iPhone, Blackberry, Android, or iPad?
The clickwheel and the digital compass are PDA features that make the biggest difference to me. The Blackberry's clickwheel interface means that you can operate all of it's functions using just one hand and most of them using only your thumb. As a platform for the clearly defined productivity applications that make up the core of their value proposition to business users, this simple and elegant design decision makes the Blackberry a standout. The one handed interface has the added benefit that you drop the device a lot less often because you have a another hand free to deal with all the other other exigencies that crop up when you are mobile. Apparently the RIM engineers also spent a lot of time making the Blackberry rugged, because I have dropped mine over twenty times and it has not only never broken, but hasn't even rebooted in response to the trauma. Your mileage may vary, but one drop meant sudden death for the iPhone. Read more
McPrinting at the Fedex Kinkos KFC Taco Bell
I was simply blown away by the self-service at FedexKinkosKFCTacoBell yesterday. I needed to print out a letter because my printer was on the fritz. I jumped onto Google Maps to find the nearest copy shop/office supply store. Of course, it being Sunday, and me being very close to Twin Peaks, everything was closed. Read more
Spring Auction St. Philip's School
The Spring Auction for St. Philip's School in Noe Valley, San Francisco was held at St. Mary's Cathedral in the Patron's Hall. The challenge of this event is that the hall is enormous measuring 135 ft. by 70 ft. and the expected audience of 300 would seem a bit dwarfed by the venue. The solution was to fill the space with massive tensile structures that both broke up the space and filled volume at the scal appropriate to the room. Read more
Green Chorizo
I had green chorizo with a poached egg from Soul Cocina for lunch. This is not your abuelo's chorizo. Made from Marin Sun Farms pork shoulder, chile, garlic, cilantro and (interestingly) cloves, this chorizo is less about pork parts dyed a bright shade of crimson than a pure sausage experience with all the subtlety and sumtuousness of a fine andouille. Read more
Craig's List Works Pretty Good
I don't know if it's a record, but It was only 14 hours between the time I posted my car for sale on Craiglist and the time I have a bill of sale and the cash in hand. Man, thast stuff works pretty good. It's not as if it was a firesale either, it was around the edmunds tmv price.
Verified Reviews - Big Diff?
Is there a big difference between "verfied reviews", meaning that the reviewed is guaranteed to have actually purchased the product and reviews which are unverfied? I compared reviews on the top 10 games on Amazon to see. I imagined the possibility that among the unverfied reviews would be a portion that were the work of paid or unpaid shills for the publisher. If this were the case then it would show up as a differential between the average star rating for the set of verified reviews vs. the unverfied. What I found was that is not the case generally. Except for IL-2, the verified reviews tracked or exceeded the average star rating of the unverified. In fact, in aggregate across all games, the difference beween the average star ratings of verfied and unverfied was about 1/100 of a star. This may not hold true for other categories, but seems to indicate that there isn't a lot of widespread shilling going on in the game reviews where a purchase can't be verfied. Read more
Does social media scale down?
I have made my career in online customer acquisition, loyalty and retention for large enterpises. Dealing with budgets of $1 million and mass communication channels with large audiences. In the last 2 years when OI have been working on social media analytics, the solutions have also been pretty universally targeted to the mass online channels and meaningful metrics seem to be only available with a critical mass of consumer comments. This experience has lead me to the central question: Do the tactics and methodologies for online marketing social media engagement and measurement scale down? Read more