You can quickly create your own wine bar with an Enomatic wine dispensing system that I found via this post on Luxist. The system holds up to 20 bottles of wine, automatically dispenses the perfect pour, and fills partial bottles with inert argon to keep wine from spoiling.
Find a retail space, buy a few of these things, buy some cool wine tumblers, apply for liquor license, decorate, come up with catchy name, repeat.
I've posted a lot about United (here, here, and here), but never really suggested and solutions, which I realized after reading this post on CUCEO. Here are some of the short strategies that the post suggests with my comments (read the post for more lengthy explanations):
As the CUCEO author wished you good luck, so do I; I've got a lot of mileage in your program.
Wayne over at Blog Business World put up this rather lengthy post on how to optimize your Blogger-hosted blog for search engines. If you have a Blogger blog and are looking for traffic, I suggest reading the post carefully.
Then you definitely will want to check out WiFiTunes that I found at this post on Engadget. Basically the software uses Rendezvous to find a Mac or PC on the local network with iTunes and allow you to stream iTunes music directly to the handheld. One little note is that the software currently does not allow you to stream AAC files.
There's gotta be just a little bit more code that would let you simply use the Pocket PC as a remote control for AirTunes.
According to this post on TUAW, Wal-Mart is going to start carrying the iPod Shuffle. I find this very interesting because the Wal-mart music store uses Windows Media DRM not FairPlay DRM that is supported by the iPod. What's especially amusing is that on the front page of the Wal-Mart Music Store is a Windows PlaysForSure notice reminding customers to look for the logo on digital audio player boxes to ensure that their player is compatible with downloads from the Wal-mart Music store.
Chances are that you are not likely to see the logo above on an iPod box in the foreseeable future, although if there were ever a company that could cause compatibility to happen, it would be Wal-Mart.
By the way: Just like Sony Connect, don't even bother trying to access the Wal-Mart Music Store with Firefox.
. . . but I can't. Why not? Simply because I have not received my W-2's and interest statements. My mortgage interest statements I can actually download from my bank's website, but not until Jan. 31. So I have all of the numbers that I need:
But I can't file my taxes because I don't have any of the official forms that I have to include with my filing. It seems to me that if the government can figure out how to get all 3 credit reporting agencies to provide consumers with a free annual credit report, they certainly should be able to create some sort of digital storage warehouse of all my relevant tax forms that are updated online in real-time all year long.
Imagine how simple a tax form could be if all of your credit documents were stored in a secure digital warehouse. If you used some sort of software to do your taxes yourself, you could simply direct the software to grab the data from the warehouse and auto-populate the return; instead of attaching all kinds of hard copy to your return, the return could simply reference the warehouse location. Similarly, if you used a tax preparer, you could simply give the preparer access to data in your warehouse for that year and let their software pull relevant data and input the same reference information. Once your return was submitted to the IRS, the IRS computers could automatically verify return information against data in the warehouse, and auditors would only have to look at manually inputted data such as donations, business expenses, etc.
Ok, here's a little bit of background:
Checkpoint SecureClient is VPN software. When you have the SecureClient software installed on a machine, you sometimes run into trouble with the SecureClient software running behind a VPN appliance. SecureClient runs as 2 services -- Checkpoint SecureClient Service and Checkpoint SecureClient Watchdog. The SecureClient Service is stopped when you exit the SecureClient application in the system tray, but Watchdog continues to run and that is what causes the problem with the VPN appliances.
To work around this problem, I have designated in services.msc that both services run manually and when I want to use the services, I have to start them through services.msc. If I start the Watchdog Service, it automatically starts the associated SecureClient Service.
Got all that? So here's what I'm looking for:
On a Mac I would program an AppleScript to turn the services on for me when I need them; Windows does not seem to have an analog to AppleScript that would allow me to do this; does it?
What I am looking for is an icon on my desktop that, when I double-click it, turns on and off the Watchdog and SecureClient Services so that I do not have to go into services.msc. I would imagine that the application would use a simple "If, then" test to check if the service was either started or stopped and simply turn the start or stop the service based on the result of the test; if it had to be 2 icons on my desktop: 1 for start, 1 for stop, that would be ok too.
Anybody have any ideas or advice?
Perhaps this post on Jeremy Wagstaff's Loose Wire will help. Or this second post on tags by Jeremy. Or this third post on tags by Jeremy.
Note that if you click on the Technorati Tag below, you will more than likely find all of Jeremy's posts because that's the nature of the system.
Technorati tags: tags'>tags
I found the letter below on this post at Church of the Customer. Normally I would not re-post someone else's post, but this is just too good:
An open letter to:
Mr. Peter C. Brown, Chairman, President & CEO, AMC Entertainment Inc.
Ms. Michael Campbell, Co-Chairman & Co-CEO, Regal Entertainment Group
Mr. Lee Roy Mitchell, President & CEO, Cinemark Inc.
Mr. Michael W. Patrick, President, Chairman & CEO, Carmike Cinemas Inc.
Mr. Travis Reid, President & CEO, Loews Cineplex Entertainment CorporationWe, the marketing-saturated American movie-going public, respectfully ask you to stop showing ads before movies. To be clear, we mean the commercials, not the movie previews.
Why are we asking? We pay you an admittance fee to be entertained. To escape. That's why, for years and years, we spent many dollars at your movie theaters every month. Often, every week. Movie nights with friends meant we regularly brought customers to you.
But now you disrespect us. You prostitute us, your paying customers, with commercial ads before movies. If the companies advertising in your theaters could advertise in churches, they probably would. There's no opt-out to the ads we're paying you to watch. We're a captive audience. Aren't you so clever.
Enduring 10 minutes of gigantic, disruptive and head-shaking ads for cars, deodorant, soda, video games and other stuff we'd rather not buy is not why we pay a sitter, hail a taxi, and spend $15 at the concession stand for movie treats to trudge across your soda-sticky floors while putting up with the guy on the cellphone who's chatting about nothing in particular.
A movie theater used to be a sanctuary for the movie experience, not a giant TV screen. Do you attend movies in your own theaters? Do you realize what they've become? Your sanctuary is now just another bathroom stall of your smelly disregard for customers.
So, we give up on you. We already did for much of 2004. Your prostitution ring of advertising was the last straw. If a theater promises an ad-free movie experience, we'll reconsider.
Now, about those paid product placements in the movies...
Sincerely,
Your former customersP.S. We are asking all of our friends who feel the same to send a letter, asking you to stop pre-movie ads by clicking here.
I'm totally sick of going to movies because of the ads and the previews. I think that my new strategy is simply to purchase my tickets online and show up 10 minutes after the published start time of the movie; hopefully this will allow me to miss all of the commercials and the majority of the previews. Now I know that arriving late means that I will probably not have a selection of prime seats, but I'm willing to suffer through sitting in the first few rows if I don't have to suffer through the same commercials that I can watch at home on TV and enough previews to make me forget what movie I actually bought a ticket to watch.
Do you think that any of the movie advertisers is getting anything close to a 4-to-1 return on investment? Most of the stuff on the screen has no direct tracking call to action (i.e., a specific code that changes week to week that you put into a website) beyond offers that involve bringing in a movie ticket stub. I wonder if you walked into a place that asked you to bring a stub for a discount and told them you had seen the ad in the theatre if they would give you the discount; I bet that they would, which, of course, would totally defeat the purpose of trying to track redemption with the stubs.
I'm really surprised that the theatres don't just turn the screens into giant text messaging boards that display text messages from different people in the theatre. The theatre could set up a number that would charge the person sending a text message $0.99 and probably make a fortune. Don't get me wrong; I don't want to sit and watch that either, I'm just surprised it's not happening.
Anyway, support the cause and click the link at the end of the "PS" above.
I went looking for information on creating Podcasts on Win XP and found this great post on Blogacasting that details Podcast reading tools and Podcast creation tools -- note that all of this stuff is for Win XP. Just figured I'd share.
Technorati tags: podcast
". . . Almost everything you read about the tarot is bullshit. But if you take the cards as archetypes for different kinds of human motives and behaviors, it becomes a kind of war-gaming system.
When a person looks at a problem, it's always in a particular context. Most of the time he'd be blinded to possible answers by his own prejudice. By gaming the problem, you're forced outside your prejudices."
From Jon Sandford's The Fool's Run and you can read this page in context via Amazon's search inside the book.
When I first read Sandford's book, the tarot/game theory stuff that the character did intrigued me. Unfortunately, all the research that I did on the internet did not yield any specific guidelines on how to practice game theory with the tarot. I suppose that I could have picked up a set of tarot cards, done a little research, and assigned the archetypes to the cards, and figured out how to do a spread.
Today at this post on The Occupational Adventure, the author referenced this post on TarotTools, which gave the following advice:
A daily reading is a good enhancement to that stuffy, fifteen-minute daily review of goals they teach to Franklin-Covey graduates. It provides perspective and context for your plans, and may remind you of tasks you've overlooked.
The process for a daily reading is as follows:
Seems like a pretty effective method for kick-starting your brain to think in other directions. I guess the attraction for me is that you have a very portable, fairly easy-to-use "device" that gets you to think outside of your normal rut.
If you are looking to make and receive calls over the Skype network and don't want to use one of those goofy USB phones, for about $50 you can get a USB Skype router according to this post on Gizmodo. The router features 3 regular phone plugs so that you can plug in a phone you already own. The device is fully compatible with SkypeOut.
Technorati tags: skype, voip, skype router
From this post on ktoddstorch, you can go to the Choose Hope site and find multiple different colors of the bands. Each band is embossed with the language: "Say It, Fight It, Cure It". While the bands cost $2, $1 more than the original LiveStrong bracelets, and you can see where the money goes by clicking on this link -- looks like 10-20% of total sales (before costs) go to cancer organizations.
Technorati tags: livestrong
Om Malik probably probably one of the more concise posts on the Silicon Valley 100. You can find the full Newsweek article here. Here's the lowdown from Malik:
[The Silicon Valley 100 is] . . . this really exclusive group which will get a lot of schwag from companies hoping to create buzz around specific products. This will include venture capitalists, lawyers and bloggers as well. Auren Hoffman has set up this group, which is like the jet set society of the late 1980s. His idea is if thee people recommend it, well then others are going to buy it.
This is oddly creepy. Will the people getting this stuff will routinely tell people they've gotten it for free?
What bothers me is the lack of transparency . . . in this case. It's just an extension of a concept of what some call "buzz marketing" -- getting allegedly "regular people" to tout products without disclosing the practice.
What's funny is that in the Newsweek article, the organizer of the group says:
. . . he avoided adding career bloggers or journalists to the list. “Those people have a different standard and shouldn’t be keeping free products,†he says (journalists are typically required to return products they sample for review).
Unfortunately, many of the Silicon Valley 100 have very well-read blogs, so if the organizer is lumping bloggers in with journalists, shouldn't all of those people have to return the sample products? I just find this interesting.
That's what this article in the Boston Globe proposes, in fact saying:
Getting organized is the new dieting.
Total organization, like weight loss, is difficult. But it is an antidote to excess for people . . .
I try to stay as organized as possible. I've used some sort of closet organization system in all of the houses that I've owned; I had my newest master closet recently done by California Closets and have been very happy with the results.
On a daily basis I use my Outlook calendar to organize my life and carry around a Moleskine for jotting down various notes on blog posts, personal items, and business items. For more on using Moleskines, I suggest the following:
Moleskines are available all over the place, but I have found them at Barnes and Noble. They seem to be getting a lot of coverage lately, and I did go and buy one based on all of the coverage. I will admit that it is nice to have a small, portable note-taking book handy for taking down all kinds of things. As a collector of quotes, I find the Moleskine especially useful and I find it very useful to leave it by my bed so that I can write things down if I think of them when going to bed or right when waking up. It may surprise many of you that, as technology-forward as I am, that I am a fan of a Moleskine; opening the cover is much faster than booting my tablet, it's just that simple.
I don't know if I buy into organization consultants -- I have lots of spaces in my office and my organizational system may not make sense, but I can put my hands on anything that I need very quickly.
Lots of tips on writing effective blog posts from this post on the Whatsnextblog (their points are in italics with my comments in plain text):
There's a whole lot more on the post and some advice on commenting. Listen: You should have fun with your blog; if it starts feeling like a job and not fun, then all the rules/advice in the world will not make it anything more than a painful process.
Lots of people write blogs for themselves, but let other people read them -- that's ok! Some of the posts that I put up are about information that I think I'll want later and so I post it to allow me to Google it by searching my site later on.
The funny thing is that many of the blogs that I read I enjoy reading because they do not adhere to any of the suggestions above. You get out your blog what you want to get out of it, but if you are posting for people to read, remember the old saying: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
According to this article on Wired, there is a cryptographic sculpture named "Kryptos" that contains 4 coded messages and sits outside the CIA building. As pointed out in the article and obvious to all of you that took a whack at solving The Davinci Code puzzle that involved pulling data from the hardcover dustjacket, the next Dan Brown novel will likely include Kryptos in some way.
There's a lot going on with Kryptos and I encourage you to read the article to find out more.
Perhaps we'll just have to wait for Dan Brown's next novel to find out more.
I don't know, but it drives me nuts when I need to create multiple new folders. This post on The Tablet PCs Weblog explains how you can use an open-source piece of software called AutoHotKey and a script available here to add the much-needed Ctrl+N command to allow you to make a new folder.
I've tried it and it works great!
Found a great article on Businessweek Online written by Keith McFarland about strategic planning. From the article:
Often when I give a speech, I'll ask how many people in the audience work in an organization that has a strategic plan -- and most raise their hands. Then I ask, "How many of you feel that your company's strategic-planning process is useful?" Only a few hands go up -- usually just those belonging to the presidents and CEOs in the room.
Why is this? An audience member once approached me during a break with a colorful opinion: "Strategic planning," he said, "is organizational masturbation. It makes the guy in charge feel good, but it doesn't do much for anyone else."
That's not really how strategic planning was taught in my business strategy class -- they said that the strategic process was 90% of the worth and the content (the actual resultant document) was only 10% of the worth. There was a very strict model that used feedback loops throughout the process; the end result, however, was a process that does not necessarily keep up with the speed of business these days.
Smart executives are figuring out that a 1960s pace for planning doesn't work today and are shifting to a 90-day strategy process. They realize that strategy-making is the vital, ongoing process through which a company learns how it can win -- and they manage their strategic assumptions and initiatives as aggressively as they manage their numbers.
How can an outfit possibly do strategic planning every quarter? Certainly not by simply speeding up the traditional processes. The people at Microsoft (MSFT ) came up with an innovative solution. For years, they have used a sort of "strategy slam" process to make sure strategies get mapped and adapted quickly. They identify a group of 20 or 30 people most capable of contributing to the strategy of a new initiative and literally lock them in a room for 48 hours with a skilled facilitator. The only ground rule: A comprehensive strategy and detailed action plan that the entire team will endorse must be delivered on the 48th hour.
There are some other tips in the article that are worth reading regarding a rapid acceleration of the strategic planning process. The interesting thing that McFarland points out is that by compressing the timeline as Microsoft does still results in a strategy that is 90% as good as one that might have taken 60 days.
Very interesting.
I seem to have missed a bunch of the VOIP stuff at CES that is detailed in this post on VentureBlog:
Portable Handsets: Almost a cell phone...
The best example of the first approach was UT Starcom's Vonage handset. Vonage is one of the major Voice Over IP providers. Previously, they used Cisco and Linksys VOIP devices that you plug into your network at home. Now innovative telecoms company UT Starcom has produced a wi-fi handset that lets you make calls from anyplace you can connect to 802.11b. Now consumers buying Vonage don't need to set up any equipment in their home so long as they already have Wireless.
Pretty cool -- I use Vonage at home and it would be nice to not have to boot up a computer to use a softphone.
Consumer Routers: No more landline...
This really isn't all that new -- DLink, Linksys, and all the other consumer router manufacturers are providing support for the various VOIP providers. What would be really cool is if there was a standard that allowed you to buy a non-specific VOIP provider router and just pop in a DirecTV-like card to activate the router for a specific provider.
Skype Gateways: Free calling...
The most interesting solutions didn't get much press at CES, probably because they were too esoteric for the masses. However, it's hard to argue with free as a consumer proposition.
A Taiwanese company called Sysgration introduced the SkyGenie product line. These devices sit between your regular phone jack and the phone. An additional plug goes into USB port on your computer. Your phone works as it did before.
However, if you dial "##" before your number, you are now dialing on Skype, the free calling network. Incoming Skype calls ring on your home phone, complete with caller ID and a different ring pattern.
The high-end device, the SkyGenie Voodoo, can even route incoming Skype calls to other phones and receive calls that then get routed over Skype. When at both ends of a call, SkyGenie Voodoo provides free international calls using your current phone system. For less than $100 in equipment, any company with overseas offices can get rid of their huge telecommunications costs.
This is really cool, but I can think of an even better implementation that would blend the service provided above with on-demand Vonage service. Imagine if you could pay $5 a month for basic Vonage service like voicemail, caller ID, etc. and a phone number. Then you use the equipment described above to determine if the call should go out over the Vonage network or the Skype network and to route inbound Skype calls to telephone handsets -- any minutes used on the Vonage network would be billed at a per-minute rate or your could elect to continue using Vonage plans with a bucket of 500 minutes at $15 a month or unlimited minutes at $30 a month.
I have been hearing a lot about this plane and its enormous capacity, but I hadn't really seen a shot of the plane that put its true enormity in a scale that I could relate to until I saw the following picture at this post on Thinking by Peter Davidson:
Wow!
I found this post on The Occupational Adventure that links through to this article on the CEO Refresher, detailing 6 ways to stay motivated:
Ok, here's my number 7, which I honestly think should probably be number 1:
Do what you love and are passionate about.
It's very easy to stay motivated if you love what you are doing; you want to get up and go to work every day. Unfortunately, many people find themselves in a position where doing what they love is put at odds to making a lot of money. I was told a long time ago that if you do what you love, the money will follow -- it has worked out that way for me.
In the words of J. Keating from The Dead Poets Society:
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we’re members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering . . . these are all noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love . . . these are what we stay alive for.â€
They should teach rule number 1 in every business school in the country.
There's a lot of buzz about this blog on the net, so I figured I would post a link as well.
If the answer to the question of the title is "yes," you should check out this blog called English Cut.
What is a bespoke tailor? Not surprisingly, the definition can be found at this post on English Cut.
I certainly am not in a place in my life to get custom suits made, but that's not really the point of my publicizing this blog. "What is the point?", you might ask. The point is the idea of the blog itself; how perfect a model this is for a business blog.
There's already a weblog devoted to the topic that I found via this post on TUAW. Note that the weblog is not Mac Mini specific, but addresses general issues of Mac home theater.
Look on the Apple site at some of the Mac Mini accessories:
Add in to all this that Apple is rumored to be working with Sony on some sort of video related service as it was noted by many people that Sony President Kunitake Ando was present during the keynote speech as this year's MacWorld expo, echoing Jobs in this being the year of HD -- more on this at this post on TUAW.
This post on TUAW points out that iFlicks has mysteriously disappeared, leaving only a cryptic message on their site that there was some issue that caused them to discontinue the project (I wrote about iFlicks just back on January 6th, so it hadn't really been around all that long) -- perhaps "iFlicks" is the name of a service previously trademarked by another entity.
This column over on PBS and authored by Robert Cringley puts together some more pieces:
Here's my thinking, and it is just thinking -- I have no insider knowledge of Apple's plans, I haven't been diving in any Cupertino dumpsters, and nobody who knows the truth has told me a darned thing. I think the Mac Mini is a fixed component in a system that will extend iTunes to selling and distributing movies.
The first hint came to me a day or so before the MacWorld show when right at midnight my computer stopped playing Apple movie trailers. The only way to watch QuickTime movie trailers (the closest I get to a movie since we have little kids) was suddenly through iTunes 4.7, which takes you straight through the iTunes Music Store. The regular QuickTime player wouldn't work. Apple had made no announcements, nor had they upgraded QuickTime, so I'd say it was a glitch that presaged the eventual replacement of that player for the selling of movies. Since then Apple fixed things and the QuickTime player now works for playing trailers, but I had already seen the future.
Now go back to Steve's MacWorld performance, which you can see on the Apple web site. What the heck is Mr. Ando of Sony doing there? Nominally he's sharing the stage to herald the ability of Apple's new iMovie 5.0 to import high definition video from a new Sony consumer HD camcorder. Apple will also be selling the Sony camcorder online and in its stores. But you don't get the head of Sony at your event just to sell camcorders. And Jobs explained it himself -- it is the "Year of HD" and nearly all of the year is yet to come. As he darkly hinted, we can expect further announcements.
There are a couple outfits already offering what could be the software components of this system. Their names are almost identical -- iFlicks and iFlix -- and both seem to be in flux. It could be that iFlix is freaked by the movie studio crackdown on bitTorrent servers, but suddenly their downloads don't download anymore while iFlicks has plain withdrawn its product from the market, leaving only mysterious messages on its web site. Both products manage well the organization and playing of videos on your Mac or PC. Either product could be the core of a new Apple movie service. I'm guessing that one or both have been -- or are about to be -- purchased by Apple.
I personally welcome the Mac Mini as a digital media hub. All of my music currently resides in iTunes, so that makes things feel pretty good. I have a DVI input on my plasma TV in the living room, so I really only need a wireless keyboard and mouse -- it would be cool if there was a wireless keyboard with some sort of trackpad on it or a wireless remote that could perform mouse functions, but I'm sure those will come. I like the Mac OS, I like iTunes, and I generally find that people who have tried both Macs and PCs tend to enjoy the Mac experience better.
I do think that the Mac Mini might need a little bit more horsepower to do all of the Windows Media Center/TiVo stuff; it seems to have a small hard drive (although the TiVo boxes don't really have big hard drives) and not enough RAM (although there are already lots of sites on the net that show you how to upgrade the Mini RAM yourself). The hard drive space is no big issue because you do have expandability options through both the USB 2.0 and FireWire ports.
For recording, the Mini is obviously missing any sort of TV tuner, although I have seen people talking about the fact that the CableCard standard seems to be making lots of headway, so perhaps Apple is just waiting.
If this version of the Mini can't record, is that ok? I mean is it a problem if you could only purchase movies and maybe even television shows from an iTunes Music Store-type environment and download them to this $500 box. As I said before in this post, I think that DVDs could very well be a dead medium and that everything will be digital; I really wouldn't have any problem ripping down all of my DVDs to a Mini and getting rid of the DVD media -- I'd even like to do it soon while there's still a market for it.
All in all, if the Mini is the digital media center, I think it will become that very fast. Certainly Apple would want to get out ahead of the momentum of Windows Media Center and take advantage of TiVo doing its best to lose its customers. Maybe we are all off the mark, but there's a lot of evidence that seems to point towards Mac Mini = Apple Media Center.
There's not much more left to do except to sit back and wait and see what happens.
Ok, this post is not at all what you think it is about.
I was reading this post on Boing Boing today that reference this article on PC Magazine in which John Dvorak talks about a column that he wrote 2 years ago:
My editor, Lance Ulanoff, was shaking his head the other day over the column I had written called "Free Porn." The column, written nearly two years ago, was an exercise in propaganda, done to prove that the use of the word "porn" in a headline would jack up the readership of any column. This was an assertion promoted by my previous online editor, Don Willmott, who revealed the trick to me after looking at years of online stats. He'd used it himself when he needed to pump up his own numbers.
Ulanoff told me that I had to do a follow-up to the "Free Porn" column since it has consistently been in the top readership list since it was published. "It's unbelievable," he said. "Every month it shows up in the list of top page views. It's never at the top, but it keeps showing up." Perhaps it's never at the top because it has nothing to do with porn. Just the use of the word is enough to pump up the numbers. Are online readers so drawn to porn that they aggressively seek it out? No wonder the amount of pornographic e-mail come-ons has been slipping. Why bother with spam? Just set up a porn site and the readers will seek you out.
Boing Boing points out that:
. . . terms like "bukkake" and "anal" rank disproportionately high in their stat logs . . .
It's a little sad that adding dirty words to articles and posts dramatically increases site traffic. I'll be checking on the popularity of this post in my site traffic engines to see how much traffic it drives to the site.
I have seen some blogs that use pictures of half-naked women in some of their posts, and while it does catch my eye when I am reading via a RSS reader, I don't know that it necessarily drives traffic to those blogs.
I was cleaning out my wallet, which I try to keep pretty slim as it is, and realized that I was carrying around a bunch of loyalty cards; primarily loyalty cards for the different supermarkets that I frequent. All of those cards now reside in one of the crap holders in my truck, but I will admit that I sometimes forget to bring the appropriate card into the store and, in those cases, usually wind up borrowing someone else's card that's in line behind me.
Now some of you will tell me that I can look up my loyalty card number by phone number. I respond by telling you that I have absolutely no idea what phone number I used on most of my supermarket cards. Specifically, I got my Safeway card when they first came out back in 1996. Although I have tried many times to change the phone number on that card, I have been unsuccessful. Can you imagine that? Totally unsuccessful in changing the number for 9 years -- pretty piss-poor customer service for a loyalty program.
Others of you will tell me that they have small versions of the cards that I can hang on my keychain. I respond by saying that I try to keep my keychain as streamlined as my wallet; I am not a janitor so I do not feel the need to have a massive janitor-sized keyring, especially if most of what is adding to the bulk is a bunch of silly plastic cards with barcodes or mag stripes on them.
Maybe what I could do is photocopy all of the barcodes onto one business card sized piece of card stock, laminate that, and keep it in my wallet. I would imagine that some of the numbers from other stores might be in different store databases, but in the case of supermarkets, I just want the virtual coupon discount, so who cares? Actually, I take that back; I guess I do get United mileage for my spending at Safeway and although I have lost my love for United, I guess I'll still take the miles if it doesn't require a lot of extra effort on my part.
There was an article that I found on Fast Company about customer loyalty programs. Here's an interesting point from the article:
"A loyalty card . . . is a piece of plastic. Most loyalty programs are plastic. They do nothing more than replace traditional paper coupons with electronic coupons. Why would that generate loyalty?"
Excellent point! That's why I had so many of these stupid cards in my wallet -- to ensure that I received the discounts associated with them. If I were really loyal, I would only shop at Safeway and not worry about even having an Albertson's card.
More from the article:
"If a company could turn 5% more of its customers into loyalists, with hooks into their amygdalas, profits would increase 25-100% a customer . . ."
See what Safeway should really be focused on is getting me to just dump all the rest of the supermarket cards and not worry about having a laminated card with every supermarket barcode on it. But what's the cost to Safeway and is it worth the price? I don't really know that even if I were head-over-heels about their loyalty program that I would buzz it to everyone (ok, I would probably talk about it a lot on this blog, but I think I can make this as a general statement). From the article:
The only problem is that sometimes the price of loyalty is just too high . . . loyal customers tend to cost more because companies often give them more services as well as greater discounts.
Maybe there is no good answer and I should just go fire up the laminator and the copier or just continue to hope that there is always someone in line behind me at the supermarket who will give me their card. I would challenge you to look through your wallet and slim out your loyalty cards; if for no other reason, do it because it's not good for your wallet to be so full that you are off-balance when you sit with it in your pocket.
I was cleaning out my wallet, which I try to keep pretty slim as it is, and realized that I was carrying around a bunch of loyalty cards; primarily loyalty cards for the different supermarkets that I frequent. All of those cards now reside in one of the crap holders in my truck, but I will admit that I sometimes forget to bring the appropriate card into the store and, in those cases, usually wind up borrowing someone else's card that's in line behind me.
Now some of you will tell me that I can look up my loyalty card number by phone number. I respond by telling you that I have absolutely no idea what phone number I used on most of my supermarket cards. Specifically, I got my Safeway card when they first came out back in 1996. Although I have tried many times to change the phone number on that card, I have been unsuccessful. Can you imagine that? Totally unsuccessful in changing the number for 9 years -- pretty piss-poor customer service for a loyalty program.
Others of you will tell me that they have small versions of the cards that I can hang on my keychain. I respond by saying that I try to keep my keychain as streamlined as my wallet; I am not a janitor so I do not feel the need to have a massive janitor-sized keyring, especially if most of what is adding to the bulk is a bunch of silly plastic cards with barcodes or mag stripes on them.
Maybe what I could do is photocopy all of the barcodes onto one business card sized piece of card stock, laminate that, and keep it in my wallet. I would imagine that some of the numbers from other stores might be in different store databases, but in the case of supermarkets, I just want the virtual coupon discount, so who cares? Actually, I take that back; I guess I do get United mileage for my spending at Safeway and although I have lost my love for United, I guess I'll still take the miles if it doesn't require a lot of extra effort on my part.
There was an article that I found on Fast Company about customer loyalty programs. Here's an interesting point from the article:
"A loyalty card . . . is a piece of plastic. Most loyalty programs are plastic. They do nothing more than replace traditional paper coupons with electronic coupons. Why would that generate loyalty?"
Excellent point! That's why I had so many of these stupid cards in my wallet -- to ensure that I received the discounts associated with them. If I were really loyal, I would only shop at Safeway and not worry about even having an Albertson's card.
More from the article:
"If a company could turn 5% more of its customers into loyalists, with hooks into their amygdalas, profits would increase 25-100% a customer . . ."
See what Safeway should really be focused on is getting me to just dump all the rest of the supermarket cards and not worry about having a laminated card with every supermarket barcode on it. But what's the cost to Safeway and is it worth the price? I don't really know that even if I were head-over-heels about their loyalty program that I would buzz it to everyone (ok, I would probably talk about it a lot on this blog, but I think I can make this as a general statement). From the article:
The only problem is that sometimes the price of loyalty is just too high . . . loyal customers tend to cost more because companies often give them more services as well as greater discounts.
Maybe there is no good answer and I should just go fire up the laminator and the copier or just continue to hope that there is always someone in line behind me at the supermarket who will give me their card. I would challenge you to look through your wallet and slim out your loyalty cards; if for no other reason, do it because it's not good for your wallet to be so full that you are off-balance when you sit with it in your pocket.
Not only does Sony Connect sell their DRM songs with the weird ATRAC3 format, but I can't access the site using Firefox, here's the message I received:
Our Apologies.
We appreciate your interest in the Connect music store, but our store currently only works with Internet Explorer 5.5 and above. You don't seem to be using that particular browser at the moment, so, unfortunately, we'll have to part ways until we support the browser you're currently using or you upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer.
So you don't have to download a specific software application like iTunes, but you do have to have specific software (Internet Explorer) to access the site. Furthermore, nothing in the language above seems to point to the fact that they seem to be making any effort to make their site compatible with Mozilla.
Just made Mama's Meatballs last night for dinner -- you know, the meatballs from the show The Restaurant on Bravo? Anyway, the recipe is actual up on the Bravo site, but I have republished it here:
MAMA'S MEATBALLS
Nicolina DispiritoServes 4 as antipasto or over spaghetti
(20 balls)For the seasoned stock mix:
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 large sweet onion
4 cloves garlic
1/2 bunch parsley, choppedPlace all ingredients in blender or food processor and puree.
For the meatballs:
1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground pork
1 lb ground veal
1/2 cup plain breadcrumbs
3 whole eggs
1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano, grated
2-3 pinches chili flakes
2-3 pinches salt
4 cups marinaraIn a large bowl, combine all ingredients (except extra virgin olive oil) with stock mix and mix with both hands
until mixture is uniform. Do not over mix.Put a little olive oil on hands and form mixture into balls a little larger than golf balls.
Pour about 1/2-inch of extra virgin olive oil into a straight-sided, wide sauté pan and heat over medium-high flame.
Add the meatballs to the pan (working in batches if necessary) and brown meatballs, turning once.Using a slotted spoon, remove the meatballs from the oil and place them into a saucepan of marinara
(they should be submerged). Simmer for 30 minutes, or until the meatballs are cooked through and tender.
Serve alone or over spaghetti (in which case, increase marinara to 6 cups).
Here are a few additional notes from me:
So I got a little bit of backlash from some people about posting an appeal for people to send me e-mails to LinkIn to them. I have a few things to say about the backlash:
I have a lot of contacts in my Outlook contacts that I don't know really well at all -- when I get a business card, it gets input into my contacts. LinkedIn prompted me how to upload my entire contact file into their system and then prompted me to send e-mails to all of the people that were already "LinkedIn"; some of these people I knew well and some I really didn't know at all. To date, almost everyone that I have sent a Link request to has responded back and Linked to me -- somewhere around 95% of the invites I sent out.
A lot of people that sent me e-mails about Linking are people that author blogs I read all the time or people that read my blog. In most cases, I feel like I have a very good insight into those who are blog authors think and act in business; in many cases I feel like I know them better than other people that I am friends with. In the cases where people have responded that they want to Link because they enjoy reading my blog, I feel that those people can read my posts and get a pretty good feeling about who I am and my business attitudes.
Is there the possibility that someone happened upon my blog by simply searching for LinkedIn connections? Sure, it's possible. But note that I asked for any of those people looking for Links to send me their profiles so that I could see their background, work history, etc. if I was not familiar with them.
The simple fact of the matter is that I got a little of responses from a lot of blog authors whose blogs I read on a daily basis; in some cases I did not actually know the author's full name and would not have been able to search for the person to create the Link through the LinkedIn system -- that would be like searching for "Ross" and hoping that you stumbled upon me. Other of the responses that I got were from readers and I was able to see how many degrees away from the person that I was based on Links that I already have -- the degrees and backgrounds of the people were what made the decision as to whether or not I wanted to be Linked to them.
Did I subvert the system a little bit? Sure I did -- most of the people that I linked to I could have reached as a 3rd or 4th degree connection via some people that I am already Linked to. Do I like seeing more connections to myself? I'm not going to lie: sure I do.
The questions was asked as to whether I would feel comfortable endorsing or referring any of the people that responded. I would ask how many times you have endorsed or referred someone's child as a favor to the parent without really spending time getting to know the child. The answer to the initial question for me is that it depends. If I read the person's blog and feel like I have a good insight into the person, I would probably happily refer or endorse them and note that as being the reason. If I didn't really know the person, I would probably have some dialogue with them (much as I do every time someone asks me to refer or endorse their child) and decide my comfort level on referring or endorsing them.
Does any of this mean that I did the right thing with that post? No, it doesn't mean I'm right, but everything above is my argument as to why it was not wrong.
I find most of these links via Technorati, so if you've linked to me and I haven't noticed, let me know.
Although they are more geared for getting yourself to write, the "50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work" is a pretty good document that I found via this post on 43 Folders. Also on the post is the author of 43 Folders "Hack Your Way Out of Writer's Block" that has even more ideas.
Not everything will work for you: maybe some of the ideas will work, maybe none of the ideas will work. The idea is to pick and gather what works for you and what doesn't. If nothing in the 2 documents above works for you, maybe the sheer overwhelming amount of things that don't work will trigger a whole list of things that do work. The great part about the internet is that you can find an overwhelming list of things that work (or don't work) for others and pick and choose what works for you.
Good luck and happy working!
There's a great post on Creating Passionate Users about "teddy bear programming" and "rubberducking." What exactly are these toy-named methodologies? Well they are actually one-in-the-same.
Many times people (me included) find that they can help solve their problems if they have to explain those problems out loud. In the post example, a person with a computer problem had to explain the problem to a teddy bear sitting on the help center desk before talking to a support person; similarly you would bounce programming problems off of a rubber duck before taking them to the programming team. The point is simply this (an I'm stealing it from the CPU post):
It's the talking that matters. Explaining your problem out loud is often enough to shake things loose in your brain, expose bad assumptions, and cause you to see things in a new way.
Pick your favorite toy and try talking out your problems to it. Even better: find someone who knows nothing about what you are doing and try talking out your problems to them; in many cases because you are trying to explain the problem to a person who has no idea what you are talking about you may just solve the problem -- just remember that it is rude to run away mid-sentence.
Following up on my post "Who needs and Ivy League degree anyway?", I found some more information at this post on Corporate Engagement:
Today's executives are younger, more likely to be female, and less likely to have Ivy League educations. They make their way to the executive suite faster than ever before (about four years faster than their counterparts in 1980), and they hold fewer jobs along the way. They spend about five years less in their current organization before being promoted, and are more likely to be hired from the outside.
What's more, the Organization Man, the lifelong corporate employee who worked his way faithfully and slowly up the executive ladder, appears to be headed out the door
"different skills are being rewarded, and that a new type of executive will benefit from this trend," says Cappelli. "The businessman in the gray flannel suit -- the person who was nameless and had no independent profile but fit into the organization -- that person clearly suffers in this model.
People who can promote themselves clearly win.
It's tempting to say that people with more merit get ahead now, although I'm not exactly sure that this is true because it's hard to judge real merit. But the people who appear to have merit clearly have the advantage in this model."
With another season of American Idol starting this week, I worry a lot about talent growth in America. It used to be that bands and singers that were truly talented were invested in by record companies and grown up to the mega-stars that they became and still are. Now everything seems so manufactured. Sure, one of the qualifications of American Idol is an ability to actually sing, but it just feels wrong that America is picking the next pop star. There used to be a magic and mystery to the music business: the feeling that there were record company agents trolling small bars and restaurants to find the next break-out hit and that it was the magic ears of those agents that helped propel popular music. Now these manufactured acts simply do everything in Pro Tools and there is a Pro Tools computer at the sound board so that the music on stage (and sometimes the vocals) are the same as those in the studios.
Similarly, look at TV. Where is the next group of Friends? The answer seems to be that no one cares. Simply go find a non-actor with some sort of story or, even better, get people to try out for some sort of contest, and simply film those people for 24 hours a day over the course of several months and distill it down to 8 1-hour episodes. Should the talent in one season not be that great, well, there's another season just around the corner.
Aren't we tired of this yet? Don't we want some of the magic and skill back? It really doesn't seem like it. Take a look at the guide on your digital cable or satellite and count the number of reality shows and episodes of American Idol. Take a look (or a listen) to the top 40 songs and decide for yourself which of those bands are actually talented. Look at some of the interviews with these manufactured bands and non-actor reality TV stars; a lot of them are very worried about whether the public will like what they are doing . . .
“Talent never asks ‘Will they like it?’. Talent pleases itself. That’s the difference between talent and ordinary.â€
-- Larry King, CNN talk show host
I found this post on Passionate entitled "Fitness Hacks for Geeks." Among the hacks are using your iPod with a pre-recorded gym work-out coach (wish I had thought of that) and using a heart-rate monitor. However, the most intriguing device that I had never heard of for personal training is an accelerometer:
If your goal is weight loss along with getting or staying in shape, this is the single best gadget you can get. In the very late 80's/early 90's I was the training director at one of the foofiest health-club-to-the-rich-and-famous gyms in Los Angeles, Sports Club/LA, and the expensive personal trainers all considered this a secret weapon they gave their clients.
If you don't know what an accelerometer is, think pedometer on steroids. It uses the accelerometer to measure motion so that you're not tied to just calibrating (and then walking) steps. At the end of the day, you'll know whether you sat on your butt or were up and down and doing things, so it's also a great way to see whether you've burned calories. Most of them will display how many calories you've burned, but you really have to see it more as an arbitrary point system rather than an actual picture of the true calories you've burned. In other words, get a baseline and then each day try to exceed that number...
I think I am going to order one just to try it out and you can order one to if you link through to the Passionate post -- they have very nicely provided links to 3 places that sell accelerometers.
You can find the list with commentary here on Tom's blog, but here's the short version in case you require no commentary:
The new version of iTunes with support for the iPod Shuffle also does something on the back-end: it removes files that have had the Fair Play Digital Rights Management stripped by Hymn according to this article on Geek News Central.
Not to be outdone, Hymn has posted already posted this work-around.
I am not posting this to encourage you to steal music in any way, shape, or form.
There are some interesting facts regarding Ivy-League degrees in this article on Slate:
. . . a recent paper by Peter Cappelli and Monika Hamori, both of the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that the prestigious degrees aren't as valuable at America's largest corporations as they were a generation ago.
Cappelli and Hamori compared the resumes of the top 10 executives at Fortune 100 companies (â€the 100 largest companies by revenue in the United Statesâ€) in both 1980 and 2001. These were so-called "c-level posts(â€CEO, chief operating officer, chief financial officer, chief technology officerâ€) plus division heads and senior vice presidents.
Between 1980 and 2001, the percentage of top executives whose undergraduate degrees came from Ivy League schools fell by nearly a third from 14 percent to 10 percent.
There's lots more to see at the article and through the paper link above. Pay careful attention to some of the cases being made for the numbers being what they are in the Slate article.
I do have to say that it is refreshing to be able to feel that you can still succeed and rise to high levels in corporations without an Ivy-League degree.
According to this post on Engadget, both United and Orbitz are giving away free T-Mobile Blackberries (no service) with travel. Certainly there are restrictions and you can find out more here for United and here for Orbitz (by the way, the Orbitz offer is easier to fulfill, but only gets you the 6710 -- that's no color screen).
Note: when I was searching for the exact page on United.com, I came across a 6710 offer from Avis that you can find by clicking here.
Start here with Spotlight, the new global system search utility and explore all the rest of the enhancements using Quicktime.
There's a great post on the [non]billable hour that links through to Sam Decker's list of things he resolves to say "no" to. From the list:
Read Decker's comments/answers under each "resolution" and try to use some of the comments to guide your answers.
You can stream this year's Mac World keynote address from here.
The iWork Suite, Apple's answer (replacement) for MS Office. Alternatively, you can check out NeoOffice/J 1.1, which is a free Office-like suite with some pretty hefty minimum requirements; can't beat the price, though.
Fire 1.5 is a free piece of software for the Mac that allows you to log on to multiple chat protocols without having a bunch of windows all over the place. Much like Trillian for Windows
You can find optimized versions of Firefox for G4 and G5 processors here. It works noticeably faster on my G4 Powerbook.
SlipStream software will untether your AirPort Express from being forced to use iTunes. I like iTunes and use iTunes, so I don't really care, but if you have a big Real Audio or MS Media Player collections, this should be pretty cool for you.
Mac Software Update tips from this post on Daring Fireball.
Authored by Debbie Weil, the PDF is a $29 value, but can be downloaded for free here at ChangeThis through January 25th.
Go get it before it costs you.
From this post at Om Malik on Broadband:
I think we are not looking at Mac Mini for its true potential. I think with this device, Apple might just have invented a new product category - the fixed mobile PC. Unlike a lot of us who jet around the country lugging around a laptop everywhere we go, there is a vast majority of people, who leave their homes early in the morning, get in their car, drive to work, where they boot up their computers and get to work. And then they do the reverse commute in the evening, and boot up their home computers. In other words, they are trying to sync home-and-work computing lives. Now with this tiny tot of a Mac, you can simply unplug and take your computer to go. It is light enough, small enough to become a fixed mobile PC.
This is an excellent point and should be considered carefully as no one has yet to crack the code on the fixed mobile PC. Some manufacturers have tried to put standards in place that would allow you to take a box from place to place and simply plug it into a docking station, but no one had been successful yet. Bear in mind, however, that these other manufacturers add features such as shock-mounted hard drives and heavy steel cases to protect delicate interior components from cracking; there is no indication that the Mac Mini has any such protection. On the plus side, the adapter that allows you to change the DVI video to composite or S-Video means that you could theoretically plug it into a TV and would only need a keyboard and mouse to have a functional computer.
Malik also notes that Elgato EyeTV (although it costs $350) could turn your Mac Mini into a TiVo replacement. Storage could be almost unlimited with the addition of external firewire drives.
Interesting.
If you do, here's a great guide on how to create a PowerPoint Presentation in 8 steps.
Then heed this advice that I found at this post on Crossroads Dispatches:
One thing I've learned from doing business with highly intelligent, technically savvy, opinionated people [yup, that's bloggers] is that you need to:
- have thick skin
- be open to dialogues - because you might learn something
For all of those of you out there writing books about blogging and business, you may want to use this quote at the start of one of your chapters (or even at the start of your book).
Looks like Microsoft's AntiSpyware may be as good as the combo of the 2 free programs Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware, according to this article on Slashdot that links through to this test done on Flexbeta.net (I found all of this at this post on Lockergnome). From the test results:
"Microsoft̢۪s AntiSpyware Beta does an extremely well [sic] job for an application still in beta phase when it comes to detecting and removing spyware/adware; and a nice job when compared to the alternatives such as Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D. The initial scan brought up a total of 2,404 files infected, 5,902 registry keys infected and 10 memory processes infected. The scan time took a little over 25 minutes to complete."
However:
"...if you chose to use Microsoft AntiSpyware as your spyware removal tool, you will still need to run other tools such as Ad-Aware and SpyBot."
I still like the question posed by Lockergnome:
Is it fair for Microsoft to charge its customers for software that is made necessary by the company's inability - or refusal - to repair the fatally-flawed Internet Explorer?
In my opinion, Microsoft should upgrade Internet Explorer to include the AntiSpyware functionality. I run Spybot S&D and AdAware once a week and they only thing they seem to pick up is a DSO Exploit for Internet Explorer -- I haven't had any real problems since I switched to Firefox as my web browser.
I had to take a trip to a funeral on Sunday that I found out about on Thursday. In order to try and get the best deal, my dad who is a United Premiere Executive and I called the Premiere Executive special number and spoke to a customer service representative. The customer service rep provided us with a bereavement fare discount and told me that I could change the departure date back from my destination with no fees. After I paid for the ticket I went and checked out Expedia -- the "bereavement fare" was double some of the low-cost carriers.
Anyway, the United ticket was not refundable, so I arrived at the airport on Sunday 2.5 hours early and asked for a different seat assignment, which I was denied because the "plane is full, sir." I then asked for an exit row seat and was asked for my Premiere card. Since when is first class in the back of the plane? Every time I fly Frontier, if you show up early and they still have them available (and you meet the qualifications to sit there), they will give you an exit row seat with pleasure. I explained this to the check-in person who told me that there was nothing she could do, but that I could check at the gate.
So I arrive at the gate and am the first person in line. I explain that I want an exit row seat and that they refused to assign me one up front. I was told that all of the seats were now assigned. Amazing, between the time that it took me to leave the front desk and walk through security, some number of people (they must have all been Premiere members) had checked into all of the exit row seats.
Does it sound like a little bit of jealousy that I'm not a Premiere member? It's really not. I'm pissed off. United is in bankruptcy; they are getting killed by other carriers. While I can appreciate the fact that they are taking care of Premiere members, not taking care of customers that don't fly enough to be Premiere is not the way to go to get new business.
United flys old airframes; Jet Blue and Frontier have new aircraft. United provides limited television service; on others you can pay for 26 channels of DirecTV. United gives you a miniscule package of peanuts and almost never hands you the can for your soda; other provide normal size bags of chips, hand you the can, and provide food for sale on flights.
Pretty sad. I wish I could sell or trade my mileage -- I now have 200,000 miles in my account.
If you can find it here, change it. Now.
Found via this post on Invisible PC.
iFlicks software works like iTunes for your video collection on your Mac according to this post on tuaw.com.
Blog figures from this report at Pew that I found at this post on Church of the Customer:
BlogKits will match your blog with an advertiser that is looking to advertise to readers of your particular topic. From the BlogKits blog:
It seems silly to me to think that we can't find other ways to deliver a marketing message in a way that fits directly into each blog's individual niche delivery, while still keeping an ethical line between paid advertisement and blog commentary. After all, in essence, a blog IS content, and good content is powerful, especially if it's niche specific. So as long as the content is on target and provides quality information, there's no reason a blogger shouldn't be able to mix in a marketing message or two, assuming they want to.