I had to use a similar system from Amtrak that could barely understand a 6 digit ID number, though it was a number that had 3's, B's and E's in it. When it supposedly understood the number, it for some reason tossed me over to an operator to finish the process, and the operator had me read the number to them again. Either UPS has a far better system, or you got lucky with a tracking code that had very distinctive letters.
I worked for the office of the "Special Assistant to the Vice Provost for International Relations" (though that title has been changed many times since then) at my public University. Her job consisted of answering emails here and there between bickering faculty members or administrators in order to run interference before these emails reached the President or one of the Provosts (of which there were I think 13) and wasted their supposedly valuable time. She would also coordinate administrator/faculty "delegations" to other Universities abroad -- basically the president of our university and rich alumni going various countries pretending they were foreign dignitaries and signing various "memorandums of understanding" with similar individuals at other universities. This mainly involved getting her unpaid interns (or, members of her "Leadership Program", as she liked to call it) to create huge binders of useless information (basically printing out Wikipedia articles). From what I heard, the new President of our university has asked for these binders to be discontinued because they seemed like a waste of time and paper. Other than the binders (which she neither created nor read), she would have her assistants, who were making a few bucks above minimum wage, call and speak with the travel agents and party planners who would actually do the work of planning these engagements. She would also, of course, accompany the delegations at the university's expense to make sure everything was "running smoothly." Thus, the job of entertaining rich Alumni was delegated by the President to the Vice Provost for International Affairs, who then delegated it to her, who then delegated it to her poorly-paid assistants and unpaid interns. For this, the "Assistant to the Vice Provost for International Affairs" made 125,000 dollars a year, while the Vice Provost for International Affairs made $165,000 -- fully documented by the state for anyone who cares to see.
Agreed, and the two are not mutually exclusive, but I highly doubt that if this was 2006, a company specializing in real-estate sales would use its cash to expand horizontally into rentals before cementing its lead in its main vertical only a year and a half after IPO. Seems like a bit of a hedge play to me. I agree with the hedge, I'm just commenting on the macro trends I think this reflects.
It would be interesting to look at this as another data point in a macro shift from buying to renting. Other data points would be decreased job security and growing gas prices making it less attractive to buy homes far out in the suburbs.
"unfortunately as a social-networking medium Facebook's users will probably be much less receptive or happy to see the paid content than Google users"
Google's ad relevance was not always what it is today. As marketers got better and the algorithm improved, the ads gained relevance to the user and became more valuable. In facebook's case, marketers will have to figure out how to create ads that are relevant to the News Feed context rather than the search context, but I don't think that the social context is inherently unusable for ads -- it just hasn't been figured out yet.
I thought I heard about there being a cork shortage as well, after googling around it seems that this may be an urban myth. Even Cork conservation sites say there is no cork shortage [1]. Looks like twist-offs/plastic corks etc. may just be around because they are cheaper than natural corks at current market prices. Would be interesting to see how the production and demand for plastic vs. natural corks swings with the price of petroleum or other chemicals necessary for plastics production.
The problems that startups are trying to solve are too small and too uniform, possibly because marketing language used to define those problems sounds good but means little.
This is just a great concept. It's surprisingly frustrating to try and find relevant movie quotes on YouTube, download them, convert them, clip them, re-convert and upload back. I tried doing this for a funny tumblr I was putting together in my spare time - moviequotesaftersex.tumblr.com/ - and gave up because it was just too time consuming. So good luck to the team and I look forward to using the product, but how will this make money and stay sustainable?
Assuming what the author says actually ends up being Amazon's strategy, I think bringing in a dirt-cheap smartphone option and thereby accelerating the movement of another class of consumers (many of whom are probably still using feature phones) onto the mobile web is pretty disruptive, if only because it accelerates the adoption of the mobile web. The means -- forced adverts/consumerism -- isn't where the value is, the end -- more mobile web users -- is.
Well considering they are the 9th most visited site in the US and the companies ahead of it are all making revenues in the Billions (except Wikipedia and Twitter), then, ridiculously enough, $100 million sounds pretty modest.
I for one, commend Craigslist for their commitment to maintaining a strict, consistent, well-defined UI and moreover, for choosing to maintain a relatively modest operation to the benefit of their core users instead of succumbing to the promises of riches that so often end up ruining great services created by the Tech Community. Many of you are saying this is detrimental to consumers, and it may be in the short term, because services like PadMapper really do provide a better experience. But in the long-term, things seem to be much different. Too many recent startups launch with promises of "changing the world" only to be bought and dismantled a few short years later, setting their community adrift. Craigslist's chief benefit to their users, and to the web community as a whole, is that they have a proven track record of stability. Thus, who can blame them for trying to protect their marketplace from getting eroded by outside interests? If they bowed to the current pressure and allowed outside access to their data, the web would risk losing a long-term standard, and, these days, consistent, trust-worthy standards are in short supply.
Interesting that people are so up in arms about having prospective employers browse their facebook, but have no problem when asked if their employers can peruse their blood, hair, or urine under the guise of a drug test. Private, recreational drug use seems just as much nobody's business as private recreational drinking or sexual promiscuity that could be uncovered by facebook investigations...
This may be a gross oversimplification, but I don't get it: First the government bails out the large banks to the tune of 600 billion (give or take a few billion), 3 years ago. Now they realize that the banks were perpetrating fraud in the first place and decide to spend potentially millions (or maybe even hundreds of millions) along with the precious time of the already over-booked and underfunded federal court system to sue them. All to get some small fraction of the money that they gave to the banks back. And the banks will probably be using money the government gave them (some of that 600 billion had to last until now right?) to pay for their defense. Is this all basically an elaborate money laundering scheme for government lawyers, or just an expensive case of the US government being indian givers?
Facebook really opened a can of worms by showing other large corporations how much information and rights users are willing to give up (knowingly or unknowingly) for "the privilege" of using products that make their life more convenient/entertaining. I can see many more corporations doing things like this in the near future. Coming soon! Fridge that sends advertisers your personal diet information and is allowed to broadcast its contents to the world whenever GE sees fit!