Hooray for Amazon.com
November 3, 2008
Amazon.com has decided to tackle one of the banes of my existence: Scumsucking, finger-slitting, diss-the-customer packaging. They’ve posted a “Frustration-Free Packaging” credo that promises to eliminate the clear plastic shells that eat your fingers, triple or sometimes quadruple boxing that costs more to ship, eats trees and fills up your garbage can, and those REALLY STUPID styrofoam bits that get on absolutely EVERYTHING and take years to vacuum up.
Thank heavens somebody finally gets it.
Quest for voltage
April 9, 2008
I want a car that plugs in, if I can ever find one that (a) really exists and (b) really exists where I live.
Car makers make it sound as though all it takes to drive electric is an open road, a plug, and a credit card. The reality, however, is quite different.
Anchors away
February 8, 2008
Yes, I realize it’s spelled “aweigh.” I was making a point. 
For those of you who haven’t heard about it yet, the Asian Internet outages that wreaked so much havoc on overseas business lately were caused–in part–by a ship’s anchor dragging over undersea cables. (You can read about it in WSJ)
The last time this happened, right before the holidays in 2006, a Taiwan earthquake was the proximate cause. Now, you can in some measure predict and protect against moderate earthquakes, but this time the outage was caused by the nautical equivalent of a cow kicking a lantern in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn, and that’s a lot harder to guard against.
When I was a tech reporter covering US federal computing, the nice guys at NIST learned of my fascination with gigantic networks and sent me a chuckle: Mae East was most vulnerable to attack from a sale-crazed Christmas shopper.
Amazon succumbs?
December 1, 2007
OK, call me crazy and non-observant, but I’ve been holiday shopping on Amazon’s new interface for days now and just noticed an odd thing: They’ve got a gen-u-wine ad on the home page. A really, truly, somebody-besides-Amazon-is-buying-space ad on their front page.
A glance at their advertising section, and I see they’re selling “best of breed brands” on the home page, product pages, and “Thank You” page. (And there are more ads below, from “trusted partners,” but Amazon’s flirted with that kind of stuff before.)
Dammit.
The end of the middle (in software, at least)
November 12, 2007
Interesting article in BizWeek on the consolidation in the software industry, triggered by IBM’s announcement that it’s acquiring Cognos.
Cognos makes products that CEOs and accounting types love and middle managers generally hate. Their flagship product is a performance management tool that eats data like candy, and–depending on how well you’ve cleaned and polished your input–spits out balanced scorecards, dashboards, and other strategic overviews that can actually make your life (or your bosses’ lives) easier…if you pick the right set of analytics.
What we sell vs. what they buy
November 3, 2007
Doing a little market research for someone right now. Nothing fancy, just an informal Zoomerang survey: 10 questions sent out to about 3,000 customers, offering them a chance at a free lunch if they respond.
Sent the questionnaire to the veep and the head of customer service for approval, and got an immediate grumble: Why were we wasting five of our precious questions on “stuff we already know,” i.e., business size, which of the company’s many products they own, etc…?”
“If that’s what you want, we’ll just ask the database guy make you a report. We capture all that stuff already.”
I reminded them of the difference between reality and perception. Reality–our product info and sales data–vs. customer perception, which is what they really buy when they plunk down a purchase order. The point isn’t duplicating the data in the CRM software, it’s understanding how much of the message actually got through to the customer, and how much of the customer’s message(s) actually get through to us.
Shakeup at Skype
October 1, 2007
eBay, which bought Skype for $2.6B (B as in billion) awhile back, is revamping Skype management, taking a few additional charges on the books ($1.6B worth) and generally expressing disappointment in how things have gone with the VoIP service, according to this article in the Wall St. Journal.
I’m not exactly astonished to hear this, as you might have figured out if you read the story of my wanderings through the Skype wilderness. Never seen a company so determined NOT to take your money or provide support, under any circumstance.
My uncle and his wife, who are doing good works among the poor in Cambodia right now, use Skype as a means of contacting friends and relatives in the US quickly and cheaply. My sister’s good friend from college, who spends most of her worklife traveling internationally, does the same.
Skype is too valuable a service–when it works–to give up. I hope eBay can make it work, but after dealing with them on the business side of the house…they have a looong way to go.
Uh-oh. Domino.
August 20, 2007
OK, so I couldn’t pass this one up: Skype failed because Microsoft users did the equivalent of heading for the bathroom at SuperBowl halftime.
According to the Skype blog:
The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.
The high number of restarts affected Skype’s network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact.
So Skype’s saying that Microsoft sent out a patch through its update service, millions of users applied it and, when it said, “You must restart your computer now…” they did.
And a gazillion restarts pretty much ate the Skype network.
Hmmmm. Given the number of patches that typically come out for any major OS these days…plain old telephone service is looking better and better.
Spinning wikis
August 19, 2007
File this one under “Sad but why is anyone surprised?”: Spin doctors are taking Wikipedia for a spin. Several spins, in fact.
An article in the Independent reports that a CalTech student, Virgil Griffith, downloaded Wikipedia, the online reference for just about everything, and analyzed revision sequences and who made those revisions. The results are available at his website.
Which came first? The red cross or…the Red Cross?
August 9, 2007
So Johnson & Johnson, a family company, is suing the American Red Cross for trademark infringement of its red cross.
This oughta be fun.
112 years ago ARC founder Clara Barton (apparently unwisely) agreed that J&J had exclusive rights to use a red cross to sell bandaids and first aid kits and the like. Now the Red Cross has gotten into the business of selling first aid kits, too, and J&J says the whole red cross thing is a violation of its trademark agreement.
ARC CEO Mark Everson has responded in a remarkable combination of flag-waving and chagrin over Ms. Barton’s apparent short-sightedness. The first aid kits sold by the ARC for both fund-raising and to “help Americans prepare for disaster.” The Red Cross will probably do a great job of portraying corporate giants beating up on poor little humanitarians like ARC. (Of course, calling ARC poor or little is akin to not noticing the two-ton elephant sitting next to you on the sofa.)
J&J wants ARC to stop selling medical supplies (and give J&J the profits) and to stop using the cross on anything (apparently) but signs over a first aid tent.
Interesting. I wonder if J&J is planning to sue the Defense Department next? Or perhaps just people who make money and employ red crosses, like hospitals, ambulances, pharmaceutical companies, etc., etc.?