October 2007 Archives

You might argue that all spam is bad, and you'd be right. But some spam is worse than others.

I just got this one:

"Summer is coming. Time to tone up!"

Given that spamming is a career for failures, when you even fail at spam, it's time to just give up on life.

TES

Too many "V" words to keep track of...

In any case, here's an interesting case presented by TechDirt that Vonage was the true innovator, and Verizon essentially came late to the game and sued Verizon out of a bad case of sour grapes:

http://techdirt.com/articles/20071025/184419.shtml

TES

The Federal Trade Commission today announced its decision to keep the five-year-old federal do-not-call registry intact. When the Registry was created, the FTC had originally adopted a five-year re-registration mechanism before essentially "starting over," requiring people who had been on the list (now 145 million numbers) to re-register to ensure that the list is up to date.

The decision was made today to retain the list as is.

According to the FTC, "The Registry has been implemented successfully for five years and has included a scrubbing program that has removed disconnected and reassigned numbers each month. Finally, “[T]he Registry has enjoyed unprecedented popularity and helped enhance the privacy of the American public in a tangible way.”

You can read the full release here on the FTC's Web site: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/10/dnctestimony.shtm

TES

I recently needed my chimney cleaned. It had been a while, and I'm one of those people who forever worry about chimney fires. I'd never had it done in this house before, so I did a Google search for chimney sweeps in my town. I found five names. The first four calls, I got an amateurish-sounding message. "We're not here right now, please leave a message."

I realize that tradesmen like this are on the road during the day and generally don't employ full-time administrative help. But in these days of call forwarding, "find me, follow me" service, etc., why is it so hard to remain connected to prospective customers while on the road?

On the fifth call I made, the tradesman picked up the phone. We set a time and a price for my chimney cleaning. He got my business. All because he'd thought to have his calls forwarded to his cell phone.

TES

Spotted this on the feeds today, and it makes me wonder...are Led Zeppelin fans REALLY likely to download custom ring tones and wallpapers?

I had rather imagined that those who download stuff like that are more in the market for boy bands and pop music. Do Baby Boomers really go in for all the cell phone personalization business?

Maybe they do. I imagine Verizon wouldn't pursue it if they didn't think it was viable.

OK...I feel hopelessly un-hip now.

TES

There's an article on MSNBC today about airports turning to Disney for tips on customer service:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21225028/

It's worth the read. If you've ever been to a Disney park and you know a thing or two about customer service, you're likely to observe that nobody does it better than Disney. Crowd control and queue management have been turned into art forms by Disney, and the company also does very well with one-on-one customer service.

I once personally observed a customer service miracle at Disneyworld: my then three-year-old niece was eating a Mickey-shaped ice cream off a stick. It was a hot day, and as ice creams do in hot weather, the ice cream fell off the stick, dropping onto the pavement. My niece's eyes bulged. Her face turned red. But before she could get the mouth fully open to start yelling, a Disney employee was at her side offering a new ice cream. It was unwrapped and back in her mouth before she fully realized what had happened. The Disney employee then quickly cleaned up the fallen ice cream, eliminating evidence of its existence, and basically melted back into the shrubbery.

At the time, I was tempted to run after the employee and check to see if he had actually been human or was some sort of ultra-efficient courtesy robot Disney had quietly invented on the sly.

Disney takes a lot of knocks for a variety of reasons. But love them or hate them, one thing you must admit is that what they do, they do very, very well.

TES

Tired of sports-related clothes for boys and flowery, princess-themed clothes for girls? (Nothing like setting your kids up for marketing-approved stereotypes from the get-go.)

Try CleverCuties.com, a Web site devoted to parents who are proud to be geeks. (Geeks being the bringers of knowledge and all...who isn't proud to be a geek?)

The moment I spotted this, I knew I had to have it:



TES

It's nice to see a Nobel prize in Physics won by researchers in the computing industry:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21202515/

While I certainly love to (try and) read about quantum theory and really way-out stuff, it's good to see a Nobel in this category getting grabbed by some individuals with practical applications for their work.

TES

It's fall...time to think "Buyer's Guides." Every year, the December issue of Customer Interaction Solutions is our print Buyer's Guides. We know everyone wants to be in it. You know you do. It's time to create your basic listing so your company will appear both in print AND in the online versions. If you think you already have a basic listing, double-check it: anything older than July of this year will not be picked up...you need to update!

To create/edit your Buyer's Guide listing for any of TMC's publications, or to see about purchasing an enhanced listing, visit http://www.tmcnet.com/tmcnet/bg.htm.

TES

I normally don't even register the spam anymore, I just delete it in large blocks. But every once in a while, a headline makes it through my pre-coffee subconscious. (And let's face it, my subconscious is the only part working before coffee).

Yesterday, for some inexplicable reason, every other spam I received was something about yachts. Buy yachts, sell yachts, check out this yacht, do you want a yacht? Get this penny stock and you can afford a yacht. Do you want to buy Viagra so you can have sex on a yacht?

The first thing I spotted this morning was clearly a foreign spam. Why? Because the title was "Britney Spears has dead." Nothing like making sure you can speak English first before you try and spam the population of an English-speaking country.

But the best, by far, was titled simply: "Don't Get Mad, Get Valium!"

Says it all, really.

TES

I'm always amazed at how early Christmas decorations start showing up in retail stores. All I can say is, I'm glad for Halloween.

Why?

Halloween, being a huge merchandising opportunity (candy, costumes, decorations, plastic skulls made in China, cheap fog machines, compilation CDs of spooky music, fake plastic tombstones, etc.), does us a favor. It "holds back" the Christmas merchandising until, at the very least, November 1st. Most stores have only so much space for holiday promotions, and they certainly don't want to miss out on a lucrative holiday like Halloween, so it's not until November 1st that they rip their shelves clean of black and orange candy and plastic bats to make room for the jingling, holly-jolly, faux-snowy blinking merchandise bonanza of Christmas.

Without Halloween, we'd be subject to in-store Christmas decorations (and piped-in Muzak Christmas carols) starting shortly after shops moved the red, white and blue Fourth of July schmaltz off the shelves.

Online retailers, or stores with a strong online/catalog presence, however, have the luxury of being able to start earlier with their Christmas promotions, as they are not restrained by physical merchandising space. It just wouldn't feel like summer if I didn't receive an LL Bean Catalog with a happy family dragging home the snowy Christmas tree on the cover, or pages and pages of adorable golden retriever puppies snoozing by the fire on flannel tartan dog beds. These usually arrive in August. Pottery Barn has been sending me autumnal/winter promotions in my e-mail for weeks now. I admit it works. I take one look at the cover of their catalog, or their HTML e-mails, even if it's in June, and I suddenly want to light a fireplace fire, make a hearty stew, buy a bottle of good red wine and feel the chill of autumn. I pretend not to notice that the spring bulbs are still blooming and the neighbors are walking down to the beach in flip-flops and straw hats.

Of course, I catch my own summer bug in approximately February, which is when a flurry of e-mails remind me that it's almost summertime and I should be brewing the lemonade and slapping on SPF 15, nevermind the three feet of snow on the ground.

I realize that stores, both physical and online, have numbers to make, and no numbers are more important than those that coincide with the winter holidays.

It'd just be nice once to enjoy the last days of summer without being told that if we don't buy the limited edition Yuletide wassail bowl now, we'll be the outcasts of the neighborhood.

TES