Customer Service Sells
It’s been a while since I posted anything here, and for a good reason; I had no time. But here is a great story from this past weekend.
I was looking to buy a mattress, but it never occurred to me that mattress sales people can be like used car salesmen. I walk into the first store, Sleepy’s, and this pretty girl comes up to me and starts showing me mattresses. She is having a hard time showing me something that I like and within my price range. Finally, she shows me something a few hundred dollars over my price range and starts the “let me see what I can do” game.
As a side note, she seemed inexperienced in sales, while at the same time, this was the only mattress she showed me that actually felt comfortable.
Anyway, after telling me that the mattress that was normally selling for $1599.00 is only $1299.00 without the box spring, I tell her that it still is $600 more than what I’d like to spend. That’s when she quickly remembers that there was a recent sale and she goes to the manager to find out what the sale price was. Well, it turns out that in the most recent sale they had, the mattress sold for $1099.00 and she would be willing to extend that price if I bought on the spot.
Magento vs the world
I haven’t written in a long time but late is better than never.
I have spent the last few weeks evaluating e-commerce platforms and I’ve been trying to make one platform in particular work for my needs.
Well, you can’t turn a donkey into a race horse.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time on Magento. It is a new open source e-commerce platform that, quite frankly, is one of the best I have seen. It has great features, fantastic back-end, and in theory is easy to customize. But all that is somewhat theoretical.
One thing that it has going for it for sure is its design. It has the best designed admin panel. Period. It also has a few features that are quite unique and won’t be found elsewhere. But this post is not about all that.
Once you get past the “wow” factor, or, ” is this really open source?”, and you start playing with it, a few ugly heads start appearing.
It is SLOW. And I mean unacceptably slow by any standards. I have tried installations in dedicated servers and it still is SLOW. That, right there, ended the love affair for me.
Instructing others
A man should first direct himself in the way he should go. Only then should he instruct others.
- Buddha
Should Google or Facebook buy Twitter?
My relationship with Twitter sounds like that of so many other Twitter users: “Everybody was raving about Twitter so I decided to give it a go, but I couldn’t see any value in it so I stopped using it. Then, several weeks/months later I decided to give it another go and then got hooked.”
Sure, I’ll admit I am semi-hooked on Twitter. Which, of course, got me thinking; Where does Twitter fit in the webscape? How does Twitter plan to make money? Or have businesses these days, formally rejected the notion that revenue and profitability is one of the goals of a company?
And that’s when I started putting two and two together.
WirelessCareer.com Creates a Career Network Exclusively for the Wireless Industry
The new career service launched by WirelessCareer.com makes it easier for wireless industry professionals to connect with companies in the wireless/mobile space.
WirelessCareer.com announced today the launch of a new and unique career network, exclusively servicing professionals in the wireless industry.
According to research by CTIA, it is estimated that 3.6 million jobs depend, directly and indirectly, on the U.S. wireless industry. That figure, which amounts to approximately 2.5% of all jobs in the U.S., is expected to increase significantly. Research shows that in the next 10 years the US wireless industry will create an additional 2-3 million new jobs.
Despite the size of the industry’s workforce, there currently is no industry specific platform that enables efficient connections between job candidates and employers.
WirelessCareer.com is scheduled to launch a number of new features and tools over the following weeks that will make job searching increasingly more efficient. Taking advantage of social media applications, WirelessCareer.com is creating a distributed network that connects wireless professionals in a more personal and informal way.
“We felt that career networking opportunities for wireless professionals are limited,” said Victor Nelson, spokesperson for WirelessCareer.com. “We believe in keeping things simple, and the simplicity of the network we are creating is what makes WirelessCareer.com an indispensable service for every professional and company in the wireless industry.”
At this time, professionals may sign up to receive updates, and employers may post new opportunities by visiting http://www.wirelesscareer.com.
On the way to CTIA
It has been more than a few years since the last time I attended CTIA, but this year I hear it is the place to be. It is also a good time to launch the new service I’ve been working on for a while now. WirelessCareer.com is still in beta, but it is officially open to everybody.
Not much else to say right now because I have to get to the airport, but I will post more details in the next few days.
Finally an inspiring theme
I think I have finally found a theme that inspires me to write. I have tried working around several themes but none really did it for me. They were all nice, each one had its pros, but this one seems more inviting.
Anyway, it’s been a while since the last time I posted anything and that is for a good reason. I am working on launching a WordPress based site that kicks butt. After all the testing is done, probably a few more weeks, the theme will beavalable as a Premium Theme.
All I can say now is that a theme like this has never been done with WP before. More on this soon.
Prologue, WordPress, Twitter and the search for Creativity
I think it is not a secret that I am a big fan of WordPress and that I believe that it has more potential than most people can imagine. Turning WordPress into a Twitter like app is not that hard.
And many posts (see REv2, BloggingPro, VentureBeat, BlogHerald, Mashable and several hundred more) have been written about how Prologue looks similar to Twitter.
Of course Matt wrote in his Prologue introduction that even though they were inspired by Twitter to make this theme, they are not interested in developing a Twitter-like tool. He further points out how they use Prologue in a similar manner others use Basecamp.
That’s the obvious stuff. Here goes the conspiracy theorist:
What prompted this sudden release of a theme such as Prologue by Automattic?
a) We can look no further and take Matt’s post face value: they were using the tool internally and thought; “why not release it”.
b) They (Automattic) were standing by, watching Twitter grow like crazy, scratching their heads and thinking; “there is nothing special about Twitter that WordPress can’t do with a little tweaking”. So they built Prologue.
c) Twitter is establishing itself as the tool for microblogging and they figured they can capture some of that market and also benefit from the Twitter buzz.
The answer could be any of the above, or it could be any of numerous other possible scenarios. The truth is that I am not a conspiracy theorist so I have a different answer.
Matt and the gang are probably frustrated that almost nobody is coming out with any creative uses of WordPress, beyond the blog. They are probably wondering why people don’t see the capabilities that the WordPress platform has. So they decided to hit the nail in the head.
What better way to showcase the thinking-outside-the-box apps that can be built on the WP platform, than by laying down the foundation to build an application similar to Twitter, one of the most popular applications out there today.
This was just a thought I’ve had, but the mention of Basecamp in Matt’s post I think supports, intentionally or unintentionally, my thoughts.
Does the WordPress community lack innovators?
Everyday Life is the Path
Joshu asked Nansen: `What is the path?’ Nansen said: `Everyday life is the path.’Joshu asked: `Can it be studied?’
Nansen said: `If you try to study, you will be far away from it.’
Joshu asked: `If I do not study, how can I know it is the path?’
Nansen said: `The path does not belong to the perception world, neither does it belong to the nonperception world. Cognition is a delusion and noncognition is senseless. If you want to reach the true path beyond doubt, place yourself in the same freedom as sky. You name it neither good nor not-good.’
At these words Joshu was enlightened.
Mumon’s Comment: Nansen could met Joshu’s frozen doubts at once when Joshu asked his questions. I doubt that if Joshu reached the point that Nansen did. He needed thirty more years of study.
In spring, hundreds of flowers; in autumn, a harvest moon;
In the summer, a refreshing breeze; in winter snow will accompany your.
If useless things do not hang in your mind,
Any season is a good season for you.
Set up your online shop with WordPress
That’s right. It is now possible to set up your online store with the popular platform we all love: WordPress.
I wrote a post yesterday about how people don’t think outside the box and don’t take advantage of WordPress’ full potential. As I wrote, AJ is one of only a handful of people who can look at WordPress and see it as more than just a blogging platform.
Well, before I had time to blink, AJ did it again, and this time pushed the envelope quite a bit. Thanks to AJ’s just released wpMarket theme, WordPress can now help anybody set up an online store in as much time as it takes to install WordPress.
To be precise, the theme works more like a product catalog, meaning it does not have shopping cart functions, but it does connect each product to a PayPal Buy button. I haven’t had time to play with the theme yet, but I can’t help to think that it could easily be converted to work with PayPal’s shopping cart and Voila!, you have a full blown online store without having to worry about the security aspect of shopping since PayPal runs the cart.
I am looking forward to seeing more of that!
