I have commiserated in the past about how making the extra effort in your customer relationships as shop keepers I present you with the correct way to present food.
The great wall
Failed WordPress Upgrade to 2.8
I attempted to upgrade WordPress to 2.8 from 2.7.1 and got this message, now I’ve not sure if I should try the automated upgrade again or resort to a manual one.
Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.8.zip
Unpacking the core update
Could not copy file: /public_html/wp-content/upgrade/core/wordpress/wp-comments-post.php
Installation Failed
I suppose I should be grateful that it’s all still working.
Idiotic Marketing by Palm
If this isn’t the most Idiotic Marketing move Palm has ever made, I can’t see how thay could top it. To begin Marketing a second Web-OS phone that is called the Mini-Pre BEFORE THEY HAVE EVEN SOLD A SINGLE ‘PRE’ If there was ever a way to cripple the potential sales surge normally associated with the release of a new Phone, this would be it! Release information about a newer, cheaper version! What were they thinking? Now the ‘Pre’ sales are stunted, as all the people who might have been willing to stretch their wallets in a recession to buy a slick new phone, will now wait for the cheaper model to arrive.
Idiots!
UPDATE: It looks like the Pixie may not happen due to bad planning Palm Pixie Is Real, But May Never Come To Market And not to say so, but I told you so!
That was cute, Keyword SpamBots
I just got Spammed by an obviously semi-intelligent SpamBot, actually three of them, all keyed on the word ‘Business’. They apparently did a small amount of word analysis and corrected the comment spam to appear to be of ‘human’ origin. Akismet only got 2 out of three of the correctly.
Very Cute.
I never thought that SkyNet and AI technology would first be applied to Spamming WordPress Blogs 🙂
Idiotic Small Business Shop behavior
I know there is a recession on, I really do. But there are things to do to cut costs, and there are things that you can do to cut your own throat, and you should never get them confused. I’ve seen a recent example of the later, under the guise of the former. Curry’s in the Ballincollig Shopping Center have chosen to close their shop on Tuesday and Wednesday’s of every week rather than pay salaries to idle staff!
In my past experience with the shop I have often observed 4 or more staff shuffling around their premises with little to occupy their time so cutting staff hours would make sense. But why not shift their hours so at least a fewer staff are on hand on Tuesday and Wednesday’s rather than close the store.
Closing the store is a permanent commitment to earning ZERO sales for two days out of the week. Shifting the worker schedule will not alter the saving earned from reduced staff salaries, while maintaing an open store. Closing for two days of each week will close ANY sale, and will put off ANY future sales from people who will go elsewhere to purchase items.
In other words Curry’s is cutting their own throat!
In this market there are two strategies that you can adopt, reduce costs, and increase customers. Funny, those are the same strategies that you have to employ ALL THE TIME! A recession only makes the urgency more poignant.
And on that point, let me call most Irish shops foolish. Think of a coffee shop or Pub that could offer free refills of simple coffee, how far will that go in earning customer returns and loyalty? Would a shop full of coffee drinkers be more inviting than an empty one? Could you maybe offer them a bit of cake to go with that refill?
What would be the benefit to the shopkeeper to stop charging for WiFi and offer it Free to customers who might like to use it with their coffee and scone? Wouldn’t it be nice to have your office have a meeting in that shop and use the WiFi to conference.
What makes to so hard for the average shop owner to shake themselves out of this ‘Celtic Tiger’, greedy take no prisoners behavior, and get back to being generous with quality customer treatment. (that last, wasn’t a question)
What simple difference could you make to the customer experience that would elevate you in their mind to choose your business over another? (that was a question)
Chinese Search Bots
I was thinking that if you wanted to stop Chinese Search Bots and Hackers you could put up a photo of Tiananmen Square and the guy stopping the tanks. But NO, they are still visiting my Idea Forecasting site.
Perhaps maybe if I’d changed the name of the JPG file so that their search engine could identify that photo 🙂
Idea Forecasting Project
I continue to work on my Idea Forecasting Project. But I’m not completely satisfied with it. I also have an idea that the process I have in place could also be used as an electronic Corporate ‘Suggestion Box‘. After all, Ideas are suggestions, which can be either anonymous or presented with ownership. I will probably have to get some other ‘Eyes’ on the site to get some feedback on this prototype.
Catholic Church in Ireland
If you are interested in the Catholic Church in Ireland Please read that link, and perhaps rethink the Idea that Religion is a Moral Authority to be respected.
URL shortening Censorship
My new site at http://ideaforecasting.com/ just got censored by the twitter URL shortening service at http://bit.ly/ using SURBL
Warning – this site has been flagged by SURBL and may contain unsolicited content.
The content of this web page appears to contain spam, or links to unsolicited or undesired sites.
http://bit.ly/nbgsV
Source: http://ideaforecasting.office-on-the.net/ideaforecasting/Site/Ideas.phpYou can learn more about harmful content at www.StopBadware.org.
You can find out more about phishing from www.antiphising.org.
There is NO ‘unsolicited content‘ on this site, and if you follow it link you will know. This is the most blatant censorship I’ve seen to date.
How to Marry
My brother and his lady of 30+ years have finally chosen to finish the job and get married, not that either was anxious of it ever happening. It will come at the near end of their life together, and over a simple piece of paper that could have been done in any lunch hour they could have had free during the last 30 years.
It has been amazing that the social and emotional aspects of a marriage can fully be distilled into a single sheet of paper, when the 30 years of being each others life is never mentioned.
An Idea about Ideas
I’ve been working on a little Idea of my own about Ideas, and while this is more prototype than application, it works. If you are a regular reader, this is running on my DIY Server.
Be gentle with it 😉
UPDATE: You are allowed to add your own Ideas there.
RFID and Mobile anonymity
Most people using mobile phones make the assumption that if they should change phones SIM’s from a GSM phone, or have their phone number transfered to another phone that the change in the mobile handset may hide them them from anyone detecting the change, but they can be!
There is a little known artifact of communications that’s call RF Profiling. The actual crystal that creates the signal for each mobile is unique so every mobile ever created is really operating at a different frequency within a set tolerance level, and that individual ‘signature’ can be detected, and recorded by the mobile network operator.
Brought to you by YAUPI. (Yet Another Useless Piece of Information)
Rotten Fruit for Sale
Say I have a store and I’ve been buying rotten fruit from my friends for sometime. Paying top Euro for it as well.
When it comes to selling it, I find it impossible to sell it, and so I conceal from my stock holders the fact that I’ve been buying all this rotten fruit,
I talk with my friends and they tell me I should convince the government that I should have help selling this fruit, or else I’ll go out of business. Isn’t it just the great that my friends in government have agreed, and are going to buy all my rotten fruit, at top Euro as well, and then they will let me continue to operate my store however I wish to.
Isn’t this a bit like the new ‘Financial’ bill in the Dail currently. The Irish taxpayer gets all the rotten fruit, and the Bankers get to have debt free banks. What a deal!
Kindle in Ireland
I was in the Kingdom this past weekend with genealogy tourists from the States and was amazed that they did not have mobile phones, but that they had brought a Amazon Kindle. They were told that it would work anywhere that a mobile phone would work. They did know that their U.S. mobile phones did not work here. But didn’t question that the Kindle would. Very funny watching them walk all over the hills holding the Kindle trying to find a connection. I had to give them a quick course in telecommunications technology 😉
What can you say
I’ve been neglecting the blogging, Twittering, facebook world lately as personal issues have, I was going to say crept into, but it’s more like slammed into, me again. It’s not depressing enough to hear about an incompetent Irish government politicians robbing from their citizens to bail out their friends. Or to hear about the number of mindless multi-nationals stumbling along destroying communities all over Ireland. I must now travel back to the U.S. during a Swine Flu pandemic to prepare for the death of my younger brother from Pancreatic Cancer.
Great, the next time someone tells me ‘things could get worse!’ is going to get a sock in the mouth.