My Writings. My Thoughts.
Barnes and Noble online-offline pricing creates bad whuffie.
// May 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // books, rant
Why is it that Barnes and Noble won’t match their online discount in-store? Do they not want me to shop with them at their physical locations?
I read the Kindle version of “The Whuffie Factor” by Tara Hunt. The one downside to the Kindle is that it is hard to use it as a quick reference. So I was going to go down to BN and buy a physical copy. So I went to BN.com to see if it was in stock. It was, but I noticed that all of the books I looked at online had a 20% “online discount” off of the “in-store” price.
So I question:
a) Why does BN charge less if I buy it online? The book is already in the store, they already have the store and the staff so it can’t be that much of an added cost for me to buy it at their store. Plus the “free shipping” expense isn’t there “in-store”, like it is “online”.
b) If I pay to be a BN Member to get a bigger discount on all books, shouldn’t they give me the lowest price regardless of being online/offline? It seems like that should be one of their benefits.
c) Doesn’t BN pay attention to the outrage of customers when other companies do this. When BestBuy has different prices on their website than in-store, and the store won’t match their own price (depite having a policy saying they will match prices), customers became furious and it was on every major blog. I have to imagine that someone at BN is aware, since this is a “online discount” rather than different prices.
d) Does BN want me to shop at Amazon.com instead? On this book, Amazon beat the BN price by $9. I can actually have this book shipped “Next-Day” and still come out ahead compared to going to the store.
For me, the most ironic thing about my experience here is that I wanted a copy of a book that talks about making amazing customer experiences by taking care of the customer by paying attention to the small details in the customer experience. Barnes and Noble certaintly has not done that here.
http://www.amazon.com/Whuffie-Factor-Social-Networks-Business/dp/0307409503/
YouTube: Everything’s Amazing
// March 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // humor
SxSW - Day 4
// March 20th, 2009 // No Comments » // personal, travel
It’s sad to be leaving South by Southwest. Lots of great presentations, met some really interesting people, and good food. I’m definitely planning on returning.
The first session today was “Presenting Straight to the Brain“. The panelests were Jared Goralnick from AwayFind, Cliff Atkinson from BBP Media, Craig Ball from Craig D. Ball PC, and Kathy Sierra from CreatingPassionateUsers.
Atkinson pointed out that there is no research to support that bullet points and templates are good presentation tools. He argues the opposite and says templates and bullet points should never be used; that there is research to support this. Instead, people load up their presentation with information and the audience will get it. (This causes one of three types of learning: no learning, fragmented learning, meaningful learning)
Atkinson says that we need to change our presentations to respect the human memory. We can only consider 3 to 4 chunks of data at a time - our working memory cannot handle any more. He lists three points for us to remember when presenting:
1. Respect the limits of the mind
2. Synchronize the visual and the verbal channels of the mind
3. Guide attention
He closed by saying “Look at powerpoint as a film strip. It has a beginning, middle, and end. It has a synchronized soundtrack. There are no bullet points.”
Kathy Sierra presented on “What turns the brain on”. She says that our brain still thinks that we live in a cave, and reacts accordingly. Our brain looks at everything it sees and says “this is not life threatening”; the brain’s spam filter is broken.
Things our brain looks for:
- chemistry: anything that causes a physical reaction
- bizarre, novel, unusual
- things that stand out, scarry
- person who looks scared
- joy, play
Recommends book: ”The Book of Bunny Suicides”
The brain does not care about:
- cliche pictures
- code
Sierra says “Talk to the brain, not the mind”.
The closing tips were:
Atkinson - “If your slides work as a handout, you don’t have a presentation”.
Ball - “Tie your slides into popular culture”.
Sierra - “Have every slide draw emotion”.
They keynote was an interview of James Powderly by Virgina Hefferman (”The Medium Column” of New York Times Magazine). James co-founded Grafitti Research Labs and worked on a project to “laser tag” buildings [as in grafitti tagging, with lasers], funded by a grant from the Dutch Government. He went to China during the 2008 Olympics, and was detained while assisting an activist group (Students for a Free Tibet) with a similar project. He was sentenced without being charged, and held for 10 days before being deported to the United States.
The next session was titled “Change your World in 50 Minutes: Making Breakthroughs Happen“. Presented by Kathy Sierra. Sierra noted that there are two ways to make things happen - incremental and breakthrough - and this presentation focused on making breakthroughs happen. Incremental is an arms race between you, your customers, and your competition. Being better is better - can occur through word of mouth or word of obvious.
She said that knowing your users makes you better, and increases “word of obvious” for your company. She notes that there are two ways to really know someone - either by their iPod playlist (the real one that you don’t share with anyone) or by asking them “flight vs invisibility” [and why]. We need to determine what superpower we would give to our users through our software. What would that superpower look like it printed on their shirt for everyone to see. Is it an admirable superpower? (She asked is it motivating, or is it brocolli? ) What problem does it solve?
The next thing to look at when trying to make a breakthrough is to play the superset game. What bigger, cooler thing is your product/service part of. If you make kitchen appliances, your marketing should focus on cooking.
Take shortcuts to getting good. In the book “Outliers”, it says 10,000 hours are required to be “world class good” at what you do. Can be shortened to about 1,000 hours by learning patterns and deliberate practice. Sierra asked if your 10,000 hours were in “10 years, or 1 year repeated 10 times”. Focus on practicing your strengths. Tiger woods spends 80% of his time practicing the swings he’s already good at.
Make the right things easy, and the hard thikngs worse. Make it easy for the user to do what they want to do, don’t let them get too far into the software the wrong way. Makes for a better customer experience and in turn creates better users.
Get better gear and justify it. Don’t go for the cheap tools, they break. Find a way to justify getting the tools you need.
Ignore standard limitations
Total immersion jams. Learn what you need to learn, do what you need to do. Do it quickly. 16 hours in 2 days sticks better than 16 hours in 2 months. Have a goal to complete what you start.
Be brave. Do what you deeply want to do. Don’t let fear get in the middle. Live where users either love or hate your software.
Change the Equalizer. Price, features, quality, service, performance are all standard. Either do one of these extrordinary well or add a new slider to set yourself apart.
Don’t mistake narrow for shallow. Nitches for all sorts of things, all done well. Example is passiveagressivenotes.com
Be amazed. Things happen now that couldn’t have happened 20 years ago. Take awe in that.
The final session was titled “Bruce Sterling Rants”. He did. Mostly about the demise of the newspapers, publishers, and editors.
Went to the Plutopia afterparty. Good music. Photos are up on Flickr.
SxSW - Day 3
// March 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // personal, travel
The first session I attended today as “Edupunk: Open Source Education”. The panel was Dave Lester from Center for History & New Media, Jim Groom from the University of Mary Washington, Gardner Campbell from Baylor University, Steven Downes from the National Research Council Canada and Barbara Ganley from Digital Explorations.
This panel was a lively discussion about the future of education, if there was a future for higher education as we know it today, and what education might look like in the future. The panel was split between the needs for the institutions that we have today. Half expressed that there was a social need in learning that could only be addressed face-to-face, where the other half felt that we could do just as well with instructors who created “open” content.
There was a clear concensus that Learning Management Systems, such as Blackboard, are “Evil” and that institutions should focus on creating their own systems which integrate personal, social contact. Campbell noted that when the Learning Management System goes down, education goes down. Vendor lock-in was also a big concern.
Groom was disturbed by education turning into a commercialized transaction. That people are paying for the institution and not for the information learned. Downs noted that Education doesn’t need authority, that people should be learning for their own benefit.
The panel and audience saw community-based education as the future. Ganley noted that we would soon reimagine what it means to become educated. Some of the policy concerns that were brought up were the public good, copyright, and fair use.
schoolofeverything.com was presented as a good example of what is being done in this field.
The next session was “Making Whuffie” with Tara Hunt (@missrogue), who has just published a book by the same title. Whuffie is a concept of social capital that replaces money in the book “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” by Cory Doctorow. Other than that there were lists of lists, this was an outstanding presentation - slides are posted at slideshow.net/missrogue.
Whuffie is reputation, influence, resources, and reprocity. You can’t buy whuffie, you have to earn it.
Steps to increasing Whuffie:
1. Turn the Bullhorn Inward
- listen, focus on individuals, receive feedback from broader communities.
- respond to ALL feedback
- give credit to people whose ideas you implement. highlight changes.
- make small changes rather than big ones all at once
- solicit feedback.
2. Become part of the commuity you serve
- what problems are you solving and who are you solving them for?
- what makes people happy?
- why do people care?
3. Create amazing customer experiences
- Dazzle in details
- Go above and beyond
- Appeal to emotion (Vosges)
- Inject fun into the experience
- Make something mundane fashionable
- Let people personalize
- Be experimental (threadless.com)
- Simplify
- Make Happiness your business model: autonomy, competence, relatedness
- Be a social catalyst - customer connecting with customers
4. Embrace Chaos
- Stop moving and look around you
- Transfer the knowledge
- Acknowledge anxiety
- Define your own measure of success
- Get outside of your personal circle
- Understand that everything is out of your control
5. Find your higher purpose
- Do well by doing good
- Think customer centrically
- Help others go further
- Spread love (akoha.com)
- Value something bigger than yourself.
Today’s Keynote was an interview with Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, by Stephen Baker of Business Week and author of The Numerati. Outside of the general discussion about statistics and politics, one of the most quotable things said by Nate was from his lesson learned in predicting this years Oscars winners: “If you know you are going to be wrong, keep working on your fu*king model”.
The next panel was titled: “Social Media: If you liked it, you should have put a Digg on it… “. This panel included Chris Bowler from Razorfish, Jordan Corredera from Carnival Cruiselines, Paula Drum from H&R Block, and Malini Ratnam from Avenue A/Razorfish/JCPenny.
H&R Block is using Twitter and Yahoo Answeres, JCP is using Twitter, YouTube and social videos. Carnival started with a Group Planning Tool which spawned to forums, a blog from a cruise captain (also photos/scrapblog) and Twitter.
JCP wanted to show that they are “not your momma’s store”, in creating a viral video advertisement.
Corredera noted that people now feel a sense of entitlement to get satisfaction through twitter. Told a story of a grandfather who didn’t think it was right that he had to pay for his two year old grandson to go on the cruise. Carnival said it was their policy, they couldn’t change it. Customer got more upset.
All about experimentation for companies. No true path to follow, no leaders to learn from.
H&R Block said not to focus on the ROI. To them ROI is “Risk of Ignoring”.
The final conversation of the day was “How not to be evil (even by accident)”. This conversation was led by Danny O’Brien and Eva Galperin from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (and the room was packed tightly!).
This was a very interesting discussion on company policies and data collection colliding, data retention policies from different countries conflicting, and keeping the customer informed about the site policies (TOS, Privacy) and how to make them apply as directly as possible.
O’Brien noted that one of the biggest places where “evil” happens is when a small startup is bought-out. The data stored by that startup is the real value, and the larger company goes to exploit it.
Thru the discussion on privacy policies and TOS, a couple best practices were presented: allow the user to export all of their data, allow the user to remove all of their data, keep your TOS very tight to what you are actually doing with the data, and present the policies in both legaleze and plain english.
SxSW - Day 2
// March 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // personal, travel
Today was a fun filled day.
Started with “Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused?“. On the panel was Danah Boyd from Microsoft Research, Judith Donath from the MIT Media Laboratory, Siva Vaidhyanthan from University of Virginia, and Alice Marwick from NYU. Siva started the discussion by making a couple points:
- Just because we give up 100 aspects of our lives, doesn’t mean we don’t care about keeping the 101st private.
- Privacy is not something that can/should be traded away. There is no way to break privacy into pieces and share a small amount.
Marwick made the point that there is a social value in being part of a conversation, but privacy is in the social context of the conversation. What you share with your doctor is a different context from what you discuss with your friends.
Donath focused on the idea of personal visualizations, or seeing the big picture of your life online. She said that there is a new “long term historical norm” being created on each person, which is new to history. At no other point in time could one person go to one place (the internet) and see what a person said or did 5, 10, etc years ago. And there is no way to recreate your online presence. Donath also said that most kids don’t consider their home private because they don’t control it, their parents do. This is leading to a disturbing trend of kids putting private information online because they feel it is a private environment.
Siva recommends looking at a digital mirror to see what it says about you. He also says to worry about the people in out community who are not technically apt to “self help” themselves; who don’t instictively know to opt out of privacy-stealing services or features.
Siva also pointed out that contracts usually require reciprocity. They can be edited and agreed apon. Terms of services do not; they’re boolean. They can also change at any time to serve one party over the other.
The next session was “The Search for a More Social Web“, presented by Dave Morin from Facebook. Dave discussed the importance of the social graph to determine who you share information with, and a data stream for others to see. Not only people, but services and companies that you interact with: CNN, NYT, Obama.
Facebook has implemented these services in their new home page (presented today). They also presented “Facebook Connect for the iPhone”, which lets iPhone applications access your Facebook Connections.
Facebook has 175 Million unique users.
Next, I listened to Christina Wodtke speak about her new edition of “Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web“. Focus was on social architecture. Key components that every social website must implement (see book). Wodtke stressed that any website that involves money needs to have a reputation system, or it will fail.
After that was the Saturday Keynote by Tony Hsieh from Zappos. It was a very inspiring presentation about customer service. Zappos is focused on creating a “wow experience”. He wants Zappos to create a lifelong relationship with the customer - one call at a time. Customers will remember how you make them feel.
Hsieh’s #1 priority is company culture. Extensive employee testing for fit. 50% of the interview is to see how well they fit into the culture. Each new employee, no matter what the position, spends several weeks in every position at the company. In the initial two week training, Zappos offers it’s employees $2000 to quit + what they earned for working that time. Only 3% of new employees take the offer.
Hsieh says that the key to success is determining what your core values are and always following them:
- Decide what your goals are.
- Figure out values and culture - Start early, live the values.
- Commit to transparency
- Vision - Chase the vision, not the money - What would you be passionate about for the next 10 years if you never had a dime.
- Build Relationships - Don’t be interesting, talk to interesting people.
- Build your team - Hire slowly, fire quickly.
- Think long term - What is your goal in life.
From there, he went on to discuss Happiness. He says happiness is about four things: Control, Progress, Connectiveness, and Vision. Recommends the books Happiness Hypothesis and Four Hour Work Week.
He ends by asking the audience, “What is your higher purpose? What is your company’s higher purpose?”.
The next presentation was “Feed Me: Bite Size Info for a Hungry Internet“. The panel consisted of: Ari Steinberg of Facebook, Eric Eldon of VentureBeat, Dare Obasanjo of Microsoft, Paul Buchheit of FriendFeed and David Sacks of Yammer. The conversation was rather predictible - Microblogging (Status Updates) are popular because they are quick to produce and consume. Also, they are reciprocal which causes others to contribute to the conversation. While the industries are converging (Facebook, Yammer, Friendfeed all doing Twitter style status updates) there is no real plan to integrate between all services into one standard feed. Require users to sign up for each service, and the other services will provide channels for publication onto those services.
The last session I attended was “Comedy on Television and the Web“. The panel consisted of Meredith Scardino (writer) from The Colbert Report, Keith Richman from Break Media, Ricky Van Veen from College Humor, Avner Ronen from Boxee, and B.J. Novak from The Office. This session discussed where the panel felt the future of television was going.
B.J. Novak states that there will be 30% fewer local networks within 10 years. Ronan says that the trend among the technical to “ditch cable” for internet connected television is quickly rising, and it will be just a short time before the cable industry will have to adjust.
Richman says that one of the problems as he sees it is advertising. Only 7% of most companies budgets go towards online advertising. He gave the astounding statistic that viewership in one hour of programming on break.com is equivalent to one hour of programming on 50 cable television networks. One of the problems with funding online programming is that there is no guaranteeed distribution. People don’t leave the internet playing video in the background like they do with their TV.
The panel felt that some networks will turn into brands, where people will flock to online for content - USA (Characters Welcome), TNT (We know drama), etc - where others have too wide of an audience to be a brand (ABC, NBC, CBS).
The closing was that “Beloved benefit from the web, Events benefit from TV”.
For dinner, I went to Stubbs and had some Texas BBQ. Was OK, but not terribly impressive. Maybe I went to the wrong place?
Then I went to the rear for the live Diggnation. People all over that place packed in tight, pretty crazy but very fun. Still a little chilly in Austin - it was in the low 40’s.
SxSW - Day 1
// March 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // personal, travel
Finally made it to South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, TX. Left Michigan at 6am, arrived in Dallas at 11am. Drove through a heavy rainstorm, got lost due to bad directions from Google Maps, and then got to the hotel in Austin 5 hours later.
Picked up my badge at about 4:40 pm.
At 5:00, I went to my first panel presentation which was titled “Social Engineering: Scam Your Way Into Anything or From Anybody “, presented by Brian Brushwood from Scam School. It was very full. Over 1000 people would be a conservative estimate. Brian is a stage illusionist, so he didn’t give away how many of his tricks were done.
The presentation provided three points to be aware of when trying to get someone to do something: Trust, Reciprocation, and Humor. He stated that studies show that people will do something most often if you provide them with a reason, even if the reason is meaningless. The example he gave was asking to cut in line at the copy machine. If you say “Can I cut in line because I only have 5 pages”, people will be much more likely to let you cut than if you just asked “Can I cut in line”. He also said that if you give someone something, even something very small like a flower, they’re twice as likely to do what you want than if you just asked for a favor.
The next session I went to was at 6:30 and was titled “Spying 2.0: Can America Compete With Web-Savvy Enemies?“. It was to be a discussion of using open data sources from the internet (such as twitter) to provide intelligence data for government purposes, but the group discussion got off track from the leader at several points. What surprised me most about this discussion was that many in the group wanted government to completely open it’s intelligence information, all while understanding that the open intelligence would mean that the opposition would be able to see what you know.
Skipped the parties at night. Drizzily rain, and I was tired from the travel.
Woot Wine
// December 13th, 2008 // No Comments » // personal
I placed my first wines.woot order yesterday. I couldn’t resist these cool bottles.
Washington Wines of Substance - http://www.winesofsubstance.com/
Niagara Falls Trip
// September 5th, 2008 // No Comments » // travel
Had a fun trip to Niagara Falls on August 14-16th.
Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cchoffme/sets/72157606793426204/
Starbucks, stop stepping on IT
// August 11th, 2008 // No Comments » // rant
I really didn’t pay attention when Starbucks announced they were closing their stores, because I don’t have brand loyalty in my coffee. I get it where I can, when I want it, and it tastes all about the same to me.
But the smell of the coffee shop on the other hand is what draws me. And that started my visits to Starbucks recently, and taking me a little further away from my normal route to work/home. They don’t smell like something is burning like Beaners does (oops, sorry, Biggby…).
After a couple quick visits, I decided I wanted to stay a while and type up some notes on my laptop. I turn it on and get a login prompt. I frown. The login prompt doesn’t tell me what to do, so I get up out of my comfy chair and ask the barista.
Turns out that you have to make a purchase in conjunction with using a Starbucks Card. He hands me one. There is a sticker that says “register this card at http://www.starbucks.com/card”. I look at it and say “hmmm”. I take it home.
I go to starbucks.com, and see that to use the WiFi, you have to make a purchase with this card once every 30 days and in exchange AT&T gives you 2 hours of internet per day. Cool.
I figure, “well I better add some money to this card so I can use it to make a purchase”. I go to the website, and click ” reload a card”. Plug in the numbers on the back of the card, and I’m told by the website “sorry, you must register your card first”.
Ok, so I click on “register a card” and again key in the numbers on the back of the card. It tells me that I can’t register the card because I didn’t get the card in conjunction with a purchase of $5 or more at a Starbucks store. BUT I can click “order a card” and order the exact same card as I’m holding in my hand loaded up with money, and they’ll deduct a small shipping charge???
Okay, so I give in and realize I’m going to have to go into the store. It was about time for my 7pm coffee anyhow, so I go down to Starbucks, order $5 worth of product, and get my card. I sit at the table, boot up my laptop, go to startbucks.com/wifi and set up my account. Register my card. Register the AT&T WiFi Account. It tells me I’m completed, and gives me a “click here” button to login. I click there. I login with the username and password created 4 minutes ago - it sends me to a T-Mobile prompt that says my login failed. I try again, no go. I try logging in to the “Member Services” page for AT&T and it lets me in.
I pull out my iPhone and see that I have a email from AT&T asking for me to confirm my email address (something I couldn’t do from the WiFi because I couldn’t get to my email). I confirm it.
I go back to login, still won’t let me. I give up, finish my coffee and go home frustrated.
I get home and see in the FAQ for the WiFi (which I also couldn’t see at Starbucks):
I just made a purchase with my Starbucks Card and I can’t get online?
Although rare, it is possible that very recent transactions won’t show up when we check your card for activity. We apologize for any inconvenience, and ask that you try again another time – don’t worry, the purchase you made will count toward this great reward.
A year ago, SBUX stock price was at $29 per share. After the announcement of store closings, it’s now gone up to $16. Why is this?
- The coffee is better than others in the area. (subjective, I know)
- It’s actually cheaper than the others in the area (Latte and Cookie at Biggby - $5.70, same at Starbucks - $4.35).
- They [in theory] offer free wireless access.
- The atmosphere (aroma, music, staff) is better.
- The barista always convinces me I need a (really good) cookie.
Wait, shouldn’t these things be indicative of stock prices going up instead of down?
User experience is just as important in coffee as it is in the iPhone (or any selection of electronic devices). Adding in rules for purchases, special cards that you have to put cash on for no apparent reason, wireless accesspoints that you have to make accounts for, not being able to register for an account in-store, and not being able to read the FAQ’s on getting online all create unnecessary hurdles to entry and distract from your reason for being there - to get a good cup of coffee.
The Biggby experience: Paper punch reward cards, available internet, no music, poor aroma, more costly. Yet, that is where I get most of my coffee from.
Starbucks, stop stepping on Information Technology. It’s fragile. Customer loyalty is too.
Ask yourself two questions, “what happens to our customers experience when this doesn’t work as we expect it to?” and “can we do it without this layer of added technology?”
Saga continues (8/13/08):
Got on the internet yesterday at Starbucks by changing my password (why that worked, don’t know). Try again today, but no such luck.
Need to add funds to the card to get more coffee tomorrow, go to website and get this error:
Nice…
Wargames - The Dead Code (Wargames 2)
// August 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // movies
Just finished watching “Wargames - The Dead Code”. I had very low expectations for this movie, but it turned out not to be terrible. Incredibly unrealistic, yes, but terrible no.
That being said, I think the appeal for me to the original is that it is incredibly feasible that scenario could have happened. Blueboxing and wardialing to find a miliary system with an open phone line. Probably still could happen today.
The basis for the new one is that there’s a gaming site that you can win lots of money by betting that you can beat a computer game, and if you can beat the game, you’re considered a terrorist and the computer goes after you.
I couldn’t figure out what the girl was doing still helping out Will (the new David), that she barely knew, evade the police in Canada. In the original, Jennifer was part of the cause of the problem so there was at least a reason that she would want to help save the world.
And what’s up with WOPR! Spewing off nonsense and using color and graphics in a terminal window from a machine in the early 80’s?!? Read some of the text on it’s display - the producers should be embarassed with themselves, where is the attempt at realism!?
And did they really have to try to steal so much out-of-date stuff from the original? The hacking-the-payphone-with-a-piece-of-metal trick, really? We all know that hasn’t worked for many many many years. Why even include it?
Falken - did the story really need him to have another family and have another kid, and then fake his own death? He already had his family die in the original and a fake death. Was a second really necessary?
Argh! 2 of 5 stars is the highest I can give it. See it if for no other reason than to mock it…
