The Empty Seats

August 15, 2004

Ressell Beattie says of the Atlanta Olympics, "They lied to us horribly." He describes the early hype about the need to get tickets early. I don't know about Sydney but I know that the same kinds of deception were in evidence in Los Angeles in 1984.

I wonder if the seats won't be empty in the form of poor television ratings for the NBC record setting poor performance. Part of the problem, at least, seems to be NBC would rather cover those things that are easy to cover. This focus on what's easy treats us to hours of rowing coverage every day. Expanding coverage to more channels hasn't made the coverage any better. Instead the viewer is given more hours a day of the same thing that would be on a single channel. When it comes to events that are more difficult to cover, like equestrian eventing, viewers are limited to a few seconds of nationalistic coverage. Almost as much time was devoted to riders saying "hi mom" as it was to the total time spent actually showing the dressage portion of eventing. Read more about The Empty Seats

Rebel Subs

Looking for a spot to eat yesterday I headed across Maryland Parkway to the land of chain fast food. As I rounded the corner to a mega-chain store at the back of the parking lot sat Rebel Subs. Thinking that local flavor is often better than the banal corporate grub. Read more about Rebel Subs

Submitted by Joshua Brauer on August 14, 2004 - 14:33

What the M means

August 10, 2004

A note that one of the places where online publishing and traditional publishing collide is on the meaning of "M". Don Park has a comment about Windows XP SP2 in which he says downloads will be limited to 2.5M downloads/day. In the traditional publishing world that would be 2,500 not the 2,500,000 meant by the post. Ad pricing is always expressed in CPM - or cost per thousand. The world of traditional publishing is tied to M, from the Roman Numeral M, meaning 1,000.

Canceled Netflix

August 4, 2004

It figures that when I cancelled Netflix they don't give you any choice about saying why you're canceling. They ask a few questions but "our customer service really stinks" is not one of them and the option to even check an "other" box isn't there.

Mark Space Customer Disservice

August 4, 2004

I'm in web-order limbo. It stinks. I tried today to order Missing Sync from Mark Space. Everything goes along fine, they take my money, send me the magic code and I install the software. Well really they send the first magic code that you have to some how turn for a second code. Problem is it doesn't work. Not a big deal I head out to the page on the website they say to visit... but if doesn't have anything about the product I ordered. Several others but not the one I ordered. That is part of the problem when a shop becomes the only game in town. I guess while I'm waiting for the response I'll go ahead and cancel Netflix who just sent another disc round tripping to themselves. Read more about Mark Space Customer Disservice

Becoming part of the churn

August 2, 2004

I'm rather sorry to say I'll soon become a part of the churn which has been debated recently at Netflix. (Fool.com had some criticisms of how they calculate churn). It seems to be a company headed down hill quickly. I say that because when a company's customer service begins to fail they quickly will loose out to the big name stores who are already circling and looking for a kill.

Here's the problem: It's been over two weeks since we returned our last movie. Since then they have been sending movies, supposedly to our correct address, and getting them back. I wrote customer service and got back a snotty little sniveling note telling me I don't know how to use the postal system. Read more about Becoming part of the churn

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