vivweb01

The sorry saga of ASDA's 'fall from grace' as one of our most value-conscious supermarkets has served to highlight a growing trend amongst our major retailers in favour of increasing profit margins at the expense of the consumer.  A recent 'Which' report recommends supermarkets offer their customers cheaper alternatives to branded items in all their stores, and ensure these items are well-stocked.  I made similar recommendations when this blog was first published after Jack Monroe's expose of ASDA in April 2022 led to welcome action on ASDA's part.  It is to be hoped that the 'Which' report will shame retailers enough to take action...time will tell whether they attempt to 'tough it out' or not....Read on for more details about what's happened since the cost-of-living crisis hit. See the latest update at the end of this article for a full roundup of ASDA's struggle for survival after yet another hedge-fund venture went bad.... -----...

  Smartphone/Tablet Apps – Should they be better documented ? It’s a sad fact that many of the Android and iOS apps that I’ve come across in my travels have been poorly documented and leave the novice user perplexed as to how they work…. I began to wonder why this might be the case quite soon after starting to use smartphones & tablets myself. Having authored quite a bit of software over the years (for pcs rather than mobiles), some of which was produced to support work projects and has been extensively used by professional colleagues, I had some prior knowledge of the coding process - and what goes into validating and documenting an app. This provided some insight into why developers might find it hard work to provide full instructions for their apps. It also provided some clues as to why early releases of some apps have a habit of crashing when used by the unsuspecting. I wanted to explore this a bit further, since these are both important issues to address for any app deve...