Smear on a Little Snake Oil – Part 1
Posted on | April 7, 2012 | No Comments
PhotoIllustration ChaliceMedia
OK, so Apple has done a number, Ok a BIG number, of amazing things. Enough to almost make me forget a out the oft used VHS vs Beta conflagration or the Blu-ray vs HDDVD shipwreck analogies when comparing the Big A to the Big MS… Almost.
For sure the guys and hmmm…word choice dilemma here…women at Apple know the heck out of HOW TO MARKET STUFF. Whew! These are the folks who made bazillion a household word. But…
There’s a really interesting (albeit brilliant) methodology happening in both the iTunes and App stores–OK, so it’s really only one store… Or a million… One or the other, who knows. My point is that they have really developed an art form in taking the concepts of cost and price OUT of the purchase equation. You don’t really get the confirmation a.k.a. Reminder that you actually spent money, until the next day or two, along with the bazillion other emails flooding your inbox.
Talk about separation of price and value….
Then again, once you buy an app, you NEVER EVER see the price of that app again. Unless, of course, you follow Apple’s rules to the letter and your wife has her own Apple ID for her iPhone–then you can use her phone to remind you how much you paid for your apps. Ok, Ok. I know that I COULD just keep all of those app store receipts… But, isn’t that just a little too organized?
By now, you’re wondering “he said snake oil, when is he gonna get to the snake oil?”
NOW, he said in reply. These kinds of Cost/value separation things are pervasive throughout the bazillion apps on the store. Oops, I mean the Apple App Store–R in a little circle. I’ve noticed it a lot when it comes to Free apps. OK, nothing wrong with Free. Free is good if it does the job. Free is good if the data migrates seamlessly to the Upgraded e.g. No ads, no limits, no something or other that the REAL version has…But they never actually tell you what the differences are.
Free to upgrade is good when you know the limitations UP FRONT. Free is NOT good when you have to reenter everything. Free is NOT good when you can’t export the data. Free is NOT GOOD when you would have spent the buck or four or ten upfront had the sales pitch been straightforward.
NOT SNAKE OIL.
—
Written with Pad & Quill, on the iPad
Nah, You Don’t Want That, You Want THIS!
Posted on | March 15, 2012 | No Comments
Ever wonder why the search engines keep getting better at guessing what they think you’re looking for? This vid on the Semantic Web is a year old, but still interesting viewing.
Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.
Update on the Record
Posted on | February 29, 2012 | No Comments
A big thanks to the customer service people at Zoominfo.com. Though company profiles cannot be corrected by anyone but their staff, they gave me the proper procedure to create a request that would get the issues resolved quickly.
Both and the staff behind it worked simply and efficiently. Corrections were made and verified within a could of days.
Kudolicious!
Ron
Setting the Record Straight
Posted on | January 26, 2012 | No Comments
Disclaimer Time
There is a “company information” website (one of many in the websphere) that is showing this company, ChaliceMedia LLC, as a bit (ha!) overstated. Some of the details:
- 16 “verified” contacts – who, knows I may be one of them but I’m only allowed to click on 15 contacts…
- Among them … a COO, an executive assistant, a head of security, the founder of BeriCraft Aviation (FICTITIOUS), a Key lawyer, and…
- A principal, tech services background (that’s Moi), and…
- nine other employees.
- Then, the profile shows 50-100 total employees (ha! — screw it — double ha! there’s just… let’s say it together… Moi)
- The really fun part is the $10 – $25 MILLION dollars in revenue. (HA!*103) – this is overstated by a minimum of 2,000 times.
All of the above is BUNK, and most of it isn’t even listed on our FICTITIOUS websites. So…. every time I build a website you will see content similar to that below on either the FRONT PAGE OF THE SITE or on a page conspicuously labeled DISCLAIMER. It’s just a different medium. Can you imagine the researchers for these companies going into a book store (or having a bot crawl the fiction offerings at Amazon) and come up with these bogus profiles?
A major frustration is that I cannot CORRECT this information on ANY of these websites.
In today’s mail I had a VIP thing to an interesting conference in San Francisco in March… If you are the person who sent it, thanks… but in all HONESTY, I’m probably not the VIP you think I am.
Sample disclaimer:
Important Disclaimer
CheapCXOs and SeemsFree are fictional companies. Any resemblence to actual organizations is stricty satirical.
CheapCXOs.com and CheapCXO.com are part of the SolaceCreek Site Network from ChaliceMedia.
The Solace Creek site network, the village of Solace Creek, Colorado and all other references contained herein are fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or places is unintentional.Solace Creek, Colorado; Boulder-Springs, Colorado; The Solace Creek Statesman; The Boulder-Springs Journal; Acolytica; York Broadcast Network; SeemsFree; BeriCraft; and other businesses and communities contained herein are fictional components of the Solace Creek Stories.The people of Solace Creek, Colorado, Boulder-Springs, Colorado, and the surrounding areas are fictional as well, although some of the place names used in the stories may be actual places for realism. The political and corporate characters in the Solace Creek Stories may be composites of real public figures.
All material on The Solace Creek site network, and it’s included websites are proprietary to, and copyright ChaliceMedia LLC, all rights reserved. For clarification on any of this website’s content, please refer the Contacts page at the home site of ChaliceMedia LLC.
And the key company-wide disclaimer information regarding fictitious entities — https://chalicemedia.com/disclaimer
If you ever have any questions about ChaliceMedia, contact us
Thanks for your patience, best regards
Ron Heimbecher, ChaliceMedia LLC
An Everlong Appreciation – Got One?
Posted on | December 24, 2011 | No Comments
In putting together the Twelve Days of Christmas project on Hoarseman, I ran across some of the most stunning artwork in the history of mankind (Wiki Paintings www.wikipaintings.org) It’s amazing that the more you struggle with learning or practicing something, or even working at something you have experience in, the greater your appreciation for those who are truly brilliant in any field.Most of the work in the collage below (11 Pipers is the Twelve Days connection) is by Vincent Van Gogh, of whom I’ve always been a fan, with the addition of some new discoveries from Gerard Terborch and James Whistler.
Another discovery led me to an article on an interesting British officer, and an acquaintance of T.E. Lawrence — yeah the Arabia guy — Richard Meinertzhagen.
‘Nuf from me. Go explore on your own and have a marvelous, fantastic wonderful Holiday…or enjoy your day at the movies. Here’s the collage.
Public Domain images from WikiPaintings(an amazing new site in Beta), except as noted1from top left:
- Corner of a Cafe Concert 1880 – Vincent Van Gogh
- Head of a Peasant with a Pipe 1885 – Van Gogh
- Head of Man 1886 – Van Gogh
- Self Portrait with Straw Hat and Pipe 1887 – Van Gogh
- Head of a Fisherman with a Sou’Wester 1883 – Van Gogh
- Man with Pipe and Eye Bandage 1882 – Van Gogh
- A Good Glass of Beer 1873 – Van Gogh
- Richard Meinertzhagen – Public Domain photograph – (from WikiMedia Commons1)
- Man Smoking a Pipe – James, McNeil Whistler c. 1859
- Fisherman with a Sou’Wester Pipe and Coal Pan 1883
- A Guard Room Interior with a Soldier Blowing Smoke in the Face of His Sleeping Companion – Gerard Terborch
1Caption of the same image in Garfield, Brian (2007) The Meinertzhagen Mystery, reads: “Richard Meinertzhagen in the Highlands, 1922″(from Wikipedia)
Tags: art > brilliance > Christmas > holiday > Terborch > Twelve Days > Van Gogh > Whistler
How Do You Picture It?
Posted on | December 19, 2011 | No Comments
Often the best way to make a point is with an image, or twelve. Over at the Hoarseman I’m having some fun with the Twelve Days of Christmas and experimenting with some new software at the same time. Of the six days done so far, four have been created using different modes of iDraw, an app for iPad; one with Corel PaintShop Pro Photo X4 Ultimate, and one with Art Studio, another iPad app.
iDraw is a vector graphics tool, with an amazing amount of functionality in a tablet app. So far I haven’t run out of layers (there are some apps that require an in-app purchase for additional layers beyond a certain point.
Here are a couple of samples from the Twelve Days Project.
Corel PaintShop Pro Photo X4 is the latest generation of an app I’ve been using on the majority of my design work for the past several years… Since it was JASC PaintShop. It’s a full featured blast.
Here’s the latest, for the Fifth Day of Christmas.
Hey, have fun. Happy Holidays.
Ron at ChaliceMedia
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