Tralfaz

Month: July 2013

  • Lost an old friend, gained a new one

    Last weekend, I posted about the demise of my faithful Swing-a-way can opener. I had that opener for probably 20 years. It had been a good kitchen tool, but it was finally wearing out.

    The parent company, Amco, still sells the Swing-a-way opener, and I was going to go that route, but the reviews on Amazon were pretty negative. In a familiar story, Amco closed up their US operation, moved the production to china, and then import them back. As is often the case, this results in a slipping of quality.

    Fortunately, there is a brand that is made in the USA, in the same factory as the old Swing-a-way can openers were made, and they have the same awesome quality. The new name is EZ-DUZ-IT, and for $7.59 Amazon delivered it to my door. That night, I needed to open a couple of cans of dog food, and I put the new opener on the cans, and it just breezed through them. Smooth action, clean cut, no missed spots. Heaven in a kitchen tool.

    While I have a decade or two to see if it wears as well as my old Swing-a-way, I am hopeful for the future.

    The real irony? Amco’s Swing-a-way, made in China was $8.99. The EZ DUZ IT – $7.59. Can’t beat that.

  • The idiots have won: Time to remove the “Reply All” option in email

    Microsoft, Apple, Thunderbird (indeed, all MUA’s):

    Time to kill/hide the Reply all option
    Time to kill/hide the Reply all option

    It is time to remove the “reply all” option. I know that there are valid use cases for it, but alas, the general population has failed to grasp the implications of this seemingly innocuous button on their email. Yes, there are times that people really really do want to spam their colleagues like it was a listserv, but this is an edge use case.

    Unfortunately, the idiots who populate the corporate and social world today seem to think that the normal use of email is to reply all. I have even heard them justify this by saying “If all those people were copied originally to the invite to meet for drinks on Friday, then I need to let them all know I am in.”*

    Even educated, scientists who I work with have this affair with the reply all button.

    Back when I was at Cisco in the early ‘oughts, we had these huge mail storms. People used mailing lists, and sent trivial status updates to literally thousands of people (good reason to limit distribution list access), to which many would reply “Please remove me”, of course this lead to a lot of other people replying the same, and suddenly you have an email thread with 500 replies in less than an hour, with absolutely no commercial value.

    Time for the nuclear option:

    1. Remove the button completely – yes, this makes life more difficult for people who have legitimate uses.
    2. Make it available as a menu option – prefer buried a couple layers deep. I know this breaks my mantra of keep it simple and accessible. I am willing to make a tradeoff here.
    3. If neither of these are attractive, then add a dialog box, particularly when there are more than 3 recipients of the original email, that warns people of how rude it is to spam their colleagues needlessly
    4. Put some intelligence into the email application. If the topic is mundane, and there are lots of people in the “to:” list, move them to a BCC: to prevent the dreaded reply all.

    Of course, the reasonable thing would be to expect people to have some common courtesy, and refrain from replying all.

    The one bright light is that Gmail’s online interface, while I find lots of flaws with it, does this well. A user has to take an extra step to reply all to an email, and it does keep it down. Of course, if you download your mail into Outlook, that safety is defeated.

    —

    *Yes, this email happened this week, and really annoyed the hell out of me.

  • Life with the 13″ MacBook Air – Two weeks down

    I have always used the time to upgrade computers to buy the biggest, fastest, bestest computer I could get. I typically keep them for 3-4 years (and use them hard) so skimping on the price is not a really a priority.

    My macbook pro is getting a little long in the tooth (but by no means giving up the ghost), and I was flirting with the MacBook Pro Retina display. But I took stock of my needs, and realized that I don’t need the biggest and fastest. For Father’s Day, Apple seemed to think that my boys should get me a MacBook Air.  They were just refreshed, with new, low power use CPU’s, and some pretty impressive specifications.

    I was piqued. I took a trip to the local Apple store (there are several here in Phoenix, one about 5 minutes away) and did some hands on.

    I was smitten. The idea of a very light, very compact package with outstanding battery life was very appealing indeed.

    So I took the plunge, bought the 13″ version, and ordered it with the 8G of memory (soldered on the board, it is not upgradable post purchase), and the 256G SSD.

    I have blogged about getting it up and running, and figuring out how to live within the space constraints (it is a bit of a shock to go from a TB to 1/4 TB of storage (hint: my music, movies and Aperture photo library didn’t come across. But my MBP will suffice for that!).

    I was tempted to buy a second charger when I picked this up, but I refrained. I am getting a real 10 – 12 hours of use between charges. That equates to two – three days of my usual use.

    The display is smaller than the 15″, and although it dismayed the Apple watchers that Apple didn’t drop a retina display in this, I am not disappointed. Yep, the retina displays are crisp, and awesome, but they have 4x the pixels, and that does impact battery life.

    The build quality is typical Apple. Solid. great screen hinges, and no blemishes.

    So far, I love it, and will probably be an ultra portable user for life now.

  • Oh, come on now… (hot and humid edition)

    I don’t mind the heat here in Phoenix. Yep it is hot, often getting well above 110F, and the sun is punishing when it does. It doesn’t stop me from exercising, but I do adapt, and adjust my routine to remain safe.

    But what is killing me is the humidity that has settled in. It has been as high as 60% RH. Couple that with 105F, and it is brutal. None of the usual “It’s a dry heat” cuts it. It is hot, humid and miserable out there.

    Alas, the humidity comes up in the summer here as the monsoon patterns develop over southern Arizona. But, when I lived in Tucson, that meant pretty consistent rains, which contrary to popular belief, pulls the moisture out of the air, and makes for it being rather pleasant.

    Here in Chandler, we get the humidity and cloud build up, but not so much rain. So the humidity just hangs in the air, making us miserable, and not actively cooling us down at all.

    Ugh.

  • Shopping observations: Coupons

    A few weeks ago, it was a madhouse at the local Fry’s supermarket. Packed to the gills, and tons of rude people.

    CouponingAlas, I stumbled across a woman doing extreme couponing. She had an expanding file folder that was literally stuffed with coupons, and a shopping cart full os odd items. This caused me to recall why I am not really a fan of coupons.

    It is an American dream to get a good deal. Even more so than elsewhere in the world there is a desire to get a bargain. Coupons are an integral part of this phenomenon.

    There are many reasons to issue coupons.  As a marketer, I know that they are a valuable tool to drive brand awareness, and to get early awareness of new products. If you introduce a new razor line, it is common that a promotional coupon to drive some early uptake in the market. But this often goes too far. Often people will only buy a product if there is a coupon. If that happens, then you haven’t increased market awareness or share, but instead you have created an expectation, lowering the reference price for the product or offering.

    I remember from my restaurant days that we often had coupons to bring in customers. I recall that they did bring people in, but an observation was that the people it drew didn’t come back until there was another coupon. Which leads me to …

    GroupOn, an online business that offers deals for people who prepay. The concept is solid, but in practice, it has had some issues. Either the business is swamped, impacting service and quality (too many deals sold), or it brings in people looking for a deal, but who don’t convert to repeat business. I signed up for a short time, but found that it was pretty much only offers for 50% off manicures, pedicures, or bowling lane time.

    I am not really a user of the common coupon. Almost always they are targeted at products or brands that I am not interested in. If I am not likely to use Schick razors, it doesn’t matter how often I get coupons, even coupons for free blades, I am not going to switch from Gillette.

    The only exception are the personalized coupons that are printed at the checkout register. If you are going to hand me a coupon for something that I am already buying, I will take advantage of it. They know that I buy a large number of Lean Cuisine meals, so $3 off when you buy 5 is a no brainer. Want me to try the fake bacon bits as salad toppers, and I am probably not going to bite.

    Back to the store, the lady that had the file folder full of coupons, her cart was full of sports drink (not gatorade), canned beans, and an astounding amount of yogurt from the new Greek style yogurt. Perhaps that was what she needed, but I suspect that it wasn’t the top of her list.

     

  • Saying “Goodbye” to an old friend

    I have to say goodbye to an old friend. We have been together for a long time. Probably 20 years or so, a good run. Alas, all good things must come to an end.

    All the cans we have opened.  All the meals we shared. You have been reliable and faithful. Always there when needed. You never demanded much, but always ready for an adventure.

    My original Swing-Away can opener has come to the end
    My original Swing-Away can opener has come to the end

    Lately, you have been slipping your gears. No longer able to cleanly open a can. It started with a few “bad” spots, but it has been getting worse. Last night, opening a can of refried beans was more than just a task, it was a travail. The decision to retire you was not made lightly.  I had hoped that you could pull it back together, but it was not meant to be.

    I ordered a replacement. The sad thing is that the replacement from Swing-Away are now made in China, and had a slew of terrible reviews. Fortunately, someone is building the same design, with the old machines from the original Swing-Away company. It should be here Tuesday.

    I will miss my old friend, but I will not forget it.

  • Hope for the future

    When I was growing up, in a suburb of Sunnyvale, the neighborhood was typical. Single family dwellings, clean yards, lots of grass, and busy professionals who worked at Lockheed or Westinghouse.

    There were a couple of enterprising youths who leveraged this situation by mowing lawns. $5 a week, they had their own power mower and edger, and would come and keep your lawns in good shape. Just about everybody on the block took advantage of this, and had these youths maintaining their yards.

    There were other entrepreneurial things you could do to make some spending cash, for example I delivered newspapers, but yard work was seen as a perfect way to teach responsibility to kids. (of course, with gas engines and spinning blades, without much in the way of safety features, it was also a lesson in personal responsibility)

    Then something happened. Starting in the late 1980’s (a guess), the advent of video games, and other sedentary activities, coupled with helicopter parents who insist on controlling every aspect of their children’s lives, and that first job was no longer a priority. The moderate affluence of the middle class meant that parents could afford to subsidize the entertainment of their offspring, and thus a generation of kids (Gen X) came to be that got through high school without developing a work ethic.

    A catchy flyer, and an offer that is too good to be refused
    A catchy flyer, and an offer that is too good to be refused

    Now, it is common to see all the neighborhood yards being maintained by various landscaping companies, all offering pretty much the same service, and convenience. And another generation of kids has a reason to not build a work ethic. Newspapers are delivered by adults in cars, and the subscriptions paid by mail. Increasingly, the other route to early work experience (and cash), the fast food restaurant, is going to the less skilled adults who need jobs to live. Where is a kid today to turn to for making some scratch?

    Then today, I saw this flyer taped to the mailbox. A couple neighborhood kids are rekindling the entrepreneurial spirit, and going to work cleaning yards. A catchy flyer, a willing, can do, attitude, and a reasonable offer. I hope they kick ass and make something of the opportunity.

  • Battle of the Simple Website Creators

    I have been working on a fun project lately, creating a website and online personas for my adopted greyhounds. Since I started the bit of an advice column for how to create a website, and what tools to use, I figured that I would try one of the simple builder sites.

    The two I played with are Weebly, recommended by my friend David Kendall Grant, and Virb, a spin off of the hosting I use, Media Temple. They both are simple to use, intuitive, and pretty straightforward website creation package. Both are attractive, and have pretty complete components to place and drop. Naturally, they both do all the hosting and back end maintenance.

    Weebly, is a startup, VC funded. They have a free offering, and two tiers of paid services that add capabilities. It can connect to an ETSY store, it can create static pages, blogs, and even simple discussion forums. It automatically connects to Facebook and Twitter to alert the world that you published something. There are a pretty extensive collection of templates that offer some customizability, and flexibility of the design.

    Virb is fairly new. It is still under development, and you can see some rough edges. Their collection of templates is smaller (but growing) and some of the goodies and components that are available on Weebly are not yet implemented. But their bits and pieces that are done work well. Additionally, they have a blog that keeps you informed of what they are developing and when to expect it. I did like the facilities for customizing the CSS and getting some access to the bits and pieces, but naturally, once you go there, you are on your own for support.

    What I liked:

    It was really quick and easy to get a site up. Adding pictures, posts, quotations, and connections to social media were easy peasy. Modifying the templates on Weebly was hit or miss. Some elements were easy to figure out how to edit, some were a bit harder.

    Virb had great controls that let you alter almost anything on the templates, from fonts, to colors, and background images. I thought this was a bit better thought out than Weebly.

    Both give you quite a bit of flexibility for your free or trial period (Virb offers a 10 day trial and then it is $10 a month, Weebly has a “permanent” free offering, but sells you features and very expensive domains).

    Both seemed to have solid hosting, and while I am not sure about Weebly, I have always been really happy with the hosting at Media Temple. Great uptime, speed, and access, as well as just awesome support for when shit goes wrong.  And it does go wrong.

    What I didn’t like:

    While I am not a pro web designer, I do like having flexibility at my fingertips to get in and muck around. I also like having some control over the plugins and extensions that I use. With both Weebly and Virb you are at the mercy of what they offer.

    I also like to take standard templates and modify them.  Edit the CSS, change classes, and alter the layout to my whim.

    These things are a lot easier if you roll your own.

    Who should consider these services?

    If you are creative, but not web savvy. If you have an idea of what you want it to look like, but the whole idea of buying hosting, installing software, and customization is scary. If you want to get something up quick and easy, without headaches. Then these two offering fit the bill.

    A note on the “Fremium” model by Weebly. First, I am not a fan. Since if you are a “free” user, you are not really a customer to them, they spend a lot of time trying to get you to buy one of the paid tiers. I literally get one or two emails a day from them prodding me to upgrade. One today was offering me the paid tier at 33% off. Virb was up front and said that you get ten days of trial, no restrictions, and then $10 a month. That is one reason why I am a fan of Media Temple. They don’t try to sell you crap everytime you log in.

  • So you want a website – Weebly update

    After my first “So you want a website” post, one of my faithful readers, David Kendall Grant mentioned that Weebly is an awesome, free, and very flexible website creation option.

    Weebly-LogoI recall hearing about them in the past, but thought nothing about it, so I thought I would give it a try.

    First, a basic setup is free. Like WordPress or Blogger, you can easily get a site up that is <your cool name>.weebly.com.  I started setting up a website. It is pretty easy, and they have a huge variety of templates that you can use. You are sure to find something you like.

    The creation of the site is done by dragging and dropping features. Pretty intuitive, and almost fun. You can create text/articles, picture galleries, insert advertisements, and have interactive items like Forums pretty easily. Really slick.

    I didn’t see any way to really modify the template. For example, many of the templates have photos in the header area. No amount of hunting by me found a way to change those images. In a way this makes sense, that the templates have some rigor to them.

    How can they do this and make money if they give you a pretty solid experience for free?

    Well, say you want to have your own domain name (<your cool site>.com instead of <your cool site>weebly.com), they will register and set it up for you for a fee.  A pretty pricey option at ~ $40 a year.  (For comparison, WordPress.com will do this for $18 per year, and if you host your own, it will be about $12 a year).  So that is some revenue.

    There are also upgrades, two tiers of that you can graduate to. The starter tier ($3.29 a month) adds some support options, and the ability to remove the Weebly branding from the footers. The next tier is “Pro” that gives you a lot more flexibility, and adds things like site search, slideshows, Video and Audio players (boo, I hate web audio), and the ability to have other collaborators on your site.

    My impressions:

    I played with it for a couple of hours. I felt frustrated by the rigidity of the formats and the templates.  Of course I am the “free” user, and I am thus limited to what they give away.

    I am not sure I would want to play with it enough to go pro.

    I did see that you have the option of downloading your entire website. I didn’t play with that to see if it is in a format that can be moved to blogger or wordpress.

    I am also not their target demographic.  I am much more likely to roll up my sleeves and dive in to tweak the stylesheets, or the templates of my own site. But for the creative, but not very technical user, I am sure that Weebly provides a great entry point.

    I am not giving up on the experience, but I think the next step will be to cough up some green and get access to the premium features.

    One thing that is a turn off is the constant “hints” to get my own domain, and to upgrade. Heck, yesterday I got three different emails to find out why I didn’t finish my site, or buy a domain.

    I understand that as the free user, I am not really a customer, and they are incentivized to coerce me to pay more, but the hard sell is not very effective for me. As I said, I am not their target demographic.

  • So you want a website – part 2

    Yesterday I talked about the different avenues to putting up a website, and mentioned some of the pros and cons. Today, I will talk about some of the mechanics. It will be boring, because you aren’t doing anything, but planning at this point.

    What sort of site do I want?

    Ask yourself what you intend to do with it. Are you a photographer and want to share your portfolio? Do you want to write about current events, or your views on a variety of topics? Do you want to sell something (products, yourself, your services)? Do you want to have advertisements (banners or other related ads) to help fund your site/lifestyle?

    List out what you want to accomplish, in as much detail as you know at this time. There are no wrong answers.

    What should I be called?

    The first step is to obtain something called a domain name. This is something catchy that is related to your what you want to do. For example, the Greyhound rescue group I work with is sagreyhoundadoption.org A web name that is unique and descriptive. Before buying a name, it is good to look for names you want.  I usually use register.com to explore names, but pretty much any hosting provider will be able to search for the availability of your chosen name.

    Don’t worry if most of your clever ideas are taken. Be diligent, and creative, and you will find something.

    Do I want to host it or use one of the services. 

    This is a trickier decision. If you are a rank novice, I would strongly recommend using Blogger or WordPress.com. They will both get you up and running pretty easily, and free.  Both can have a custom domain name, and there is a pretty wide variety of themes you can select and customize.

    If you are a bit more tech savvy, don’t be afraid to go the self hosted route.  You can’t use blogger, but it is about a 20 minute process to get WordPress up and running. Trivial to say the least. This way you will have a very granular level of control over the look and feel of your website. I will post a blog about the learning path of self hosted wordpress.

    I want to go hosted, what should I do?

    First, select a hosting company.  There are many that will offer robust, reliable, and safe hosting for about $5 – $10 a month.  They will include almost endless storage, a reliable database, and all the infrastructure to handle your hosting. They will also be able to register your domain (and I recommend doing it from where you host) and keep all the records up to date.

    You are going to what a basic Linux hosted service. Pretty much all the hosting companies are good. Hostgator, Network Solutions (they are register.com) and GoDaddy are all fine choices, and will get you up and running quickly. There are another tier of hosting companies that are a bit more professional to deal with, but it comes at a price. I personally use MediaTemple and love their service and support. They never try to sell you crap you don’t need, and when you have a support issue, they are super responsive and fix things right away.

    All these hosting providers will have an option called VPS (or DV). That is a “Virtual Private Server”, essentially you will have provisioned a full VM with its dedicated disk, cpu, memory, and database. You will not have to share resources, which sounds like a big benefit. But it comes with a mighty cost. You have to update and maintain the linux installation, applying patches, and configuring the services that are used (like PHP and Apache). Unless you are comfortable mucking around in the Unix environment, I would avoid this at all costs. Also, these services will come at a premium price. Expect it to start at $20 a month and go up depending on your resource use.

    How to install the software.

    When I first started, this was a major deal. I had to download the package, upload it to y hosting site, and then follow the setup process. Pretty easy, but still a manual process.

    Now, for the common packages, you can just use something the hosting company will call a “1-button install”. All the most common packages can be installed and a basic configuration setup in a few minutes. No need to mess with MySql databases, or user accounts. Literally, push the button and in a couple minutes you have a WordPress install. Or a Joomla install. Or a Zencart (e-commerce software) installed.

    Now you have a basic site. Next in the series is how to set it up, how to customize it, and how to begin populating it with content.