Clipmarks allows you to save only the information that you want from webpages and to tag and add comments to the clips you save. Clips can be saved privately and publicly. There are add-ins for both IE and Firefox to allow easy clipping, but only the Firefox add-in works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Registration is free.
Google has just launched Gmail Mobile, which allows you to use a mobile phone browser to access Gmail. Check out more features and bookmark http://m.gmail.com on your mobile.
CUCEO reports on their experience with SurveyMonkey and give it high marks in being low cost and high support (what more can you ask for?). Sounds like a good place to start if you are looking at doing an online survey.
The steamroller is picking up steam — if Apple is able to secure major networks and HBO as a major cable network, they very well could dominate the digital video market like they currently dominate the digital video market.
How do you feel about that? Just like printing a plane ticket at a kiosk at the airport, you can swipe your card and get your room key at a kiosk in the soon-to-be-opened Hyatt here in downtown Denver.
If it really feels good and works from the consumer perspective, then there is really no reason not to put the check-in kiosks out at the airport just like some of the MGM/Mirage properties have done in Vegas.
Here are the instructions:
To differentiate itself from other blog search engines, Opinmind splits results into positive and negative. Kind of interesting to play with.
You should add your blog if you do not find that you are coming up in the search results — do this by searching for your blog and then scrolling down; you will see a “Don’t see your blog in our results?” field.
TUAW is reporting that you will receive 10 free songs for each $25 iTMS gift certificate and 25 free songs for each $50 iTMS gift certificate. Offer expires Dec. 31, 2005.
Hell, you could even send the gift certificate to yourself — $50 for $75 worth of music isn’t a bad investment.
That’s what Feed 2 Podcast will do for you; just make sure you are publishing the full text of your posts in your RSS/ATOM feed.
Sounds a little like Hal.
10 episodes in 2 weeks with action and intrigue as good or better than 24.
And you should listen to what he has to say; here’s an example from a recent interview that he did:
1. Does it perplex you that many big brands still have reservations about the web?
Not at all. Big brands got that way by doing the things that worked over and over. They're not good at the new, and they're horrible at experimenting.
5. Interruptive online ads are thought to damage brands, yet we still see an awful lot of advertising clutter on the major publishing sites. What would you say to these publishers and advertisers?
They're not listening, so I can't say much of anything.
If they were listening, I'd ask them to do one thing: measure.
Makes you want to read the whole thing, doesn’t it?
I was playing around with SimplyHired today because it seems to be getting some press — apparently SimplyHired is getting a capital infusion. For a job search engine, the interface is very clean and simple and the site is extremely easy to use.
I initially saw this at this post on TUAW, which links through to the original instructions from Mike Matas. Here’s a picture of the life poster from Mike’s blog:
Essentially you take 98 individual pictures and turn them into a 30”x20” poster. Full instructions are on Mike’s blog and you should definitely read them because it will make the project very easy. Mike estimates the cost at about $29 per poster.
I really don’t see any reason why you couldn’t pull off the same sort of project with Flickr if you don’t have/use iPhoto.
We received our 80–hour TiVo earlier than expected, so I had a chance to set it up; here are my thoughts and experiences:
We used the TiVo last night to pause live tv, which is pretty cool and reminded me of a post I wrote in January 2004 about using DVRs to watch the first 10 minutes of a reality show, fast forward through the middle 40 minutes, and watch the last 10 minutes.
The TiVo has not been set up long enough for us to have scheduled anything to record, so I cannot yet speak to that feature set. My wife seems to find the interface very intuitive and I think both of us are very happy with the single remote. One of the big questions that my wife had was whether we could record one show while watching another — unfortunately, unless you have DirecTiVO, I don’t think there’s a TiVo box that supports multiple inputs (and we’d need another DirecTV receiver in the living room). I did explain to her that we could record something while watching recorded content, so I think once we get some stuff recorded, this will become less of an issue.
I need to go buy some S-Video cables.
This is pretty damn cool — Amazon has made the Alexa Web Search platform open to the public. From the site:
Users can search and process billions of documents -- even create their own search engines -- using Alexa's search and publication tools. Alexa provides compute and storage resources that allow users to quickly process and store large amounts of web data. Users can view the results of their processes interactively, transfer the results to their home machine, or publish them as a new web service.
You should think about how your company might be able to use this.
Walletex has taken the USB flash drive and made it into a credit card-sized device. I love my USB flash drive and use it all the time, but it would be cool to keep one in my wallet.
It seems like there’s an awful lot of surface area for advertising if a company were looking for using these as a promotional item.
I just finished reading Corporate Canaries by Gary Sutton. Although I was initially a little skeptical of learning business lessons from stories about working in coal mines (coal mines used to use canaries to detect poisonous gas — if the canary stopped chirping and/or died, it was time to get the hell out of the mine shaft), my mind was changed after reading the first chapter.
Sutton summarizes what the book is about very succinctly:
Corporate Canaries is the first and only book showing managers how to detect potential disasters.
There are 5 potential disaster situations that Sutton instructs managers to look out for:
You need to read the book to really understand what Sutton is talking about with regard to each of the 5 topics.
I really liked how Sutton lead off each chapter with a story about Grandpa, the coal miner — the story leads you directly into the lesson of the chapter. However, interspersed among the coal miner stories are boxes with small, real-world examples of the very lesson that the story seeks to teach; unfortunately these small boxes are distracting and sometimes teach you the lesson in a way that makes you skip the coal miner story. My suggestion would be to skip the boxes as you are reading the coal miner story and come back and read the boxes once you have read all about Grandpa.
It was refreshing to see a book that is this useful come in such a small package — it has been my experience that it is much easier to get managers in organizations to read books that are shorter, smaller, easier to transport, and quickly get to the point. I agree with Sutton with this statement he makes at the very beginning of the book and admire the guarantee he makes in the same sentence:
This book will help managers detect a serious business problem, either in your company or in a competitor's within a year of reading. If not, I will return your money plus a dollar.
This book teaches lessons with easy-to-understand stories and plain terminology (no business buzzwords) and I would highly recommend it.
Link
Important disclosure: This book was provided to me free of charge by Universal Buzz. Although I did not pay for the book, I have provided a completely objective review in the post above; in fact I’m probably tougher reviewing books that I receive free of charge than I am reviewing books that I pay for.
Dion Hinchcliffe of Sphere of Influence has posted his list of the best Web 2.0 software for 2005. There are lots of things that you would expect on the list, but it’s worth taking a look at if you are looking to quickly get going with the Web 2.0.
I wanted to produce some MP3 ringtones for my new Treo, so I played around with the easiest and cheapest way to do it this weekend and here’s what I found:
These instructions apply (naturally) only to music that you own.
Wishingfish.com has Coal bubble gum for sale. The gum comes in a black box about the size of a bar of soap; all of the gum inside is individually wrapped, flavored black gum balls. You need to order by Dec. 22 for guaranteed Dec. 24 delivery. Each box costs $5.
Chances are good that it’s not going to happen. However, you can submit your picture and Time will probably display it on the big electronic billboard that they have set up in Times Square. Interesting promotional idea.
Although Nokia has been processing my order for the 770 since Nov. 14th and still not shipped, I was able to get my hands on a 770 today at CompUSA. Price was the same as Nokia, but I didn’t have to pay for the shipping, so I actually saved some money over what it would have cost buying direct from Nokia. On the one hand, it’s kind of a bummer that Nokia isn’t servicing their pre-order clients prior to CompUSA, but on the other hand, I’m glad I was able to quickly get one.
The guy at CompUSA told me that they had only received 3 total units in the store, so quantities may be low around your area; the closest store to me didn’t actually receive any units, so I had to drive about 15 miles to pick this one up today.
My initial thoughts on the device are as follows (the battery’s still not even fully charged yet):
I’ve heard that there’s already an update available for the device. Initially I was a little worried about the update because it’s hosted on the Europe site, but after playing with the device, I don’t really think it matters.
More information to come after I’ve had some more time to play with it.
Link (be sure to enter your zip because it’s not available to ship)
This is from the Amazon Deals Shopping Blog:
The price has been lowered from $999.99 to $899.99. In addition, this computer also qualifies for a $100 rebate. The bottom line, $799.99. Rebate expires 12/20/05, see details.
This computer also qualifies for a free Apple Mighty Mouse after rebate. This rebate expires 12/31/05, see details.
The example above is for the 12” iBook (1.33 GHZ) with 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, combo drive, and built-in Airport Extreme. Like it says in the title of the post, it’s the best price I’ve seen for a non-refurb.
I have a confession to make: I will soon be the owner of an 80–hour TiVo box. “How can you do this?” you might ask. Admittedly, I have not been the biggest proponent of TiVo for the last couple of years. However, with the arrival of our baby, my wife and I need to modify the way that we watch tv — we need to be able to pause live tv, we would like to be able to record our favorite programs and watch them at our leisure, and I would like to be able to take record tv programs with me when I travel — and TiVo, right now, is the best solution. That’s not to say that if a better solution comes along from a company like Apple, we wouldn’t change over, but the other simple factor is this: I am very comfortable with technology while it just needs to work easily for my wife (not that she doesn’t understand technology, she does better than a lot of people, but recording tv can’t be a pain in the ass or she won’t use it).
When I was weighing back and forth on how much of a hypocrite I would be by getting TiVo after bashing it for so long, I came across a post on TechDirt regarding unbundling tv shows from the stations, which is what the rumored Apple media center is supposed to do:
. . . the next generation of children will have no concept of what a channel is because they'll just subscribe to shows individually. The thing is, just as setting up a la carte channels would mean a big change for cable companies, setting up the ability to subscribe to individual shows would be an even bigger leap. That's why it's unlikely the cable companies will be the first to go there (though, they've done some experiments with on-demand shows). It's the perfect way, however, for the telcos pushing IPTV to jump into the game, by offering something a lot more interesting and different than just a cable copycat.
Unbundling the shows certainly would solve all of the issues that I’m trying to solve right now with TiVo, but we need a solution now. Certainly I look forward to when I can just subscribe to a show without having to pay for 500 channels that I don’t use, but for the short term, I suppose that I’ll just have to be happy using TiVo’s Season Pass feature.
Jeremy Wright initially brought up capacity scaling issues on his blog, essentially saying that Web 2.0 companies need 99.99% uptime or else [CORRECTION: Jeremy was generally ranting about uptime and never specifically called for 99.99% uptime; I inferred this based on a later post by Jeremy, which is worth reading]. I enjoyed Signal vs. Noise’s response to Jeremy’s post because it provides a concise explanation of why 99.99% uptime is really hard:
To go from 98% to 99% can cost thousands of dollars. To go from 99% to 99.9% tens of thousands more. Now contrast that with the value. What kind of service are you providing? Does the world end if you’re down for 30 minutes?
If you’re Wal-Mart and your credit card processing pipeline stops for 30 minutes during prime time, yes, the world does end. Someone might very well be fired. The business loses millions of dollars. Wal-Mart gets in the news and loses millions more on the goodwill account.
Signal vs. Noise goes on to question what the implications for a service like Flickr are if they operate at less 99% uptime; the answer is that right now it’s probably no big deal.
The same questions and arguments can be applied to internal corporate applications. Is it ok if your company’s e-mail doesn’t work all the time? Probably not, especially with people accessing over the web, via Treos and Blackberries, and working on the weekends. Is it ok if the human resources web portal doesn't have a 99% uptime? HR might tell you that it is, but chances are good that HR is not working 7 days a week in most companies.
Signal vs. Noise introduces a great term for evaluating uptime that came from Alistair Cockburn: “Criticality”. The percentage of uptime is directly related to the level of criticality.
Ross Mayfield reports on a new wiki community called “wikilaw”:
Wikilaw's goal is to build the largest open-content legal resource in the world. To accomplish this goal, Wikilaw needs your help! We encourage all law professors, practitioners, and students to share their knowledge.
Currently, there are roughly 1,000,000 lawyers in the United States. If every lawyer in America contributed a fraction of their legal knowledge to this site, Wikilaw would become one of the largest libraries of legal information in the world.
How cool would it be if even 25% of the lawyers in the country took time to populate the wiki? Now, how do you make this happen? I’m pretty sure you’d have to figure out how to indemnify and hold harmless anyone that posted any information to the wiki.
Adjab covers the argument made my Google VP of Product Management, Jonathan Rosenberg, with regard to Prada advertising:
. . . fashion company Prada would be better off participating in the Google AdWords program than advertising in high-end print publications such as Vanity Fair. Rosenberg breaks it down by the numbers, saying a $.28 AdWords buy can target readers who are actually and actively looking for Prada merchandise, versus magazine readers who aren't doing so, not to mention all the potential buyers who won't even see the print ad.
Insert your company name for “Prada” in the quote above and then evaluate whether or not you should be doing AdWord advertising; it’s a strong argument to refute.
TUAW reports on the public domain torrent stream that you can take a look at to load up your video iPod.
From The Work Better Weblog:
MicroPersuasion reports on a new service called JotSpot Tracker that allows you to put MS Excel spreadsheets on the JotSpot site for sharing and collaboration. As Steve Rubel, author of MicroPersuasion, rightly points out:
Combine this baby with JotLive or Writely and not only are you this close from being liberated from Microsoft Office, but you gain very powerful collaboration features as well.
I didn’t see any information on pricing after the 30 day trial, but I’m sure it’s there somewhere.
I stumbled across CoverFlow, which is a visual way to display your iTunes library by browsing CD covers or other artwork it finds based on how your music is tagged. Unfortunately, the software only works on a OSX Tiger, but it’s pretty damn cool; basically looks like a virtual jukebox.
The software is in beta, but what isn’t these days?
There are all kinds of news stories with all kinds of opinions about the air marshal that shot and killed the man yesterday who claimed he had a bomb. I travel a lot by plane and feel safer knowing that air marshals are willing to take decisive action rather than waiting to determine the validity of a person’s claim.
What everyone should take away from this incident includes:
I will be very disappointed if we see any sort of lawsuit come out of this incident.
First, I stumbled across a copy of the open letter from Best Buy to consumers regarding the initial XBox 360 launch on the Social Customer Manifesto. The entire letter is reproduced below, but essentially states that the forced purchasing of XBox 360 bundles is not the policy of Best Buy and you can return any XBox 360 stuff you bought for a full refund.
"TO: Open Letter to CustomersFROM: Brian Dunn, President – Retail, North America
RE: Launch of Xbox 360
CC: Best Buy Store, District and Territory Employees; All Officers and Directors
DATE: December 6, 2005
I’m writing to apologize.
While all of us at Best Buy were thrilled to be part of the recent launch of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game system – one of the most anticipated events in the history of electronic gaming – the launch did not go as we had hoped. We sold out of Xbox 360s nationwide in less than two hours, and most of our stores did an outstanding job of serving our gaming customers. I’d like to thank the majority of our employees, who provided a terrific experience for customers at the launch date. However, our promotional activities in certain cases failed to follow company guidelines. As a result, some of our valued gaming customers had an experience in our stores that was inconsistent with what you’ve come to expect from us, as a leader in the consumer electronics industry.
Specifically, customers in some Best Buy stores were told that they were required to buy additional Xbox accessories or services if they wanted one of the sought-after Xbox 360 consoles, even though we advertised the Xbox 360 console alone. I want to be very clear that Best Buy does not condone pressuring customers to purchase items they may not want or that may not fit their lifestyle. In fact, these behaviors are in direct conflict with our desire to serve customers’ needs better than anyone else, and our values of honesty and integrity.
We are currently investigating all leads about promotional practices that may have violated the company’s guidelines, and we will take disciplinary actions as appropriate. We also have reminded all of our stores about our policies with respect to launches of hot products. Meanwhile, on behalf of Best Buy, I’d like to offer a sincere apology to any customers who felt pressured to buy items they did not want.
Customers who are unhappy with Xbox 360-related purchases made in November 2005 may return unwanted items for a full refund at any Best Buy store. In addition, if your Xbox 360 purchasing experience did not meet your expectations for any reason, please email us at xbox360@bestbuy.com . (Employees with information pertinent to our investigation are encouraged to call our Ethics Hot Line instead.)
Last, I would like to invite you back to our stores, particularly later this month, when Best Buy will receive more shipments of Xbox 360s. While supplies continue to be very limited, we are truly excited about this new gaming platform, and we’d like to deliver the best of that experience to you. We promise an in-store experience that is focused on your needs and the needs of everyone on your holiday gift list.
Brian Dunn"
Today I saw a post on Gizmodo that shows the clip below from the Best Buy Retail Insider that directs XBox 360 units received between Dec. 11 and Dec. 16 to be stockpiled for release on Dec. 18. Furthermore, the clip directs that XBox 360 units are for the general public and may not be held for “select” customers and/or employees.
It appears that Best Buy is trying to the right thing with the Dec. 18 release, but it just seems a little weird that they wouldn’t sell units as they come in on a first-com-first-served basis. Of course, by having a second “release,” there will be lots of lines and lots of people driven to Best Buy stores in hopes of getting a unit in time for the holidays — perhaps you might buy something else, especially if you don’t get a unit.
Just the word itself is pretty viral — I immediately associate it with Virgin Mobile. You can also check out the viral on their site.
If you check out Squidoo.com today, you may notice that the public beta is live. I’ve been a private beta tester for the last few weeks, trying to break Squidoo and reporting bugs, errors, etc. In public beta you can now sign up for an account and begin creating your own lenses. You will find the lens creation process to be very straightforward and easy, and you will hopefully find it bug-free. Note that some lens names may already be taken as those of us that participated in the private beta got to keep the names we registered during that period once the site was public.
Check out my personal lens by following the link below.
Check it out; it all installs into 256 megs on a flash drive.
Seth Godin summarizes it succinctly:
Producing is not about making something. It's about making something other people thought couldn't be done--or were too distracted to do themselves.
According to this post on BBHub, Ken Dulaney of Gartner has released a report that recommends consumers and businesses stop buying Blackberries and stop Blackberry deployments until there is a decision in the NTP/RIM case:
“Stop or delay all mission-critical Blackberry deployments and investments in the platform until RIM's legal position is clarified,”
Although RIM has stated that if an injunction were put in place that prohibited RIM from selling or servicing Blackberrys in the US, they have a software solution that will continue to service existing customers. However, Dulaney cautions:
"RIM claims its work-around is legally sound, but its history in the courts does not inspire confidence," Dulaney says. "Moreover, end-user validation and implementation would take time, resulting in a temporary loss of service."
I first heard about Fon when Om Malik posted about it, then I read about it on TJ’s weblog, and then I read about it on TechDirt. Here’s my simple summary of Fon:
Fon is wifi access based on a peer-to-peer model. Essentially lots of users install FON software on their access points all over the place to create a continuous Fon network. The current deal is that you be a Linus user (you agree to purchase a Fon-enabled access point and share the connection you are already paying for with other Fon Linus members) — if you share your connection with other Fon users, then you can use all other Linus users’ access points. Future classifications of users are “Bills”, who charge Fon users for connecting, and “Aliens”, who don’t provide a Fon connection and simply pay for usage.
I don’t really see any access points in the US on the Fon Map and certainly not any around where I live. It’s certainly an interesting concept. I haven’t read my Comcast terms closely enough to see if I would be in violation if I were to be a “Bills” and charge for excess bandwidth on my home connection; my guess would be that I would be in violation, but I’m not sure.
Currently the FON software for the access points only seems to work on Linux-based routers at this point and the installation instructions are not so non-geek friendly.
It will be interesting to see what kind of traction this gets and how the world responds.
Essentially the e-mail told me to call customer service within 72 hours or my 770 order would be cancelled. Confused, I called Nokia, gave them my order number, and verified my billing address, shipping address, and security code for my credit card. I then asked the customer service rep if this meant that the units were now and she told me they were shipping to people in the order that pre-purchases were processed on the Nokia site.
I thought all this was pretty cool and that the 770 I had ordered would be shipping shortly until I read a post on the Nokia 770 blog that relates the story of Neil McAllister, who also received an e-mail from Nokia:
When I called the Nokia number, the operator on the phone guessed right away that I was calling about the 770 and told me that the e-mail I received was probably generated because I was one of the very earliest people to order the tablet.
She said that when people originally ordered the tablet the Web site said delivery was expected on November 17 and people had “misinterpreted” that do mean that delivery would actually happen for sure on that date. “Due to unforeseen circumstances,” the units hadn’t yet arrived at the warehouse, and they were sending out the e-mails to confirm with people that they still wanted to receive the tablets.
I asked when they were now expected to arrive and she said there was no firm date, but that it had been suggested that the warehouse could expect them December 30. Even that, she said, was not a firm date — the fact that the e-mails were being generated now could be interpreted as a sign that the units would arrive sooner — but basically, nobody should get
their hopes up.
Marvelous news — hope it’s not true.
Started off at about 20 degrees this morning and steadily crept down into the single digits. There are some upsides, like lighting a fire, but the biggest upside is that the ski resorts are getting pounded — the e-mail I got from Vail today reports 4 feet of new snow in the last week and it’s still falling.
Right now it’s 3 degrees and -8 with the windchill with light snow. The high tomorrow is supposed to be 7.
It’s definitely winter.
Check it out. They’ve got to get more competitive quickly if all of the Mac media center rumors are true.
TUAW has posted the link to the resume of Steve Jobs that lives on his .MAC account.
Interesting stuff.
Here’s what it includes:
It’s important to note that the Enhancement Pack is 5 of the most popular programs from the TabletPC Experience Pack and TabletPC Education Pack and is available in 8 non-English languages — if you want the stuff above in English, follow the links to the Experience Pack and Education Pack.
Ever since the last tech collapse, Wired magazine has been pretty thin from a strict width perspective. As the technology business has heated up, Wired has gotten thicker and contains more pages. I noticed today that this post on Corporate Engagement links through to a post on The Podcast Network that compares Wired pagecount to NASDAQ performance:
I wondered how Wired’s page count might reflect the technology industry. So I plotted page count against the Nasdaq, and received this surprising result.
Very interesting data set.
It’s important to note that Mark Evans is exploring the same kinds of correlations.
Promonet has thousands of albums from tons of bands from all of the world. From the site:
PROMONET is a new promotional music distribution network from IODA—the Independent Online Distribution Alliance. IODA is the leading digital distributor of independent music, helping over 750 labels of all sizes and style distribute their music to digital music stores all over the world.
Independent labels make up over 25% of the global music market. They have long been the breeding ground of trailblazing artists responsible for most movements and trends. Now you can do your part to support this world of indie music—the best music there is—by spreading the word. Whether you're a podcaster, blogger, or zine, a music supervisor, marketing/ad agency, or a digital music service, Promonet can hook you up with over 10,000 promotional mp3 tracks from a diverse catalog of more than 20,000 albums by over 6,000 artists.
We provide the music and info. You help get it out there...
Together we can change the music world.
For all of those worried about the use of “Christmas” as opposed to other holidays, please view this animation.
. . . isn't having your marketing team proudly selling "unlimited" service, while your lawyers limit it very much in the extremely fine print, a clear-cut case of false advertising? The operators and their supporters say they need to limit use to protect the network. That may be absolutely true -- but, if that's the case, then they shouldn't advertise it as unlimited. If they can't actually deliver unlimited service, they shouldn't be selling it.Link
There's no music worth risking my data for.Link
Paul English makes some great points. I saw his piece on ABC World News Tonight and he's bringing to light that most companies operating in the IVR space have shoddy systems. There are a couple companies in the IVR industry trying to change things, however, with next generation systems that link to CRM systems. Angel.com has a great web-based system that allows small businesses to create IVR systems that are even more sophisticated than what the big boys are using. My Dad uses the system for his online ebay store selling vintage posters and autographed baseballs. He's able to provide far better customer service using Angel.com's system than he would ever be able to provide on his own.
That’s one well-written comment. I was impressed (as I imagine, would be Angel.com. Not only can they be linked with the little guy (and who wants to bash the little guy?) but they get to bash some of their competitors too). But not being cynical about the posting, I allowed it through and emailed ‘Kate’ with a request to interview her father. If true, it’s a valid point and one to explore.
What I didn’t expect was for the email to bounce. Not that unusual, especially with comment spam, but not when the given name (‘Kate’) jibes with the email address (‘katerobins@yahoo.com’). Why go to the trouble of putting a believable fake email address, especially when you presumably would be quite happy if someone followed up and got a bit of publicity for your eBay-selling dad? Baffled, I checked the IP address where the comment came from: a Verizon address in Washington DC. Not, coincidentally, that far from Angel.com HQ in McLean, Virginia.
I wish I could say my sleuthing took me further. But I could find no Kate Robins in the phone book, no sign of someone with that Yahoo address on Google, or anyone on eBay who might be her dad (not that surprising; itÂ’s a big place). IÂ’ll keep looking, but if anyone knows Kate Robins, her dad, or could shed any light on this, IÂ’d love to hear from them. IÂ’d hate to think that my blog is being used by anonymous shills to do damage limitation exercises for the IVR/CRM industry. On the other hand, if Kate does exist and just mistyped her email address, IÂ’d love to follow up the angle she suggests.
Ask Dave Taylor provides lots of information about gift card scams.
It’s still listed as pre-order, but some people are reporting seeing it in stores. Ok, so I called the closest CompUSA to me, but they don’t have any. Oh well.
Andrew Escobar has full instructions, sites to download the application from, and even has some troubleshooting tips (namely that you should be running 10.4.3).
It has come to my attention that this post I wrote about my experience with Doxa watches is causing some of you that read it to choose not to purchase a watch from the Doxa online site. I realize that Doxa is a small, family-run business and it was never my intention to cost this company thousands of dollars in lost sales.
From information that I have found on the internet, it appears that Doxa has fixed shipping problems and is now getting watch orders made on their site turned around in 48 hours. Additionally, here are comments that were made on my original post from actual purchasers:
And another:
And another satisfied customer echoing the comment above:
I think it’s important for all of us that blog to realize that search engines really like live content and that posts can show up very high in results. If you search “doxa watches” on Google, you may find that my original post about my bad experience with Doxa sometimes shows up in the top 10 results. For all of you that are intending to purchase a Doxa watch, I think it is important that you bear the following in mind:
I will close with this: I did receive the Doxa 600T orange watch and it is the special edition with the “Dirk Pitt” language inside the face. Although I own a number of watches, I have never had more positive comments about any of my other watches combined as compared to the number of positive comments I have received on my Doxa. Furthermore, the craftsmanship of the Doxa watch is excellent and it does not seem to lose or gain minutes like other automatic watches that I own.
Seems like I’m running across a lot of cool Flickr stuff today. Check out Shozu, it seems to support most MS Smartphones and a bunch of Nokia phones.
Note that Tom only orders by phone because of this problem he describes with online ordering:
. . . the repeated experience of getting 90 percent of the job done, then being derailed by a glitch. Frankly, the phone is still easier, at least at this early date.
The founder and original CEO of MP3.com, Michael Robertson, brings back the online music service provider model that he had tried and gotten sued for at MP3.com (I’ve previously written about the MP3.com service I loved here and wrote about Robertson’s new project here before it was launched).
MP3Tunes.com is the address for Robertson’s new service that allows you to store all of your music files online; it is also compatible with iTunes, so you can back up your entire library and all of your playlists as well. Unlike the MP3.com service that only required you to insert a CD before you gained access to tracks online, MP3Tunes requires the upload of files that you have in your possession. The MP3Tunes storage site is called a “locker” and is fully compatible inside of iTunes. Once your music is loaded to MP3Tunes, you can do several things with it:
See the registration page for a more thorough feature list and for the differences between the free service and paid service.
I’m damn excited about this service and will probably sign up for a premium account tonight so that I can start filling up my locker. Just like my previous post about the iPhoto Flickr extension, I would pay the yearly if for no other reason than to have an independent back-up.
Of course this software exists, I just never thought about it. In any event, TUAW is reporting that FlickrExport for iPhoto has been released. I may have to start dumping pictures to Flickr tonight if for no other reason but to have an independent back-up.
BBHub reports on an add-on by Total Solution Technology that allows fingerprint capture and credit card processing on a Blackberry. Currently the solution only works with the Blackberry 7730, 7750, and 7780.
In traditional fashion Mobile Burn has posted an extraordinarily in-depth review of the Nokia 770; it’s 9 pages long and pulls no punches.
Avid, maker of Videotoaster, has released a non-professional free video editing suite called Avid Free DV. Great functionality for the best price — available for both Mac and Windows.
I am totally disgusted with Sony after reading a report by Techdirt:
This time, it's more about Sony BMG's other copy protection system, MediaMax, from SunnComm. As you may recall, Sony has only recalled CDs using the XCP copy protection technology from First4Internet. Once again, we have Alex Halderman to thank for bringing this to light. Halderman noted that MediaMax has many spyware like qualities and also discovered the security hole in SunnComm's uninstaller. However, the latest finding is perhaps more problematic. The way MediaMax works is, if you have autorun enabled on your Windows PC and insert a MediaMax-enabled CD, it pops up an end user license agreement (EULA), not really telling you what it's doing. If you realize that you don't want this installed on your computer and hit "no," it's already installed some amount of code that isn't easily removed. However, the latest finding is that inserting another (or the same) CD with MediaMax on it (even if you hit no to the EULA again) will install even more code that will run on your machine even though you specifically told it not to.
This makes it really easy for me to only buy music from iTunes.
Our ice machine in our refrigerator stopped working the other day. Simultaneously, the filtered water line stopped working and vegetables started freezing in the vegetable drawer. Having experienced water lines freezing in the past, I turned down the temperature in the refrigerator, but that had no effect. Luckily I had purchased the extended warranty through Sears, so the repair guy came out today.
The repair guy told my wife what the problem was:
The temperature control in the freezer controls the temperature for both the refrigerator and freezer portions of the fridge. The temperature control in the refrigerator portion is simply a baffle control for the amount of cold air coming in from the freezer. Consequently, if the freezer dial is turned up too high, it doesn’t matter how warm the refrigerator setting is.
Unfortunately, the freezer temperature control is located directly over the automatic ice dispenser — very easy to turn the temperature control when you reach your hand in for ice. Everything’s working fine now and I will rectify the temperature control problem in the freezer with a piece of tape so that it doesn’t happen again.
As a side note — the original 5 year warranty for the fridge from Sears was $300 and this service call (the repair guy had to replace the ice machine motor because it had run without water for so long) would have cost $224; I highly recommend appliance warranties.
Robert Scoble has cut his blogroll down to 800 feeds according to Business Blog Consulting. Unfortunately Business Blog Consulting did not make the cut, but Strategize did.
There are lots of reports of XBox 360 malfunctions in the news and all over internet. John Porcaro who works in Microsoft marketing has a response to all of the XBox 360 malfunction reports; from his post:
Even though there are some sensational headlines, it’s important to know that the reports of crashes and overheating are being exaggerated, at least in the mainstream press. Those that don’t have problems probably aren’t online (they’re happily playing games on their new Xbox 360). Sensational headlines sell papers, and because all the news up to now has been pretty positive, journalists (and Sony fanboys) are looking for a different angle to report.
I’m not saying the issues aren’t real.
We know that electronics can’t be 100% tested before shipping, and that shipping and storage and temperature and all sorts of minute manufacturing defects can affect a unit after a customer gets it home. It would just suck tremendously to have waited in line for 10 or 20 (or 40) hours, only to get your box home and find it doesn’t work. I’d be seriously pissed. It’s one thing to get the wrong kind size jeans--it’s another to get something home that you paid a ton of money for, waited almost a year for, stood in line in the freezing cold for, and basically did everything right to assure your spot at the top of the list, only to find out it doesn't work. And unfortunately, you can't just skip back to the store and trade it in like you can in most cases. I firmly believe that when an issue affects you personally, it doesn’t matter that you’re in the minority. The problem is happening to 100% of the units YOU care about.
For you with problems, know that our customer service team is pulling out all the stops to make sure you’re taken care of as fast as possible. We have all the hardware we need to provide great customer care. We’re doing everything using overnight shipments (even shipping the prepaid overnight box for customers to use), and I’m told our troubleshooting team is turning around most units in 24-48 hours before overnighting it back. That means you could get a working unit back in less than a week. Not as good as a working unit on day one, but not as bad as some other manufacturers.
There’s lots more information in Porcaro’s post and I encourage you to read it in its entirety.
Maybe this is old news, but Lifehacker posted 2 operators you can use in Google to search residential and business phonebook information. For residential use “rphonebook:” and for business use “bphonebook:”. For example, you would enter the following into the search window:
rphonebook: Joe Schmo San Francisco, CA
Pretty cool.
That’s the rumor. I’ll be checking it periodically throughout the day and will post if I see it available.
Ummm, I think the FCC might be a little bit behind the times; don’t get me wrong , it would be great if it happened.
It’s now live — check it out. Today is a 37” Panasonic plasma TV for $750 and next Monday is the Range Rover Sport for $5K.
Think Secret is reporting functionality of the rumored new Mac Mini (codename “Kaleidoscope) — here’s what they are saying:
I already have a Mac Mini and love it. If Apple were to release a new Mac Mini that could truly function as a media hub in my living room, complete with DVR capabilities, then I would very likely be the proud owner of 2 Mac Minis.
Mark Cuban posts about why hard drives aren’t pre-loaded with music. Specifically he points to the Harry Fox Agency, which he describes as “. . . so out of step with the times it’s holding an entire industry back.” How can one company do this? Cuban explains:
How expensive is it to “pay the Harry Fox Piper ?” From their website
“The current statutory mechanical royalty rate is $.085 (8.5 cents) per song per unit for recordings of compositions up to five minutes (5:00) in length.”
Thats a lot of money. Do the math. How many songs can you pre load on a 30gbs or 60gbs IPod. How many as those hard drives grow and grow.
At 8.5 cents ea. Thats big, big dollars. Per Ipod. Which is exactly why you cant buy MP3/Ipod devices preloaded with music. Its obscenely expensive.
At $0.085 per song, it would be insanely expensive to even pre-load an iPod Shuffle. Here’s what Cuban suggests:
Why not do it the right way. Since units like the Ipod can track usage, just set a very simple reporting mechanism. Its being done for subscription services. Downloads are tracked. Listening is tracked. Why not apply it to mobile devices ? If the user has privacy concerns, they wont buy the unit with this feature.
. . . why not finally put DRM to a use that actually benefits consumers ? If that song stays on the hard drive 5 days and is listened to more than 5 times during any period, then Harry Fox can collect on it. It wouldn't be 8.5 cents. Thats a ridiculous number of course when there could be thousands of songs on a hard drive. People who just kept the songs on the hard drive could end up costing the distributor thousands of dollars per Ipod as hard drives grow. But just like the subscription services have worked things out, there is no reason why Harry Fox cant come in to the 21st century and realize that their beneficiaries will make more money by making it easier for music lovers to consume music.
It also takes away some of the incentive for users to troll illegal download sites. ITunes and the other music sites could easily download music overnight and let the users have fun with it.
Wake up with a 1k new songs on your IPod every day, week or month. Pick and choose what you want. Keep what you like, delete the rest. If you don't want to delete, we will remind you that you will be charged for them and we will hit your credit card for them.
Imagine if you could have your device pre-loaded the first Monday of the month with the top 40 played songs from your favorite radio station and you could pick and choose with track to keep. Of course, this screws up Harry Fox’s business model, but who really cares about that besides Harry Fox?
You should check out In Bubble Wrap — all kinds of cool business woot for answering some simple questions; new items M-F. Also, if you run a subscription model, pay attention to the fact that In Bubble Wrap allows you to elect to receive e-mail updates or to subscribe to a RSS feed with the same information.
Check out the More Space project and get a glimpse at the potential future of publishing.
From the Apple Support site:
The Broadband Tuner allows you to take full advantage of very high speed Internet connections that have a high latency (5 Mbps or greater). The installer tweaks some system parameters.
The installer increases the default values for the size of the TCP send and receive buffers. With larger buffers more data can be in transit at once. A startup configuration file is also updated so that these changes will persist across restarts.
That’s interesting; I’ll have to play around with it at home.
Engadget is hosting a Treo 650 tips and tricks page — be sure to scroll down and read the comments, which is where all the tips and tricks can actually be found. Great information for someone like me that is just getting started with a Treo 650.
If you want to blog about the Nokia N90, you can pull information off of this Nokia site — very interesting idea to help viral advertising.
The Amazon Deals Shopping Blog has posted the following information regarding deadlines for holiday shipping on Amazon.com:
I posted a few weeks ago about a site by Paul English listing ways to talk to a human instead of navigating through voicemail hell. Angel.com,. a provider of automated voice systems, actually posted a response to the “cheat” site, making the following points:
All of the points above are about what you would expect and, as I would expect, Paul English had this response to Angel.com:
The rebuttals are mostly a bunch of hogwash.
. . . consumers are not stupid, and they should be given the choice to connect to a human when they want.
I would put it in this way:
If IVRs were so helpful and easy then there would be no need for Paul English’s list and no need to produce a 5 point rebuttal to English’s list.
Paul English’s response to Angel.com
