adamyntium

Category: business and consumers

  • Zap ridiculous disclaimers, reform CEO pay in one fell swoop

    Stupid disclaimers.  You know ‘em, and you probably either ignore them or laugh at them.  Slightly enhanced samples that are either spoken at 420 words a minute or that take up a bazillion lines of tiny tiny text on the back of ads in news magazines.

    • “Warning: Stunt driver on stunt track in stunt car.  Do not drive like this [except in Rome]”
    • “Warning: Medication may cause sniffling, itching, numbness in extremities, permanent paralysis, or death. [+ 31415928 more lines that no one bothers to read]
    • “Remember, drink responsibly!  [Also, be nice to your mom.  Put up the toilet seat.  Don’t be prejudiced.  Love a geek today.]
    • “Results not typical.  Your results may vary. [Let’s face it… 99.9999% of people on this diet don’t lose an ounce.  We just managed to find the one freak who had liposuction after taking our product.]

    Completely useless, aren’t they?  Somehow I don’t think we’re gonna hear stuff like this from beer-bongin’ frat boys:
    “Hey Sarah, I’m concerned about you!  I mean, Mr. Jose Cuervo insists that we drink responsibly, and I just don’t think you are!  Can I get you an orange juice instead?”
    “Whoa, dude!  Didn’t you listen to that ad?  It said DON’T drive like this!  Come on, pull it back to 55 man!”

    *  *  *

    And then there’s the seemingly unrelated issue of corporate compensation.
    Forbes magazine lists some of the worst (most unproductive) CEOs and notes their compensation, including:
    – Richard M Kovacevich, Wells Fargo, $72.04 million
    – Edward E Whitacre Jr , AT&T, $49.01 million
    and, brace yourself:
    – Barry Diller, IAC/InterActiveCorp, $295.14 million (over half a BILLION dollars in the last 5 years, and ranked as one of the 15 most unproductive CEOs in the entire survey)

    Which raises some questions:

    1. If compensation is intended to reward good performance, why are so many outstanding leaders (in the public and private) sector making five figure salaries while many total losers and ruthless-jerk CEOs are making more than 100x their salary?
    2. If we also assume that compensation is intended to incent good performance, shouldn’t we ask: do any humans really *need* $xx millions per year to get out of bed and work hard for the day?  Given that there are, absolutely without a doubt, an enormous number of extremely intelligent and hardworking and respectable folks who would do wonders for a company at $x milion or even $xxx thousand per year, well… WTF?!

    Admittedly, I’ve kind of stacked the deck in my above examples a bit:  I mean, really, who loves their bank?  Or their phone company?  Personally, I find AT&T to be one of the most unpleasant, irresponsible, and customer-non-centric companies out there, but then hey, maybe that’s just me ;-).

    *  *  *

    Never fear, I have the answer to both problems… a way to get rid of moronic speed-read or 1pt font disclaimers while effectively shaming the grossly overpaid CEOs who perform worse than would Paris Hilton in a dramatic Shakespearean theatre role.

    In another article, Forbes complains that trying to do anything about CEO compensation is likely to either be unsuccessful or backfire, perhaps resulting in a further crapification and obfuscation in shareholder reports.  But my idea wouldn’t have that problem.

    Ready for it?  Replace the disclaimers with two required placements of Consumer and Stockholder Truth:

    • On every TV, radio, and print advertisement, the following must be sanely presented: “Last year, the [company-name] CEO made $78 million, median [company-name] worker: $11,000.  Stock has decreased 17%.”
    • On every stockholder quarterly / annual report, the company must present a “Compensation and Performance Summary” in one page, in normal font.  It’d include exactly what the CEO and other key executives took home, how the company did (particularly in its sector), and so on.  No forward-looking B.S., no big long charts.  Just a one page, ideally-bulleted summary.  I mean, hell, I don’t have time to read 50+ page shareholder reports, do you?  Didn’t think so.

    Okay, so I’m kidding a bit with the first part of the idea.  But seriously… don’t you think that there’d be some hell to pay for CEOs who were (effectively) publicly outed as greedy and incompetent asses?  And, in an ideal world, also some come-uppance for the lazy or thoughtless jerks who approved their compensation structure?  My favorite is when *especially* bad CEOs are finally shown the door… and then they get a $100 million dollar severance package or the like.  Often times, this happens around the same time that free coffee is eliminated from break rooms and lots of minimum wage folks are let go with two weeks pay.

    *  *  *

    Having seen what I perceive to be more sane and more humane economic structures and practices in place in Europe and Australia, I admit that if I could wave a magic wand and force exec pay to be no more than 10x worker bee pay, I’d do it.  But yeah, that’s never going to happen here in America.  So instead, I’d love to see executive losers simply get tomato’d in the public eye and forced to resign in shame.  Can you imagine, for instance, an “American CEO Idol” combined with a “CEO Gong Show” and “CEO Survivor” where CEOs have to defend their performance and keep others happy or get voted out of the cushy work world?  Not quite sure how instructive it’d be, but it’d sure be entertaining :-D.

    *  *  *

    Related BLADAM entries:
    – The Free (and Stupid) Market

  • How much would YOU pay not to be obligated to tip?

    I’ve had it with tipping.  The more traveling I do—for business or pleasure—the more I despise the uncertainty, the uncomfortableness, the need to have petty cash on hand.  When will someone—an influential someone—say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH?!

    Tip too little, and you risk imperiling the quality of service you receive in the future from that person… plus you may look like an idiot or a miser in front of friends and business acquaintances.

    Tip too much, and you look like a chump… and your wallet is made thinner (sometimes much thinner).  And you feel like a moron for being taken advantage of.  Heck, in some countries, you risk really offending someone!

    This is one of the many reasons why I love Europe: you typically round up to the nearest euro when you eat out, and that’s that.  Adding to the coolness… for takeout food and pretty much else, what you see on the billboard or pricetag is what you pay.  15EUR?  You pay 15EUR; taxes, fees, etc., all included.

    Now, back to the insanity that we endure in the States… Here’s just a sampling of recommended tips from a recent AAA (Automobile Association of America) article:

    $2-$3 to your shuttle driver, $2 per suitcase to the skycap, 15-20% for the taxi driver, $2-$3 for a shoeshine, up to $5/night to your hotel maid, $5/day to a pool attendant (?!), up to $3 per round to the bartender and $20 (!) to your sommelier.

    Sick yet?  I am.  After all, where’s the $5 we should be giving to our professor after a fine lecture, the $3 to the garbage man when he picks up our smelly refuse, $5 to the guy who trims our garden, $4 to the busboy in your work cafeteria, and $10 for your colleague after he helps you draft a memo.

    But that’s ridiculous, you note.  Isn’t the colleague already getting a salary?  Why should you be responsible for bribing him to do a job that he’s already supposed to be doing?

    And you may further argue, hey, but the waiter is getting a crap salary… if it weren’t for our tips, he’d practically starve.  But, I’d retort, why the hell is it OUR (awkward) responsibility to make up for employers’ cheapness?  And who the hell picks 1) who gets tips and 2) how much a “proper” tip is by profession and location?

    Don’t get me wrong:  I think that everyone deserves a living, decent wage.  And I’d be quite pleased to have 15% or whatever automatically tacked on to my restaurant bill… so that the cost of my meal actually covered an appropriate salary for all involved with the occasion.  What about crappy service?  I’d do what I do when I encounter crappy service or products anywhere else:
    – Firmly yet politely complain to the right people.
    – If the matter remained unresolved, simply refuse to patronize the establishment again and warn my friends.

    …and, of course, the opposite for good service (yes, I *do* write “thank you for the outstanding service” letters, sometimes by hand… and I wish more people did this).

    Frankly, I doubt most folks are primarily motivated by money in their jobs anyway.  Does giving the waitress an extra $1 cancel out the urgent and occasionally rude demands we sometimes inflict upon her?  Not to her, I’d bet.  In fact, I’m pretty sure she’d rather we stuffed the dollar back in our wallet and treated her with respect and patience.

    By extension, one could even see tips as demeaning… suggesting that “those kind” of people are only apt to do a good job if they’re thrown fish (dollars) like trained seals.  You don’t see people giving tips to lawyers and doctors, and no, it’s not purely a pay thing.  Frankly, I’m betting my bartender friends make quite a bit more per hour than most of my lawyer friends… honestly.

    Of course, with all this said, I’m not only angry, but also rather resigned and un-optimistic about the crappy tip-required culture of ours ever being reformed.  I mean, what would it take?  If Our Goddess Angelina stopped tipping tomorrow, she’d just be vilified in the Enquirer and nothing would change.  If Bush didn’t tip next week, people would just (probably correctly) assume that he was unable to compute the tip even using a calculator.  No, I think it’d take an act of God, or maybe a good-looking denizen from outer space.  Until then, I guess I better just remember to keep a lot of ones in my wallet and just grit my teeth when I say “thank you.”

  • I hesitate to read your opinions when I can’t talk back

    Please forgive the unsexy title. I know it would have been far more Diggable if I had titled it “Top 10 Reasons Why Your Opinion Blog Needs Comments.”

    Anyway… I can sometimes enjoy link blogs (“101 uses for a paper mache African swallow. No, European!”) without comments. Or info-blogs (new product released, site will be down next Tuesday, check out these new features).

    But blogs in which the AUTHOR is mostly discussing his or her opinions about stuff, or blogs that cover controversial stuff (news stories, culture, etc.)… damn, those better have comments enabled, or they won’t get my eyeballs for long.

    For instance, I’m looking at you, BoingBoing.  Aside from the fact that I have (somewhat) of a life that precludes reading a bazillion entries a day that are talking at me, not with me… when it’s uber-oh-so-important-or-popular sites, I’ll be bound to find the same links in my friends’ blogs anyway.

    Yes, I know, comment and trackback spammers are a bitch.  I hope their nether-regions suffer from this and/or they are forced to be locked in a closet with Vanna White night after night after night after night.  But with good software, good plugins (YAY, Akismet!), and a little elbow grease, these cretins are substantially less of a problem.

    I have mixed feelings when it comes to comments on corporate blogs.

    Positives:

    • Bullshit can be called out or, on a less severe note, readers can offer corrections, add useful contextual info, etc. (hopefully resulting in better blog entries in the future and more informed readers)
    • Readers can request for clarifications or additional info from the company.  But see the flipside of this below.
    • Occasional registration requirements aside, commenting has a comparatively low barrier to entry, meaning that quality input is sometimes more likely to be offered when commenting, not just forum posting, is available.
    • Comments can often be generally insightful and/or entertaining… sometimes more than the blog entries themselves :-D.

    Negatives:

    • Someone’s gotta monitor those comments… to delete spam, to (ideally, IMHO) delete offensive and off-topic crapfests, to note info to take back to other employees, to correct misconceptions or outright lies, and to (potentially) answer questions in-line.  That takes time… sometimes a LOT of time.  Time that, one could argue, might be better spent actually tackling questions in a forum, fixing bugs, speaking at conferences, retooling UIs, or even getting sleep.  And let’s face it: tech support, at least, is most likely pretty damn inefficient via blog comments (“Help!  When I turn on my qpod, it doesn’t work!”).
    • Sometimes comments can draw out the worst in folks, especially anonymous folks.  Even simple, informative posts can trigger shockingly nasty and uncomfortable exchanges… making the company not only less likely to blog, but (non-masochistic) customers or potential customers less likely to read the blog or even respect the company.
    • Major companies can be attractive targets for comment/trackback-spamming script kiddies.

    *  *  *

    So I’m curious… do you feel the same way I do? 
    – Do you also draw distinctions amongst link, info, and opinion/commentary blogs?
    – Do you care one way or the other about comments on blogs or not?

  • Targeting the wrong goal, writing lazy articles

    I have no idea if the rank and file in other companies—say, Yahoo and Microsoft—start their day by scheming how to beat, conquer, overtake, pummel, or even “kill” other companies.  At least at the engineering and product management levels, I both hope and expect not.  I prefer to think that—like the folks I work with at Google—most individuals at other companies are dedicated to just making damn good stuff, and not particularly caring how this affects the competition.

    But appallingly often it seems that what happens after stuff gets filtered through marketing, execs, journalists… well, it ain’t pretty.

    Apparently, engineers and product managers don’t give a whit about users.  They care about beating the other guy.  Stealing their market share.  Even putting them out of business.  And, though as I’ve noted I’m confident that’s not an accurate depiction of what’s going on in the frontlines, I still need to emphatically call it like I see it: That attitude is wrong, it’s shortsighted, it’s counterproductive, and—more concisely—it’s absolute bullshit.

    Let me give a clue to these folks who continue to moronically view—or at least portray—the exciting and complex world of technology as cross between WWF and rollerball:  At the end of the day, only the users matter.

    No, I really mean it.  Stockholders are fickle, particularly American stockholders.  Competitors sometimes come and go, sometimes lose focus, sometimes totally drop the ball.  Forming business plans around their actions—whether from opportunity or fear—is just plain stupid.

    But users?  They are the ones that actually, well, use your products.  Pay you money.  Tell their friends.  Convince their Fortune 500 IT manager.  They have a *need* to be productive, to learn, to feel secure, to have fun.  And there are a LOT of users… not just in America, but all over the world.  If you have 50% market share for a product, you’re probably going to make a lot of money.  If you have 3% of an sufficiently large market, you’re probably still going to make a lot of money.

    There is no need to kill anything or anyone, dammit!!!  The pie is so large that a significant number of companies can have a slice (or a niche or whatever) and be perfectly happy, successful, and well-respected. 

    People still watch TV.  They still use Microsoft Office.  They still even search for sites, images, music, and porn on a variety of search engines and that’s just fine.

    I don’t know every single person at Google personally, nor do I have intimate knowledge of every single thing we’re working on.  But I can tell you this:  Not once (literally) have I heard someone talk about stealing marketshare, trouncing a competitor, replacing rather than augmenting something, and so on.  We ask “will people use this?” and “what could we do to get more people using it?” and “what could we do to make our users happier so they use the product(s) more and invite their friends?” 

    So it deeply disturbs me to see headlines like “[blah blah blah] Microsoft killer?!” or “[blah blah blah] deadly threat to Google” and so on.  Trust me, I know that controversy and winner-takes-all stuff sells papers, gets people staying tuned to your [insert-network-here] broadcast and so on.  And perhaps others, even tech outsiders, view such hyperbole for the crap that it is. 

    But what worries me is that this obscures the more important messages, the more interesting stuff:  how are products (by any company) expanding the pie?  how are they changing the way people work?  How are they affecting economic and other structures?  To what level do new products and UIs lead and alter vs. simply reflect user behaviors?

    *  *  *

    I’m not terribly optimistic about changing the habits of the “big folks” in journalism.  They’ve been around too long and gotten too accustomed to crafting the us-vs.-them story in their sleep (either David vs. Goliath or Goliath stomps David or Goliath #1 causes or will cause Goliath #2 to implode or whatever).

    But I’m going to ask you fellow Bloggers out there to eschew the lazy path.  Quit framing things in terms of battles, in terms of winners and losers.  Savor the (useful) challenge of ridding your headline vocabulary of oft-negative absolutes and instead focus more on the big picture and on nuances.  What does a particular product or product change mean for users?  From a user-centric perspective, why might something have been done?  While products may seem superficially similar (Writely stuff next to Office), how are the goals and audiences targeted and how effective is this (again, from a user perspective, not from a stock price / competitive tweaking view)?

    *  *  *

    And perhaps, if I might be optimistic for a bit, if bloggers and journalists focus their writing on end-user issues rather than trumped-up corporate warfare, they might even find a more sizeable share of the audience pie themselves 🙂

  • International calling / SMS rates — Why so high?

    Okay, BLADAM friends, apologies for two rants in a row (in a sadly otherwise dry AdamBloggingSeason), but… why does T-mobile—an international company—charge so much for international calling, roaming, and texting?

    And Cingular—the only other American mobile phone company I know of that supports international roaming—has rates that are even worse, from what I gather.

    Anyway, on T-Mobile, the rates for me to call from the U.S. overseas are more than triple what I’d pay via a discount calling card or even AT&T Callvantage.  Calling from overseas to *anywhere* ranges from about $1 to $4 a minute for incoming OR outgoing calls.

    But what *really* gets my hide is T-Mobile’s charge for text messages sent to and from my friends in Europe.  15 cents each for me to send a handful of text characters, and 35 cents each to receive the same.  What the heck?!  I know, I know, this voluminous amount of data has to potentially pass through companies that aren’t T-Mobile, but still!  And no, T-Mobile’s varied texting-bundle plans do *not* include international SMSes.

    I’ve played with various SMS options online, but haven’t found any to be reliable for either sending or receiving text messages internationally.  Oh lazyweb, anyone know of good options? (other than calling up T-Mobile and telling them they’re provincial jerks for their usurious rates, which, I admit, doesn’t exactly qualify as a good option)

  • Crouching Tiger Hidden Charges

    On a recent business trip, I ended up staying at the Hilton London Islington Hotel, since it was next to the business centre hosting the conference I was attending.

    Though by this point I shouldn’t have been shocked, I was nonetheless outraged that a colleague and I paid $57USD for one night of Internet access in our room and also we were expected to pay about $5.50 per minute to call another colleague on his London cellphone from our room phone.  Oh, and adding insult to injury:  we discovered that we had to pay separately for wireless Internet access downstairs; it wasn’t included in the $57 we had just paid.

    So this got me to thinking:  Why do hotels charge so much for such ridiculously minimal (and actually low-cost) incidentals and—more critically—how do they get away with it in a free marketplace?  And what other industries feature such utterly obnoxious gouging?

    As you can imagine, when I came across this article recently—The Hidden Economy—I was fascinated to read some justifications from economists about this very subject.

    They explain that primarily two different types of people patronize establishments and services with cheaper up-front costs but higher per-use or incidental charges:
    – The clueless n00b (except they politely call this person “myopic”) who simply doesn’t expect or even notice the high incidental charges at the “cheap” place or with the “discount” service.
    – The savvy planner (someone who aims to be aware and beat the system by substituting others’ cheaper offerings to replace the main provider’s usuriously-charged services); this person reasonably believes he or she can actually save money overall by being a tightwad and purchasing incidentals elsewhere.

    But what this article fails to address is the apparent inelasticity of business purchases.  That is to say… even as the price rises, purchases of a business good or service often do not fall off proportionally.

    Take the example of hotels, for instance.  Contrary to the inverse relationship exampled in the article (low price hotel has high incidental charges and visa versa), my experience has shown a rather wacky but ultimately understandable proportional ratio of base charges to incidental charges.  Specifically, the pricier the hotel is, the more outrageously high their incidental charges are while, conversely, places like Best Western have relatively low base charges and give away stuff like local calls and Internet access for free.

    So why do companies—even generally thrifty ones—still often book their employees into the expensive-all-‘round hotels?  I don’t think it’s for the amenities or overall comfort (frankly, I’ve found the “cheap” hotels often scoring better on both issues!).  Rather, I’ve found that it seems to come down to proximity issues.  The hotels attached to or near conference centers just seem to be damn expensive in general.

    Of course, this shouldn’t be so surprising, eh?  Time is productivity is money, and time spent schlepping from the conference center to one’s cheaper-but-distant hotel particularly takes time away from in-person networking opportunities and/or naps and so on.

    *  *  *

    With that said, though, I do wonder what would happen if there was greater transparency in hotel charges.  If corporate booking agents for large companies—undoubtedly reasonably cognizant of cost control issues and cost/benefit analyses—were able to quickly compare total expected business-related costs for a stay (e.g., Internet access + breakfasts + a bit of printing or photocopying), might the difference finally tip the scales in favor of the slightly-more-distant hotel?  Or ultimately even result in slightly more sane incidental charges at the near-conference-center hotels?

    For instance, say it’s $270 a night at the Hilton and $170 at the Best Western.  Okay… a thoughtful manager or travel planner might weigh the difference and decide… hmm… I can see my employees, especially if sharing a room, gaining well over $50/day productivity and serendipitous networking encounters by being “close to the action.”

    But after meals and incidentals, if the costs are respectively $350 and $175, then the choice becomes a bit more difficult, right?

    *  *  *

    I suppose the same question of the value of transparency could be asked for other industries in the context of business, but at the moment, it seems like other choices are generally already more transparent.  When we move into the realm of consumer purchase choices, then I agree partially or largely-hidden charges are far more common (in credit cards, telecommunication services, etc.), but in that case I think the base price compared to incidental charges more closely follows the gameable inverse relationship noted in the article above.

    So, then, some questions for you…

    1) What are some other examples of largely-hidden charges in popular business or consumer services?  Do you think greater transparency of these these charges will result in them being lowered over time, or will something else reduce them (gov’t intervention?) or will they remain relatively high?

    2) Other than business-area hotels, what are some other examples of relatively inelastic service/product purchases with high incidental charges?

    3) And on a more fun / less wonky note… what’s the most ridiculous amount you’ve paid for an item or service in the context of a larger product/service? (Mine has to be an $11USD pineapple juice at the top of a large building in Singapore.  I was excited that the base price—for traveling up the elevator to the site-point—was free!  But the incidental cost associated with being required to make a purchase at the top was a bit shocking to me, especially given that I had just enjoyed many glasses of fresh-squeezed juice for 50 cents each that same day :-P)

  • Pre-Europe-travel grab bag

    WARNING:  Mishmash ahead.
    Haven’t yet packed, which means this is the perfect time to procrastinate with a blog entry.  Or something like that.

    I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a two-week work-related trip.  See details of that trip, plus enjoy some of my phone, camera, T-Mobile, and other musings below.

    My upcoming travels for May 29 through June 11

    • LONDON:  I’ll be attending the Search Engine Strategies conference in London, where Webmasters, marketers, advertisers, and others that care about making moolah on the Web will be hanging out.  You gonna be there, too?  Look for me and say hi!  :-D.  Oh, and just for the heck of it, feel free to check out my London 2001 photos and my London 2002 photos that I took during earlier (non-work-related) visits.
    • BERLIN:  I’ve gotten gleefully roped into a Google pan-European sales conference.  Time for me to learn about new salesy stuff in the company, and I’m looking forward to sharing info about Search Quality and spam fighting with sales-type folks.  Alas, every minute is pretty much accounted for, though, so I won’t have much free time to explore.  I’ve visited Berlin in the past (fascinating city!), but will look forward to spending more time wandering around nooks and crannies during a future trip.
    • DUBLIN:  Definitely looking forward to re-visiting Ireland!  I had a great time during an earlier visit… friendly folks, charming pubs… and now that the pubs are (at least in theory) smoke-free, I’m even happier!  I’ll be visiting Google’s European headquarters here, meeting up with some colleagues over laptops and possibly a pint or three.

    Other random stuff

    My losing streak continues, sadly.  In the last few months, I’ve had TWO cameras and TWO expensive phones stolen.  It’s almost enough to make me either become a luddite or hire a personal assistant to thwack me on the head when I’m being particularly absent-minded. 

    Luckily, insurance will (at least in theory) be covering most of the cost of everything but one of the phones… and in an almost unbelievably example of “the kindness of strangers”… a colleague in the Atlanta Google office learned of my pathetic plight and IM’d me, “Hey, I don’t really use my Treo much, would you like it?”  I said, sure, I’d consider it… what did she think would be a fair price?  But no, she said, she was happy to just give it to me.  And Fed-ex it to me next-day, just in time for my trip.  Wow!

    But alas, it didn’t quite make it here in time, and (understandably) none of my local friends just happened to have a spare tri-band phone to loan me.  So in desperation, I went to a T-Mobile store and, after learning they only had dual-band loaners, decided to just bite the bullet and buy a phone.  The salesman recommended a quad-band Motorola V188; it seemed pleasantly basic and small enough, and I figured $100—even with a required 1-year contract renewal—seemed fair.

    Upon arriving back home, though, I noticed that Amazon is selling the same Motorola V188 with the same 1-year contract for… negative $145!  That’s right, after the $35 new account fee, you get $110 cash back.  So I basically got gypped out of $210!  I’m pretty pissed.  So I decided to call T-Mobile and I got—as usual—a delightfully friendly and helpful rep (this is part of the reason why I generally do love T-Mobile and didn’t mind renewing my contract).  Alas, she said that the Amazon promo is, as it states, only for new customers.  I expressed to her that I felt this was sort of a slap in the face for existing customers (especially those loyal ones way past their required contract term).  After much time on hold, she offered to give me 30 free text messages (a value of $3).  I thought this was pretty laughable, but at this stage in the game (leaving tomorrow), I just didn’t have the time to argue.  The uber-moral of the story:  if you’re looking to get a new phone, especially one more pricey than the entry-level one I bought today, you’re likely better off going through Amazon.com and just porting over your number.

    Oh, and a few opening thoughts about this Motorola, compared to my Treo 650…
    – It doesn’t cradle as nicely between my neck and shoulder.
    – The speakerphone is decent.
    – I don’t like the non-recessed volume buttons… worried about them getting pressed when in my pocket.
    – There’s no “are you sure?” when writing a long SMS and accidentally hitting the cancel button.  Blegh.
    – It feels okay in my pocket.  Really light.  But I’d probably be more comfortable having a long and thin phone in my pocket.
    – It’s so weird to not have a qwerty keyboard for texting or Web surfing.  I already miss my Treo and can’t wait to get my replacement!

    *  *  *

    I also got a new camera today, the Canon SD700.  It is, admittedly, rather a splurge, but I don’t feel too guilty; I tend to spend money on the arts (music, theatre) and photography, and I guess everyone’s entitled to some guilty pleasures. 😀

    Online, on the low-end (but still from trustable companies) it tends to go for about $470 (with no sales taxes due up-front). At retail stores near me, it’s going for, well, retail: $499 (plus tax). Ouch. I found out that Frys (Tech Gadget Mecca for Geeks) in San Jose had it for $449, and while I’d normally never drive down to San Jose (about 90 miles round trip from my apartment) just to save $50… in this case, I already had plans to go to a BBQ at my friend Merry’s house in Mountain View, so it all worked out. They also had a reasonably decent 2gb SD card for $49, which I also snagged.

    Of course, the real cost of photography is in time. I still haven’t gotten around to processing the 1,800 or so photos from my recent trip to Australia and Singapore; at about a conservative one minute per cropping/fixing/tagging/titling/describing, that’s 30 hours out of my life just to post a bunch of photos. Even if I pick the top one-third to post, that’s still 10 hours of photofussing just for this one trip. Ack! Seriously, because of this (I know, it’s a little silly), I seriously considered whether I wanted the hassle of schlepping, protecting, using, and dealing with a camera + its byproducts. Nostalgia won out, though.

    * * *

    Anyway, I probably better get packing. I’ll try to blog some stuff while I’m away, but it may be a few weeks ’til I’m bloggily back.

  • Four key ways to improve how your company emails customers

    As I’ve written in other entries, I’ve become buried in e-mail, and so my “unsubscribe trigger-finger” has become a bit more itchy.

    Often times, I do the (unsubscribe) deed with little remorse.  Hasta la vista, baby!

    Other times, though, it’s more of a frustrating decision.  Take Vistaprint, for instance.  They offer well-made products such as business cards and address labels at generally reasonable prices.  My customer service experiences have been pretty decent with them, too.  I’d like to get email updates from companies like this, within reason.

    But when it comes to VistaPrint’s email list, they’re like that attractive but thoughtless jerk on the subway who talks your ear off about nothing important every five minutes. 

    Okay, let me give some more specifics…

    A snippet from a recent VistaPrint email I got:

    SUBJECT:  We need your feedback!
    Dear Adam,

    As a valued VistaPrint customer, we are interested in your opinions. To better serve our customers we would like to ask a few questions. Simply click here to complete our survey and we will both benefit.

    As our way of thanking you for your time, we would like to offer you Premium Business Cards for only 6?. That’s 99% off the regular price of $19.99!

    Here are some more details about VistaPrint’s current practices:

    – They email me seeemingly EVERY month with the subject line “We need your feedback.”  Yeah, right.
    I’m sure it won’t shock even the most dim-witted person to discover that VistaPrint likely doesn’t really need such solicited “feedback” every month; they are just looking for any excuse to garner additional traffic and purchases.

    – They email me about every week with new “specials.”  “6 cents business cards!”  “Totally Free postcards!”
    Except that, for one, the shipping and handling tends to be usurious.  I don’t know about you, but that overrused perversion of the concept “free” is annoying and offensive to me.  And I’m also peeved when “totally free!” stuff turns out to include a count of, say, 10 postcards.  Whoopeee!

    – Even when I really *do* want to buy something from VistaPrint, I’m tempted to wait another month or two months until I get an email noting a price reduction.
    Because their specials, while not ongoing, are hardly infrequent.  And ironically, since I may really want those new business cards *now*, I may be more apt to just go get them done across the street at Office Depot instead of feeling gypped by “overpaying” during a non-specials period with VistaPrint.  I know, that’s an emotional, not a logical reaction, but I’m sure I’m not alone.

    – At the end of the day, it’s like the boy who cried wolf.
    “Amazing special!” “Fabulous deal… just for the next 5 days.”  Yeah, yeah, yeah… just shut up, will ya?  You’re worse than my gym (24 Hour Fitness): “Last 5 days!” [until we run this same “special” next month].  It’s a massive credibility shredder.  Why can’t more companies be like the fabulous Trader Joe’s?  No coupons, no “specials,” just decent prices and outstanding service.  They rock!  But I digress 😀

    Back on the topic of email lists… the most frustrating thing for me is that there are no options in between “obnoxious and frequent mailings” and “total silent treatment from VistaPrint.”

    *  *  *

    So with that said, here are some recommendations of GOOD customer-communications practices:

    – Ask me how frequently I’d like to get email from you.  I find it thoughtful when my options are, for instance:

    Send me emails…
    A) As often as daily.  I LOVE you guys!
    B) Every couple of weeks to update me on your latest products and specials.
    C) Only when you have *major* announcements (about 2-3x a year)

    Three choices.  A world of difference.  Not only does this make me feel at the outset that they respect my time and preferences, but it also potentially lets the company “hold on” to people who might otherwise totally unsubscribe.  For instance, if I clicked on an unsubscribe link:

    Wait!  We show that you’re on our “frequent mail-to” list.  Would it be cool with you if we just emailed you every few months?
    A) Okay, that’s fine.  Write me LESS OFTEN: about 2-3x a year.
    B) NO!  I don’t want to ever hear from you again.  We’re done!  Finished!  And give me my t-shirt back!

    Okay, so maybe that’s a bit over-the-top for an email list for, say, the Everglade Casket Company.  But it’d be a super fit for a gaming newsletter, or perhaps Southwest Airlines, etc., and for others only the tone’d need to be changed.  I do think *all* companies that run email lists should give us frequency choices.  Not everyone has the same needs, interests, or attachments for a given company!

    – Give me non-email choices to keep abreast of your latest info.
    Like RSS feeds.  How about one on “Super specials!” (and dammit, make sure they really *are* super specials!).  And another one on “Announcement of new major products or product lines.”  You get the idea.

    – Consider on-demand per-product emails or feeds.
    “Notify me when this price drops to [x]” (several airline-price sites already offer this useful service!)
    “Let me know when this product is in-stock again.”
    “Tell me when there are significant price breaks on accessories for items I’ve already purchased.” (e.g., SD cards or waterproof case for my camera…)

    – Consider even offering an IM option
    If it’s to be used *very* sparingly, you could tell me stuff like “The campfire stove you put in your cart for $79 last week is now $29!  Click here for more info.”

    *  *  *

    The bottom line:
    – Improve your email practices.  Ask yourself:  Do people really find these emails useful?
    – Offer a choice of contact frequency
    – Enable your customer to request future communications on a more micro-scale.
    – Provide other communication options (RSS, IM)

    *  *  *

    Do you agree with these observations and guidelines?
    How would you improve the email communications you receive (in tone, content, and frequency)?

  • Just how stupid do they think we are?

    Every day when I drive home from work, I see a painfully intelligence-insulting billboard ad put up by some bank (it’s rather interesting that I can’t even remember which bank, isn’t it?).  It reads something like this: “3 cents back on every debit card purchase?  Just give ‘em a toaster and be done with it!”

    So let’s think about this for a moment, shall we, with a few assumptions:

    – A typical person makes *at least* 10 payments totalling $100 a week, not including rent or mortgage payments.
    – This person could probably get *some* cash-back or rewards non-debit (credit) card.
    – Such a card would easily pay 1% in cash or rewards (for instance, on my cards, I get a free round trip airfare for a spend of $25,000, a reward of at least 1.2%).

    Given this scenario, practically anyone could make the same purchases on one of the rewards cards and in a year, make (from a *very* conservative estimate) $52 as opposed to $15.60 with the crappy debit card.  Not to mention enjoy far more consumer protections.  And the hypothetical $25 toaster that the ad makes fun of?  It would take 834 purchases on the debit card to earn the equivalent of that toaster. 

    *  *  *

    But the latest promotion I just got in my inbox even tops the lameness of the debit card “deal.”  Here’s the copy:

    My [American Express Card] WishList returns June 6, 2006! Not only are we offering some of the hottest products for spring at Cardmember-only prices, but we’ll also be granting three Cardmember wishes on the last day. So tell us what you wish for by May 14, and one of your wishes may come true.

    Hmm, I thought.  Aside from the it’s-so-‘99-ness of the “My” prefix, that sounds pretty neat.  Clearly it’s one of those sweepstakes where I say, hey, I want a [whatsit up to such-and-such value] and if I win, I get it.  Right?

    Uh, maybe not.  Digging down into the fine print on the Web site, I see this:

    Is My Wish a sweepstakes?
    No, this promotion is not a sweepstakes, as Cardmembers will be given an opportunity to purchase the submitted Wish should their Wish be selected. Wishes will be selected at the sole discretion of American Express. The Wish selected will be offered to the Wish’s submitter to purchase before making limited quantities available to the general Cardmember audience, who will also be eligible to purchase the item(s); the same Terms and Conditions of My WishList will apply.

    Oh boy!  Let me see if I understand this right.  I get my inbox crammed with another AMEX ad that has nothing to do with my account.  I then have the wonderous opportunity of coming up with my dream present, vacation, etc., and filling out some form on AMEX’s Web site (undoubtedly opening me up to more junk mail).  And then, if I’m lucky—oh so lucky!—AMEX will choose MY fantasy to come true and offer me a chance to buy it or pay for it myself (I guess where that’s where the “MY” comes in:  “at MY Expense”).  Of course, they won’t offer it to all their cardmembers… right away, at least, so I’ll feel particularly special.

    *  *  *

    Who comes up with crap like this?  And does anyone actually get excited by it?

    Sadly, I’m going to guess that the answer to the second question is “yes,” or why would we continue to see such ridiculously dumb marketing?

    Ah, don’t mind me.  I just had a (thankfully rare) day spent at the local mall and I’m feeling rather anti-commerce at the moment in general.

  • Thoughts on choosing a domain name

    It’s easy to get your own space on the Web (Geocities, Google Pages, Live Journal, Blogger, etc.) without cost and without fuss.  So why get your own domain name?

    • It can provide you with a nice vanity and (generally) permanent e-mail address… e.g., .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
    • Same goes for a Web address; also, you can then host your site anywhere you want!
    • It’s dang cheap!  $5-$10/year for the domain registration (+ optional Web site hosting costs, usually $2-20 depending on how much space/bandwidth/power you need)

    In the rest of this note, I’ll cover very briefly how you get a domain name, and—more comprehensively—some things you’ll want to consider before choosing a domain name.

    Actually getting, or “registering” a domain name is the easy part.  For $2-10, you can get a domain name at registrars like GoDaddy, Yahoo, and many other companies in literally a matter of minutes (though it can take a day or so for the domain to propagate, or go live across the net).  Make sure that whatever methods you use to register a domain name, you actually maintain full ownership!  Beware of registrars or Web hosts that offer seemingly fabulous deals on a domain + hosting but keep ownership of the domains for themselves!  You want the control and freedom to take your domain anywhere and put whatever (legal stuff) you want on it.

    The hard part?  That’s choosing a domain name!  Granted, with domain registrations so cheap, you could just buy domains willy-nilly and not really commit… and in fact, there are quite a few folks (domain speculators, spammers, very very very indecisive or bored folks) who buy thousands of domains a month.  But let’s hope that’s not you.  I’m going to assume that you’re the thoughtful and careful and deliberating sort of person 🙂

    So with that said…

    *  *  *

    Settle on a purpose and expected / desired audience

    If you’re wanting to put your resume somewhere, sexyhotlegs.com is probably not your best bet (though I admit it depends on your profession). If you’re interested in voicing controversial political opinions or posting scary photos of your armpits under green light (or both), you may not want to reserve yourname.net. Use common sense, particularly weighing issues of personal and professional image, privacy, and anticipated and desired audience.

    Consider spelling hassles

    You are likely going to be mentioning your domain name in person and perhaps even over the phone quite a bit. Unless you really enjoy having to say for the one billionth time “Let me spell that for you…,” consider choosing a domain (or even a domain that points to your real domain) that is reasonably easy to write without thirty seconds of spelling and verifying.

    Be afraid of lawyers

    If you’re thinking about reserving yahu.com or sleshdot.com or waltdisny.com… don’t. It’s not cute, it’s not clever, and—though admittedly a few typo-squatters and the like do unfortunately make a lot of money from sewing confusion in this arena—it’s likely not worth the headache and stress of getting nastygrams and court summons.

    Homonyms, numbers, and related issues

    Be wary of sound-alike words (bearplace or bareplace?), numbers/abbreviations-vs-words issues (is it happy2seeu or happytoseeyou…?), and so on. These ambiguous domains create confusion not only when spoken, but even pose memory-challenges for people wanting to revisit your domain. Even worse, if someone else has a similar domain in this context, you can pretty much bet that not only web surfers but also e-mail messages are going to get misdirected.

    Avoid-names-like-this

    They look spammy. Seriously, given smartautos and smart-autos, which domain looks more professional to you, and which one are you likely to remember when surfing or e-mailing?

    Length matters

    Think of length… even as it relates to your business card, online design, and so on. If your name is Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, I respectfully recommend you think twice before using your name as your domain.

    Yes, Virginia, there’s a world beyond the U.S.

    And some of the folks there even speak languages other than English. You may not care if your blog domain name translates as “Ugly dog urine” in Swahili, but you may want to do at least a bit of language checking. If you’re getting a domain name for a serious business, you may also want to examine international intellectual property (e.g., trademark) issues as well

    Bluntly obvious or open-endedly opportunistic?

    On one hand, you have companies like amazon, expedia, and yahoo who named their domains (probably intentionally) in a way that was deliciously flexible. On the other hand, you have sites from the moderately bounded (esurance.com, travelocity) all the way to the tightly focused (danceshoes4u, danishhistory.denmark.dk).

    Which is better? That’s a great question! You can certainly find success stories all over the spectrum.

    Personally, I’d tend towards the more general and/or non-dictionary-worded domains. Time and time again, we’ve seen that outstanding organizations have started off with one focus, only to develop into significantly different areas due to market pressures, new interests from the executives, and so on. Such topical expansion isn’t easily handled with a topically restrictive domain name.

    Others might argue that the more tightly-focused domain names will be significantly favored by the search engines and offer snappier and faster brand insight to consumers. While I can understand the latter, I personally give little credence to the former [as always, note my BLADAM disclaimer!].

    At the end of the day, the most important thing is that you make a conscious, not accidental, decision in this realm, understanding the benefits and disadvantages of general/imaginative vs. blunt/focused domain names.

    Be wary of non-friendly relationships with your .com and .net neighbors

    It may seem frustratingly limiting, but IMHO I’d avoid registering a, say, .org domain if the .com is already taken… especially if the .com is prominent. At least in America, I believe that most folks think “dot com” by default, and so you’re likely to get lots of people visiting yoursite.com and mailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) even though you registered the .org. At the very minimum, make sure your non-dot-com registration is done in the context of an amiable relationship with the .com holder, so that if he or she does get misdirected e-mail, they’ll be sure to forward it on to you. Or, better yet, they might even create a forwarding alias, automatically redirecting mail from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

    Be aware of unintentional word combos

    When the folks behind Experts Exchange registered expertsexchange.com, they probably didn’t have transgendered folks as their intended audience. However, with a brief look at their domain name, I think you’ll now understand why they’ve since rebranded themselves as experts-exchange.com. Don’t make the same (amazingly not-uncommon) mistake.

    And last but definitely not least… apply the Friends Test

    Ask your friends… “What do you think of [domain you’re considering], and don’t be afraid to be blunt!” You’ll be shocked and grateful, I’m sure, at the insights—sometimes quite obvious insights you’ve overlooked—that you’ll get from your friends. Ask them how they’d spell your domain, what the name brings to mind, whether it sounds too suspiciously like something else, and so on.

    * * *

    Do I practice what I preach? Reasonably so, I think. BLADAM is “The Blog of Adam” or “The Blatherings of Adam” and it’s pretty easy to spell (“B-L and Adam, my name”) and nicely short. Lasnik.net… well, it’s not super-easy to spell, but it’s unambiguous and it’s been a decently professional place for me to place my resume.

    I’m also proud of Ascena (and ascena.com)—what I renamed a German company I once worked for (formerly “fortISinformationssysteme”—whew!). Pleasantly evocative (“to ascend”) in multiple languages, short, pretty easy to spell, and (at least formerly) available in a ton of domains (ascena.de, ascena.com, etc.)

    * * *

    I hope my thoughts on domain naming have been helpful! I welcome your opinions and questions below 😀