- Muxtape – Ghetto-blastin’ the web (2.0)
Holy crap. This is going to be one the best indy sites we’ll see in 2008. Built by Justin Nouellette it has a simple interface for making your own sharabale mix-tapes for the web. You get your own sub-domain and everything, and it streams nicely through an AJAX interface which means it will work on an iPhone (but it only sort of works). Click on the links below to rock my own personal mix; it’s got it all!
Popularity: 29% [?]
- Apple Customer Service Report – WTF
I decided to upgrade my system last week, and outfitted my home office with a nice mac pro, complete with dual 20″ displays. I spend much of my waking life at the computer so I figured it was worth it to splurge and I made the conscious decision to pay that extra cash to get more than enough hardware, and the option of being on Leopard instead of Vista. I am fully impressed and satisfied with the systems performance and interface BUT when I set things up I realized the build was mis-configured!
The system was not installed with the optical DVD drive I had purchased! I am shocked. I could have bought a car for the money I paid! I figured the three business days it took them to ship the system was a QA cycle. What happened?
Today I got on the phone with a customer service rep to address the situation. No biggie, I figured, I’ll just get them to send me the part and I can either install it myself or bring it over to the Apple Store. I have heard from Apple service folks before that the online store and the physical store location are two different entities, but certainly they can communicate on a service issue like this. NOT THE CASE! “We can’t really do that, they are totally separate.” was all the rep could offer me.
“OK Fine”, I said. “Send me the part.”
“Well, I am going to have to process this as a return because we don’t sell that part online.” the rep stammered.
“What? I don’t get that. There is obviously a part missing, get your hands on it and ship it to me.” I was getting a bit heated at this point.
“Well,” he explained, “the part comes from our shipping center, and I don’t have the ability to get the one you need.”
“So really this is a communication problem with your warehousing and fulfillment infrastructure? ” I proposed for him.
Silence.
This didn’t seem to be going anywhere for either of us at this point so the rep changed his strategy and asked if I wanted some free speakers. I conceded and settled for a copy of Office 2008 instead and am going to have to part with my brand new precious system for a few days to get it reconfigured. As a customer I was very dissatisfied my customer service experience, and as a share holder I am worried about the communication and quality assurance problems I uncovered. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect more and certainly hope someone at Apple is reading this post; my contact info is on the About this Site page if you care to take this off-line.
Popularity: 26% [?]
- WSOD Blog Post
This is a quick post for Client Solutions. If you were able to make my presntation, I’d love to hear what you think. Please comment below.
Thanks!
Adam
Popularity: 26% [?]
- Stone Skis?
I just read on Josh Spear’s blog that there is a company out there making stone core skis. Sounds totally ridiculous and it is!
Popularity: 22% [?]
- Here comes another bubble
Popularity: 21% [?]
- Catastrophic Failure
Popularity: 18% [?]
- Automata
So the latest DARPA challenge is currently underway. If you haven’t heard of it, last year they were racing automated cars across the desert. The Stanford team took home the cash prize with their modded VW Touareg.
This year the ante has been upped and the contest is being held in an urban environment. Wired has some pretty good coverage, but the best stuff is up on youtube.
All this reminded me of a crazy post I saw on NPR a little while back. This guys is creating some truly remarkable “creatures” completely powered by the wind with 40’s erra mechanical processing “brains”!
Check out the video on the TED site
Popularity: 13% [?]
- How many hits do I get?
If you live in the Colorado front range you have undoubtedly been following the hysteria regarding the sale world series tickets, or more aptly the lack there of. It’s a literal panic out there for tickets and having participated in my fair share of high pressure, high bandwidth launches I must say the Rockies and Paciolan (MLB’s ticket vendor) have botched this one good.
It’s funny because just today, The Times ran an article on just how unreliable web traffic figures seem to be. It’s a complicated problem. Just for this little site I have Stat Press, Google Analytics, Google Ads and a couple log parsing offerings from my hosting provider all giving me slightly different data, derived in slightly different ways. From the best I can tell I average around 20 hits a day, but my spikes are sporadic and quite significant. Predicting traffic is more complicated but there are plenty of tools out there to help so these guys have no excuse. A shout out to the Sponsor Keynote for providing a great third party load testing solution for just this problem.
I’ll be sure to let you know if I get any tickets
Popularity: 5% [?]
- The Footprint Chronicles
Patagonia’s new feature The Footprint Chronicles is not only aesthetically pleasing and informative it’s setting a new benchmark for manufacturing accountability and transparency. It’s worth a look even if you’re not into $80 fleeces.
Popularity: 7% [?]
- Democracy 2.0?
Another great Wired Article today on the disappointment in the web community regarding the presidential debates. Fortunately the site 10 Questions is bringing the debate format into the 21st century. Check out this excerpt from wired on the logic behind it:
In the CNN-YouTube debate in July, it was CNN producers who chose the online-video questions to present to candidates. Similarly, in the ongoing MySpace and MTV forums, journalists serve as filters between voters and candidates. TechPresident’s goal is to provide U.S. voters the leading role in controlling the much-touted national dialogue with the presidential candidates.
The project’s organizers are hoping to do that with social software designed to enable “the crowd” to speak responsibly with a collaborative voice. They plan to keep their online voting system simple, and audit the tallied votes.
The point, says Sifry, is to create a large-scale online forum with the same rhetorical attributes that characterize physical town-hall meetings, instead of tweaking a commercial broadcast medium that provides candidates with 30 seconds to advertise their personalities and positions.
Popularity: 4% [?]
