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February 26th, 2006
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So obvious, but so often overlooked.
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Not exactly a Wiki, but a really interesting idea for collaborative documentation.
Posted by delicious
Filed in general
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February 26th, 2006
I’m not happy with my cell phone. I bought a Motorolla V710, knowing it sucks, but it was the first Verizon phone with bluetooth. I expected little, and was pleasently surprised. The reception is great, the headest works well, and the phone is decent. It’s good enough.
Until recently. It developed a slight aversion to the charger, I have to make it stand on its head in order to charge, and sometimes it will stop before fully charging. I tried it with four chargers, it’s definitely a problem with the phone. Because the battery dies often, the battery life is now shorter. Add to that, the cheap plastic cover is falling out.
I can get Verizon to replace. Or I can upgrade to a better phone. I’d rather upgrade to a RAZR.
So I looked at the Verizon Web site and they do have some decent deals. But they want a 2 year contract. I don’t do 2 year contracts.
If I could replace the phone for a reasonable price, I would, and I’d stick with Verizon. Why switch if the service works? But if I need to consider a 2 year contract, or a hefty price tag … that’s a commitment. Plan pricing, usage rates, features, all of that will change ten times before the 2 years are over. It’s a serious decision. I start to wonder what Cingular will be offerring in that time frame. Or what about T-Mobile?
What just happened?
In their infinite wisdom, Verizon just asked me to consider switching carriers. They’re not making it easy for me to just stick around, keep rolling with their service. They want me to make a decision, which means I need to consider the competition. I need to re-evaluate if I want to stick with Verizon. That 2-year contract they want me to sign, there’s a 50% change it will cause me to switch to someone else.
If you’re offering a service or selling a product, here’s a lesson for you.
Customers stick if you meet their needs, but also out of interia. They don’t switch because switching has a cost. Unless switching is as easy as sticking around. If you force them to re-evaluate your offerring, you’re losing any momentum you have. You’re creating an opportunity to switch.
And no matter what drew them to your service/product to begin with, when it’s time to consider switching, you’re no longer as attractive as you think. They know all your flaws by experience. They’re courted by the competition. And they’re a bit resentful of the work they have to do to just stick around.
Learn from Verizon, don’t repeat their mistakes.
Posted by Assaf
Filed in general
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February 25th, 2006
co.mments has just settled in it’s new home. A beautiful, spacious server with lots of room and a scenic view. Minus the scenic view.
Besides that, it now has its very own co.mments blog. So if you want to check out what’s new with co.mments, what features are coming, make your own suggestions, voice your opinion, etc, head over to the new blog.
This blog will now resume its normal scheduled programming. Ruby, Ajax, microformats, WordPress and my personal raves and rants. And some behind the scene discussions on the making of co.mments.
Posted by Assaf
Filed in announcements, co.mments
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February 23rd, 2006
The co.mments server is maxed out. A lot of users, and I thank you all, but the poor server just can’t take the load. It’s barely managing to pull through.
So bear with me one more day. Because tomorrow, Friday night at 11pm Pacific co.mments is going down for maintenance for a few hours. And when it comes back, it will be running on a new server. And the new server is FAST.
Posted by Assaf
Filed in announcements, co.mments
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February 16th, 2006
Ben Metcalfe raises an interesting point:
Of course, I’m not advocating the editing of comments, but ultimately it’s important for a blog owner to be able to do so - in the event of inappropriate, libellous or offensive content for example.
At the end of the day, blog owners need to decide which comments get published and which don’t. Your blog is your castle.
I don’t necessarily agree with every decision, but I have to respect it. If my comment gets rejected, I can post my opinion on my own blog. And if nothing else, moderation is the only thing standing between us and a sea of comment spam. I moderate comments. I hate doing that, I think it’s annoying to my readers. But not as annoying as having comment threads full of solicitations for online casinos and erotic services.
I designed co.mments so it only reads comments that have been published, whether automatically or after moderation. It will also remove comments from the database, if it detects that they are removed from the blog. It makes no judgement, it simply respect the blogger’s authority of their own blog.
And another quote from Ben:
The reason this issue is arising is simply because there is no standard way to semantically represent comments.
As Betsy Devine points out in the comments section, there’s some initial work on a microformat for comments. I’m an active participator in Microformats and I can’t wait for this effort to get off the ground. But I also know it will take a while. Be hopeful, but don’t hold your breath.
Posted by Assaf
Filed in co.mments
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February 16th, 2006
Starts: 8:00 pm, February 16, 2006 Location: Map It!House of Shields
32 New Montgomery St.San Francisco Ca lifornia 94105 Come celebrate Geek Entertainment TV’s launching of our 1000th subscriber. Yes, that’s right. Barely 3 months old and GETV is getting close to the coveted 1000 spot on someone’s long tail. In monetized eyeball buzzwordology, that worth $25! As many drinks as that would buy, we’re not quite ready to sell out. Yet. In other words, no open bar, no free t-shirts, not even a free lick of the toilet mint. What you will get is an excuse to rub elbows with the newly internet famous and maybe even become internet famous yourself for a brief megabit. See the future now.
No open bar, no swag, but a house full of geeks with a sense of humor. And a lot of video bloggers, so you’ve been warned. See you tonight.
http://www.geekentertainment.tv
Posted by Assaf
Filed in general
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February 16th, 2006
Last night I managed to break the DNS records by reading the wrong help page, so for a while co.mments was inaccessible to many of you. I filed a support ticket with my DNS provider, and they promised to get back to me sometime tomorrow(!). Fortunately, their automated support system redirected me to the right help page, and I got it fixed. Needless to say, I’m not happy with them.
But I did manage to squeeze in a few improvements while waiting for the problem to be fixed. MetaFilter works better in this release, and you can also track comments from Upcoming.org. New users registering will also receive an e-mail with some brief instructions.
Posted by Assaf
Filed in co.mments
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February 15th, 2006
When we come back:
- Multilingual support. This was a sore point and will be fixed in the new release.
- Support for a few more blogs, MetaFilter and Upcoming.org.
- Feeds will show number of unread comments in title and longer titles.
- A few performance improvements.
Posted by Assaf
Filed in announcements, co.mments
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February 13th, 2006
I got tired of how hard it is to follow all the interesting conversations happening in the comments. It’s just tedious to go back and check for updates. So I decided to do something about it.
Let me introduce you to co.mments.com.
It’s a simple idea. Bookmark a conversation you want to follow from your browser, and get all the new comments delivered to your feed reader. The co.mments server takes care of finding out new comments, grouping them by conversation and keeping track of the ones you’ve read.
Right now it will work with most WordPress and MovableType blogs, Blogger, Flickr and Digg. More coming up.
It’s the first release, so be patient. It’s rough around the edges, not all the features are there yet, and it’s not the fastest server in the world. But it’s functional and you can try it out today. And if there’s a feature you want, or an improvement you can think of, just let me know.
Update: I’m getting a lot of traffic from MetaFilter, so I went and added it. Now you can also bookmark MetaFilter discussions.
Posted by Assaf
Filed in announcements, co.mments
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February 11th, 2006
Michael Gartenberg doesn’t waste any words explaining why Apple it the company to watch in the consumer space:
In the 21st century, the battle lines are different and the next big battle isn’t for the boardroom but the living room. Machines there are bought one at a time. Apple knows how to sell to the consumer. Microsoft, , knows how to sell to business who buy a thousand PCs at a time. They don’t yet know how to sell to a consumer who buys one at a time.
Time to buy some Apple stock.
Posted by Assaf
Filed in general
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