A few months ago I called out a company for giving out my E-mail address to a third party that peppered me with “deals” I wouldn’t want to miss. I did this through Twitter. A rep from that company contacted me to find out what was going on and I shared all the information I had including screen captured evidence that they were behind it. This rep’s superior then contacted me saying that they had done nothing wrong because I agreed to it in the rules of a contest I entered (not true - I read the rules 10 times and found no agreement) and asked me to take down the offending tweet. I replied that I would be glad to take down the tweet but that I would make another one that would link to a blog post explaining the whole thing if they would prefer it.
I never heard from them again.
Flash forward to yesterday. A month or more ago I tweeted something positive about the company that provides our people and money database for the church I serve, Fellowship Technologies (Fellowship One is the service). We are very happy with the service. I honestly don’t remember what I wrote about them except that I think I endorsed the service in answer to a question about which management system we use. Yesterday, I had a box of swag on my desk and a handwritten note from someone at Fellowship Technologies thanking me for the tweet.
That, my friends, it how you do the internet.
The contrast couldn’t be bigger. I suspect if I had a problem with F1 they would jump all over it and make it right. They showed appreciation for positive feedback. What do you think I’m going to tell people from now on when they ask me if I’m happy with F1? Exactly. That other company? When asked, I tell my friends to avoid their products. The quality of the product might be good, but why would I put my reputation with my friends on the line when I’m not sure they would get a good customer service experience?
I don’t have to doubt with Fellowship.
I received an E-mail this morning from Amazon.com’s Associates Program. If you’re unfamiliar, this program gives me a very small amount of money (really, it’s store credit) when people click links and make purchases through links that I provide on blogs and on Twitter. It’s advertising. And it is no more in the state of Arkansas.
Our governor recently signed new sales tax law that, if I understand it correctly, is going to charge sales tax on items purchased on-line. I’m not sure how they’re going to get that tax money and I find it ridiculous that they will do this when it’s really no different than me going to buy stuff at the Wal-Mart in Westville, OK rather than here in Arkansas.
Oh, but for one thing. A couple of weeks ago I was speaking with someone who works in Wal-Mart’s main complex up in Bentonville and asked if they would ever move to a more metropolitan area like Dallas or at least fracture the home office and put parts in different cities. Her response was, “Why would we do that? We pretty much own the politics of this state.”
If you ever had any illusions that politicians aren’t bought and paid for I hope you’ll drop them.
Urban Outfitters and their skinny jeans and v-neck t-shirts, that is. And their stealing. I think I’m going to buy the Arkansas one from this gal as a protest and because I’d love for my daughter to have it.
Flannel.
(ht/ Daring Fireball)
Assuming that’s a long “o” which is how Leo Laporte pronounces it.
Apple’s going to go to bat for their developers. That 30% must be a really nice figure.
Markdown is the New Word 5.1
Now, I never used Word 5.1. That I remember. I worked in a lab while in college that had nothing but Macs but I’m pretty sure all I did at that desk was check my E-mail and play solitaire. I didn’t buy my first Mac until 2005 so I missed the way Word used to be.
What Markdown + TextMate remind me of is that old DOS version of WordPerfect I learned in high school. No superfluous junk. Lots of keyboard strokes. Just what you needed to write. This is exactly the reason I write everything in Markdown/TextMate.
I guess I was the only one surprised by the late evening E-mail I got last night from DropDAV telling me that if I wanted to continue to use the service I’d now have to pay $5 a month. Not that big a deal, I guess. I was only using it to export/import OmniOutliner and Keynotes from my iPad.
From the E-mail:
To support the hundreds of man-hours that went into the new version, and majorly improved infrastructure, we’re transitioning away from a “freemium” pricing model. Starting today, we ask all of our users pay $5 per month.
The first question I have is, “When is this going to happen to DropBox?” The second is, “When is Apple or Amazon going to figure out sync in their cloud services?” No one has that figured out quite like DropBox does.
Microsoft the S.S. Minnow.
