Common Sense eCommerce

CompUSA - memba them? Well they’re still around, sort of. CompUSA was once one of the top electronics retailers in the US but fell on hard times. Last March, they announced the shuttering of stores in many states (including Washington where I live). Then late last year, they announced they were just calling it quits.

However, Systemax (the parent company of TigerDirect) didn’t want to let that name go to waste. They must have believed there was some value left in the brand because soon after that towel was tossed in, they announced they were buying the name, 16 of the retail stores and of course, the eCommerce website of CompUSA. The eCommerce part of CompUSA has always been a seperate entity than the physical storefronts.

You can read the announcement here. Just today I checked to see if the CompUSA website was still there and this is what it looks like.

So it appears Systemax will keep the brand as is rather than overlay TigerDirect on top of it. Will customers continue to buy there? That remains to be seen but in the world of eCommerce, if there is power in a brand, it would be worth hanging on to.

Tags: CompUSA, Systemax, TigerDirect, CompUSA Closure

I love audio! I’m not referring to music (although I like that too) but rather audio files that I can listen to providing me with some sort of insight, enlightenment, or otherwise educational information. I like them because I listen to them while I am engaged in activities where I can’t read a book or do anything else (such as waiting in a long line or driving somewhere). It’s a way to have some information of my choosing played to me, rather than a spoon fed, pre-determined mass media audio.

Naturally that brings me to Audible.Com quite often. Audible is THE seller of audio books and they are partnered with various large eCommerce media companies like Amazon and Apple. Recently I bought a copy of Joe Vitale’s “The Key” on Audio and it was a real wrestling match getting it onto my iPod Nano. While Audible supports the Nano, the process of downloading to my iPod is usually fraught with errors and crashes. I have some technical expertise and can usually get the audio file going on my iPod but I feel for a non technical user of Audible. In their fervor to enforce DRM, Audible has created a process that is difficult and problematic - a long ways from seamless.

Audible is the eBay of the spoken audio world and it would be nice if they had some competition. I for one, am growing weary of these ‘wrestling matches’ with Audible downloads!

Tags: Audible.com, Audio Books, Audible Issues, Audible Downloads

I get a lot of email from internet marketers in my Gmail box. I’ve noticed that two in particular have been getting dumped into the Spam folder of Gmail. Mike Filsaime and The Blog Squad to be exact. I’ve had to instruct Gmail that these folks are not spam - I believe Gmail ‘learns’ from what you tell it. I’ll wait to see what it does next time I get email from these people.

How long or exactly when they began getting moved into the spam folder I cannot say. They were going to my inbox at one time. They might be doing something that Gmail’s spam algorithm doesn’t like. There are plenty of other internet marketers who go right to my inbox. From the perspective of an internet marketer, having their email go off into the spam folder is practically a fate worse than death! It’s kind of like “go to directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $$$”.

I may send them each a little note letting them know about this or else they may pick up my tag. If Gmail is doing this to my inbox, it’s possible that other Gmail spam filters are getting their fill of these legitimate emails as well.

Tags: Mike Filsaime, Blog Squad, Internet Marketers, Spam Filters

Remember when the Open Directory Project (ODP) was the end-all for valuable inbound links? Times have certainly changed. Nowadays, they are mostly a reflection of better days. Times when directories were the search engine of choice. If you try to submit your site you get this message:

Service Temporarily Unavailable - We apologize for the inconvenience while we resolve technical problems. Please check back in a day or two.

Day or two? A forum post from 11/26/06 (link here) - as well as other things I’ve read - suggests that the problem has persisted for longer than just a few days. In fact, I first tried this last week and have tried off and on over the past few days. I would say ODP (aka DMOZ) is simply a relic of times past and may never come back.

Furthermore, there is evidence of corruption in the ranks. Remember Ana Thema? The so-called corrupt DMOZ editor who started a blog call Corrupt DMOZ Editor (link here) - which has not been posted in for nearly 10 months.  And then there was the DMOZ editor who got exposed for taking money for putting up listings (link here). Whether those two are the same I have no idea.

But the question remains as to why search engines still give credence to ODP as an important resource. Google for example, still shows a ToolBar page rank of 8 associated with it and the ToolBar page rank was recently updated as I understand. I suspect ODP should be relegated to the internet archive and just be seen as a page from the book of internet history. At the very least, it is not living up to one of its main goals:

The ODP is an Open Source inspired initiative created and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors. The following is a social contract that we created to reflect Netscape’s commitment to the Web community to keep the ODP a free and open resource…

ODP … is anyone home?

Tags: Open Directory Project, ODP, ODP Problems, ODP Corruption, ODP Failure, DMOZ Problems, DMOZ Corruption

I received an embarrassing email in my box this weekend.  It had this as a subject line:

Hi !firstname_fix}, This set a record at Clickbank

!Firstname_fix?  The worst part is that is from a very well known, highly successful internet marketer.  You probably know his name.  In fact, maybe you saw this as well.  I know his list is very large. 

This is a problem with the email auto responder setting. If you are going send out an email blast, marketing gurus, please make sure your auto responder is set up properly.  My name is not !firstname_fix}.

That is a really quick, quick way to get your email deleted before being read.

Microsoft’s music player has hit the market with a mixed hoopla.  I plan on checking it out over the next week as my iPod is rapidly in decline.  As a longtime iPod user, here are few things I feel Apple could improve on to make their product better.   (In the unlikely event someone from the Microsoft Zune product development team reads this blog, they might get some free ideas here.)

Battery - Much has been made about the iPod battery issue so I won’t belabor the point.  It could have all been solved, Apple, if you would have ONLY built the iPod with a removable battery.  Then people like me would have been happy to pay for a new battery to extend the lives of our iPods.  Microsoft, are you listening?

Podcasts - I’m a far cry from the typical iPod user.  I use mine mainly for listening to podcasts.  On the iPod, podcasts are organized under … Podcasts.  Makes sense.  Except when you play one and the episode finishes what happens? The iPod goes back to home position. Oh I know, I can create a playlist to solve this, but Apple, why didn’t you set it up so that the next episode in line automatically plays? That would have been ever so handy.  Microsoft, are you listening?

Wireless - Updating the iPod is nothing short of clunky.  First you must update the iTunes software on the computer, then plug the iPod into the computer to update it. A 2 step process that really could be better. I have said for a long time that the iPod would be so much better if it were a wireless device and could connect to the iTunes directories wirelessly. Microsoft, I know you listened a little here but I mean really wireless.

My digital player needs are simple. Why are the devices stumbling over each other to be so complex?

Tags: Apple IPod, Microsoft Zune

There’s been a lot of news coming from the Microsoft campus over the past few days.  Almost hidden behind chatter about Microsoft’s new music player, Zune, is the news that Microsoft has completed work on the long awaited next generation operating system Vista.  That’s the good news-bad news thing. 

The bad news is that it won’t available to consumers until January 30, 2007, much too late to pump up any 2006 holiday season sales.  To make the best of this unfortunate situation, Microsoft is providing Vista Upgrade coupons for PCs that are Vista Ready.

I think this is making the best of a bad timing situation.  A new computer with a coupon is not going be the same as a new computer with a brand spanking new OS on it.  Still, there will be a number of consumers who will see value in this and hopefully PC sales won’t suffer too badly this holiday season.

Tags: Microsoft Vista, 2006 Holiday Sales, Vista Upgrade Coupons