Category: Big Business

Just before I went off on my trip, I happened to open up SiteMeter to see how my hit counts were doing. It’s not something I obsess over, by any means, but I do find it interesting.

I was (non-obsession aside) a bit dismayed to notice that my visitors and page hits in October had dropped way down, to less than half of what they’d been earlier in the summer. Was it folks getting tired of web-surfing pre-election? No, the weeklies in November were still down the same way? WTF?

Took me a bit of digging, but I eventually found that when I upgrade to MT3 and went to dynamic publishing, I’d missed including SiteMeter in the individual archive pages, so anyone visiting those wasn’t contributing to the hit count. I fixed that, and the counts are back up to “normal.”

That is interesting, though. I design my blog around the front (home) page, but clearly that gets only a fraction of the traffic of the blog as a whole. Extra traffic by folks looking at comments? Folks going direct to the pages via an RSS feed? Cross-links from other pages? Google hits? I don’t know. But it’s interesting.

Lego has been in financial trouble of late, and it’s not getting any better. Hopefully some of the radical steps they’re looking at will save the company. I have a lot of fond Lego memories, and would just as soon not see it go the way of the dodo.

Hmmmm. Maybe it’s time to do my part and put some “real” (normal-sized) Lego on Kitten’s Christmas list. I could use with building up some scar tissue on my feet …

(posted by CronDave)

To the folks at Tile for Less on County Line Road and Quebec, for their flexibility and reasonable pricing in cutting tile. Margie ended up having a very nice experience with them, and they deserve your custom, should you be in the area and have need of their services or product.

An amusing collection of ads that never made it past the client. I particularly like the one with the Cigarette-Smoking Man touting milk.

In a number of cases, the “story behind the cancellation” is the best part (e.g., the rejected ad for Stephen King’s Langoliers mini-series).

(via BoingBoing)

I’m sure this will be a fine opportunity for all our friends to tell us about the fetid odors that infest our house (“Even your best friend won’t tell you”), but I really don’t understand why I’m seeing so many wild and high-tech plug-in air deodorizers (“fresheners”) being advertised on TV these days.

Especially since they don’t actually do anything about odors, but only mask them (or deaden your nose).

The Do-Not-Call List is a Godsend, which is why telemarketers are doing their dangdest to find ways around it. The newest twist is establishing a business relationship in the fine print when you go to a “free prizes” website:

A reader recently pointed out some interesting language in the privacy policy of a “free sweepstakes” website that a friend of his had been foolish enough to join. By registering with the site, the privacy policy stated that one was agreeing that “such act constitutes an inquiry and/or application for purposes of the Amended Telemarketing Sales Rule, 16 CFR §310 et seq. (the “Rule”). Notwithstanding that your telephone number may be listed on the Federal Trade Commission’s Do-Not-Call List, … (the sweepstakes company) retains the right to contact you via telemarketing in accordance with the Rule.”

There is that loophole, of course, and it makes sense. If you’ve applied for something with a company, or done business with them, they should be able to call you without worrying that the Feds are going to bust their behind.

By slipstreaming that relationship into fine print, though, these “free sweepstakes” and “free prizes” sites are using that loophole to their own advantage.

Remember: there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. And nobody’s going to let you enter a prize drawing without getting something in return.

Fascinating little tale of the Beanie Babies fad.

In many ways, in fact, the Beanie Baby mania was the dot-com stock bubble writ small.
Both were creatures of a frothy, peacetime economy with low unemployment and towering consumer confidence. Both were abetted by the advent of online trading and the explosive growth of the Internet. Both gave rise to celebrity oracles who seemed able to decode the mysteries of the market. Both spawned fraud and even episodes of violence. And, finally, both flouted all classical notions of investment value. Until they didn’t.

BBs were still hot when I moved to Denver, and a store at the Tabor Center (where my comic book shop was) would periodically at lunch time have a huge queue of people in front of it, waiting for the doors to open and the New Shipment of Beanie Babies to be on sale.

For me, I have a few, most of which are in Katherine’s custody. Indeed, they are fun little toys, and their value as such is show by the fact that Ty still makes them (though only seeing half the revenue today that they did in ’99).

But getting swept up in a collectible fever and spending huge amounts of money for a children’s artifact in the insane hope that prices will be bid up so high someday that it will put my daughter through college?

Bah. Silly people.

Now, my comic book collection on the other hand …

An amazingly surreal online conversation between a customer and Earthlink’s tech support folks, which, were it me, would have had me banging my own head against the wall until I fell into a blissful coma.

Matt: and it says that it was shipped or billed on July 27
Matt: 2nd day air
Matt: it’s Aug 9
Val P: Yes, you are correct.
Matt: well why hasn’t it been shipped, this is getting ridiculous
Val P: But the tracking number for the new modem is not generated. As the shipping method is in 2 day, it should be generated in 2 days.
Matt: so it still hasn’t been shipped?
Val P: I am sorry, it is not yet shipped.
Matt: why?????????
Val P: The request has been sent to the appropriate department to send you the kit. I request you to wait for 2 days.

Kafkaesque doesn’t begin to describe it. The disadvantage of online support chats like this is that the other person can blithely key away without any sort of coherent response. The advantage is that you can keep a log …

Costco test markets caskets.

The folks in the Death Biz aren’t amused.

Those involved in arranging funerals were not as enthusiastic about discount retailers moving in on their business.
“If you take the casket out of the equation and the casket is purchased in a retail environment, then that portion of the funeral director’s profit center will disappear and the funeral director must respond to that,” said George Lemke, executive director of the Casket and Funeral Supply Association.
Asked if that meant raising prices, he replied: “That’s entirely possible.”

Yeah, there’s a shock.

Costco’s caskets are “medium weight” and run about $800. Various funeral homes offer caskets between $300 and $8000.

(Memo for the record. Unless it comes with a free granite pyramid with a mourning angel on the top and an eternal flame in front of it, an $8000 casket is not on my wish list for my post-departure period.)

Having both a mother and a mother-in-law who have worked as bank tellers (and having managed a cash register myself), I know how hinky banks get about drawers being short.

Which makes this particular “bank error” even more bizarre:

A cache of cash found in the Columbus landfill was the result of a bank error, police said.
The money — more than $46,000 — was found on July 23 by a backhoe operator who was digging through mounds of garbage at the Pine Grove Landfill. That was about the same amount of money a Columbus bank official told the local FBI office in July 2002 the bank had misplaced.

And, not surprisingly …

The money was returned to the bank Friday. Officials asked police not to reveal the bank’s name.

I’m sure their depositors would be interested in knowing …

(via Wizbang)

Some good news on outsourcing:

Judging by various outfits’ plans, this trickle of reverse offshoring may well turn into a flood. In their attempts to pacify U.S. customers spooked by offshoring failures and bad publicity, these companies could end up creating more jobs than they take away. A recent study by economic think tank McKinsey Global Institute has found that every dollar a U.S. company spends on outsourcing results in $1.12 to $1.14 in additional work here.
Foreign investment for setting up U.S. subsidiaries and plants doubled, to $82 billion, between 2002 and 2003, according to the Commerce Dept. That means 400,000 new jobs, most of them tech-related, figures the Organization for International Investment, a trade association based in Washington, D.C. Over the same period, outsourcing has taken away about 300,000 U.S. jobs, according to tech consultancy Forrester Research. So, on a net basis, foreign outfits have actually added some 100,000 U.S. jobs.

And there are, evidently, good reasons why companies are doing this, including it being a good sales tactic, client expecations about local presence, security concerns from Sarbanes-Oxley, and simple time zone coordination for global firms.

One hopes the trend will continue.

(via Pejman)

Toys ‘R’ Us, which was itself responsible for “big box driving little mom-n-pop store out of business” stuff in the 80s and 90s, now says it might have to quit the toy business because of discount price pressure from Wal-Mart.

The $11 billion company, which rose to become the nation’s largest toy retailer by developing a once-successful formula that pushed its rivals out of business, said in a statement that it was determined to split its toy business and its faster-growing baby supplies division, Babies “R” Us, into two companies. It also said it planned “to explore the possible sale of the global toy business.”
[…] During last year’s December holiday season, Wal-Mart, Target and other discounters captured a large share of the $27 billion United States toy business by expanding their selections and slashing prices. Wal-Mart now has about 20 percent of the market, said Chris Byrne, a toy consultant based in Manhattan, and Target has about 18 percent, while Toys “R” Us has dipped to 17.
Ten years ago, Toys “R” Us held 20 percent, followed by Kmart, Sears and Ames, Mr. Byrne said. Wal-Mart and Target were insignificant players.

The whole Babies ‘R’ Us bit may be in danger, too. Wal-Mart is expanding its own babyware section.

All I have to say is that Microsoft better hope that Wal-Mart doesn’t get into the Operating System business …

(via the Beat)