Despite the fact that O’Donnell laudably tried to target the audience’s awareness onand hopefully final, Charlie Sheen trainwreck interview, courtesy of the tragic undertow that threatens to pull Sheen beneath for very good, I used to be overtaken, not through the pulling around the thread, along with the voracious audience he serves. It did not make me unfortunate, it manufactured me angry.
In the case of celebrities, we could be considered a heartless nation, basking within their misfortunes like nude sunbathers at Schadenfreude Seaside. The impulse is understandable, to some diploma. It may be grating to pay attention to complaints from individuals who appreciate privileges that many of us can’t even think about. In the event you cannot muster up some compassion for Charlie Sheen, who makes a great deal more bucks for a day’s get the job done than most of us will make within a decade’s time, I guess I can not blame you.
Together with the speedy pace of activities on the net as well as information revolution sparked from the On-line, it’s extremely hassle-free for your technological innovation industry to imagine it is extraordinary: constantly breaking new ground and performing elements that nobody has actually achieved in advance of.
But you can find other sorts of internet business that have previously undergone a number of the identical radical shifts, and have just as great a stake while in the future.
Take healthcare, as an illustration.
We commonly suppose of it being a tremendous, lumbering beast, but in reality, medication has undergone a series of revolutions in the past 200 a long time which can be at the least equal to these we see in technological innovation and data.
Less understandable, but nonetheless within the norms of human nature, is the impulse to rubberneck, to slow down and investigate the carnage of Charlie spectacle of Sheen’s unraveling, but for the blithe interviewer Sheen’s lifestyle as we pass it during the best lane of our every day lives. To be sincere, it could possibly be difficult for men and women to discern the difference involving a run-of-the-mill awareness whore, and an honest-to-goodness, circling the drain tragedy-to-be. On its very own merits, a quote like “I Am On the Drug. It is Called Charlie Sheen” is sheer genius, and we can not all be expected to take the total measure of someone’s lifestyle every last time we listen to a little something funny.
Swift ahead to 2011 and I am seeking to take a look at indicates of becoming a bit more business-like about my hobbies (generally audio). By the end of January I had manned up and started off to promote my weblogs. I had put together a number of distinct blogs, which have been contributed to by associates and colleagues. I promoted these routines thru Facebook and Twitter.
Second: the very little abomination that the Gang of 5 around the Supream Court gave us a year or so in the past (Citizens Inebriated) really comprises slightly bouncing betty of its personal that could highly nicely go off during the faces of Govs Wanker, Sacitch, Krysty, and J.O. Daniels. Seeing that this ruling extended the principle of “personhood” to each businesses and unions, to experiment with to deny them any proper to operate inside the legal framework that they were organized underneath deprives these “persons” from the freedoms of speech, association and movement. Which means (when once more, quoting law college trained relatives) that both the courts need to uphold these rights for that unions (as particular person “persons” as guaranteed by the Federal (and most state) constitutions, or they have to declare that these attempts at stripping or limiting union rights must use to leading companies, also.
Google has gotten a lot of attention for the launch of One Pass, the all-in-one subscription plan for publishers that the search giant revealed earlier today — primarily because it made for a nice counterpoint to Apple’s new in-app subscription system, which launched on Tuesday. While Apple’s offering is closed and takes a big chunk of the revenue from publishers, Google’s takes a much smaller cut — and because it’s based on the web and not on controlling access to a walled garden, Google’s system is much more open. That said, however, it’s not at all clear that publishers will get anywhere by signing up for it, open or not.
The main benefits of Google’s plan are fairly obvious: It doesn’t force publishers to provide the company with preferential access to their customers, the way Apple does by requiring in-app purchasing for all subscription services, and Google is taking only 10 percent of the revenue any publishers bring in via its payment system, while Apple takes 30 percent of all subscription fees. On top of that, as MG Siegler notes, the One Pass system provides publishers with access to information about those who sign up — names, email addresses, zip codes and so on — which is crucial data that content companies use to market their services to advertisers. Apple turns this option off by default, and users have to opt in.
That’s the good news. The bad news? Google’s One Pass is pretty much just a warmed-over content paywall. All it does is collect the money for publishers who want to put up a toll-booth around their content. In fact, the thing it resembles the most — as Josh Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab notes — is the Journalism Online Press+ system that entrepreneur Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal executive Gordon Crovitz have been peddling to newspapers and magazines for the past year or more, without much success.
Like that system, Google’s service is essentially designed to handle the payment processing for multiple subscription sites, so users can theoretically sign up for dozens without worrying about being nickel-and-dimed by each one. There’s just one problem: There’s no sign that users have any interest in doing this — or at least, not in large enough numbers to make it work for anyone other than perhaps The Economist and the Wall Street Journal. Those who have put up new paywalls, including The Times of London, have seen the vast majority of their readers disappear into the wind.
One of the reasons users of Apple products like the iPhone and the iPad seem a lot more willing to pay for things like apps is because the experience is so much better and paying is so easy. Despite that, magazine and newspaper publishers have have had little success so far in getting people to pay for their apps. Why would it be any easier with Google’s One Pass? If anything, it’s likely to be even harder, because it’s based on the open web — and users are likely to notice that free content is all around them, while iPhone and iPad apps do a fairly good job of disguising that fact.
So congratulations to Google for making some hay with its launch, but any publisher who sees One Pass as some kind of golden ticket is dreaming in Technicolor.
Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d):
- How Media Companies Can Compete Online
- Demand Media — Search Spam or the Future of Content?
- Google Needs to Fix Its Spam Problem Even If It Hurts
Post and thumbnail courtesy of Flickr user David Kozlowski
It's been more than three years since we received any confessions from an employee at Staples. Thankfully, Staples vet Dave decided to write us with the insights he gleaned from his time at the office supply superstore.
1) The managers have a ton of power, the front line employees have very little. If you want to negotiate, get an exception, have a question, or were told one thing and are now being told something else, just ask for a manager. Managers can make pretty much anything happen and are extremely sensitive to customer complaints.
2) Tech work is the lowest priority. Everything else comes first even if it's something as time insensitive as putting out stock. The reason is that everything else is evaluated in some kind of metric, tech work being finished in a timely manner is not (or at least it's never enough of a priority to let front line employees know). This may not seem like a big deal, you wait a few extra hours maybe a day or two, but it exponentially increases the likelihood of error because the tech doing the work is constantly being pulled away from the task at hand, making it far easier to forget what needs to be done, what had been done, and other details of the work at hand.
3) Price matching is pretty much an absolute sure thing so long as it's from a bricks and mortar store. Just bring in some evidence in the form of a flyer, photo, or even have them call to confirm. This is especially useful when combined with...
4) Online coupons are all over the place. Google around on a weekly basis and many times you'll be able to find coupons for 15% off an entire order, sometimes they'll go as high as 25% off. They're not tied to a specific person, or account, and they'll be good over and over again until they expire. If you're shopping for a specific item wait till a brick and mortar competitor puts it on sale, price match it and use the coupon.
5) Staples makes almost nothing, and sometimes loses money, on PCs, especially laptops. As a result, Staples focuses very strongly on selling you a bunch of crap with the PCs. Crap they make a lot more money on. This is why if you try to dash in, buy a laptop and dash out you won't be dashing anywhere. Staples has set up a system to eat up at least 20 minutes of your time, in an attempt to sell you extended service plans, tech services, accessories, and anything else. Most of the metrics Staples uses and pays attention to are focused in this area (the biggest of these is called Market Basket and is essentially the cost of everything bought except the PC that is sold in each transaction with a PC). If a sales associate is letting laptops fly out the door without attaching any other sales to it he won't be there long. As a result it can be difficult to buy just a PC. You'll be hammered with how you need to buy extended warranties for a good bit of it, you'll be asked for lots of information so they can record it for their records (this is mostly an attempt to slow you down so you can't make a quick purchase), you'll be told any number of things to drive up the market basket number. A sales associate would far rather you not buy at all than buy just a laptop, so expect roadblocks to be thrown up if you make your intentions obvious. One associate in a nearby store was notorious for telling customers they were out of stock and would send them to another store to avoid an accessory-free sale.
6) The Up Front Agreement is Staples' attempt to get low-paid, high turnover employees to sell more. There's nothing really to know here except that Staples explicitly touts this as a way to make the customer feel as if they are in charge when really the sales associate is in charge. Not a shock that's what they intend, but a bit more honest than I expected.
7) You get to be an Expert or manager by selling, not by being competent. So if you're dealing with an EasyTech Expert they may know what they're talking about when it comes to fixing your PC, but they definitely know how to sell.
8) Sales end on Saturday night and new ones begin on Sunday. If you find an old tag that's expired they will still honor it so long as you point it out. I once saw an expired tag honored that was out of date by over a year.
9) The Copy and Print Center is by far their most profitable area. As a result they will make it right if you complain, they will re-do the order to correct issues even to the point of if they screw it up enough times giving you your corrected order and your money back. About the only thing they won't do is actual design work, so you'll need to bring in your order already ready to go. If you do need design work done they can send it out to be done, it's a little expensive but I never saw a complaint. Also, you will be upsold here to nicer paper, its not much more and does make a big difference if it's a project you want to impress with. I wouldn't have believed that before I worked in the CPC, but it does.
Thanks to Dave for sending this in. If you have some insider info about the store you work at (or used to work at), send us your confessions at tips@consumerist.com with "confessions" in the subject.
Source: http://removeripoffreports.net/ online reputation management
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