Fri 4 Jul 2008
Looking for a really unusual vacation idea? Going to Wales? Check out this really cool vacation rental in a Medieval Manor.
Nothing like sleeping in an 800 year old manor house in Caldicot to remind you that America is a new country. This is a great find if you are thinking of going to the Ryder Cup in 2010, because apparently all the hotels within 100 miles are sold out already.
Mon 12 May 2008
This should show the polldaddy widget
Thu 13 Mar 2008
If you are too social for words, you might consider this nifty widget from People Search Engine Wink.com. What’s cool is that if you take a few minutes to consolidate your identities, you can use this widget and it links to all of your profiles from a single location.
Thu 20 Dec 2007
We all recognize a bad neighborhood when we are walking or driving. Trash and broken glass lay scattered on dirty, cracked concrete. Billboards adorn the buildings on every corner, presiding over liquor store & payday lender. Pan handlers, can collectors, scam artists, drug dealers and prostitutes lurk by the bus stops and most of us lock our doors while we try to find a safer neighborhood. Urban blight inevitable leads to plummeting property values and anyone who can afford to do so quickly flees in search of a better neighborhood.
Websites and virtual communities suffer from the digital equivalent. Spam, Sock Puppets, Bot Attack, Slogs and Advertorial mix with aggressive affiliate programs, ads for debt consolidation, pay day lenders, porn, casino’s and pharmaceuticals without a prescription – everything you encounter online that makes the web feel like a bad neighborhood have been given a name along with an interesting new site that wants to create a discussion about how to combat it- Virtual Blight .
Like it’s real world counterpart, blight left unchecked it will chase away the inhabitants of a community and destroy the value of the site and the brand.
Mon 17 Sep 2007
The Utility Computing revolution apparently arrived in the form of AppLogic from 3tera.
Modern applications are complex systems comprised of the application software, web servers and databases, operating systems and drivers, numerous servers, storage for application data, switches, firewall, and the networks that connect it all. Deploying and operating these systems requires significant expertise and scaling complex systems is a not-trivial problem. Applogic is trying to address these issues:
Applogic starts with grid operating system that puts together standard servers to creates a single supercomputer. A grid can be built from commodity servers and may contain anywhere from 1 to 5,000 machines (so far, they claim they don’t know the effective upper limit).
3tera recently completed Grid Computing Benchmark Test along with dedicated server hosting provider Layered Technologies. The benchmark measurements show that Applogic really delivers performance.
An overall performance benchmark of 42,540 was achieved with the UnixBench WHT utility while consuming 443 CPUs. Based on the single CPU server result for the same benchmark of approximately 100, this implies that users can harness the equivalent of 420 single CPU dedicated servers through the utility computing service. This is no way represents the maximum performance of the system. During the benchmark we did not reach any fundamental architectural limit of the system, but ran out of hardware resources to add to the test.
Applogic makes very clever use of software virtualization, a process that can make almost any piece of Linux software or infrastructure hardware (Switches, Firewalls, Storage Arrays) and replicate them as a virtual appliance. A visual mapping tool allows the user to model complex IT application systems and transform them virtualized infrastructure — completely self-contained solutions that be propagated from one datacenter to another or seamlessly scale from a fraction of a server thousands of servers without reconfiguration.
We have yet to measure this Grid solution under real world tests, but the technology seems very promising
Sun 1 Jul 2007
Happy Bat Mitzvah day to Hana Jael.
Sun 1 Apr 2007
April 1st, 2007:
Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) will announce on Monday that it has reached an agreement to acquire Digg, Inc. for an undisclosed sum.
The deal has been in the works for several weeks, according to Microsoft spokesman Mario Nette, who noted that, “Digg is a pioneer in crowd sourcing, the Web 2.0 way of discovering what is important to a new generation of technology-friendly consumers. The Digg community is our natural consumer base and this acquisition is a great opportunity to connect with them. We know Digg users are passionate about Microsoft products and we are anxious to engage them through this new channel.”
Stories posted on Digg are submitted by community members, who currently number over 1 million accounts. After a user submits a story, other members read the submission and “Digg” what they like best. If a story receives enough votes, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of visitors to see.
The acquisition of Digg is a significant advance in Microsoft’s promise to improve Live Search as well as an important an important step towards developing social media platforms.
“This deal is not about buying our way into the hearts of a million Digg members; it brings together two important players in the battle to improve the relevance of online content,” said Pierre Calzino, Director of User Feedback at Live Search. “Web users waste too much time searching for what’s important. Microsoft has been involved with this problem for years and Digg has clearly become a factor to be reckoned with.”
“The natural synergies between the two companies are really exciting. Digg has created a user validation model for determining the significance of online content - a system that is almost impossible to manipulate. Combining Digg’s crowd-sourcing methodology and validation infrastructure with Live Search’s leading technology will allow us to remove the last vestiges of SPAM from our search results.”
“Improving Live Search is just the beginning,” Calzino continued, “We see enormous opportunities for electronic voting. Digg’s online voting platform inspires confidence. Add Microsoft’s track record for building secure systems and you can envision the voting system of the 21st Century. No one will have to wonder if the vote could be hacked or stolen. This deal represents the future platform of our Democracy.”
Digg founder Kevin Rose could not be reached for comment, but according to spokesman Morceau De Bouche, he was delighted with the deal. “Microsoft has an enormous tradition of excellence in engineering and we are all excited about the prospect of learning from them. They have set the standards for technology innovation very high and we know we will benefit from their ability to develop innovative applications on-time and on-budget.”
The acquisition of Digg technologies and brand will help Microsoft maximize shareholder value. “We’ve had our eye on Digg for some time,” said Lavage Green, Environmental Communications Director for Spuhn Associates, “Kevin and his team have created a compelling success story by providing a forum for discussing important social issues such as climate change, the impact of globalization and the Xbox versus the Wii without ever doing anything about it. They have effectively created a committee of millions; everyone can agonize over the problem and feel good about being globally aware without being inconvenienced by committing to any quantifiable action. This shows the depth of thinking and skill they will bring to Microsoft. The addition of Digg’s street credibility and perceived expertise to their existing talent will provide the ability to continue not addressing fundamental global issues for another decade - without fear of repercussions.”
Financial terms of the deal have not yet been released, but company sources indicate that the purchase price is somewhere between .1% and .01% of the total market capitalization for Microsoft as of 5/1/2007.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Tue 27 Feb 2007
Buying a new car is rarely a pleasant experience.
Most of us would rather get a root canal than walk into a showroom.
So, what does a dealer do when you catch the salesman red-handed in a bald-faced lie?
Apologize? Show Contrition? Pretend to care?
Berkeley Toyota simply refused to sell my wife a car.
What does this have to do with measurement? Call it the Stein Uncertainty Principle: what you choose to measure changes behavior with unintended consequences.
Toyota has a great reputation for customer satisfaction. They methodically follow up with every customer and have built much of their compensation for salesmen from the customer survey results. Salesmen know that one unhappy customer could affect their rating and cost them thousands of dollars. Does this system make salesmen treat customers better?
NO. Instead, this dealer won’t sell you a car if they think you might be unhappy with them. Catch them lying to you and they won’t sell you the car. Why risk letting anyone with a bad experience actually tell Toyota Corporate about it?
This saga begins when my wife decided that her 1992 Camry was ready for a replacement. The car had served her well for 15 years and over 100,000 miles, but time had taken its toll on the interior and exterior.
We began by visiting Broadway Toyota in Oakland, where I had leased a Prius the month before. We chose the model and color she wanted, but they did not have the car in stock. The Oakland dealer did search and told us that the touring package was only available in a Package 5, which contained the navigation system and was about $3k more. They offered to sell us a package 5 Prius for $1750 off of the sticker price, but said that they couldn’t find any in gray. We asked them to locate the car we wanted and give us a call.
After not hearing from them for three day, my wife decided to call Berkeley Toyota, where she bought the Camry in 1993. She spoke to a salesman named Javier and asked him if they had a gray Prius in stock. He said they had two available and made an appointment for us to come in.
My wife and I arrive 15 minutes later to discover that Javier hasn’t returned from picking up the car. When he finally arrives after 20 minutes, I explain that we were in a hurry; I took off work to come make sure my wife gets the deal we were promised and she needed to leave for class in two hours.
Javier stepped away for a few minutes to talk with another salesman and returned to tell us that it turns out that they sold one of the gray ones on Saturday and that the other one they have isn’t available because it just arrived and hasn’t been checked into inventory. He said that the car can’t be ready for delivery for another three days. When I questioned why it would take so long, he responded that the service department was very busy (this PDI process, according to the customer service manager at Berkeley Toyota, takes about 1.5 hours and can usually be done the same day).
Javier sat us down and asked my wife to fill out a credit application along with an offer sheet. He took the sheet and went into his manager’s office. Javier returned about five minutes later and told us Mr. Rios said his manager noticed that we “were upset or in a bad mood,” and wanted to be sure we would be happy. He then admitted that the gray car been damaged and needed repairs before they could sell it to us. After hearing we were not interested in buying a brand new car that had already been in the body shop, he tried to sell us on a different car.
Of course, we were not happy about coming in to the store to discover the car we wanted wasn’t available. We told Javier exactly what we wanted on the phone, we had already researched the car and we came in to close the deal. We didn’t come, not re-negotiate the deal or be offered a different color. They didn’t have the car they promised us available, so we left.
My wife phoned Mr. Rios a few hours later to ask what the manager might have meant by that comment about us being in a bad mood. She explained that at this point she was interested in ANY Prius with a Package #2 and a dark interior, and she was willing to come back in to discuss another color. Javier said that he would look into what was available and call her back.
Imagine her shock when Javier phoned back a few minutes later (presumably after discussing it with his manager) to say that he “feels uncomfortable selling us a car” since we were so angry and that her husband made him “feel like dirt” on the phone.
We were outraged. They lied to us about having two cars available. They lied about needing three days to prepare the car for delivery so they could fix the body damage. After all that, when my wife was ready to settle for another color to be finished with the agony of dealing with car salesmen, they said we weren’t happy enough to buy a car from them!
Toyota has gotten a lot of press about their customer satisfaction program, including a recent New York Times article, Toyota’s rise to world domination driven by customer satisfaction, we decided to write Toyota Headquarters.
We did hear back from Toyota, who said they would file a report with Toyota of Berkeley and that we would get a call back from them within 3 days. They did not offer any hope for resolution or provide anything we could feel positive about.
The next morning, we got a follow up call from Toyota of Berkeley. The customer satisfaction manager explained that he had heard about the situation and that the dealer was simply exercising their right to choose who to do business with. He agreed that Javier was trying to avoid us knowing about the car needing paint when he said it would take 3 days to PDI. He further stated that Toyota would require them to tell us about the body damage if the repair exceeded $500. He didn’t state that the damage was beyond the $500 threshold, but we speculate that the dealer told us about the body damage after they new thye would have to disclose it when they sold us the car.
He also said that this situation occurred because the salesman was afraid that if he sold us a car, we would respond unfavorably in our customer satisfaction survey. He said that one bad experience reported by a customer could lower the customer satisfaction index, costing the salesman thousands of dollar over the course of a year. Javier dug himself a hole and then claimed that we were in a bad mood and using profane language because he was scared we might trash him in a customer survey.
How is that for Irony? Because of Toyota’s customer satisfaction measurement system, Berkeley Toyota lied to us, got caught lying and then their management refused to sell us a car.
Unfortunately, that won’t ever show up in a customer survey.
Fri 10 Nov 2006
Boogy Bon Bon writes about how “a flaw in MSN’s new anti-spam algorithm that will remove just about any website” out of their index, as well as how to combat this attack, at least until MSN fixes its algorithm.”
Thu 19 Oct 2006
Rand Fishkin posted the best analysis to date of web stats versus online tools to determine a site’s traffic: Website Analytics vs. Competitive Intelligence Metrics, A survey of 25 blogs in the search space comparing external metrics to visitor tracking data.
Despite varying collection methods and numerous flaws in the data that makes it impossilbe to use this information in a quantitative model, this is a must read for anyone who wants to highlight the limitations of these third party marketing intelligence systems. Here is the summary from the SEOMOZ paper:
“This project’s primary objective is to determine the relative levels of accuracy for external metrics (from sites like Technorati, Alexa, Compete, etc.) in comparison to actual visitor traffic data provided by analytics programs. 25 unique sites, all in the search & website marketing niche, generously contributed data to this project. Through the statistics provided, we can also get a closer look at how the blog ecosphere in the search marketing space receives and sends traffic.”