Best dressed banker

File under 'I'm not sure what to make of this story, so will stick it on the FStech blog. Yep, that seems like a good idea'.

Apparently, there's a competition to find the best dressed banker of the year, organised by Cad & the Dandy and judged by the likes of former pugilist Chris Eubank. No, I'm not making this up, it's a real competition.

The current top three entries are: Duncan MacInnes, CEO Xenfin Capital; Sir Mervyn King, Govnernor Bank Of England; Kweku Adoboli, UBS. I'm sure that the latter will be particularly thrilled at making the cut - some good news after a, erm, difficult year.

Further info here.

Pointless poll of the day

Sexting has been voted the most annoying example of tech talk or geek speak. It topped an online poll of 2,054 people conducted by YouGov for Computeractive to find the single "most annoying or horrible" new technology-related word added to dictionaries over the last year or so.

The next most irritating words, felt those polled (who, you know, might want to get out more often), were respectively: Intexticated; Defriend; and Twittersphere.

Yawn. Am I the only one who doesn't actually find these examples of tech talk/geek speak all that annoying? I mean, OK, they're not words that I use on a regular basis but as polls go this one is pretty lame. Easy targets and all.

Pet PR peeves

I was recently asked to speak at an industry association event on the relationship between Editors and PRs and, specifically, provide advice to PRs and their tech vendor clients looking to engage with the trade press. All of which got me thinking about my pet PR peeves. In no particular order:

PRs who send a press release, then call five minutes later to ask, did you receive it and is it of interest? Sample answer: I haven't read it yet - amazing as this may sound I don’t sit around all day waiting for your latest press release. A recent response to that: Erm, OK, are you going to use it then?

Companies who clearly have not read FStech or even taken time to look at the website, but still feel it’s OK to send over badly written, irrelevant pitches and press releases. Then chase you up about them.

PRs who, because you met them once, think you’re their best mate and so contact you with random requests, such as: 'could you do me a solid and meet with my new client? They expect instant results and it will make me look good.'

Aggressive PRs who bombard you with calls and emails, telling you that their client’s latest press release is ideally suited to your mag and you really should run the story. Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?

Phew, rant over! I should stress that there are some good PRs out there, guys (and gals) who take the time to research your mag and tailor their pitches and communications accordingly. When it comes to these individuals, I am always happy to take their calls and respond to their emails. But there are a lot of time wasters in the technology vendor PR business who do their industry and clients more harm than good. And who get short shrift from your’s truly.

What Julian Assange did next

This week I will mostly be reading Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Biography, published amid much controversy last month.

FStech has been following the Visa/MasterCard/WikiLeaks row with great interest so I was keen to get hold of a review copy of this "bile-flecked" book (Private Eye's words, not mine). It begins with a note from the publisher, Canongate, explaining how Assange signed a contract with them in December 2010, then in June 2011 said that he wanted to cancel it. Having read the first draft, he declared: 'All memoir is prostitution.'

But Canongate, having reportedly forked out around £350,000 to woo Assange, decided to publish and be damned. The result is a work that is glaringly incomplete but nonetheless immensely readable and intriguing in the way it casts the WikiLeaks founder not as some revolutionary figure, but rather an unremarkable nerd.

Further info here.

Oracle fires shot at Autonomy CEO

 Oh, this is good. Oracle issues statement, accuses Autonomy CEO, Mike Lynch of 'whopper'. The business software giant is somewhat miffed at Lynch's claim that he did not try to 'shop' them the firm before selling to HP.

Full story here. 

Spreading the word

During my obligatory mid-morning Facebook log in (I can't possibly wait until lunch, I need to know what my friends have been up to), I came across a Visa sponsored link which took me here.

Pretty cool page, I must say - lots of useful info such as a map showing the contactless retailers closest to you. I blogged last week about an FStech contactless and mobile payments roundtable. One of the key messages to come out of the roundtable was that the industry as a whole needs to look at how it deals with messaging at various levels because at the moment it is all over the place. So it's good to see Visa attempting to connect with millions of Facebook users in a clear and concise way.

I still think that in many ways contactless is a solution looking for a problem, a problem that many people just don't have. Ultimately, cash works very well for them. But I will leave that 'rant' for another day.

Upwardly mobile

Just going through my notes from last night's FStech roundtable (sponsored by Elavon) which covered contactless and mobile payments.

Thanks to Wil Cunningham of Lloyds Banking Group for chairing and to the attendees who contributed to what was an interesting, lively debate. I'll run an indepth review of the roundtable in the next issue of FStech, but for now here are some of the stand out comments:

When it comes to contactless, it's like someone has built a Ferrari but the roads are full of potholes.

There are real positives. Look at McDonald's - they rolled out contactless in a matter of weeks. They have a compelling contactless proposition.

The industry needs to look at how it deals with messaging at different levels. The idea that cash is dead is utter nonsense. The cards and payments industry does itself no favours by claiming otherwise. Cash will be with us for many years to come.

With the rise of Facebook, Google and Apple and NFC-enabled phones, are we approaching the stage where we say, why do we even need a bank account? We can make the switch from bank to cell phone provider.

This discussion brings up an interesting scenario. With the exception of the two ladies at the end of the table (NB: Sonia and Emma, FStech sales ladies), we are a bunch of boring old farts. We're talking about email but it is so last century. Young people are not even having this debate, they are on Facebook and so on and they are communicating and looking out for one another on a whole different level to us.