fuzzyraygun

I had to write a little post about the difference in online stores, because of the experience I have had in the past week.

Last tuesday I placed an order with Swissarmy.com for a new watch band for my nice watch. I won’t even go into how unhelpful their website and customer service were before I placed my order because that is a whole post in itself and I wanted to wait the whole thing out and then write about it. After placing my order I got a order receipt from them the same day telling me that they got my order, but no emails from them since. Nothing, nada, no shippo.

I placed an order for my new MacPro this morning and I got my order acknowledgment and by the end of the day I got an email telling me that my entire system had already been shipped. Same day.

I’m not a genius about these things but I really thought that it would be much harder to put together and ship a huge custom configured desktop computer than it would to put a watch band in a box.

While the watch band is significantly less than the computer both of them rely on the same order tracking and fulfillment backoffice that is the lifes blood of online commerce.

If your going to spend all that money to have an online store, doesn’t it make sense that you would want to sell stuff? If they manage the online store themselves than they need to take a real hard look at what they are putting their money into, and if someone is managing it for them, than they really need to understand how bad service, no matter who is running it, can really affect how people look at their brand.

If your gonna do it, make sure it makes your brand look good, or else just don’t do it. It makes you look cheap and half assed. I would expect this from Swatch or Fossil or a ton of other schlocky watches, but I was not expecting this from SwissArmy, and I guess I view them as just another schlocky watch company now.

Maybe more people should listen to Joel on this one

I have taken the plunge and bought myself a new MACpro. I haven’t bought a new computer in about 4-5 years so this is quite a step up for me. Two Dual core processors, a nice 20″ monitor, dual hard drives. The tough part about getting this machine is that I will have to move all my music equipment stuff over to this new platform, which could be kinda tricky. We shall see. Check back later to listen to me curse.

Alanna was at her studio most of the weekend for Open Studios, while I was trying to get my motorcycle back up and running. After charging the battery and putting some gas in, the bike just didn’t want to kick over. I guess I will keep trying.

People have been doing that crazy Silli valley investment dance and when the music finally stopped it was Microsoft who eventually overpaid for a 1.6% stake in Facebook to the tune of $246 million. Giving a rough valuation of the company at $15 billion dollars.

To give you an idea about how retarded this is, ALL of Myspace.com was bought not to long ago by Rupert Murdochs News Corp. for $580 million. That would give a rough estimate of $5 a user.

With the Facebook deal, Microsoft basicly paid $272 per user for a minority stake in the company.

These companies are based on advertising revenue. Which means when the site is not cool anymore, which could be in 15 minutes, the advertising dries up and the company is hosed. Remember Friendster? is anybody talking about how much Friendster is worth? The actual difference between any of these companies is negligible, so why is one worth nothing and one is worth $15 billion?

Because one is popular…..

Nice tidbit in Wired about some reasons behind Microsofts investment.

I got on the bus this morning and it was raining and everyone seemed to be silent and miserable. A few stops later a couple of teachers came on with about 12-15 kids all under 4 or 5 years old. Suddenly the whole mood of the bus changed. They are laughing and smiling and talking to people about the rain and it seemed that for just a little while the whole bus seemed to be having a good time with them.

As I was riding the bus home tonight there was a crowd gathered at an intersection in lower haight. When we got closer I realized that one guy was covered in creme pie and his friends were handing out creme pies to anyone who wanted a swing. My guess is that he lost a bet, but you never know, some people with do just about anything for creme pie.

I’m really starting to think this would be a great idea for me. With the availability of all sorts of crappy information, people are starting to feel like they need to consume more information. I’m on a boycott.

4Hourworkweek – Timothy Ferriss

I saw some posts today in the news about how the ANNUAL deficit for the year is ONLY $162 billion dollars. The lowest amount of red ink in 5 years.

In case everyone didn’t notice the ACTUAL deficit is $9.1 TRILLION (with a T) dollars. Just because you overspent by less of a margin doesn’t mean that you didn’t overspend. And it certainly doesn’t mean that you haven’t overspent year after year.

Go check it out on the Treasury website. All the numbers are right there. The amount of debt added to the total for the month of July alone was over $65,000,000,000.00

Here are two posts by Seth Godin about making websites. If only businesses would read this before trying to make websites they would really make my life so much easier.

How to create a good enough website
How to create a great website

I have probable run into every possible problem when creating websites with clients. The worst problems usually center around clients thinking that they are somehow web designers and their inability to make decisions or making decisions and then changing their mind over and over again. It seems strange that you would pay so much money for a professional and then disregard their advice. Somehow it is always the designers fault.

It’s really simple. Follow these really easy directions.

Mountain Dew
Baking Sode
Peroxide

Pass it on.