "To create and manage the mobile backlogs for Android Groceries app, iPhone Groceries app, iPad Recipes app and future applications. Work with the IT development teams to plan and implement releases across the products. Support the Product Owner and contribute to the wider mobile project stream.".

Is that you? Oh that's fantastic - click this link to read more about the role - and apply.

If our interviewing team think you have what it takes to enable us to be first for customers in the mobile space, I'll see you in our state-of-the-art Tesco.com HQ building in a few weeks time.

Buy the right to watch the movie and NOT worry about the format

Tesco has just taken a majority stake in local video-on-demand service BlinkBox with an 80% stake in that business.

Blinkbox is the UK's leading movie streaming service, offering thousands of titles streamed on the internet to 2m users each month. Their catalogue of more than 9,000 titles is available to rent or buy, alongside a host of free-to-view movies, TV shows and trailers, on PC, Mac, PS3 console, tablet devices and internet-enabled connected TVs.

Tesco has bought an 80% stake in Blinkbox from Eden Ventures and Nordic Venture Partners.

Richard Brasher, Tesco UK CEO said, "Whether customers want to own the DVD, download a digital movie, stream a rental or all three, Tesco is committed to giving customers choice. We want to allow them to decide how they access entertainment content and on which devices, whether it’s on PC, TV or tablet. The acquisition of blinkbox, together with a range of other services currently in development, means we can link physical purchase of a product to the building of digital collections in a new and seamless way. Working with the blinkbox team and our content partners, we will bring these compelling propositions to life for our customers."


So what's the deal? As a customer, traditionally you buy a DVD and the reality is that you have really only bought the right to watch the movie on that DVD. If it gets damaged or lost, then no more viewing of that movie is available. The right to watch the movie is tied to the continued good condition of the medium and format on which it is embedded. Another example: the loss and non-replacement of my VHS machine means that I have lost the ability to play my old and substantial VHS movie collection.

Using this service Tesco can “link together” the physical purchase of films and entertainment with digital technology to create a multichannel entertainment offer. That means that when you buy a movie, you buy the right to watch it in any format and device covered by Blinkbox technology, not just on the physical DVD.  In future there might be a lo-res version for your mobile phone, standard definition for an average TV, and an HD version for your high-bandwidth broadband and HD TV.

I should point out that this is a long-term aim. The team set up to run the service will need to walk before they can run - and at each step offer a really good service for customers. Nobody at Tesco is going to rush into this without geting every stage of this journey working perfectly. Deep breaths, dear reader, this journey to Utopia will take time!

The Blinkbox technology exists today on Sony PlayStation/3 consoles (I use mine far more for watching content than playing games) and also on Samsung's Internet@TV service which is available as soon as you plug in an ethernet cable or wifi dongle into the back of the TV.

I've been a 'technical consult' on this project working with the business development team, which looked into the possibility of on-demand media for customers last year as a way of augmenting DVD sales. That's the real reason I ended up at CES Las Vegas last year. My role was to see how we could make this work technically from end-to-end. Buying into Blinkbox with their massive media library of more than 9,000 movies and proven delivery technology makes this somewhat easier.

So in future you buy the right to watch the movie, and no longer get tied to the format or medium on which that movie gets to your screen. Exciting stuff!

Further reading:
Tesco Press release: http://www.tescoplc.com/plc/media/pr/pr2011/2011-04-20/

Media coverage examples:
http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/sectors/retail/tesco-buys-into-blinkbox/3025698.article

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/8463413/Tesco-buys-video-on-demand-company-Blinkbox.html