Offline Gmail now available
Finally a google gears app. The concept is great,this is going to bridge the gap in cloud computing . now waiting for offline google docs ...
new theme and fixings
So the other day I realised his site was a little broken to the muppets that use IE. For some reason the home page was only showing the first post and and the title of the second , every thing that loaded afther that post was missing , I assumed this was due to some plugin , I have gone through and removed that "Feature " for now.
Why is being poor so expensive ?
Something really bugged me over the years is how places exploit people in poor situations.
Yeh I know this sounds like some conspiracy rant but really, how many places charge penalties to people who could least afford to pay? Think about it. You cant afford to pay a bill so you get charged more.. this is dangerous and just plain stupid. Ok I know businesses need to do things like this to stop getting screwed over but isn’t there a better way?
I think the best process if give people an option, help them decide. Try giving the people the chance to pay off the debt without incurring fees with small regular payments. Sure you may lose out of a little money but you would more likely keep a customer happy. Just don’t let them get over extended again.
Ferrit autopsy
Ok I am going to try and write this without getting personal or overly critical, It should also be noted I don’t know jack about marketing or business
Lets begin
So what went wrong? Well in my opinion Ferrit didn’t offer anything new that didn’t already exist. It has been implied they were working on a trade me killer that offered new good rather than second hand stuff that at the time trade me was known for.
In theory this sounded simple and a good idea but has lots of other problems like where do you get your products from and how do you add thousands of products to your inventory, but this is nothing that cant be solved without a few beers down at the malthouse. Any way to summarise, Define what your going for , and more importantly make sure there is a need for that service.
I also think starting a business simply to crush another business is a shit idea.
Second, Marketing.
What is the best way to market a website? Well let’s face it, people are lazy and have poor short term memory. Don’t expect them to see some AD on the back of a speeding bus or on TV and remember the exact URL of your site. The best way to advertise your site is online and word of mouth, Hell I think free laser etched hotdogs would have worked better that the AD campaigns they used. I also see people actually avoided the site based on those AD’s but I am sure marketing executives have some BS terms to make this sound ok.
Third, Honesty.
If you are going to offer reviews on products don’t “tweak “customer’s reviews, don’t make up reviews, and if you do make up or tweak reviews don’t get caught.
Fourth, Jack be nimble
So you’re a start-up with almost unlimited funding, what do you do? Well let’s face it, it wasn’t a start-up and would have probably inherited a few processes that would slow down development and change. Process tends to keep things stable ( once they are working) but at the beginning of something ground breaking you need to be free to change quickly and adapt to market forces. I am not saying you should be willy nilly with changes but you need a certain level of freedom to fix things that don’t work.
Fifth, listen to the user
If people are ranting about you site, swallow your pride and make some changes. Don’t try and reinvent something new when there are plenty of working examples of sites that do work you could learn from.
Sixth, know when to pull the plug.
People have been waiting for this for almost 2 years and if the public have already figured out that its not working, what’s going on inside? I am sure there are countless times people say it’s a long term investment but lets face it, if you inject millions into something you would expect to see some returns rather quickly.
Seventh, you cant buy innovation or passion.
I really don’t want to be taken as a "I told you so" because it isn’t, no one likes to see business shutdown but there is a lot to learn for from this.
And one last point, get the bloody .com next time
Media center options
Over the holidays I have been looking at rebuilding my media center system. What I really want is a back end system that can look at network drives and transcode that to front end systems like ps3, xbox, psp and windows media center.
Here's what I found
Neuros osd
http://www.neurostechnology.com/
This is the most promising system , would love to get my hands on one..
This is more of a media managment system that allows you to organise your downloading of videos but is not much of a media center as such.
Boxee
http://boxee.tv/
This is social media center app that recomends videos. Pretty cool but lacks the abailty to stream to psp and ps3.
There are plenty of other systems out there but these are two that really suprised me.
Windows 7 beta download link
Product keys from here ( when its back up )
But untill then apperantly the slmgr -rearm command will give you 120 days grace
OLED flexiable screens comming soon to a home near you.
An Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED), also Light Emitting Polymer (LEP) and Organic Electro Luminescence (OEL), is any Light Emitting Diode (LED) whose emissive electroluminescent layer is composed of a film of organic compounds. The layer usually contains a polymer substance that allows suitable organic compounds to be deposited. They are deposited in rows and columns onto a flat carrier by a simple "printing" process. The resulting matrix of pixels can emit light of different colors.
looks pretty cool , would imagine the price of laptops falling more , batterys lasting longer and maybe even stronger
