After a bit of movie browsing on the web this weekend, I came accross what I thought was the new p2p movie streaming site from the folks at The Pirate Bay. The name and pirate ship logo is a dead ringer for the orginal. But, after further review, they’re not related. Turns out, the ThePirateCity.org is just trying to piggy back off the success of the Pirate Bay. I did browse around their site however, and found a bunch a movies that were mostly streaming from megaupload and a few other sources. The Pirate City offers a directory of movies that are already being hosted on other sources, throughout the web.
According to Techcrunch.com, The Pirate Bay is still planning a p2p streaming site, but the have nothing to do with the Pirate City.
For other sources online to watch movies and tv, check out our earlier post here.
I know, I know, not another blog rant about some crappy service received from a giant corporation. Well, I can’t help myself. After dealing with a nightmare of a issue with a computer manufacturer (Dell), I took the time to reflect on my own customer service experience and thought I would jot down my experience.
One of the first issues that sticks out in my mind is one that was a bit tricky, based on the product in question. When skateboard.com first started, we had our returns policy in place and made it very easy to access throughout the web site. One of the products that we sold a lot of at skateboard.com was skateboard decks. The skateboard deck, for those of you who don’t know, is the actual wood board that you put your feet on and is obviously the most important part of a complete skateboard. The skateboard deck is made from wood and will break pretty easily, if you land on the board incorrectly. The skateboard manufacturer has a lifetime guarantee from manufacturers defects on the deck. There are only a few things that could possibly be defective on a skateboard deck that manufactures would be responsible for. In reality, 9 out of the 10 decks that are returned for breakage are usually a result of landing incorrectly on the board when doing a trick. But, it’s usually pretty hard to explain to a parent that the deck that they just paid $50 for, for little Johnny, and that he broke the same day he got it, was not defective. One of the first of my dealings with this incidence was not to long after we launched and we got a broken deck returned to us with a note saying they wanted a replacement. So, after reviewing the broken deck, we conclude that it was not defective. We called the customer and spoke with them to explain that we couldn’t replace the board because it wasn’t defective. The kid understood but the mom wasn’t having any of it, she was down right nasty to us, threatened to charge back her credit card and buy another deck elsewhere. The fact that she was nasty to me made my decision to stick by our policy that much easier. She eventually harassed our CSR team enough that she got through to our current CEO. The CEO made the decision to send her another deck. I explained that decks break and that this was going to be a problem moving forward if we didn’t enforce our return policy. After the decision was made to replace that one broken deck, we received a letter a few weeks later from that same customer that was so rude to me. The letter stated that she was very grateful that we made a decision to replace the deck and that being a single mom, not making much money, it wasn’t easy to spend $50 for a skateboard, bah blah. You know the regular old sob story. Never-the-less, she was happy, the kid was happy and we were cruising along. Fast forward a few months later, at Christmas time, one of our CSR’s had gotten a phone call from the same lady, she gave the CSR her CC info and gave instructions that her son had a $500 limit and could get anything he wanted for Christmas. He chose to get all of his skate gear from us, $500 worth, because he said that we replaced his deck months before. He could have been blowing smoke, but from then on we realized that it would make sense to change our return policy to include broken decks within a specific time period. Over the following years, that was one of the selling points that we had over our competition. We gained a certain amount of respect and trust as a result of that policy change. Turns out, returns of broken decks went up only slightly, but increased sells made up for it. We had also learned that our return policy was not written in stone.
Now, to bore you even more. I just wanted to highlight a situation that I had recently with Dell Computers that has significantly changed my opinion of them forever. I purchased a new Dell XPS M1530 laptop at the end of August that took them almost 2 weeks to build and ship. There were many things, from the check out to delivery that required me to interact with Dell customer service via phone, that I’ll spare you the detail on here. They finally finished my laptop and shipped it out on September 4, It was delivered on September 8. It had been more than two years since my last laptop purchase, and to say the least, I was excited. I actually, felt like a kid waiting for their skateboard to be delivered. Never-the-less, i got the computer, took a couple of days to get mostly everything set up, files moved over, and software installed. I then got back to business with client work and pretty much business as usual, but with my new laptop. For the next two weeks, I noticed that the computer moved slower than my previous laptop even though it had a lot more processing power and ram and just about everything else. Additionally, every time the computer would hibernate it would actually restart. Even worse, I would get the occasional blue screen, as well freezes and crashes and heat like it would catch on fire. So, after dealing with this I decided I didn’t want that computer and wanted to return it, maybe exchange for a different Dell model, but definitely send it back. So I tried contacting Dell several times on the 28th, every time would result in a disconnect. Eventually I sent them a email via their contact form. Additionally, I called the next morning and spoke with a live person, albeit a person that spoke very badly broken English and sounded as if the read from a que card. They informed me that they have a 21 day return policy and that there are no exceptions. Of course I asked to speak with a manager, and was told repeatedly that a manger would tell me the same thing and that there were no managers available to speak with me currently. I eventually did speak with a “manager” and was told the same thing that the earlier rep told me, 21 day return policy, no exceptions. Screw it, I gave up and tried again the following day. Everyone read from the same que card. Since Dell has no showrooms where a potential customer can go and touch and feel the product, and I live in Austin. We have to take their word for it, that we’ll be receiving a quality product. You would think their return policy would be at least 30 days.
I figured if I was going to be stuck with the computer that didn’t work the way I had hoped, I should at least get Tech Support involved. I did, they had me run a bunch of test, they said it would take few hours to run all of the tests and that they would call me back at a agreed upon time to discuss the test results. Our agreed upon time was 9pm and guess what, no one called back. I suppose at some point I’ll have to call tech support to try and get them to replace the computer, but, I fear since the test looked like they ran without error, I’ll have a hard time convincing Dell that I have a lemon. So, I restored the laptop back to the factory settings with intentions of selling it. I’m not sure I would feel comfortable selling the laptop to someone else. What do I do? Either way, I’m currently stuck with $1,500 brick. I know one thing is for sure, coming from someone who has purchased over $100k in Dell servers and Desktops in the past, I will be very reluctant to do business with them in the future.
I refer back to my experience with skateboard.com and other customer oriented companies that I’ve worked with, your return policy should be not written in stone.
P.S. If anyone wants a good deal on a “top of the line” line Dell laptop, just let me know.
If you were unable to to attend Startonomics today in San Francisco. You’re still in luck, as they’ve archived everything on Ustream.tv and on SlideShare.
Startonomics is a one-day workshop designed by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs on how to create simple, actionable metrics; and how to use them to make better product and marketing decisions for long-term growth and startup success.
One of the standouts for me was the presentation by Muhammad Saleem.com/
Spill.com is an up and coming movie review site that has a bit of a twist. First off, the team of movie reviewers, Korey, Cryus, Carlyle, Leon and Co-Host 3000 are all animated characters. They all give honest fun and entertaining reviews of the latest box office releases. Spill offers up more than just reviews though, they’re a Ning hosted social network, so you have all the usual social networking functions and features. I’ve found myself lately checking Spill every time I want to find out what others are saying about the latest movies. Apparently, I’m not the only one either: according to Quanticast, spill is reaching around 1 million people monthly and growing. Keep an eye on these guys, it’s just a matter of time before they’re the go to source for movie reviews.
You can follow them on Twitter here.
Wordpress has stepped up to the plate with their very own app. The new app supports both wordpress.com and self-hosted blogs. Some of the features are:
- photo support for both camera phone and library photos.
- support for tags and categories
- ability to password protect a post, save as draft or mark for latter review.
- Support for multiple blogs
- Post previews
- Auto recovery feature recovers posts interrupted by phone calls.
You can screenshots of the app in action here http://iPhone.wordpress.org/gallery/
I’m using the app to make this post. This will be a useful app for anyone with wordpress and a iPhone.
If you need a place to store all of your music and movies, here’s a deal for you. Buy.com is advertising a Fantom Titanium-II 1TB USB 2.0 7200RPM External Hard Drive for $129.99 (after Rebate). This hard drive is “reconditioned” but also includes a 1 year warranty.
Fantom Drives Titanium II USB 2.0 Hard Drives offer the most affordable storage solution for USB enabled PCs and Macs. These drives provide transfer rates of up to 60MB/sec on USB 2.0 and are fully backwards compatible with USB 1.1. The Titanium USB 2.0 Hard Drive family feature sturdy aluminum casing to provide maximum durability, fanless design for silent operation, and could be placed horizontally or stand vertically to allow maximum deskspace. From increasing storage space to providing a safe and flexible data backup solution, Fantom Drives Titanium II USB 2.0 Hard Drives are ideal for home and business users alike.
This hard drive want be the fastest, but for the price, you can’t beat it.
Buy it here.
On Monday I had a break in at my house. The punk ass thief took some pocket change, my 15 year old Mountain bike and my Xbox 360, my laptop and a few other items. I’m going to miss my bike and the Xbox. Damn it, I had so much time invested in trying to finish SKATE. I guess I’ll have to start all over. Oh well.
So, on Monday, I went to a friends house, to dog/house sit for a few days but before I left, I set up my web cam and started broadcasting on Justin.tv. I had never done this before but for some strange reason I set it up. Never-the-less, I checked in on Justin.tv a few times but never really got a good view and for some reason it said it wasn’t broadcasting. So, I went to check in on my house today (2 days later) to discover my back bedroom window busted out and my stuff scattered about in the hall. I called the cops, they came out and finger printed and assured me that a case like mine usually takes months. They left, and then I remembered that I had been broadcasting on Justin.tv. Sure enough, after about an hour of sorting through the archives, I hit the jackpot. The mother fucker broke my glass at about 10:35 pm and then the video captured the following:
- he waited about a minute and then broke out the rest of the glass (4:42 on the video)
- walked down the hall and came into my office, taking a few dollars (4:05 on the video)
- left my office and explored the house, probably taking my Xbox, controller and games as well as my laptop. Bastard!
- comes back down the hall and starts flipping on bedroom lights, grabs my bike. (1:44 on video)
- then he goes back into my office where he finds the change bowl and other small items. This is where you get a good look at his face (1:22 on the video)
- leaves the office and goes back to turning on lights and checking everything out, takes my bike and then goes out the front door.
Watch live video from Playing work ain’t easy on Justin.tv
You can see a larger version of the video here.
If anyone recognizes the piece of shit in the video, please contact me. Thank you justin.tv, you made my day.
Popdeck is an ongoing skateboard deck design contest. Just like Threadless.com (and others) anyone can submit a design, then the website members vote for their favorite designs. The design with the most votes wins $200 (currently) and gets a free deck. I love the concept of popdeck and that business model in general.
It’s been a few months since I’ve posted here, as you might have noticed. The last quarter of 2007 was crazy busy for me, so I neglected blogging. I hope to make more time to blog in 2008. There is so much stuff to blog about. Stay tuned.
I just got my invite to the latest entrant in the Music Discovery/Community web world, called Jango.com. At first glance it seems to be a cross between Pandora and Last.fm but with a lot more Ajax and a really nice user interface. The jury is still out on the music selection though. They don’t have a lot of the artists that I like, instead they tend to have more main stream popular stuff. Hopefully that will improve over time. They are in invite only Beta now, so you’ll have to work a little to get your invite. You can go to the jango.com homepage to signup for an invite or give inviteshare a try.
You can read more about jango at readwriteweb
I’ve recently been doing online Marketing consulting with an ecommerce client. They’re an old school ecommerce company with not very sexy products. Never-the-less they’ve been around for a longtime and will be going public soon. So, as a part of the process I put together a list of 5 ideas for their internal marketing team to review and hopefully implement or improve. I thought I would share those 5 things here. I know that most ecommerce companies do most or all of these, but you’d be surprised at how many “old school” companies that are out there that do not.
- Create a corporate blog, and brand it in a way that reflects your main site but also gives you the appearance of being an expert (which you should be). This is a good way to have an online presence that will possibly get you a new audience and get bloggers talking about you. Update it daily.
- Blog marketing: make a list of all of the authority bloggers that write about products in your niche and spend an hour or less a day participating in their conversations. It’s important to do this without spamming them. If you participate in the conversation you’ll get more respect.
- Be diligent about making sure sale items or breaking product/ technology news gets in front of the Digg, reddit and other social news sites audience. This could be huge. It might even be beneficial to do some sort monthly “overstock” item sale that’s by design just for the digg crowd. Everyone likes good deals.
- Boost up your affiliate marketing: I’m sure you are already doing some sort affiliate deal through CJ or others. In my experience, affiliate marketing is one of the best and least expensive ways to get your products out there.
- Be creative and unique: It would be awesome if you could create some sort of “contextual” ad network just for your products. Bloggers would eat it up, as they are always looking for ways to monetize their blogs.
The important thing to remeber is that all of these will work, but you have to be diligent and understand that it doesn’t happen overnight.
Here’s the deal… If you have a 3rd generation ipod that’s currently on the “fritz” you can take it back to the Apple store and they will give you 80gig ipod classic for $71. Apparently for a limited time apple doesn’t have any spare parts for 3rd genetation ipods so they decided to give everyone the upgrade deal. I took mine in on Sunday, under the advice of an Apple employee and was in and out less than 10 minutes. My “battery” was the problem with mine and they didn’t even turn it on to see if it worked. So if you have 3rd Gen iPod take it on down to the Apple store to get your new 80gig classic. If someone was enterpriseing enough I’m sure you could purchase a broken 3rd generation for next to nothing and then take to Apple for a new ipod classic. But hurry up because this will only last a couple of weeks at the most.
Digg lunched some new feature today that makes them a bit more like Facebook and myspace. They’ve added 50 new features, but most revolve around social networking.
- Digg will notify you via email when certain activities happen, such as when someone adds you as a friend or a story you submit becomes popular. You can control what emails you want to receive in the Email Settings section of your Digg User Profile.
- You can easily find your friends’ Profiles on Digg by searching for them by their email address. If you don’t want to enable others to search for your Digg Profile by your email address, or if you want to manage what personal information to display in your Digg Profile, you can reflect this in your Privacy Settings.
You can check out their blog for a video rundown of 5 of the new features.
Lots of folks are waiting to hear from Apple about the latest and greatest iPod’s and iPhone’s. So far a new ipod Nano and new touch screen design for the iPods, including WiFi have been announced. Get real time news from CrunchGear.
pic via crunchgear
Early last month Flock released the latest version (0.9) of their browser. This release moves them “significantly closer to their 1.0 release”. Some of the features that’s included with the 0.9 release are:
- MyWorld: a dynamic home base for all your favorite sites, feeds, and media streams
- Flock’s Media MiniBar provides fast access to both photos and videos on Flickr, Photobucket, Youtube, and Truveo.
- The new Accounts & Services sidebar offers easier configuration and enhanced discovery and activation logic
- Improved Favorites with folders and support for Ma.gnolia and del.icio.us
- Blogging: Improved UI, integrated Clipboard, support for all major Blog services including Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad and Livejournal
- Security improvements
- In-line spell check
The Flock browser has gotten a lot of media attention since day one and I’ve been a frequent user of their browser since early on. When this latest release came out I was very excited about the new feature and the possibility of switching from Firefox permanently. At first glance the Flock browser looks great and all of the unique features are easy to figure out. I really like the Media MiniBar as it’s a great way to see my friends Flickr photos and video. Additionally, I really like the convenience of the uploader tool which makes it real easy to upload your latest photos to flickr. Now I know that this is not their 1.0 release and that they’ve come a long way since their first release. But, I’ve been using this browser “full time” on my laptop for more than a month now and have threatened every day to move back to Firefox becasue of how incomplete this version is. First of all, I use two different computers everyday and if I’m going to use the Flock browser I’m going to need some sort of way to sync the two. As you might imagine, it’s pretty frustrating when you save something on your laptop but when you flick on your desktop computer you have to start all over. I would be happy to signup with Flock for an account and sign in to my browser just so everything can be synced. That shouldn’t be to hard, should it? The other feature that needs some work is the “star this page” or favorites. I use Del.icio.us for my bookmarks, which Flock favorites is integrated with however they’re lacking in execution. For example, you have to many steps (2) to enter a Del.icio.us tag and you don’t get a list of the previous tags that you’ve used. The most frustrating thing about the favorites is actually trying to locate one of your saved Del.icio.us bookmarks. If they were to copy how del.icio.us does it then it would be perfect. Another feature on Flock that will need more attention is the RSS reader. It’s fully integrated with the browser and is a great feature, however there are a few improvements that should be made that would make it even better: For example when you add a new RSS feed to the reader you don’t have any option to organize that feed. You have to wait untill it’s added to the list and then find and then drag it to the folder that you want. Additionally, there’s no way to edit the feeds. The last thing that I’m going to bitch about is the Blog Post tool. I can’t use it until it has a post to draft.
All in all I see a great future for Flock but I think they still have a ways to go before I can make the switch. As of writing this post I’m switching back to Firefox and will be anxiously awaiting the next release of Flock.
Mashable.com has been on a roll lately with all of their “top” lists of tips, trick, tools and resources for just about anything online. Including some tools for web surfers, wordpress users and just about anything else you can think of. So, I decide to put together a list of our own that includes more than 2500+ of the lists that Mashable.com has put together over the last couple of months. I would like to eventual build a data base to make this kind of information easier to access. If you have any interest in helping me achieve that, then let me know.
- 30+ WordPress Plugins To Get More Blog Readers
- 50+ WordPress Plugins for Multimedia
- 50+ Tools For The WordPress Admin
- 30+ Plugins for Wordpress Comments
- EBAY TOOLBOX: 50+ Tools for eBay Buyers and Sellers
- DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING: 30+ Firefox Add-ons For Downloading Images, Videos & Files
- Facebook Powertools: 150+ Apps, Scripts and Add-ons for Facebook
- CMS Toolbox: 80+ Open Source Content Management Systems
- Make Money Online: 100+ Tools and Resources
- Q&A TOOLBOX: 30+ Tools For Questions and Advice
- ONLINE STORAGE: 80+ File Hosting and Sharing Sites
- Web Development Toolbox: 120+ Web Development Resources
- GTD NINJA: 50+ Websites For the Kickass Control Freak
- Online Swaps: 8 Sites to Swap Your Stuff
- 5 Money Making Opportunities on Facebook
- 50+ Firefox Add-ons For Security and Privacy
- Open Source Social Platforms: 10 of the Best
- PDF Toolbox: 40+ Tools to Rip, Mix and Burn PDFs
- A Mashable Guide to Faster Web Surfing
- Web Design Toolbox: 50+ Tools for Web Design
- 50+ Tools For Torrenting
- ONLINE MEDIA GOD: 400+ Tools for Photographers, Videobloggers, Podcasters & Musicians
- Online Maps: 50+ Tools and Resources
- Work Together: 60+ Collaborative Tools for Groups
- 70+ Tools For Job Hunting 2.0
- Top 12 Greasemonkey Scripts for StumbleUpon
- ONLINE PRODUCTIVITY GOD: 400+ Resources To Make You Smarter, Faster & a Demon in the Sack
- The Free and Open Source PC
- 30+ AJAX-Powered WordPress Plugins
- 40+ Firefox Add-ons for High Speed Blogging
- 6 People Search Engines Tested: Can They Find Me?
- 20 Ways To Aggregate Your Social Networking Profiles
- E-Commerce Toolbox: 30+ Leading E-Commerce Sites
- Video FTW: Top 10 Competitive Video Sites
- The Wiki Toolbox: 30+ Wiki Tools and Resources
- The Tagging Toolbox: 30+ Tagging Tools
- Online Radio Survives: 7 To Try Before It’s Too Late
- 7 Online Video Aggregators Reviewed
- Copycats: Top 10 International Facebook Clones
- 11 Craziest Ways To Browse Flickr Photos
- 13 Must-See Google Maps Mashups
- 40+ Resources for Managing Your Money Online
- Twits to Go: Top 12 Twitter Apps for Your Phone
- 10 Most Beautiful Social Networks
- Online Music: 90+ Essential Music and Audio Websites
- Podcasting Toolbox: 70+ Podcasting Tools and Resources
- The 7 Most Disruptive VoIP Services
- TC Interns’ 10 Favorite Facebook Applications
Do you suppose this guy has had a hard time with his computer lately? He’s probably switched to a MAC by now.
Originally posted here
Ok, this is a shameless plug but it’s a pretty big deal around here. We launched Bonza.com tonight. It’s a blog that will be featuring news and info on skateboard products, street wear, sneakers, tattoos, art and music. I know it’s a lot of stuff to cover but it’s stuff that we’re interested in. Also, Bonza.com is kinda special becasue it was the first e-commerce site that we launched in 1998. You can read the story here. So, go on over to Bonza.com and check it out. By the way, we’re looking for people who would be interested in writing up some content for either this site or Bonza. Contact me if your interested.
I assumed someone would do this sooner or later. It’s such a natural fit: Google Maps + community powered skate spot identification = Skatespotter.com. Currently the site doesn’t have very many spots for the west coast but as soon as others discover the site, I’m sure that’ll change. Check it out for yourself at Skatespotter.com.
I'll fill this in later.
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