Finding an alternative to Starbucks in Edinburgh

After many years, my relationship with Starbucks has faltered. A recent 6% increase in the price of a cappuccino was the last straw. £2.45 was a lot, but £2.60 was a step too far. So I have been trying out other local coffee places. It took a couple of weeks to go through all the options within walking distance of my office, but here is how it went.

Pret-A-Manger £2.25

Very fast service. Accepted my contactless American Express card. Coffee different to Starbucks but of similar quality. Not labelled as Fairtrade so probably isn't.

Greggs £1.80

Very fast service. Did not accept my American Express card, but offered me a cake for 20p extra. Coffee is OK, but not as good as Starbucks. Definitely Fairtrade though.

Costa £2.35

Very fast service, good coffee. Accepted my American Express contactless card. Not clear if Fairtrade.

Social Bite £2.10

Pretty slow service, but the coffee was good. No contactless card option and coffee not Fairtrade as far as I could tell.


I am not sure which one is the best option. The best compromise is probably Costa.

Is Blogger.com on it's way out?

With the recent news that blogs hosted, on a paying basis, at wordpress.com will be able to use plugins I think we may be about to see the demise of Blogger.com.

If you look at the recent history of the Blogger platform it seems that it is gradually being abandoned by Google. There have been few updates to it recently, the mobile app was withdrawn and the amount of spam comments getting through the filters is increasing. Blogger is now so far behind the curve it is hard to see how it fits into Google's current strategy.

The key to this for Google will be how much ad revenue Blogger.com pages produce vs the cost of running the service. It may be that policing a free blogging service is just too much hassle.

There are a few possible scenarios for the future of Blogger:

1. The service gets a major overhaul to bring it into line with what Wordpress.com is doing in terms of functionality and usability.
2. The creation of new blogs gets suspended while old ones continue to be viewable or usable for a while. There will then be an announcement of closure and a campaign to retain all of the content.
3. Things just continue as they are, but I can't see that happening while so few people are actually using Blogger as a proper blogging platform. Serious bloggers switched to Wordpress a long time ago and Blogger seems full of spammy sites.