Archive for November, 2006

I’ve posted a few critical stories regarding MediaTemple’s new grid server product lately. MediaTemple GridServer is a disaster MediaTemple GridServer is buggy bizhack now on media temple grid server But I’m happy to be able to post good news: now MT is doing the right thing. I just got this email: Dear John, Our...
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Thomas Hawk just bought a Mac after 18 years of wandering about in the valley of the shadow of Windows. Here’s what he has to say: I never in a million years would have thought that the design of a laptop would ever matter to me at all. It’s not about the aesthetics of...
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Last year we had snow. This year, we have more: snow, vancouver, flickr, john koetsier
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I love the way some companies’ emailers talk. (Check the “to” field.) Reminds me of Monty Python. monty python, email, suppressed, john koetsier
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I moved to MediaTemple a few months ago on the promise of great service and an upcoming grid server product that was supposed to blow everything else out of the water. Instead, it just blows. It’s had multiple outages, some ephemeral, some lasting for significant fractions of an hour – like today’s. See also...
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This is the (cough, ahem) Web 2.0 Journal story on the “habits of highly effective web 2.0 sites.” One habit, of course, is ease of use. Note the part with actual content, which I’ve highlighted in yellow: Not very simple, or clean, or user-focused. Apparently, web 2.0 is 90% advertising and interface. (Of course,...
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Peter Field, a friend and business associate of mine, sent me the following email a couple of weeks ago. I thought I’d post it here, with his permission: Hi all my people, Something really neat happened tonight but I have to preface my story with a little detail dating back to the summer. We...
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We’ve all been on the phone to the cable/satellite/electric company, furiously navigating endless voice menus, endlessly pressing 0 for a real live human being. When is automation a good customer service strategy? That’s the question Leo Bottary, a Hill & Knowlton VP, asked today. Since I hate to write (or do) something and only...
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I’m considering getting an entirely new home theatre set-up, and this is where I’m saving my research/exploration findings. Television I’m thinking of a 42″ Panasonic Plasma (at JR.com): TH-42PX60U. It’s extremely high-rated, great looking, and fits in the space I have. Price: $1299 US, $1500 CAD Receiver Panasonic SA-XR57S (also at JR). I’ll be...
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Take a peek at this 45-second movie of parents surprising their kids with a Wii console: Wouldn’t you want that kind of reaction for your product? I know I do. Kids screaming your name? Wow. (On a personal note: as a parent, this is the one console I might buy … because Wii gameplay...
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So Aidan wanted to watch The Lord of the Rings. I said no, it’s too scary for 3-year olds. He disagreed, saying that he would not be scared. “I’m tough!” he declared. Teresa backed me up, telling Aidan that there were lots of parts in LOTR that she was even scared by. He thought...
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Yesterday I met Joe Laudenbach, a Bellingham, WA realtor who is wondering how blogging might be something he could use in his business. As I prepped for the meeting, I jotted down some thoughts on how blogging will fit into his business. Note: my goal was not to get him blogging, but to give...
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PhotoStamps is a cool company that makes wonderful custom stamps with pix of your kid, your dog, or your college on them, but if they keep spamming me I am tempted to go postal on them: They’ve now sent me 7 identical emails today. Not extremely clueful. spam, photostamps, john koetsier, bizhack
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Been surfing the last hour or so listening to Jason Calacanis’ goodbye podcast – a little mix of reflection, sentiment, prognostication, consulting. What a cool way to leave a job. BTW, good advice to the poor founder of Gizbuzz, who sent a voice email to Jason kind of complaining about working hard blogging and...
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bizhack has reached the dubiously honorable plateau of 25,392 spam comments caught and skewered so far. Somebody play the Monty Python spam, spam, spam, spam song, please. spam, comment, spam, akismet, john koetsier
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