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I bought a computer for the girls over the holiday.  I was going to buy two, one for my buddy Gerhard’s kids, but he argued that it would be better to wait until Vista was shipping on the boxes.  Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking…

I’ve jumped through the hoops emailing scans of my bills of sales to ModusLink (one of the few remaining children of dotBomb CMGI) who is handling the fullfillment on behalf of Gateway/eMachines.  The process utterly bogged down with Moduslink requesting the same information I’d sent again and again.  Finally on Feb. 7, they said I was all set.  They even provided a nice link where I could check the status of the order. 

The problem is that link has never changed, and I haven’t gotten my disks.  The tool they are using for tracking is utterly pathetic, not providing anticipated ship dates or anything.  What I do recall is that Best Buy had promised the disks would arrive prior to March 1, without fail.  It’s now Feb. 28 and there’s absolutely no chance they’ll arrive today.  (more…)

Sorry for the lack of posts – I’ve got a tear in one of my knee ligaments (medial collateral) and I’m going through physical therapy, which has severely eaten into my writing time. There will be more posts coming shortly. 

My latest article is up at ExpertBusinessSource.com – this is a good one for the contractors (or anyone in a project related business – “Tips for Building a Web-based Project Portfolio.”  

You may use think of your website as an initial point of marketing contact, used to attract new prospects and let them know how to reach you. But you can also use the Web to seal the deal with customers by giving them a rich, online photo gallery that demonstrates the range and quality of your work. With the right photos and descriptions of your best jobs, your work can literally speak for itself.

Couldn’t find the Julius Hemphill Judah suggested last week – so here’s Nick Cave and the Bad Seed doing Stagger Lee, as suggested by Val.   Sorry for the lack of posts, been out of office and also fighting off some of that flu that’s going around.

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From Rome – “School Work” – back in the day…I was actually looking for James Blood Ulmer, and didn’t find any…this may be a little “out there” for most of you…

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For all the promise of search, and all the billions of net worth the industry has created, I will say this: functionally, search has not improved dramatically since the days of AltaVista.  It’s not that we aren’t able to search more stuff, we are.  It’s not that they haven’t become more clever at how they sort and prioritize the initial results, they have.  And it’s most certainly not a problem that limited to Google, or MSN Live Search, or Yahoo.  The problem is usability – the ability to narrow the results you’ve already got is neither easy or intuitive.  It’s the same as it’s ever been – fine tune your results manually in the search text box, as though you’re manipulating a command line.

What that means to the user is that 95% or more of the people that use search are limited to the words they enter in the text box for the search, and those folks will rarely if ever dig deeper into the results than the first page.  When you’re talking about words that have multilple and diverse meanings, the chance is, they will not get pertinent results.

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Pimped Out John: Roto-Rooter’s Fresh Idea

Maureen Rogers’ has a great post over at OpinionatedMarketers.com about Roto-Rooter’s new marketing campaign based off the “Pimp My Ride” reality theme. 

the Pimped Out John contest has it’s grand prize, a fitted out toilet that electronic junkies in particular will flip their lid for.

Among the fixtures:

• Xbox
• DVD player
• Laptop computer (“with fully articulated robot arm”)
• iPod (with stereo docking station equipped with toilet paper dispenser)
• Tivo recorder
• Bike pedal exerciser

For toilet traditionalists, there’s a magazine rack (plus subscriptions to Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and GQ – the latter of which seems like quite a peculiar choice).

Apparently it also comes with an emergency button that calls Roto-Rooter.  But therein is the rub…

You see, I am utterly sick of low flow toilets that don’t work.  I don’t want my ipod to play me nice tunes while I plunge the crapper after every single use.  I want the #$%ed thing to work, first time and every time. 

The low flow toilet was designed to save water, and it’s frankly an abject failure.  Some work, most don’t.  They’re supposed to use something like 50% of the water of one of the old style, but the problem is they often take 4 flushes to do their job.  Hence they’ve used 50% *more* water.  A @$%@ing design nightmare.

For the record, none of that is Roto-Rooter’s problem.  And yes, I have already plunged the darned thing this am, before reading or writing about this little campaign. 

You can join the Roto-Rooter sweepstakes here.  Although when I tried, the form failed and I got a 500 error when I submit my entry…

My next article is up at ExpertBusinessSource.com – this one’s a quick study on how localizing search optimization can bring people in the door at a Retail Shop, featuring OverTheTopChocolate.com.

When I mention the importance of “search engine optimization” to retail shop owners looking to spruce up their websites, the response is almost always, “I don’t need SEO – I’m only interested in local customers.” This attitude is not surprising, but it’s dead wrong.A localized search strategy can help business owners tap into a new source of walk-in traffic for their retail stores.

Sheepwalking

One of the better wake up calls I’ve seen in a long time.  Read it at Seth’s blog…then think about those around you.  Do you hear the sound of grass being nibbled?  Is there a faint sound of bleating eminating from the other cubes?

I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job and enough fear to keep them in line.

You’ve probably encountered someone who is sheepwalking.

Resolve with me now not to play the sheep today – stretch your arms and embrace your inner wolf.  Make things happen and stop accepting the status quo…

Seth notes that he may be too harsh – I can tell you he’s, if anything, not harsh enough.  I’m tired of seeing people who (as I’m known to characterize them) are simply waiting to die.  Make a mark…

Wrong Number,  E.T.

Alan Mutter’s got it exactly right – the NAA (Newspaper Association of America) is about to launch an ad campaign that confirms all the worst stereotypes of what’s wrong with newspapers.  I could spend the next ten minutes writing up my version of what he’s got to say, and I wouldn’t say it nearly as eloquently or as succinctly as he has – go read it there, and don’t miss the excellent accompanying graphic of the NAA ad, vs. what should have been the ad.

The NAA and its agency got this ad wrong, because they have fallen into the trap of trying to defend against the perceived deficiencies of their product, instead of crafting a positive message about its strengths.

We all know what’s wrong with newspapers. Print is static in an age of streaming video. The news arrives later in print than via broadcast, the Internet or mobile devices. Print puts editors, instead of the consumer, in charge of what’s covered.