70 Executions In 10 Days, Mexico Is Not A Violent Place…

Ignore the drug cartels and their wars. Mexico is not a violent place at all, and those Mexican tourism ads that paint a pretty picture are more like the real Mexico.

Unfortunately, the 70 gruesome executions over the past 10 days in Tijuana make lies out of the ads.

Mexico really can’t come up with a convincing slogan unless, perhaps, they try: “Come to Mexico. It’s not like the government has collapsed. Yet.”

Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness So Here Is A Glimpse Of Heaven

What red-blooded American male wouldn’t want to get his deification on among these beauties?

[Well, besides me, because there's only one woman on my mind, and she knows who she is...]

COED Magazine’s Bikini Car Wash Girls

Solar, Molten Salt, Steam And Algae: Alternative Fuel Tidbits

Solar energy used to heat molten salt which is used to produce steam which is used to produce electricity sounds like some hair-brained scheme, but it is not: it just received $140 million in second round venture funding. Also, Bill Gates is investing along with others in Sapphire Energy, which aims to replace petroleum with an algae based gasoline, diesel and jet fuel which is compatible with existing engines and technology and does not use a fermentation process.

In the realm of alternative energy some interesting stuff is turning up every month it seems. The big question is will any one or some small number of solutions gain enough traction by leaping ahead in viability to lead the way to an energy revolution? Or, will the market pull and tug investors and scientists in too many directions to make the significant change needed to forestall the sort of societal collapse sure to happen when petroleum supplies dwindle and run out?

I just happened across those while catching up on some articles over at Red Herring, and thought I would share. Molten salt. Hmmm…

FromSunlight.com Up For Auction On eBay

I’m curious to see how putting FromSunlight.com up for sale on eBay will do. There were well over 1000 views of the listing when the domain was on Sedo.com, so I want to compare how eBay will work.

Better, I am throwing in four other versions of the domain (.net, .org, .info, .biz) for free if the reserve price of the auction is met or a Buy It Now is used to purchase it. Not only is the reserve really low, but I lowered the overall price compared to the Sedo listing.

Interestingly enough, some people don’t want to go through Sedo for some reason. I am curious to see how the eBay experience will compare.

New MySpace Classifieds And The Sinking Social Ship

It appears MySpace’s lucky redirect recently, where they suggested a layoff was actually a shakeup aimed at bringing in new blood, apparently didn’t do the company much good. The new classified system that MySpace implemented will be detrimental to the social networking giant’s popularity I predict.

What used to make MySpace classifieds unique was the member-driven flavor, with relevant ads. Now, it’s like they tapped into some major job search and real estate search engines—and threw in a few singles/romance classifieds search engines for good measure and then pulled as many corporate ads as they could into the index on MySpace. What’s worse is the horrible Web 2.0 interface of the classified system.

Things resizing and reloading automatically interrupting the ad browsing experience just plain sucks. Worse is the annoying highlighting. Still worse yet—showing four goddamned ads per page just so you can create more ad views. I was browsing the musician wanted ads and there were 30 pages of results according to the information showing on the page. With only 4 ads per page. What the hell?

More gimmicks. Less substance. More irritation. Less intuitive. More irrelevant advertising. And most importantly, it does not look like there are any member classifieds at all. Oh there are some in there…but you have to really, really look and they are hard to find (there’s a little link that lets you select just member ads, but you might not even notice it). But it is no longer a classifieds for, of, and by the members. It’s now a commercial endeavor full of corporate spam that no one really gives a shit about.

You aren’t going to discover ads by members and become their friend browsing through real estate listings, especially when every other ad requires you to sign up for some site subscription just to view the friggin ad.

The social part of social networking just took a cannonball below decks…fired from poorly trained crew on the good ship MySpace. Poor executive decisions and poorer business planning are going to kill MySpace. What next? Will MySpace find a way to screw up the MySpace Groups next and make it the latest victim in a long string of snafu-ridden attempts to squeeze ad revenue out at the expense of what makes a social network site a social network site in the first place?

What did they do over there? Replace the employees they let go with a bunch of high school kids, or 80 year old ad execs? Either way, there’s another hole in the hull, and MySpace is taking on water.

I wonder if Tom can swim?

It’s like that what-if scenario with Shakespeare and monkeys with typewriters. What would happen if you let 10,000 monkeys run your classified ad system for you? Eventually, even Shakespeare would delete you from his friends list—and the monkeys throwing shit at your customers would run them off.

You know what I mean?

CNN Good For A Laugh

I give CNN credit for at least publishing the articles, but I found it funny to see the sort of scenario you find occasionally due to advertising revenue models. One recent article about gas prices and ways to confront the issue featured advertisements with Father’s Day gifts…with a photo of a green Lamborghini that your dad could zip around in for a bit—for the low price of $1495.

Wow…what not a great way to beat the expense of high dollar gas—blowing $1495 for a few hours of driving a car. Not that I don’t appreciate muscle cars, hot rods, racing, dragsters, etc., as I totally do. But what a perfect example of how to drop the ball with demographics. CNN could use some help in their marketing department it seems.

The article was interesting, though. Another article I found of interest was: Oklahoma’s painful car culture.

Oh, and you might as well check out: Is America’s suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare?

Maybe it’s only funny to someone with a marketing background? Oh well, it’s late and I’m bored…

OpenSuse 11.0 Just Around The Corner

Okay, if you have read any of my posts on open source, you know that I have taken issue with Suse and Novell for their Microsoft deal. However, I am curious to check out the upcoming release: OpenSuse 11.0 should be out Thursday, June 19th.

Why?

Well, while I don’t like that Novell caved in to Microsoft and bought into their fear-mongering tactics, I can appreciate the direction of the OpenSource distro and the progress it has made. One thing I can say from first-hand experience is that Suse will install more smoothly on more systems and has the polished look and feel that makes it a prime candidate for luring corporate/office users away from Microsoft’s ailing platform.

So, I’m going to take a hard look at OpenSuse 11.0, put it through its paces as I consider what distro I should recommend to folks. This is, of course, an ongoing issue/challenge when it comes to Linux as I look for a good SOHO distro that also has the potential to step up and handle the duty at the SMB and Enterprise levels…all while staying user friendly and easy to use.

And, since I am going to take another look at OpenSuse, I might as well give XandrOS another look (I had written it off as well since it climbed in bed with Micrsoft also). Then again, maybe not. I understand the need of businesses to work with integrated networks and can appreciate the difficulties and justifications of cost and ROI when facing the prospect of phasing out legacy systems…but some of the XandrOS licensing and pricing schemes/tiers are starting to look an awful lot like those that come out of Redmond’s greedy resident.

Others I’m about to test include Mandriva Spring 2008, Zenwalk Linux 5.0, Simply Mepis 7.0, Freespire 2.0.8 and the latest Fedora release (which I have put off trying out for some time because of lingering memories of how the Fedora project was being run).

I have run across a lot of fun distros, a lot of slick distros, and some really dismal ones as well over the past few years. A lot of distros have great potential, but there seems to be a common underlying theme of poor project management, lack of focused direction, and ego clashes…with far too little marketing and business sense in the mix. Just when you feel like one distro might make a nice home on the digital range…something comes along to spoil the idyllic moment.

It is my great frustration that I’m not a programmer or I would have started my own distro by now. In the meantime, it gives me something to do on slow days when caffeine levels are climbing, this constant installing and kicking around under the log-on prompt.

FromSunlight.com Up For Sale

Available through Sedo.com, you can check it out here: http://www.fromsunlight.com/

It’s a brand protected domain with four other extensions available (.net, .org, .info, .biz) for a total of five domain variations. A great generic domain name that’s easy to spell and remember and can be put to a wide variety of uses. It is about to be a featured listing on Sedo’s USA and UK sites.

You Might Think NAS Devices Were Endangered

Part of the reason I haven’t been posting as much as I would like the past week and a half is work related. Murphy reared his head with a vengeance, and let me tell you, it hasn’t been pretty.

It was supposed to be a rather routine data transfer, from an old, failing NAS to a new one. For the most part it was routine. But then problems developed, requiring calling the programmer and troubleshooting the software. We determined the applications were working fine…but data was corrupting, and the likely culprit was dropped packets somewhere.

Replacing some cabling seemed to take care of the issue and a third attempt had the network and apps up and running. And then a storm came through that took out the power, just ever so briefly. Well, guess what device was not working? The UPS. Guess what new piece of hardware got fried? The new NAS! Murphy was in the house…

So, we ordered a replacement. Same model. Company assures us they have one, the LAST one in fact and so we order it, overnight shipping…they even seem surprised we want to pay the incredibly high cost. The next morning we have an email stating the box was mislabeled and they don’t have one and don’t know when they’ll get one. Murphy is doing pirouettes on a razor’s edge, he’s in such fine form.

Calling nearly every computer and IT store Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas to be told that NO ONE has a NAS in stock takes 6 hours. Finally one is located. So, off goes someone on a trip to Richardson, TX to pick it up in person. They will be back late and I will be working late tonight.

Who would have thought it was so hard to find Network Attached Storage? I mean, it was insane. I called manufacturers who could not tell me what dealers might have their products in stock. Being in a remote location far from Silicon Valley, the only other option (and it was probably further down the list of options than reconfiguring the entire network was) would have been to buy a PC somewhere and set it up as a server.

I was even thinking up contingency plans for a FreeNAS box.

The company that screwed up our order (TigerDirect.com) has never failed me in 8 years, but when I needed that reliability most they didn’t just drop the ball, they turned around and ran it into Murphy’s endzone for him.

What ever happened to customer service? What ever happened to a company saying, “We know this was a critical item, we dropped the ball, we’re sorry. Let me tell you what we’ll do. We’ll upgrade you to the next model which we DO have in stock at no charge and we’ll overnight it to you.”

I’ll tell you what happened. No one understands customer service in America. No one understands taking care of a client that buys regularly from you. This particular client has been considering moving away from Dell and ordering hardware in bulk to build their own systems. I had been pushing the company that never failed me before. Now, the guy who makes the decisions is having to drive out of state and employees will have to work late and tensions are high…and this computer company’s very name brings twinges of pain to everyone’s face.

All because someone can’t work an inventory system. All because someone mislabeled a box. All because someone is too lazy to have someone in a warehouse physically locate and confirm the presence of a product in order to make a guaranteed sale (the client had on the same order bought a new UPS…and just days before, the NAS that was fried.). Now, over that tiny mistake, they stand to lose all the future business that they had pretty much locked up.

Who would have thought locating a NAS was so hard? If the network were actually set up the way it needed to be, I could have resorted to an attached USB drive. However, the setup is so site specific and would require basically rebuilding the network (and uninstalling/reinstalling software on all the workstations needing to run the apps as well as transferring data)…and then we would need to change the network back when a NAS did come in. All of which would double the costs on what is already spiraled higher than it should have.

Sometimes, you need to spend money on your network and not wait until it is failing to be willing to do so. It’s that simple. Oh, and redundancy is your friend.

Any SMB ought to—in my humble opinion—have a spare of every critical component—even if you don’t have any in-house IT staff. Any competent tech or otherwise geeky sort can probably do what needs to be done if they have the right hardware that is known to work with your particular network setup or workstations. Discovering you can’t find something when time is critical is not fun.

And customer service? What the hell is that?

Perhaps my expectations are too high in that area since I majored in eBusiness and look at things from a marketing perspective? Some phone-jockey and some person working in a warehouse with no concern for their company’s bottom line cost MY CLIENT more money and probably just cost THEIR EMPLOYER a lot of prospective business.

The good news? MicroCenter gets a tip of the hat and if I or any future clients need some hard to find item, their phone will be ringing.

Now, that SOB Murphy. Just let me get my hands on him… I’ll show him how wrong things can go—even for him—I swear.

Wait a minute. What if…?!?!? What if it’s Baron Greenback and he’s got The Bad Luck Eye of the Little Yellow God?

Danger Mouse and The Bad Luck Eye of the Little Yellow God - Part 1

Danger Mouse and The Bad Luck Eye of the Little Yellow God - Part 2

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Update - 06/02/2008: The cost of dropping the ball is already mounting. That’s how quickly it goes. TigerDirect did not get the several hundreds of dollars spent today by my client. It only takes one screwup to lose a customer, and when there are a lot of companies online readily available and eager for new business, you can’t afford to be so careless. I’m sure TigerDirect could care less, but I never understand why so many companies are happy to throw money away. I also wonder whatever happened to the most basic customer service/sales training that tells those answering the phones that most of your business comes from repeat customers and how important they are?

Update - 2: I managed to get the replacement NAS in place, up and running. But it has problems with the managment interface. Can you believe it? I ordered another one (same as the one that was inadverdently fried in the power outage rather than whatever was handy), directly from Visionman. After several days, they let us know they were behind with some parts and so we wouldn’t be able to get the model we had ordered for some time. You know what the company did? They upgraded my client’s order to the next model higher up the line (which makes use of 4 drives instead of two) at no charge. Now there’s a company who knows how to do business. I completely am happy to suggest Visionman as a company worth doing business with. I love their Storango NAS management interface on the Smart NAS series of appliances, too. It’s easy to set up, use, and really versatile—and really polished!

Yahoo! Has Opportunities And Something Other Brands Only Wish They Had

Pundits have been decrying Yahoo! for fighting off Microsoft’s takeover bid. Now, Carl Icahn, the self-righteous “I know what’s best for the Internet and investors” guy is trying his own version. I say hats off to Yahoo! for doing what is best for the end user of their product and stockholders.

While short-term stock holders might be unhappy, long-term stockholders will benefit. How? Yahoo! has earned itself the kind of credibility in some circles that no PR firm can generate for you. All they have to do now is find the right angle to work it. What exactly am I talking about? Let me explain…

Microsoft has been dropping the ball lately with several products. Not the least of which is Vista. How many times have you seen an operating system hit the market where customers ended up looking for downgrade licenses?

My point exactly…

Semi Nude Moms From Spain Need Your Help

If you haven’t heard about the group of women from the small Spanish village of Serradilla del Arroyo in the northern province of Salamanca, Spain, who posed semi-nude for a calendar in order to raise money for their tiny rural school and its children, you have now. They ran into financial trouble after not selling many of the calendars and found themselves in debt.

Not knowing much about marketing or publishing, they missed the Christmas rush (extremely important in Calendar marketing it seems) and were left with about 5,000 unsold calendars. The printer has pressed the issue of their being behind on payments and media attention has put the spotlight on their efforts.

Their tiny village of around 400 has one teacher for its one room elementary school spanning four grade levels. The mothers decided to try and do something that would raise money for their children to have a recreation center. I certainly have to give them credit for trying. However, it wasn’t as easy as it was for the British women who did so—and whose story inspired these Spanish ladies. These concerned moms owe $16,000 to the printer.

You can help out by purchasing one of the calendars. Better yet, buy one for yourself and as many of your friends as you can. How often do you get to honestly say you bought a semi-nude calendar to help out children in a remote Spanish village?

Calendars can be purchased here: La Casa de Medico (Calendar is towards the bottom of the home page, Calendarios Madres de Serradilla)

An Online Auction Strategy For A High Dollar Payoff

You have an item you want to put up for auction with hopes for a big payoff, and the moment comes to make some choices about your pricing strategy. How do you price not only to sell, but to sell big?

Some items are obviously more suitable for a big payoff than others. Often, this is because they are unique items or standouts in a particular niche market. Examples might be a rare musical instrument, a highly modified (or meticulously restored) muscle car, a hand built wooden sailboat…or a cornflake that looks like a state.

What is your pricing strategy? I’m asking you to chime in with a comment and share your thoughts on how you would go about pricing your item for sale.

You Online Auction And Pricing Strategy

We will use our example of a unique item for sale. It doesn’t really matter what it is we’re selling–it could be anything. However, since some people like visuals and something tangible to picture in their mind, we will say it is a muscle car. Not just any muscle car however. Here’s what we know about it.

It is in really good condition and just from the physical quality of the engine, performance carb, nice transmission, tires, etc, you know that if you were to part it out it would fetch a solid $10,000. However, due to its age and the great paint job and attention to details, it is more common to see similar ones go for $20,000. You could enter this baby in some shows.

However… Let’s say this car has something intangible attached to it. It was driven by someone famous, has a significant role in history (set records on the drag strip?) or was in a movie (not necessarily a blockbuster…we’re not talking Bond’s Lotus or the Batmobile here) for example. You have a feeling that with the right buyer, this car could fetch $40,000-$100,000.

So…how do you price it?

Prices To Consider

• Absolute minimum you will take.
• Starting bid price.
• Reserve price.
• Buy it now price.

We will assume that since we can part it out for $10,000 that we do not want to sell for less than that. Now, share your strategy for what you think will get you the biggest payoff!

What would I do? Hmmm…

Starting bid at $10,000…reserve at $17,000…and buy it now at $35,000? My own thinking is start the bidding low where it looks like a steal, but set the reserve about 15% under what we think it would do typically…and then encourage the chance of making more by pricing the buy it now so that it is under what its niche value might be, but not so far from the reserve that it doesn’t discourage–all the while suggesting a belief that it is unique and that it is worth a solid $35,000 which is more than similar conditioned models without its unique feature? Let its unique feature drive the market above that 75% markup from standard market value ($20,000) that your buy it now suggests…if it is truly meant to go there at all?

I don’t know, really. Which is why I want to know what YOU think!

Tell Me This Horrible New WordPress Dashboard Is A Joke!?!?!?

What the hell?!?!?! If this is the new WordPress Dashboard and it’s going to be forced on all users, I’m jumping ship. This has to be the most awkward, ugliest, all-around most horrible user interface I have seen. Aside from Typo3…

Seriously…everything is garbled about, the color scheme is bland, and where everything was previously nicely separated and a bit intuitive…this looks like someone threw up inside my monitor.

I hope this is just some joke. Someone tell me that the WordPress team hasn’t handed off the design to some high school kid who is colorblind…

It’s been a long time since I have felt so…claustrophobic using an interface. Anyone else think this is like taking three steps backwards? The whole Web 2.0 interface with pop-up windows to upload images (windows I cannot reposition and which have f@%&!ng scroll bars in them…) just sucks!

The Categories panel for marking your posts is incredibly wide and mouse movements that were previously a couple inches now feel like crossing the state on an overnight trip. There’s not enough space on the left-hand side of the interface and far too much on the right. Options have become obfuscated, the entire interface confusing.

This will be my last blog post until they restore the old interface or come up with something better. In the mean-time, I’m going to investigate other blogging platforms. I am in the process of launching some commercial sites with WordPress being used as a CMS. If this is the direction of the software however (backwards rather than forward), I must reconsider and find another solution. This simply won’t do.

[Note: Normally, I'm appreciative of Open Source efforts and have always been of WordPress. But to force this on users and not offer any choice or option...that's decidedly like some Microsoft practice, and I thought WordPress stood for the exact opposite of what this new Dashboard represents.]

Fillmore Fuels Creates New Biodiesel Auction Site

Just a short post to suggest an interesting article I happened across on Red Herring about Fillmore Fuels and their new online auction site for biodiesel and related products. According to the article by Justin Moresco, Fillmore Fuels is hoping to create “a sort of eBay for the growing market around the renewable fuel.”

The company is hoping to build a community experience around the biodiesel industry and has some new forums that have just gone live. If you’re interested in helping the adoption of renewable fuels along I hope you will read the article on Red Herring and then visit the Fillmore Fuels website at: http://www.fillmorefuels.com/

[Note: The link to the company's site was miswritten in the HTML code in the article, so I have included it here. I sent a note to Red Herring about the link issue and am sure they will correct it soon.]

While I’m at it, there’s a great interview video on Red Herring with ZeaChem’s CEO, Jim Imbler, about their process for turning woodchips into ethanol.

[Note: I wish WordPress had better support for embedding videos from other sources besides YouTube, as I had tried to include the video here. Sorry.]

I’m interested in learning more about it since getting an inside glimpse into ethanol production. My hometown is putting in what will become the first ethanol plant owned and operated by a municipal government in the state of Oklahoma. I’ve been to the plant and had a look inside and it is fascinating to hear how the process has gone. The City has no real template for the whole process since no other municipal governments have done this, but things are coming together. There is already another ethanol plant here (not bad for a place with a small population) commercially operated, and the two plants will certainly put the place on the renewable energy map.

It is exciting to see rural economic areas embracing technology and creating renewable energy initiatives. The expected revenue from the plant will do wonders for the community. A lot of people have their eye on the project—people in important places (it might surprise you, just who). Anyway, enjoy the articles!