I guess I just dont get this whole "email the CEO" thing. We keep seeing people getting replies from Steve Jobs (no doubt really from his team) and I have read of people having luck with other big companies.
But there are two parts to this. First - someone is frustrated and has nowhere else to turn. Second - the CEO (or whomever) may actually nt know about the practice.
A couple of years ago I got a lemon of a Whirlpool refrigerator. After three trips out by the service company (A&E -- don't ever buy an appliance whose warranty service is done by A&E), and five times ordering the wrong part, and several failed attempts to escalate within A&E... I got annoyed and started doing some digging.
I learned the email of the CEO Whirlpool. I took the time to write out the saga -- including the three refrigerators full of lost food, several days spent waiting for service folks (who were either late, didn't show, or "oops" had the wrong part. Did I mention they get paid for each trip by Whirlpool regardless of whether they fix anything?)...
The result? The CEO sent their general council head an email saying "take care of this, it shouldn't be happening." The general counsel got the right people involved -- people who didn't realize the scam A&E was running. I got a new refrigerator (two tiers up from the one I bought) and some cash. A&E at the very least got a firm speaking to, but I suspect it went a bit further than that. The CEO sent me a note thanking me for raising the issue.
So yeah... I could have just sat at home and whined about how unfair life is and how Whirlpool really sucks. Or I could do about two hours of research to find the right email address, send a well-written email detailing how their customers were being treated (including links to several blogs and forums indicating that my experience was not unique) by their service contractor, and see results.
I think the problem would go away if they just stopped answering normal customers emails to the CEO and executives, or at least just replied with the customer service contact details.
I guess that depends on how you see the "problem" -- if the problem is a whiny customer customer annoying you his petty complaints, I guess that tactic might work. On the other hand if the problem is that your customers are being treated poorly by the company you're putatively in charge of-- well no, that problem won't go away if you ignore it. It will just get worse.
I just recently canceled a $4 or $5/mo unlimited text plan from AT&T -- they stopped offering it three years ago, but I was grandfathered in because that's what I signed up for. Do you have any indication that this will be any different?
For some weird reason, I have never met someone outside of the US that even had the slightest conception of "caffeine withdrawal". All the usually described effects - headaches, sleepiness - on caffeine withdrawal, just don't seem to happen for people outside of the US. Now that would be a topic for some serious psych dissertation...
I submit that you've not met many people outside of the US...
You ain't jokin'. I used to drink 2-3L of mt dew a day... destroyed my teeth. Now I'm getting fillings every visit, and I don't expect that to improve any time soon. WOrst part is that when I switched to diet soda, I thought it would at least help with the tooth problem. Nope -- it's not the sugar, it's the slightly acidic content that essentially etches your teeth where it pools up along the gumline. (On the other hand, contrary to what "studies show", I *did* lose about 10 lbs with diet soda. That's some consolation..)
But wasn't this in the context of customization? Or did you just mean being able to change basic appearance through the admin interface, without changing the templates?
How's growth doing for RIM? I'll tell you: not well. Not well at all.
I wouldn't tell me that if i were you, as it would make you wrong. RIM is showing record growth, as is Apple.
I'm not saying that Apple and Android aren't threats -- there's a real possibility that RIM will find itself in trouble in the consumer market, if they don't start pushing their app world and their development platform. (The one that's free, and doesn't require you to build on a niche OS.)
Even if that happens, in the worst case - "they hang out as a niche player for business users". They're not going anywhere in the business market. Apple is making no significant gains there, nor is Android. Aside from that, the business market is good for a lot more than trying to sell your $1.99 oh-look-my-app-is-just-like-everyone-else's product.
And in the most likely scenario, an equilibrium will be reached. None of the big three is going anywhere; Android will make gains against both RIM and Apple, but I suspect those two will remain market leaders for a long time to come.
Which brings me back to my point: BB App World is a good, stable platform - it's getting new feature and updates, but you also get a clear picture of your installed user base distribution. You know which features you can use, and roughly how many people you'll be excluding if you *do* choose to use a given feature set. The requirements for entry into app world are also stable, and -- thus far -- not subject to random whims, parent company's marketing plans, or corporate censorship.
No, it's not the most glamorous platform to develop for. But it's a stable one, and a good app can bring significant income -- all the more so because in spite of the installed (and growing) user based, there's a shortage of both business and good consumer apps.
True. Good luck getting your thousand impulse purchases. It seems that those early wild success tales we hear out of iPhone-land are much more the exception than the rule...
Emake something for the App Store, where decent apps prosper and you at least have a chance at making money.
You can't find the silver for all the dross out there. The number of app developers that fail are so much greater than those who succeed. And it's no longer even a matter of if your app is any good or not - now it's whether your app is marketed, and catches the attention of the right bloggers. (This is, of course, assuming that you're allowed to publish your app and keep it online in the first place.)
I agree that App World has no selection -- that's kind of what makes it such a market. The only real problem is that there is no advertising going into it. It's got no sex appeal, and so there's a dearth of app developers.
Which is good (for people like me -- after the SSH open source project is relatively complete, I've got several commercial ideas for consumer apps that I think will do well), but only for a short period. Android and app-store *are* real competition. If RIM doesn't clue in and start pushing App World the way we see iPhone's app store and android's market getting pushed, it will hurt the consumer market. The business market will remain strong; and there's a premium price that will be paid for niche applications.
At the moment, though, they have an edge that they don't need to lose. They still own the platform with the biggest market penetration out there. They still provide the most uniform platform out there; in return you get about 90% of the features of the other platforms. Most importantly -- they don't change their minds every week as to what's allowed into App World. The rules are simple to begin with, and seem to be staying that way. And they don't provide a moving target of an OS that differs from provider to provider.
You know... Blackberry has the market penetration (more than android or iphone). They don't change their acceptance conditions every other week, and they're pretty reasonable conditions to begin with. They are standardized and the features available across revisions are well documented. They've components that integrate with Eclipse; and (for 5.0+) with Visual Studio. They're also under-served -- in spite of their penetration, there are relatively few applications written for App World. Did I mention the studies showing that BB users are willing to pay more for their apps?
Yet everyone seems to think this boils down to Android v iPhone. Y'all keep busy over there, while I do my thing over here...
I've never understood how a templating language is any more or less difficult than a simple php (or jsp, or whatever) page in which you're doing only presentation-- displaying data provided to you by other system components. It's still code, no matter how you cut it. A look at the example provided at the bottom of the Understanding Joomla! templates page bears this out yet again. Except you have the added benefit of several additional components to be configured separately in XML and INI files (but as part of the same template).
Okay, seriously? How many Joomla book reviews do we need? (If you answered at least 6 in the last year including today's, you apparently win the Internets today.)
Someone *always* seems to remember that SSDs have a limited life span, pretty much any time someone discusses SSD in any forum whatsoever. Which is usually OK, because half a dozen other people obliging provide the appropriate... "wear leveling" mumble mumble "no wear from reads" mumble mumble "better lifespan than mechanical in many cases"... replies
Thing is, SSD has been available for years -- shipped installed in laptops and desktops; and in ever-increasing capacities. They've also been seeing increasing enterprise data-center usage as well, where the usage patterns are far more extreme than anything you'll do on your home PC.
If they had a failure rate that was any higher than mechanical hard drives at this point, it would be secret only due to a massive industry cover-up-- and I'm a bit skeptical that the industry found a way to silence hundreds of thousands of voices -- including the subset of them who are also bloggers. Not to say that failures don't occur (google shows that they do easily enough) -- but that they don't occur in any disproportionate amount relative to standard hard drives.
In the US it's optional - but parents are generally encouraged to do it; and the default behavior is to go ahead.
I seem to remember growing up too many years ago, fingerprints were taken at school -- on the theory that if we died a horrible death, our bodies would be identifiable or somesuch. (I actually don't remember why, but I do recall that sometime between 3rd and 5th grades, they were fingerprinting everyone. Can't recall if there was parental consent or not.)
Everyone benefits from something your taxes pay for.
Most especially the politicians, banks and auto companies. If my taxes got used in a significant and beneficial way, paying them would be much less abrasive. I keep voting for politicians who promise to change this, but for some reason it never pans out...
So, what you're saying is that you've been avoiding/evading paying taxes in the past? The requirement for 1099s for $600 or more has been around for a long time. The fact that people are ignorant of the rules doesn't really change that. Yes, you as a payer now have a slightly increased paperwork burden to actually fill out the 3 boxes on the form (name& address, TIN, and dollar amount), but I don't see that it's a huge issue. It's not like there's a filing fee for the 1099s, and if you're *in business* then annual recordkeeping isn't a big deal, eh?
Erm - not quite. This has never been in place for purchase of tangible goods. This means that if your business buys $1000 in computers from CompUSA, you have to report it. If you buy $601 in paper clips from Office Depot, you have to report it.
Yes, you're tracking this anyway if you're doing proper bookkeeping; but small and medium sized business will now be responsible for including hundreds of new forms every year. Large businesses will be responsible for tens or hundreds of thousands, depending on how many vendors they do business with.
Not that I think that the law is a good idea (I don't) -- but I do think you're confusing the right to privacy (which is questionable) with the right to anonymity (there is none).
However, if your grammar was tightened up, we would be too.
I was going to make the obvious was/were correction there, but then I figured you did it on purpose. I assume you were trying to make the point that I should have used "was" -- but that's not correct, since my sentence was in the subjunctive mood.
Or perhaps this is a big whoosh on my part? The brain has entered analytic mode, there's no turning back...
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I saw a statistics, saying that 90% of Indian immigrants have a degree- the highest rate of any immigrant or native group.
Given the quality of the "degree" holders that I work with on a daily basis, I don't think that means very much.
I guess I just dont get this whole "email the CEO" thing. We keep seeing people getting replies from Steve Jobs (no doubt really from his team) and I have read of people having luck with other big companies.
But there are two parts to this. First - someone is frustrated and has nowhere else to turn. Second - the CEO (or whomever) may actually nt know about the practice.
A couple of years ago I got a lemon of a Whirlpool refrigerator. After three trips out by the service company (A&E -- don't ever buy an appliance whose warranty service is done by A&E), and five times ordering the wrong part, and several failed attempts to escalate within A&E... I got annoyed and started doing some digging.
I learned the email of the CEO Whirlpool. I took the time to write out the saga -- including the three refrigerators full of lost food, several days spent waiting for service folks (who were either late, didn't show, or "oops" had the wrong part. Did I mention they get paid for each trip by Whirlpool regardless of whether they fix anything?)...
The result? The CEO sent their general council head an email saying "take care of this, it shouldn't be happening." The general counsel got the right people involved -- people who didn't realize the scam A&E was running. I got a new refrigerator (two tiers up from the one I bought) and some cash. A&E at the very least got a firm speaking to, but I suspect it went a bit further than that. The CEO sent me a note thanking me for raising the issue.
So yeah... I could have just sat at home and whined about how unfair life is and how Whirlpool really sucks. Or I could do about two hours of research to find the right email address, send a well-written email detailing how their customers were being treated (including links to several blogs and forums indicating that my experience was not unique) by their service contractor, and see results.
I think the problem would go away if they just stopped answering normal customers emails to the CEO and executives, or at least just replied with the customer service contact details.
I guess that depends on how you see the "problem" -- if the problem is a whiny customer customer annoying you his petty complaints, I guess that tactic might work. On the other hand if the problem is that your customers are being treated poorly by the company you're putatively in charge of-- well no, that problem won't go away if you ignore it. It will just get worse.
I just recently canceled a $4 or $5/mo unlimited text plan from AT&T -- they stopped offering it three years ago, but I was grandfathered in because that's what I signed up for. Do you have any indication that this will be any different?
Well, the US has its "Department of Homeland Security" and the totalitarian East German regime had its "Department of State Security".
Why do I see a pattern?
So do I. And we all know where it ends. Next up someone invokes G--win's name. (But it won't be me! Oh no, I won't fall into that trap!)
the slippery slope implies that there is no rational thinking people in the room
Yep, ridiculous. Wait - we are talking about politicians here...
Holy carp - that's pretty friggin cool. I hope it turns into something seen in practice.
Have you ever considered rinsing your mouth out with water after you drink soda...?
Sure - but at the time I didn't know it was a problem at all. I figured I was brushing my teeth 2x a day, so I was good.
For some weird reason, I have never met someone outside of the US that even had the slightest conception of "caffeine withdrawal". All the usually described effects - headaches, sleepiness - on caffeine withdrawal, just don't seem to happen for people outside of the US. Now that would be a topic for some serious psych dissertation...
I submit that you've not met many people outside of the US...
b. less of a need to visit a dentist
You ain't jokin'. I used to drink 2-3L of mt dew a day... destroyed my teeth. Now I'm getting fillings every visit, and I don't expect that to improve any time soon. WOrst part is that when I switched to diet soda, I thought it would at least help with the tooth problem. Nope -- it's not the sugar, it's the slightly acidic content that essentially etches your teeth where it pools up along the gumline. (On the other hand, contrary to what "studies show", I *did* lose about 10 lbs with diet soda. That's some consolation..)
But wasn't this in the context of customization? Or did you just mean being able to change basic appearance through the admin interface, without changing the templates?
How's growth doing for RIM? I'll tell you: not well. Not well at all.
I wouldn't tell me that if i were you, as it would make you wrong. RIM is showing record growth, as is Apple.
I'm not saying that Apple and Android aren't threats -- there's a real possibility that RIM will find itself in trouble in the consumer market, if they don't start pushing their app world and their development platform. (The one that's free, and doesn't require you to build on a niche OS.)
Even if that happens, in the worst case - "they hang out as a niche player for business users". They're not going anywhere in the business market. Apple is making no significant gains there, nor is Android. Aside from that, the business market is good for a lot more than trying to sell your $1.99 oh-look-my-app-is-just-like-everyone-else's product.
And in the most likely scenario, an equilibrium will be reached. None of the big three is going anywhere; Android will make gains against both RIM and Apple, but I suspect those two will remain market leaders for a long time to come.
Which brings me back to my point: BB App World is a good, stable platform - it's getting new feature and updates, but you also get a clear picture of your installed user base distribution. You know which features you can use, and roughly how many people you'll be excluding if you *do* choose to use a given feature set. The requirements for entry into app world are also stable, and -- thus far -- not subject to random whims, parent company's marketing plans, or corporate censorship.
No, it's not the most glamorous platform to develop for. But it's a stable one, and a good app can bring significant income -- all the more so because in spite of the installed (and growing) user based, there's a shortage of both business and good consumer apps.
True. Good luck getting your thousand impulse purchases. It seems that those early wild success tales we hear out of iPhone-land are much more the exception than the rule...
Emake something for the App Store, where decent apps prosper and you at least have a chance at making money.
You can't find the silver for all the dross out there. The number of app developers that fail are so much greater than those who succeed. And it's no longer even a matter of if your app is any good or not - now it's whether your app is marketed, and catches the attention of the right bloggers. (This is, of course, assuming that you're allowed to publish your app and keep it online in the first place.)
I agree that App World has no selection -- that's kind of what makes it such a market. The only real problem is that there is no advertising going into it. It's got no sex appeal, and so there's a dearth of app developers.
Which is good (for people like me -- after the SSH open source project is relatively complete, I've got several commercial ideas for consumer apps that I think will do well), but only for a short period. Android and app-store *are* real competition. If RIM doesn't clue in and start pushing App World the way we see iPhone's app store and android's market getting pushed, it will hurt the consumer market. The business market will remain strong; and there's a premium price that will be paid for niche applications.
At the moment, though, they have an edge that they don't need to lose. They still own the platform with the biggest market penetration out there. They still provide the most uniform platform out there; in return you get about 90% of the features of the other platforms. Most importantly -- they don't change their minds every week as to what's allowed into App World. The rules are simple to begin with, and seem to be staying that way. And they don't provide a moving target of an OS that differs from provider to provider.
Yet everyone seems to think this boils down to Android v iPhone. Y'all keep busy over there, while I do my thing over here...
I've never understood how a templating language is any more or less difficult than a simple php (or jsp, or whatever) page in which you're doing only presentation-- displaying data provided to you by other system components. It's still code, no matter how you cut it. A look at the example provided at the bottom of the Understanding Joomla! templates page bears this out yet again. Except you have the added benefit of several additional components to be configured separately in XML and INI files (but as part of the same template).
Okay, seriously? How many Joomla book reviews do we need? (If you answered at least 6 in the last year including today's, you apparently win the Internets today.)
Thing is, SSD has been available for years -- shipped installed in laptops and desktops; and in ever-increasing capacities. They've also been seeing increasing enterprise data-center usage as well, where the usage patterns are far more extreme than anything you'll do on your home PC.
If they had a failure rate that was any higher than mechanical hard drives at this point, it would be secret only due to a massive industry cover-up-- and I'm a bit skeptical that the industry found a way to silence hundreds of thousands of voices -- including the subset of them who are also bloggers. Not to say that failures don't occur (google shows that they do easily enough) -- but that they don't occur in any disproportionate amount relative to standard hard drives.
I seem to remember growing up too many years ago, fingerprints were taken at school -- on the theory that if we died a horrible death, our bodies would be identifiable or somesuch. (I actually don't remember why, but I do recall that sometime between 3rd and 5th grades, they were fingerprinting everyone. Can't recall if there was parental consent or not.)
Thumbprints shouldn't be treated as sensitive personal information, they are too hard to control.
In a civilized society, fingerprinting is what you do to criminals.
Also most infants at birth - hands and feet. So much for the "criminal" rhetoric.
Everyone benefits from something your taxes pay for.
Most especially the politicians, banks and auto companies. If my taxes got used in a significant and beneficial way, paying them would be much less abrasive. I keep voting for politicians who promise to change this, but for some reason it never pans out...
So, what you're saying is that you've been avoiding/evading paying taxes in the past? The requirement for 1099s for $600 or more has been around for a long time. The fact that people are ignorant of the rules doesn't really change that. Yes, you as a payer now have a slightly increased paperwork burden to actually fill out the 3 boxes on the form (name& address, TIN, and dollar amount), but I don't see that it's a huge issue. It's not like there's a filing fee for the 1099s, and if you're *in business* then annual recordkeeping isn't a big deal, eh?
Erm - not quite. This has never been in place for purchase of tangible goods. This means that if your business buys $1000 in computers from CompUSA, you have to report it. If you buy $601 in paper clips from Office Depot, you have to report it.
Yes, you're tracking this anyway if you're doing proper bookkeeping; but small and medium sized business will now be responsible for including hundreds of new forms every year. Large businesses will be responsible for tens or hundreds of thousands, depending on how many vendors they do business with.
Not that I think that the law is a good idea (I don't) -- but I do think you're confusing the right to privacy (which is questionable) with the right to anonymity (there is none).
Hm. Did somebody forget to check "Post Anonymously"?
The scary part is what happens if his model actually works, or at least is better a better source of revenue than the current model
TANSTAAFL. Perhaps then we can finally see business models emerge which rely on selling a product instead of bartering away our attention.
However, if your grammar was tightened up, we would be too.
I was going to make the obvious was/were correction there, but then I figured you did it on purpose. I assume you were trying to make the point that I should have used "was" -- but that's not correct, since my sentence was in the subjunctive mood.
Or perhaps this is a big whoosh on my part? The brain has entered analytic mode, there's no turning back...