As the 2008 presidential candidates start making their rounds and speeches (stumping), it’s important to remember that a lot of their promises are dry and empty, much like this stump.
Yearly Archives: 2007
Price wars are bad for everyone
I believe a lot in equitable pricing. A product’s price should be able to net its creator a decent profit — not a huge profit, not a tiny profit, because that makes it hard to go on, and certainly not a loss. That’s why I’m really annoyed with the recent price wars in the hardware industry. Scoble reports tonight on his blog that Seagate didn’t meet its projections in this last quarter because of horrendous price wars among hard drive manufacturers. An unnamed manufacturer was willing to lose over 100 million dollars just to maintain their foothold in the market. Beta News reports that AMD lost half a billion dollars in this last quarter, and that’s directly related to its price war with Intel.
This is bad. In the end, what was gained by the price wars? Companies lost money, their employees were overworked (to meet R&D and production deadlines), and everyone ended up stressed out. Did any company emerge as a winner? No, they didn’t.
I would love to see the frenetic pace of business and competition slow down to something more rational, more sustainable. I for one can imagine how stressful it must be to work in companies where you’re constantly pushed to meet deadlines, and more deadlines are coming at you down the pipe. I treasure the sense of accomplishment that I feel when I’ve just finished a project and know I’ve got a lull before the next one lands on my desk. No such thing goes on at these companies. Not only do they constantly have to find ways to tighten their belts and “restructure” by firing people, but at the end of the day, their bank accounts don’t really show the results of their efforts. What’s worse, they may even end up in the red.
I for one am willing to pay a little extra for my hardware, if I know that the pace of work at these companies is rational, and that employees there are treated well. Remember, we are all employees in one way or another. How would we like it if we had to work extra every day or got fired just so some Joe Blow can brag that he got his hard drive for $20 less?
[Added 4/20/07] Lest you think the consumer wins, think again. What we as consumers get out of this is bad design or bad quality control or bad customer service and support, or any combination of these three. The companies cutting prices have to skimp on something. You can’t rush things, cut prices AND provide a wonderfully designed and reliable products with great customer support. If you don’t believe me, see Julie’s comment below.
Fly to me
Broke through 250,000 views over at Zooomr today. It’s a nice milestone: a quarter million views. My thanks to those who viewed, faved or commented on my photos! I reached 100,000 views back on February the 3rd, so it’s quite a delightful surprise to see that I got 150,000 views in little more than 2 months and a half.
Here’s one of my favorite recent photographs. This orchid is called “Dragon Wings”, and can be found at the National Arboretum in Washington, DC. Ligia and I visited it a few weeks ago, and I used the Canon EOS 30D to photograph it.
Finding inspiration
I think these following videos are wonderfully inspirational. We all know about Michael J. Fox’s fight with Parkinson’s Disease. What we may not know is that he’s a very gracious person, and a real inspiration to others. Watch this segment of an interview with Katie Couric, and you’ll see what I mean. I also wrote about Michael in this post, back in October of 2006.
This second video is the historic 1938 match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral. It shows what you can accomplish when you have faith in someone, even in an aging horse that was considered useless.
Here is Mr. Roger’s testimony before the US Senate in 1969, back when President Nixon wanted to cut the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which aired Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.
When Reynaldo Ojeda lost his entire left leg, he didn’t let it stop him from becoming a professional salsa dancer. Watch this video of him and his dancing partner, Claudia Lopez, and be inspired.
Future by Design is a trailer for a movie that talks about Jacque Fresco, a modern day futurist and inventor.
During severe flooding in Mozambique, a dog and a monkey bonded, and remained inseparable afterwards. The dog apparently even fought to defend his little friend from other dogs. Wait till you see the droopy-eyed expressions on the two animals’ faces. You’ll think it’s the cutest thing.
Getting good site stats
I’ve been using both Google Analytics and FeedBurner‘s own Site Stats service simultaneously for the past couple of months, and I thought I’d give a comparison of the two.
They both use little JavaScript snippets that you copy and paste into your web pages. They’re both good at eliminating false traffic (bots, etc.). That’s where the similarity ends.
Google Analytics gives more detailed feedback that’s targeted toward marketers and webmasters. It’s also tightly integrated with Google’s AdWords program, so you can track the success/conversion of your campaigns. But, it’s got so many options and menus to dig through, that it’s hard to use overall. You really need to spend some time learning it.
On the other hand, FeedBurner’s Site Stats service is simple and easy. They present the data in a way that’s easy to understand. And while at first you may think you’re not getting all of the data that Google Analytics provides, in practice, I’m getting all the data I need. It’s just organized so much better, that I need to go through less menus to get at it.
Want to know the best part? FeedBurner’s Site Stats provides almost instant feedback on what’s going on with your site. Yesterday, one of my posts about Zooomr got dugg, and made it to Digg’s front page. It was already more than three hours since it had been dugg, yet Google Analytics provided me with no data to indicate the Digg traffic. FeedBurner was right on top of it. I’d been getting data almost instantly and could monitor the traffic very nicely. This has been the case all along. I’ve been using Google Analytics since May of 2006, and I knew there was a significant lag, so I couldn’t use it to monitor my live traffic — I could only tell what happened to my site afterwards.
As any web developer will tell you, the ability to monitor your site traffic live is a huge benefit. What’s even more important is the ability to get great customer service. FeedBurner provides that, and has done so from the start. When I email them, I know I’m going to get a reply from a real, live, person, not a bot, and not a canned reply. That’s really cool. That’s why, even though their Site Stats service is free, I opted to purchase their detailed feed stats, and pay a little every month for that. It’s much better to pay a little and get something worthwhile, than always go with free and get what you pay for.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking Google Analytics. It’s a great service. But Google’s getting bigger and bigger these days, and they’ve never made it very easy to get in touch with one of their “humans”. Just a few days ago, I had a question about my AdSense account, and needed to get in touch with a person, because I couldn’t find the answer in their documentation. I emailed them and got an auto reply back, which said I should reply back with certain further information if I wanted to reach a human. I did that, and I got what looked like a canned reply, so I’m not even sure if it was a human being, or another auto reply. Not fun, and my problem still didn’t get solved.
On the other hand, I know the FeedBurner folks. I met a few of them in person, and I know the others via email. They’re real, helpful people. So if I were to recommend a stats service to you, I’d say go with FeedBurner’s Site Stats. That is, unless you absolutely must monitor your AdWords conversion campaigns through Google Analytics. Or use both services, and do your own comparison. I think in the end you’ll be happier with FeedBurner, like I am.
Raoul Pop 