- How much business might I have lost so far?
- How much do I stand to lose in the next year?
- How much could I gain by doing what Java Jim is doing?
- What could I lose by not doing it (my whole business??)
- How much can I invest in my website?
- What would happen if other competitors went online, especially someone big?
- What do I compete on?
- What do I give him?
- Where’s my niche?
Author: Victor
Catalyst of Consumer Lust
The phone rings, she shakes her head free of coffee lust and jogs to the phone, rubbing her slightly oily fingers on her apron. "Hello, Sweet as Love. This is Catherine"
"Hi, Catherine, it’s Tim, from Angelina’s." Angelina’s had been a huge boost to her business a year ago when Tim, a manager there, suggested Sweet As Love deliver all the coffee for their 3 restaurants.
"Hi Tim! How can I help you?"
"Well, unfortunately I need to cancel our weekly order."
The word cancel took the air out of her chest. "Really? Is everything OK?"
"Yeah, yeah, I think we just reached a point where we needed, well, different service."
"Oh, alright. But, do you mind if I ask what kind of service?"
"Well, you know, sometimes we need special orders fulfilled quickly. Java Jim’s website let’s us place an order any time, and it’s delivered within a few hours. We realized it would be easier to get all our coffee there."
Catherine remembered, wincing, all the times she played phone tag with him to get the orders delivered. "Oh, sure, OK. Well, thanks for all your business, I appreciate it."
"Java Jim’s. That is such a dumbass name." She pulled up the website. "Damn, this thing is ugly." But she sees the shopping cart icon, and understands how millions in books, music, clothes, gardening tools, a whole lot of other things pass through that 10 by 10 catalyst of consumer lust. The business reality of it all sets it, deep. Immediately her competitive instinct kicks in.
"Let’s just analyze this for a minute…" She grabs an envelope at hand and starts scribbling…
Bend It
Bend It Like Beckham…fucking brilliant.
Taxonomies Requiring LIS Knowledge
I’m doing a lot of heavy taxonomy lifting these days. Because it involves working with existing systems, what I find more useful than LIS knowledge is IS knowledge, being able to talk to DBAs and read database tables, talking to the people who have to implement this stuff. In this case I’m reverse engineering and then designing, rather than starting with pure data or knowledge and classifying it.
Sneakernet in New Form Factor
I didn’t completely get the utility of those new little USB pen drives until I saw them in action as the new sneakernet. In a world where removable disks are more rare but everyone has USB, they are the new floppy disk for exchanging files quickly, no networking needed.
Indisposed
Excuse my lack of blogging/email/other, I’m away on business and frantically trying to keep up with everything. More contact and blogging will ensue in a week or two.
Making the Web Work
Finally had a chance to take a serious look at Bob Baxley’s book Making the Web Work: Designing Effective Web Applications. It’s an overview of designing for applications – not just pages – on the web. Especially for beginning and intermediate students, it’s a solid set of lessons.
The Programming Hurdle
Matt pens some thoughts on easier programming, interesting to me is anything Andy Hertzfeld has to say. After struggling with Pascal and C in college I decided to put my braincells to full time work on the human interface design side instead. I think easy programming simply becomes part of the interface; like recordable actions in Photoshop. Normal programming stays hard (by becoming more advanced) and in the domain of people who dedicate themselves to it. I don’t plan to change my ways anytime soon.
Framejacked
Jeffrey Veen has some nifty glossary terms gleaned from a consulting gig. I especially like Framejack: v. to move a user horizontally through an architecture, switching the interface to another vertical, in the context of a single task. “If a user clicks on My Account while in the Checking vertical, they get framejacked to the Document Center.”
She Loves The Stuff
Her favorite time is just before the store opens. The brewing aroma the strongest, the morning light magical through the windows, the peaceful quiet outside. Today she [informally] inspects the shop, walking down a row of coffee barrels full of beans on both sides of her. Each is lovingly labeled. She stops at one,
Columbian Supreme
$4 per pound
medium body and balanced flavor
I love this with a hearty breakfast of eggs and toast or as the final course of a home-cooked dinner of beans and rice
She glances around to make sure no one is looking, and sinks her hands deep into the beans. She closes her eyes and wiggles her fingers, feeling the beans dance around her fingertips. She smiles gently and savors the feeling.
William Gibson, Writing, and Blogging
Karlin Lillington reports that William Gibson will stop blogging. ‘I do know from doing it that it’s not something I can do when I’m actually working.‘
Does blogging and writing/working need to be two separate things?
Does anyone who blogs regularly and then stops ever fail to pick it up again?
Sweet As Love
Life Chair
Just sat in a Life chair in the Knoll showroom. I dare say it’s as comfortable as the Aeron, and manages this feat while avoiding the cyborg appearance. I guessed a simpler look would equal a lower price, but alas it starts at US $800. The array of fabric and color options might be worth the expense though, there’s enough variety there to change the look significantly.
Moonbeams in Song
The Moonlighters’ Blue and Black Eyed. They sing to you.
Heads up courtesy Toby and Derek.
Photos from Vacation in Hamburg
Some curiosities seen in Hamburg, Germany:
The U.S. Customs Services erected a kiosk to receive comments and suggestions…
…but after booting up it awaits a password
What new office buildings look like
My First Sony. I love the three progressively bigger green buttons to adjust the volume. Oddly, the arrows on the rewind button point to the right instead of the left. This is because the tape winds to the left, but I wonder if anyone actually uses that little window to judge how much tape has played, especially 3 year olds? This is aggravated by how the tape goes in “upside-down,” tape first, which fooled some people using it. There’s a little icon and arrow to the right that tries to help with that. In spite of these little faults, a neat little way to bring music to children.
In the bookstore in the mall, two shelves devoted to books about tieing knots. Notice the supplied red and blue rope.
The apartment we stayed in had these little water heaters underneath each sink instead of using one big, centrally located heater. A small challenge to my notion of what infrastructure in a house should be centralized. Unlike most German appliances, they worked weakly and inconsistently.
In New York’s JFK airport, the Brooklyn Beer Garden. And we wonder why U.S.-German relations are strained.