Categories
Money

E-Commerce Sites – How to Lose a Customer in 5 Days

Today, five days after placing an order on Buy.com, I got this email:

Hello Marcus,

Thank you for shopping at Buy.com.

At Buy.com we strive to provide the widest assortment of high-quality products at the lowest prices on earth. However, sometimes circumstances beyond our control affect our selection.

We were recently informed that the item listed below from order #55555 is no longer available from that supplier. Please accept our sincere apologies for this inconvenience.

Your order for this product has been automatically cancelled and you will not be charged.

….

Sincerely,
Customer Support Team

I can see getting an email a day after I placed the order, or maybe even two, but a week later? Sorry, I’ll go elsewhere to avoid waiting a week for something then, about the time it’s supposed to arrive at my house, find out it’s been cancelled.

Categories
Software

New Features In Firefox 1.0

Until Maqx.com starts to get a little more noticed, I’ll cross link some articles here. This article goes over some of the features you can expect to see in the yet-to-be released Mozilla Firefox 1.0.

Categories
Software

Which OS Are You?

os_x.jpg

I like operating systems, but I never thought I would BE one. According to bbspot I’m OS X. Nice… I’ve known was destined to use a Mac since OS X was released.

I found the link on PocketPC Thoughts, my favorite PocketPC site. If you’re interested in Operating systems (or if you take the test and get labeled as an OS you’re unfamiliar with), check out OSNews (I’ve been published there several times). It’s a good blog for all things operating systems.

Categories
Software

Transfer Email from Outlook to Entourage

entourage.jpg
Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, did not use a the same file format for email between Outlook and Entourage (their Mac version of Outlook). The solution I’m using to get mail from Outlook to Entourage is to first upload the mail to an IMAP mail server in Outlook, then download it again in Entourage. Nothing is lost–attachments, formatting, everything is retained. I’m going from Outlook to Entourage, but I’d guess the process is the same both ways.

If you’re like me, you probably don’t have an IMAP server sitting in your closet. Luckily, there are alternatives. I found St. Georges International Email Service. They offer 3gb (yes, gigabytes) of free IMAP email. No ads, no crazy sign up process, nothing. How they do it, I have no idea, but I’m using it to transfer mail and it’s working fine.

Categories
etc.

Back to Business – New and Improved

My weblog sabbatical is over. In the past few weeks I’ve done the following:

  • Started work on Maqx Software Awards which is still very much in development both conceptually and technically. I didn’t plan on linking to it yet, but it looks like it’s going to take awhile before it’s perfect. In the meantime, I figured there’s no harm in opening it now.
  • Started work on Queenthings–my wife Jenny’s weblog. Again, this one still has quite a way to go as far as design but she’s already writing on it and it’s some good stuff.
  • apple_powermac_g5.jpg
    Switched. Yes, I got a Mac. It is good. The difference in speed between my 1.6ghz G5 at work and the Dual 2 at home is incredible. The price wasn’t bad either. I did my homework, compared everything available and for the speed and quality, nothing in the PC world came close. I got mine refurbished so it was less expensive than the ones on their site now, and I’m feeling good about the whole thing.

    If you keep reading this site and Maqx.com there will definitely be more on the software I’m using and specifics on why I’m pleased with the switch.

Other stuff has happened as well, more to come. Many more good things to come.

Categories
Design

CSS Woes

I’ve designed web pages for several years now. I’ve used cascading stylesheets to some extent with every site I’ve created, principally for text formatting. Over the past two weeks I’ve been working on a couple WordPress weblogs. By default WordPress comes with a file called index.php with div tags and styles already inserted. I’m trying, for the first time, to use only css to format the layout of the site and I have to admit, it’s driving me crazy!

Tables seem so much more intuitive to me. I guess it’s because I learned that way and change is hard, but give me a break… why is it so hard just to have all the content centered in the browser with css?

If anyone has a suggestion of a good book that will get me up to par without necessarily starting from the dead beginning of what CSS and HTML are, I’d appreciate it. I’m going to try to stick with this and get on the css bandwagon (late albeit) and do things right from now on.

Categories
Entertainment

Electric Skateboard By eXskate

It’s been awhile since I’ve felt the wind in my hair. Since moving to the flattest place on earth (Newport News, VA) I haven’t been much of a longboarder. Last night all that changed. Read about my experience on an electric skateboard on Silverfish Longboarding.

Oh… the lack of posts on this site is because I’m working on another weblog that will be bigger, better, faster more. Actually two of them. As they say, ‘coming soon.’

Categories
Money

The Google Ad Experiment

Maybe I’m a little late to jump on this ship but I’ve never had ads on any of my sites. Finally (with server expenses being what they are) I decided to try Google ads. I put them on Silverfish Longboarding, a site I created a few years back that now gets about half a million page views a month.

As much as I’d like to make a little cash off it, I’m also curious as to how people react to them and how much the bother me after they’ve been there for awhile. I’m also really curious to see if anyone actually clicks them. Personally in my entire Internet career I’ve probably clicked fewer than 20 ads. Updates to come.

Categories
Software

Unsanity WindowShade X 3.1 Frustrations

Despite the title of this article, I love WindowShade X. It’s software for Mac OS X that brings back the functionality of rolling up windows to just the title bar that OS 9 had. Not only does it do that, but it also lets you shrink windows down to small boxes you can place anywhere on your screen.

What frustrates me is that when WindowShade X is running, windows get “stuck” behind other windows. I happens sometimes with pretty much every program I use, but it seems like Firefox and Dreamweaver are the biggest culprits. Even newly created windows will sometimes appear behind existing windows and they’re impossible to get at unless you minimize the windows in front of them. It’s frustrating.

Even more frustrating is that I emailed them a few months ago and they replied saying they’re aware of the problem but have still done nothing as fix it. It’s not so much that I’m frustrated at them, but more at the fact that a program that has almost eliminated my need for the dock (and that I paid for) is almost unusable because of this pretty major bug. I hope they work it out soon, or that someone comes up with some competition. The concept is excellent and overall, so is the implementation.

For Windows, Winroll does a great job of Window Shading.

Categories
etc.

Effective Management – Four Simple Rules

Work has been interesting lately. If I ever become a manager, I hope I remember the following things:

1. Don?t mention changes to employees unless you have a firm plan, and more importantly, a date for implementing them. No matter what the plans may be.

2. Talk to your employees. Especially if they have shown a desire or hinted at wanting to talk to you.

3. Offer incentives and a clear, reasonable path for advancement. Don?t always make your employees come to you for rewards; go to them.

4. Know your stuff. You don?t have to know how to do their job, but you do have to be able to tell the difference between an excellent, good, mediocre and poor job (and about how long it should take to do it).

That?s it. Managing 101 from a firsthand perspective. Speaking of managing…it?s time for me to go get managed.