Liverpool finished the season in 8th place — their lowest league finish since 1994 — with the same number of points as Fulham and only five more than West Brom (bonus points for spotting the delicious ironies there). Not since 1980 have they scored fewer points in the league.

And it’s not as if they were pipped to the post for a Champions League spot either (their stated goal, pre-season, was to finish in the top four & qualify for the Champions League). Tottenham placed 4th in the table and scored 17 more points than Liverpool. Newcastle (5th) scored 13 more and Chelsea (6th) scored 12 more. Everton — fierce local rivals — scored 4 more and finished the season one place ahead of Liverpool.

Under Dalglish, Liverpool fell short of their target by 17 points.

1p and 2p coins are legal tender only if you are paying for something costing 20p or less: once you have amassed 21 or more 1p pieces, your coins contravene the Coinage Act 1971 if used in a single transaction.

There are also limits for 5p, 10p, 20p and 50p coins.

[Ron Delnevo] maintains that it makes it more fun for people to use cash machines and that it also creates a conversation piece. So a speckled hen becomes £10, a cab rank is a bank, and sausage and mash is cash.

Ismat Ullah never understood why people laughed as they walked away from the cash machine situated in front on his convenience store in East London’s Commercial Road, until somebody explained to him the intricacies of cockney rhyming slang.

“I am glad to hear about people walking away from the machine laughing because that is how we want people to react to it,” Mr Delnevo says.

“At the same time it helps foster a bit of British culture.”

When I heard the news, I was a bit disappointed — Roy’s unhappy stint at Liverpool forefront in my mind. But, I’ll admit, I knew little else of the man and, over the past few days, have changed my mind.

He’s won titles — lots of them. He’s managed internationally. He speaks five different languages (which speaks to the intelligence of the man). His Wikipedia page will tell you more, particularly his career statistics.

I wish him well. I think the timing of his appointment means that expectations are low. He’s stated that he’d be disappointed not to get out of the group stage at the Euros but I think I’d be happy seeing England playing well, as a unit, without all the normal distractions & backbiting one associates with the England national side.

Solid foundations. Pick the best team, not the best individual players. Pick players that want to play. Drop anyone who doesn’t, no matter how big their name. Don’t pick players who have a habit of alienating managers. Create a sense of camaraderie. Trust in youth. Ignore the press. Be confident. Stop shit like this and this.

Do that and you’ll create a team the nation can get behind and be proud of.

Happy Sunday.

From the Hardmac report:

If we had to bet, we would put our money on the revolutionary remote control that will be associated with the future Apple TV set. This is particularly in this area that innovation in design and ergonomic are needed, and Starck and his team are known for that.

Can a remote control really be revolutionary?

Aside from the Frog Design collaboration from the 1990s I don’t recall anyone other than Apple designing Apple products.

[UPDATE 22/4] Oh

However, I’m less enamoured about receiving emails at all times, particularly work emails. Wouldn’t it be useful if you had more control over when to receive certain types of push data?

What if your phone was able to determine:

• When you’re at your desk with your mail client open
• When you’re not at work
• When it’s the weekend
• When you’re on holiday (it’s in your calendar)

And what if it allowed you to set a preference for when to receive push data?

This is a rather quick & crude mockup, and part of me feels that this is such a non-problem but I love the idea of my phone being super smart with how & when it pulls my work emails down for me.

What if my phone didn’t pull emails down:

• When I’m at my desk with Mail open (I’m getting my emails via Mail — nobody likes getting a ting on two devices when receiving one email)
• When I’m not meant to be working (I’ve told iCal what my work hours are)
• When it’s the weekend (weekends come at the end of every week; they’re pretty predictable)
• When I’m on holiday (I’ve put my work holidays into iCal)
• When I’m anywhere I’ve told my phone I don’t want to be disturbed (e.g. the cinema)
• Anytime I’ve told my phone I don’t want to be disturbed

This is definitely a first world problem. Why not just turn off push data when you don’t want it? It’s relatively easy to find within the Settings app and takes but a moment. A bit of a faff, perhaps, turning it off & on each time you want or don’t want it, but a simple solution — that works in iOS now — that solves the problem.

When Scott Forstall demoed the location-based reminder feature of iOS 5, I had a bit of an ‘ah-ha’ moment — this was using the full power of the whole device (the GPS location & contact data) to make something fairly rudimentary (reminders) better for the user. Yes, setting your phone to ping at the time you think you’re going to be home works most of the time, but what if you could tell your phone where ‘home’ is and have it remind you when you get there, regardless of what time it was? Location-based reminders set off a little lightbulb in my head.

Something similar that allowed me greater control over when to receive push data would be marvellous.

There’s a persistent myth that mobile users are always distracted, on the go, ‘info snacking’ in sessions of 10 seconds. That’s certainly part of the mobile experience, but not the whole story.

Totally agree with Josh.

Nielsen has always presented his research as gospel, with little thought or consideration for context or changing trends. See, for example, his thoughts on using tabs as a navigation device. Granted, this is from 2007 but tabs have been used as a method of primary navigation for some time — certainly for a period that began pre-2007. Nielsen cites Amazon as an example (but notes that they ‘recently abandoned’ the tab design). I also remember the Apple site had lovely, shiny, lickable tabs.

To dismiss a common use of tabs as ‘incorrect’ because of a narrow notion of what tabs actually represent strikes me as a rigid and myopic viewpoint. Web interface design is an ever evolving discipline. Trends emerge. Things change.

Would ‘pull to refresh’ ever have happened if we all thought like Nielsen?

I find it mildly infuriating that Safari doesn’t offer more help here. If you mistype a URL in Chrome you get a Google-like “Did you mean:” suggestion and a Google search box.

Why can’t Safari be similarly helpful? If it’s clear I’ve mistyped a URL I’ve visited before, tell me.

(Yes, I was trying to visit the Mothercare website. When you get one of these, your browsing habits tend to include such places.)

That email I got back was apparently because my attachments were too large. I can barely read that email — let alone my grandmother. Machines can read it just fine, though. Here’s an idea: machines shouldn’t slap us in the face. They should help us along if they fail to do our bidding.

Sebastiaan’s proposal takes the standard ‘undelivered email’ bounceback message and reworks it to be more user-friendly. If I were to receive one of these emails I would better understand why my message failed to be delivered but I’d still have an undelivered email.

To me, the problem here isn’t that people don’t understand email bounceback messages, it’s that they’re receiving them in the first place. What if our email software could pre-empt these kinds of errors based on things we’ve done in the past?

So if I’ve previously tried to send large attachments to this email address that have bounced, perhaps my email software could warn me that the same thing might happen again?

(Yes, I know — this might work for situations where attachments cause email delivery failures but wouldn’t necessarily work for other errors such as ‘host unreachable’.)

Liverpool’s director of football Damien Comolli has left the club “by mutual consent” after the club’s owner, Fenway Sports Group, decided the high-profile expensive signings – such as Andy Carroll – have not delivered value for money.

How culpable Comolli was for these signings isn’t clear:

Comolli was also involved in bringing Jordan Henderson, Charlie Adam, Stewart Downing, José Enrique, Sebastián Coates and Craig Bellamy to the club, although the manager Kenny Dalglish had the final say on their arrivals.

What is clear is that Comolli has been made a fall guy for Dalglish. If the manager had the final say on who to sign, and those signings ‘have not delivered value for money’, surely the manager is culpable too?

Lotus has terminated its title sponsorship deal with sportscar manufacturer Group Lotus, AUTOSPORT can reveal, but remains wholly committed to keeping the famous name in Formula 1 for the future.

The best thing Tony Fernandes ever did was to name his F1 outfit Team Lotus in 2010.

The second best thing he ever did was to rename it in 2012.