Marketing

I ordered from BicycleTrailers.com a Baby Jogger Tailwind trailer that I ended up returning. I ended up returning it mostly because it had no storage room at all. I’m toting my son in the trailer and he needs his lunch, sometimes a change of clothes, etc. And it’s nice to have that behind him where he can’t get at it. The trailer itself, while a bit on the heavy side, was extremely well built and had some very nice touches compared to our Burley LadyBug trailer. It seems likely that the Baby Jogger folks were aiming this at people who want to jog with young kids and that having no storage room was a feature, since the missing space gives a runner room for their legs to step forward. ...

Found a link to this Kodak video from Jason Calacanis’ blog. His article about winds of change has one word: genius. It is a phenomenal video. Too bad that Kodak’s web site is messy and confusing and has nothing of interest to me. For me, the video just brought home how much they don’t matter to me. I can’t remember the last time I bought a Kodak product. I suppose that they do sell paper and stuff like that to Walgreens or Costco or wherever I get the few photos I want on paper printed out. ...

Eric Sink writes a great article called This Blog Entry is Urgent and it includes: When I see an envelope that says, (Do not discard this envelope(, I know immediately that it will be safe for me to throw it away unopened. When I see an envelope that says (Special Offer(, I know with certainty that the offer contained therein is not special, and was in fact distributed to everybody with a pulse. ...

Not that it applies to this blog at all but Web 2.0: Buzz-Monitoring and Tracking is a nice write-up of some solutions and I need to look at it more closely. I’ve been trying to use Google notebook to track things but it’s not working so well for me. The interface is kind of clumsy. Need to get back and try it some more, I guess. In the meantime, I can use the blog to call attention to articles that are useful for me and for my hordes of readers.

Found a reference to Amazon selling 1000 Xbox 360s for $100. Which is what one would be worth to me. So I showed up and tried it, figuring that I wasn’t going to get one of these: However, I was interested in how the process worked and also wanted one of the alternate items. I was logged in to my Amazon account on both Internet Explorer 7 and FireFox 2. Things worked fairly normally until about 10:59, when the system became totally non-responsive for about 10 minutes and not very responsive (meaning I got 1 session to work but none of the others) for 15. ...

As somebody who’s spent his fair share of time putting together desks and bookcases and children’s toys, one of the most powerful quotes was (paraphrased) “that things should be cheaper - we’re making them ourselves”. In a post on “Is it tech rage or customer service rage?”, Techcrunch talks about how many stories at “tech rage” are but asks whether they’re really caused by awful customer service. I certainly think that’s the case. When I see a guarantee from companies like Qwest or Comcast, I immediately discount it down to 0. I’m sure that whatever the guarantee is, there’s something in the fine print that will prevent me from collecting. Assuming, of course, that I have the patience to persist in reaching a person. ...

Regal Cinemas is testing giving somebody a wireless device that summons an usher. In exchange for being the eyes and ears, you get a free bucket of popcorn. Seems like a reasonable deal to me. Thanks to: Techdirt: Ever Wished You Could Push A Button To Remove A Disruptive Movie Watcher?

It’s tough coming up with a decent domain name - all the good ones are taken. But you have to wonder what some people were thinking when they came up with these domain names: Who Represents? - www.whorepresents.com Pen Island - www.penisland.com and 8 more worst company urls

Laura Ries has a great article about Wal-Mart testing a high-end store in Texas. $500 bottles of wine at a Wal-Mart? What’s the message here? This is especially interesting coming on the heels of her article about how to properly segment: Scion, Toyota, Lexus or Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic. Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart? Don’t think so.