Looking for cars online and ruminations on wasted opportunities
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lancerrevolution/3710832872/
My mom is looking to buy a car, so I was asked to use my superpowers of search and to find her a few candidates online. My only instructions: it must not be too small, it must not be to slow, it must cost less than R100k, it must not be ugly, it must not be chinese, it must be reliable, it must not be too old, and it musn't rust, ever. Right.
So off I went to my familiar port of call, namely autotrader.co.za and much to my surprise there was almost nothing of interest listed on there, useless. What now?! So I do a quick Google exercise and land up on Carfind.co.za.
Yuck! What an ugly site, this is like sooo old-school-not-web-two, don't think your rounded promo boxes with shaded backgrounds will fool me buddies! But you know what? There where real cars on there, I mean lots!
So off I went and added brazillions of cars to my shortlist. I was super stoked. Now what? So I visit my shortlist and lo and behold, I find that I can contact ALL of these dealers with a single form. Brilliant! Fantastic! Killer Feature!
Now to be honest, it was not all moonshine and roses. Nope, there was a field to enter my mobile number. Oh dear. You see, I have this irrational fear when it comes to handing out my mobile number to car dealers, weird huh? Happily it seemed that it was an optional field. But wait what's this? It's refusing to post the form, so in went my "mobile number" as 000000000. Right, disaster averted.
So at this point I was pretty happy, and was even more surprised to find that not only did I get sent a useful list of contact details for all the dealers via emails, my showroom request was also stored under my profile on the site. Quite clever this site, hey?
Anyhoo, that being done I refreshed my Inbox for the swift responses I was expected .. and there where none. But 10 minutes later there where. Imagine that.
I must say that this is probably a triumph for what we do in this (web) industry, I mean its really basic, there is nothing cutting edge or amazing here, it just works. It saved me a ton of phonecalls and I have had real results.
Now why the title of this piece? You see it's now 8 hours later and there are still some dealers that have not contacted me, why? I mean here is a solid sales lead, I did all the hard work for you, why can you not respond to me in a reasonable time frame? No, 24 hours is not reasonable, in fact I have already cancelled some viewings as other guys got there quicker. I get frustrated when we build these tools for people, they spend lots of money and then they drop the ball so heavily. Your tool which you pay for is only going to help you if you use it properly!
Now on another note, car sales guys listen up, learn to craft better emails, did you forget your job is to sell? Half the respondents forgot to tell me which company they are from and did not have a standard footer. Nearly ALL did not expand details on the vehicle, why? Do you realise there is only one crappy photo on carfind?
Kudos to David Carr from Barloworld Amstrong N1 City, he sent me a great email I was very impressed. He included a nice little sales pitch with the history of the vehicles (they are ex rentals in this case) and sent me 6 hi-res images from different angles, and had a complete mail footer with his name, title and contact details as well as the name of the dealership. That's what I expected from the others.
Remember, use it or lose it!
Want to spend bucks on social media marketing? Read here first.
image via gapingvoid.com
More and more companies are latching on to social media marketing as a way to get their product across. Large companies are hiring the cream of social media consultants to establish a social strategy involving sophisticated monitoring systems, CRM integration and even hiring banks of staff to hit sites like facebook, twitter, myspace etc.
Sad thing is that smaller and smaller businesses are now getting caught up on the buzz, often losing serious amounts of cash to charlatans looking for a way to milk the wave, and worse, embarking on crazy "viral" competitions in which they giveaway wads of their hard earn income.
Before you start selling through social media channels, stop and think! In the beginning (uh 2 years ago?!) it was cute how hard companies where trying to get my attention but now its just getting old. Start listening to your customers for once if you want to really benefit your company. In short: talk less, listen more.
The number one danger out on the internet today for your business is the risk of losing a single customer as a result of negative feedback placed onto a social media channel like facebook and twitter. Disgruntled customers are really loud, happy ones keep quiet, ecstatic ones are even louder than angry ones. You need to engage your unhappy customers, and turn their frowns upside down, an ecstatic customer is your most valuable marketing asset, can you afford to have the antithesis running out there blackening your name? No! You want to be able to engage with them, and you can! This is the beauty of social media. All it takes is a reply to a tweet, a comment on a blog or a response on a forum.
So do you go out there and hire a "Social Media Expert" straight away to get you "situated"? No I honestly don't think you have to, just do a Google search for "Social Media Strategy"and "Online Reputation Management" and read how others do it, make your self knowledgeable. Even if you pay that expert, remember he will eventually leave you to your own devices anyway. Also sign up for accounts on popular social networks and twitter and learn to use them, its really not hard! Remember that the expert also had to learn to use these things like the rest of us.
To get you started looks at tools like http://www.whostalkin.com/ and for a small fee there is a very good local product available at http://www.brandseye.com/
So after you have given it a go and want to ramp up to the next level, then you can consider bringing in an expert, its just that now you will be much more equipped to make your own informed decisions.
Good Luck!
SpiffBox.com, pays you to be social, but that’s not the point
I ran into a new social network today called SpiffBox.com, and the only reason it caught my attention is that they allegedly pay users to use their site, i.e "the more social you are, the more you earn" ethos.
"Interesting", I thought to myself, mainly because I am not a fan of this marketing strategy for a social network (nothing like shallow, low value connections to devalue your network - just ask MySpace), but that's a post for another day. No, after signing up with a 90210 area code (the site is only available to US people apparently - sorry SpiffBox), I realised that there was something else going on, something that they cleverly mask in the form of a social network.
Here it is: SpiffBox.com is not a social network, it's a direct marketing platform! Let me lay out my reasons below:
- Credits can be earned, spent, purchased and redeemed.
- The word Spiff is well known to salespeople, referring to an immediate incentive a salesperson receives after a sale, i.e here is a box you can dig around in to earn yourself more spiffs?
- You can absolutely not interact with someone unless you are a friend.
- There is something in it for you to respond to friend requests, messages, chats etc.
- Friendships are shortlived (30 days), but you can pay points to have them extended. Clearly the system is not intended to foster lasting relationships and is encouraging a large turnover of connections. I don't imaging you would bother to keep track of real-world friends here would you? Rather like the relationship you have with a marketer?
- You can really go into details in terms of your search demographic, this could also benefit those looking for a love interest, but also possibly marketers. Of interest is the long list of what the person would like to spend their points on (Food, Clothes, Bills, etc).
- Emails cannot be forwarded. Marketing might be confidential?
- Friends cannot see other friends. Again confidential.
- You can't make anything from posting Status Updates? Why is that?
- You can create a list of "candidates" for future friendships, kind of like a sales prospect?
- You are able to take part in SpliffOffers which are promotions, surveys etc which reinforces the marketing angle.
This smells a lot like LinkedIn which masks a recruitment tool as a business network for obvious reasons (professionals are always looking for better jobs, their bosses just don't know it), if you don't believe me do a google search for the terms linkedin & recruitment.
The only part I cannot figure out is why you get credits when someone views your gallery and vice-versa, that part doesn't quite make sense to me yet.
Clearly this is a social network which is setup to NOT foster long term relationships whether they meant to do it or not, and people doing it for the money are not there to catch-up with mates.
I just realised, those looking for love are not too far off from direct marketers hey? Hmmmm...
Vodacom "gift" box
Vodacom wants me to use the what is left of my remaining free anytime minutes so I can get 10 gift minutes. One has to wonder how cheap service delivery is to make this worth their while on the off chance I may use some billable minutes, I suppose they make their money from the pricy contracts already. Bloody bean counters have us all figured out!
I love Steri Stumpie
Seriously, it's no lie.
This is what I am thinking on my day off (thank goodness for tuesday holidays = looong weekends) as I am slowly sipping a perfectly chilled chocolate stumpie. Some might crack a beer to sip on the couch, but me, I crack a Stumpie. hmmmm.
The last week or so I have been dragging the occasional Steri Stumpie to work, much to the dismay of my colleagues who tell me its not the manliest thing to be seen drinking behind your desk. I think they may just be jealous, envy is such a nasty thing. If you don't have anything good to say you'd better just 'sharrup', so there you bastards!
*Sip*, hmm velvety chocolate delight.
Funny I was "off the stump" for a long time, you see I had a short affair with Super M from Clover, but that ended in tears, tragic really. Then as if the planets aligned in just the right way I spot this case of 24 Chocolate Steri Stumpies in Makro and through a combination of blind lust and price miscalculation I tossed the case in my trolley and wham, 13.5 bottles later and I am hooked.
One sec ... Bloody hell, that was a good sip ...
I see there is a social media campaign brewing for the elixer of the gods over at http://www.steristumpie.com/ you can become an "Ambassador" if you perform some wacked out stuff on video using a Steri Stumpie .. hmm .. maybe later, I am enjoying this bloody milkie too much. Oh I see there's a twitter account as well .. cool .. @Steri_Stumpie.
You know what life is good, who needs the Land of Milk and Honey? SA is the land of MILK, that's good enough for me.
Now my only worry is to remember to get a new case before I run out!! Erk.
The Facebook Mobile Texts experience
While there has been a lot of talk afoot about the newly launched Facebook Usernames feature, I took some time to evaluate the Facebook Mobile Texts experience. I was blissfully unaware of the SMS features that existed previously, until receiving a prompt on my Facebook to go and check it out, which I did, and I must admit it seems very handy and quite alarming how much money they could be spending on this little feature that is buried away in the bowels of the site.
The sign-up process was very simple and involves sending a text to a shortcode which then replies with a subscription code that needs to be entered on the site to confirm your mobile number.
At the moment Vodacom is the only listed provider and South Africa is the only African country listed, one of 19 countries in all. So we seem to be very lucky.
There's a comprehensive config where you can tweak parameters such as delivery times, which types of notices you want etc. Most interesting is the option to receive status updates via sms, when you combine this with the ability to send in your own status update via SMS one starts to see the beginning of a very powerful little group text delivery system which could prove to be a very cost effective real time communication tool to your group of friends. Yes, it seems there is no charge above normal operators charges. Ofcourse MXit is still cheaper in the long run but its not as real time as an SMS, which the recipient is immediately made aware of. To prevent this from turning into a fullblown free-for-all you cannot easily subscribe to all of your friends status updates, but have to manually key in their names on a form.
Furthermore their is a nice keyword language you can use when sending in updates in order to perform different actions like, "wall john smith happy bday" to write on a friends wall and "note this is a mobile note" to write a note.
If they start releasing this to more African countries I can see this developing into a popular "chat via status" tool via SMS if it remains effectively free. (I will be keeping an eye on those charges)
I wonder how facebook looks to recoup losses, perhaps they are planning to make some back on mobile ads, but right now it seems like a dead loss.
A bit on RESTful webservices
Today I was put on the spot and asked to explain REST as it pertains to Web Services, unfortunately I found that I could not articulate that which I know and ended up basically flubbing the opportunity. Uggh, I was so angry at myself.
The truth is that REST is not easy to use and/or explain. Yeah, its simple but its not easy, in fact its hard. So I thought to avoid that particularly uncomfortable situation recurring that I should come up with some basic points to explain it, I shall call them Conrad's 4 basic cornerstones of RESTful Web Services. Those reading here should also see it as an opportunity to chime in and help by providing feedback as I think there are a lot of people that THINK they understand REST but don't really grok and I am certainly not excluded in that statement. I am not going to go into the benefits and what not, read wikipedia for that. This is purely some notes on the very basic principles.
Conrad's 4 Cornerstones of RESTful Web Services (HTTP)
REST = Representational State Transfer
- The service exposes application state and interaction as resources that can be represented (sic) as a unique URI over HTTP
- Resources are manipulated (maybe not the right word) through a uniform interface, these are POST, GET, PUT and DELETE verbs
- The service is stateless.
- The service is strictly client-server
Right I believe that is enough for my purposes, there are some other bits around Caching and Layering, mime types and response codes that my points don't cover but IMHO we are ok as HTTP takes care of that for us to some extend and the rest are less crucial to grokking the concept and thus removed for simplicity. (opinions?)
What does the URI address for the resource look like?
A simple example:
http://mysite.com/api/user/1
Here we are addressing a specific resource in the user collection .. though we are not expressing any intent as we are not providing a verb.Throw a verb in the mix:
GET http://mysite.com/api/user/1
Ah, now we are getting somewhere we want to retrieve the data for that specific resource.OR
DELETE http://mysite.com/api/user/1
I would like to delete the addressed resource..Similarly POST would create a new user (drop the resource identifier "1" here) and PUT would alter and replace the resource.
Thus the verbs loosly map as follows for out purposes:
POST = CREATE
GET = READ
PUT = UPDATE
DELETE = DELETEResponses on these actions will return status codes, another handy HTTP freeby that REST can use e.g. 200 OK's and 404 Not Found etc..
To state or not to state?
Um REST is stateless and the so-called gray area of using cookies for auth purposes is not gray, its broken. Just deal with the fact that your are not 100% compliant and leave that there. Alternatively look at Amazons Rest Auth implementation which operates via headers sent to and fro. Also adding the session identifier to every URL is not valid as this breaks the uniqueness of the resources' address as each user will utilise a different URI to address THE SAME resource!
Ok I am tired now, I still want to talk about using RESTlike URL's in your web application/site (as opposed to API's for webservices) as I have done in the past which raises issues such as the difficulties of using PUT and DELETE via browser forms often addressed by repurposing the POST method somewhat .. maybe subject matter for a next time.
PS whats up with Facebooks so-called RESTlike API?
Methods like admin.getAllocation etc??? Looks more like RPCLike what with method names getting sent in the requests? Use of HTTP and XML does not a REST service make!
Mobile phone data projectors. Paradigm shift?
Every day on the schoolyard a familiar scenario plays out where a group of kids all huddle around someone with a cellphone, pumping out the latest and greatest MP3 over the built in speaker. These kids can also be seen on their bicycles playing the same songs, walking in the mall playing the same song (loudly, so everyone hears) etc, etc.
The next big thing that all the mobile manufacturers are scrambling for seems to be the inclusion of a teeny tiny data projector, built right into the phone. No doubt this is originally meant for photo sharing and business purposes, but I can see something else evolving out of it. Perhaps this will be what the kids on the playground latch onto next?
Marketers, keep an eye out on this one, mobile video may become the holy grail for embedded advertising in ways we never thought of. The small screen has become untethered.
Pantech releases blow-controlled cellphone
I was a suffering from caffiene withdrawal when I saw this post of a Blow Controlled mobile phone, and the following crazy scenario played through my head, this is what I would have blogged if it was all true (which it's not):
[Start of silly fictitious post here ...]
Amazing, finally someone has savvied to the idea of a blow controlled cellphone. Ever since watching fear and loathing, I knew there was more to a bit of blow than meets the eye.
Meet [insert manufacturer here] "blow-controlled" mobile.
I mean, who needs anything more than a really basic phone anyways. The coolness factor should an could always be influenced by providing the user with appropriate quantities of blow during purchase and carefully regulating the users intake when accessing features like the phonebook and looking for a "multiple recipient" feature etc.
At last, someone has now released that exact phone. Brilliant. Much in the same way as Apple may be laceing their packaging with crack so that people will continually buy their products once buying the first, no matter how bad it is, someone has realised that introducing a notable narcotic in your product offering will sweeten the deal just so much more, while simultaneously easing product development. Almost makes that 2 year Vodacom Weekender contract (with the useless weekend minutes) more bearable.
[End of silly fictitious post here ...]
Sadly:
No folks sorry to disappoint but this is fact an actual device made by Pantech as featured by engadget mobile and as crazy as it sounds, this device is really controlled by the "wind" or rather the action of you gently blowing into the microphone may be used to adjust things like brightness, and volume..
Disclaimer: The fact and opinions expressed on this blog are completely a figment of the authors distorted mind, and can in no way be traced back to anything correlating with any one entity or event in reallife ever. This is a work of fiction and is there only as a parody/bit of a joke and will be gladly removed at the request of any party directly affected by it.
About me
Web Engineer, lover of technology, tearer down of walls.
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