As somebody who spends ungodly amounts of cash on technology I frequently go to sites like NewEgg.com for my purchases. Those guys tend to have the best pricing and they usually have whatever I need, be it hard drives, memory, enclosures, batteries,…whatever.

The one thing that bugs me to no end is this rebate crap. If you’ve never bought anything with a rebate attached it works like this: you buy something at full price, then once you receive the item you fill out some papers, and usually jump through other hoops like cutting out the retail code from the item’s packaging, and send that all in to a rebate processor. That processor then is supposed to send you a check as a rebate. The amounts vary.

Sounds simple but the reality is that rebates are such a hassle (and with the bankruptcy of one of the largest rebate processor companies, CPG/RebateStatus.com it’s even worse now) that I often skip the whole process and just don’t get the rebate.

Part of what I do is to give equipment and gear recommendations to my clients. If they need new computers, servers, cameras, software, or really anything tech related I thoroughly research what’s best for them, and how to get it as cost effectively as possible. But rebates are so bad I don’t consider them in my pricing research: say a $100 item comes with a $20 rebate attached I don’t tell my clients it only costs $80 because in my experience they won’t go through the whole paperwork hassle, and even if they do, chances are they’ll never see the rebate check.

::: Rebates often don’t make financial sense :::

Usually unless you are either not making any money or the rebate amount is very large, there is little financial sense in spending a lot of time and energy on the rebate thing.

It’s simple math: if you average out your income to be, say, $25 an hour then it doesn’t make sense to spend an hour to put together the rebate forms, UPC codes, hunting for serial numbers, and so forth if the rebate is just $10. Makes sense?

Case in point:  I purchased two packs of Patriot DDR3 memory and a Western Digital Velociraptor hard drive through Newegg. Prices were decent and both items had rebates attached. Normally I don’t care but this time around I wanted to see if the whole rebate process nightmare had improved.

::: Rebates are a good idea, but… :::

I buy this type of stuff a lot throughout the year – if rebates actually worked then I’d be saving quite a bit in some cases. It might just be worth it. So here’s hopin’, right?

No.

I printed order details, cut UPC codes, printed and filled out rebate forms, hunted down serial numbers, and did anything else they wanted. Since I’ve been 100% digital and virtual for many years now, I have to search hard for actual envelopes and stamps.

I made sure to do all that right after receiving the items because as usual there is only a very narrow time frame in which you can get your rebate. Send in your papers too late and you get nothing.

It’s a hassle but for experiment sake I’ll do it.

About three weeks after sending in the rebate to Patriot’s rebate processor firm I received a notice from them claiming my purchase didn’t fall within their accepted time frame. Of course that’s bullshit since I double check those things.

I’m not going to spend the time and energy to argue with them over a twenty dollar rebate.  And that’s probably what they’re counting on. A couple of thousand folks like me who just let it go adds up to a nice little amount for them.

And now Western Digital claims I left out the Serial Number on their rebate form. Again, the damn serial number is on there. I do make copies of everything and keep those filed away, as you’re supposed to. It’s not a secret that rebate processors like to..uh…lose…paperwork. But seriously – why is this such a damn hassle?

::: A game not worth playing :::

So no I’m back to skipping rebate offers – I wait until the item becomes available at a lower price without rebate or just purchase at full price. Yes, I hate rebates that much.

Note: the rebate thing is bad and that doesn’t change regardless of where you buy your stuff. I use Newegg as an example because that’s where I buy a lot of my stuff. Newegg doesn’t have any control over the rebate process. If you have problems with getting your rebates you’ll need to contact the manufacturer of the product that offers the rebate, as well as the rebate processing company. Don’t bug Newegg or whatever other retailer you buy from about this.

PALM PRE – RELEASE DATE

So it was announced that the long anticipated Palm Pre smartphone will be available to Sprint vict…subscribers on June 6th.

The price is a penny shy of $200 …. after $100 mail-in rebate.

SPRINT AND PALM STILL DON’T GET IT

And that’s where the problem is: Sprint doesn’t get it. I’m betting Palm doesn’t get it either.

Mail-in rebates are bullshit. They’re inconvenient, and often mean you’re losing money because those rebate vouchers magically disappear in the mail, or the company hired to validate the vouchers goes out of business (happend last year, remember?)

Companies doing the mail-in rebate crap are betting on their customers being forgetful or dumb enough to not send in the rebate voucher on time.

So Sprint and Palm, on the verge of biting the dust, expect customers to shell out $300 and deal with the hassle of getting a rebate check some time this century.

No! Sprint needs to kiss its customers’ collective butts and do everything possible to make becoming or staying a Sprint customer as convenient and economically advantageous as possible.

Charging three hundred bucks for a crap shoot of a phone at the same time when one can get the leader of smartphones, the iPhone, and its other main competitor, the Blackberry Storm, for about two hundred bucks right out of the gate.

I’m sure there are lots of folks who’ll spend the money on the Palm Pre anyways. But will the numbers be large enough for Palm and Sprint to turn things around? This mail-in rebate stunt certainly doesn’t help.

This is really too bad because I think the Palm Pre is actually a great little gadget. I love the Touchstone, the wireless induction charger. And I’ve had good experiences with Palm products in the past. But pricing is often the make-it-or-break-it factor in the world of gadgets and smartphones (unless you’re Apple in which case you can charge a fortune for mediocre junk with shiny surfaces).

We’ll see how this pans out for Palm and Sprint.

I call any form of advertising and marketing that’s wasteful and pointless Black Hole Marketing.

Yes you aren’t crazy – there really are stupid marketers doing stupid things all the time.

To give you an example, I just saw yet another TV ad from Comcast, advertising their new bundled cable Internet and TV packages. A nice TV ad, and I’d be interested in the offer – except Comcast doesn’t offer service anywhere in the metropolitan area where I live (a very big city. Oh screw it, it’s Phoenix).

I bet this ad is shown in many other areas where Comcast isn’t even operating. Black Hole Advertising.

The same evening I see another TV ad, and get a pamphlet from Sprint in the mail. Both forms of advertising talk up Sprint 4G, Sprint’s new super fast wireless internet access service. Download and upload speeds rivaling cable. Awesome. I so want it.

Problem: it doesn’t exist yet, except in Baltimore. Later this year a few other cities should have Sprint’s 4G service too. So why advertise this nationwide? To hype up demand for 4G prematurely?

That’s stupid marketing.

It’s stupid because it costs a lot of money to produce and air television commericals, and to print glossy color pamphlets that are sent to hundreds of thousands of people who can never buy.

It’s stupid because it tells thousands (millions) of people about something they can’t get, making the offer pointless. It’s not a “hype” thing either because you can’t hype something if you never plan on selling that something. The Comcast ad is a great example. Comcast isn’t in Phoenix, and will likely never come to Phoenix. But their ads are shown here on local TV, during prime time. Phoenix’ ad marketing isn’t cheap. Why not put this money towards advertising in areas Comcast does have service?

Some genius at these companies’ marketing departments thought it’d be a good idea to spend a few million dollars advertising to people who are not – and never will be – customers.

That’s money down a black hole.

This is frivolous spending because it cannot possibly yield any positive results. And yet you see this type of idiotic marketing everywhere.

Whether the marketing/ad people are just not paying attention, don’t care, or are really that incompetent doesn’t matter – the result is the same: wasted money and energy.

So, is your marketing effort seen by people who can actually be your customers?

They’re  renown self help gurus who originally had a good service to offer, had a great reputation, and now are nothing more than desperate telemarketing sales spammers.

Got an automated call from Loral Langmeier’s office at 1-866-905-9891

The message stated that Loral Langmeier would conduct a seminar in my area and gave dates. It tried to elicit third party credibility by mentioning Loral Langmeier was featured on Dr Phil (FAIL!). Doesn’t matter.

I knew of Loral Langmeier from the movie “The Secret” and thought she offered good advice and ideas about wealth creation. I don’t recall ever putting my phone number on any lists permitting her to call me. And my number is on the FTC’s Do Not Call list.

And yet, Loral Langmeier saw fit to infiltrate my privacy anyhow and pitch me on her services.

Very disappointing to find out she’s nothing more than a spammer.

Needless to say I’m not interested. She betrayed my trust by calling me, despite me never giving out my phone number. And that’s after I received a bunch of nearly daily emails about her stuff. It was so bad I unsubscribed from her mailing list, something I rarely do.

Rewind a few years to Robert Allen, author of money books like Nothing Down Real Estate and others did the same crap: start out with a decent idea, then kill his good image by spamming the hell out of his subscribers. Not only that, if he somehow got your phone number you better expect a call every few weeks about his services.

You betray our trust, you lose. If you act desperate we don’t believe you are as good as you say you are because if you were you didn’t have to be desperate.

If you are a marketer remember that you are not in control (as Seth Godin likes to say) – your customers are.

You should see the complaints both of these guys log on the web.

FAIL.

I mean it – instead of scaring New York City residents, and costing US tax payers over $300K, any reasonable decision maker involved in this would have commissioned a artist to whip something up in Photoshop.

In less than an hour and costing just a few dollars this could have been recreated. Hell, I’ll do it for free – so White House people you just hit me up next time, okay?

INCOMPETENCE – And Your Business

Good thing the douche in charge approving this mission, Louis Caldera, resigned over the issue.

And here is how this all relates to your business – incompetence and lack of communication.

I truly believe that a big part of this country’s (the world’s) problem is due to incompetent people in positions that can (and often do) affect large groups of people negatively. One person has so much decision power and so little competence that the fact of this person being in the position practically begs for problems.

Louis Caldera was a White House military aide. Not a cabinet member, not a high ranking military official. A person like this should never even have the authority to authorize such an important mission.

Who is the person in your organization who has more decision making power than he/she should? Is it you?

Who is the person in your organization who should have more power but doesn’t?

I imagine I’m not the only one and it appears Forbes is really trying to figure out what’s wrong. But instead of looking at the obvious (talking ads. several of ‘em. Bad layout. Slow response times. I mean c’mon!) they figure they just need to be more “hip”. And what’s hipper than funny videos, right? YouTube does it so why not Forbes.

Trying something different is good. Trying something different to desperately to save ratings or viewers is called Jumping The Shark. At least that’s what it’s called in TV production. I don’t know if that’s what Forbes is doing but it sure seems like it.

Wikipedia has a perfect explanation of the term Jumping the Shark and its origins:

“Jumping the shark is a metaphor that was originally used to denote the tipping point at which a TV series is deemed by a viewer to have passed its peak, or has introduced plot twists that are illogical in terms of everything that has preceded them. Once a show has “jumped the shark,” the viewer senses a noticeable decline in quality or feels the show has undergone too many changes to retain its original charm. The term has also evolved to describe other areas of pop culture, including movie series, music, acting celebrities, or authors for whom a drastic change was seen as the beginning of the end. Some have broadened its use to simply describe any decline in appeal for the subject in question, without requiring a significant “jump the shark” moment.^[1] The term derives from an episode of Happy Days, where Fonzie jumped over a shark on water skis.^{[2][3][4]  “}

 

Always stable: Aziani videos

Luckily we don’t need to resort to stuff like that on Aziani. Hot girls are always in demand so there’s no need to change anything drastic. Case in point: check out Penthouse Pet ANDIE VALENTINO’s latest video update. She’s a little hottie with “cute” stamped all over her tight body. So does my latest obsession Lena, who also just had a new video update on Aziani. Hmmm….sexy girls…

Okay, it ain’t really meth – meth coffee is merely Arabica beans and Yerba Mate. The producer of Meth Coffee is unknown and just calls himself “The Roaster”. If you want to sell his stuff you’re called a “Dealer”. Pretty creative.

The Meth Coffee web site is all kept in black and white, has the word “fuck” on the main page and has a pretty clever sales pitch about the product. Digging deeper through these crazy pages The Roaster talks about best ways to consume meth coffee (including a coffee enema) and gives tips on the proper handling of coffee such as storing it (actual quote: “…Keep your Meth bag zipped up tight like a cat’s asshole and store it in a dry place away from sunlight and extreme cold and heat.”).

I’ll order a bag because I’m a coffee lover and have enjoyed Yerba Mate tea in the past. I think I’ll bring a bag to some of the next shoots and see if I can’t squeeze out a few more videos with all that newfound energy

Well guess what: Intel anncounced that they will now release their Quad-Core chips (so twice the processing power of these new chips I longed for) this November.

And the price will be about the same.

So after spending a fortune to finally get those fucking Core 2 Extreme chips in my systems I have to learn that a few months later I could get something twice as good for the same price.

Since my business is making visual entertainment I will naturally have to purchase these new super chips as well, hence making the Dual Cores obsolete – about four months after they have been released to the market.

Intel is winning with people like me. But there aren’t a lot of people out there who are willing/able to spend that kind of money on microchips, particularly because even “outdated” chips like some of the most recent ones are still more than adequate for consumers and even most professional applications.

The good news for you guys is that soon videos will become even clearer and higher quality than they already are. I will be able to produce movies in about half the time now and with the recent upgrade in equipment I can even put some sweet surprises in every once in a while. Oh, you’ll see!

So I’m pissed and excited at the same time, quite a weird feeling.

I just wish Intel didn’t have their heads so far up their own asses about these things. Their marketing department should be fired. All of ‘em.

Why? Think about this: I know for a fact that Dual Cores (the ones releases in July/August made a big splash. Lots of people saved up their cash to get their hands on those sweet processors.) Guess what, that money now is not available for Quad Cores. The only ones who can afford Quad Cores are the ones who didn’t buy Dual Cores in the first place – hobbyists, gamers etc. Oh, and fucking Dell and HP. But Dell and HP live on consumer spending, who already have been/are buying Dual Core machines. Those consumers don’t have the funds left for Quad Cores either. So this means that Intel will lose A LOT of money with their new chips, as good as they may be. I certainly won’t buy any Intel stock this year, that’s for certain.

Well, I don’t like Apple Computers. I do have one but never use it.

Let me make this very clear: I think Apple Computers are overpriced, overrated pieces of home accent pieces. They look great, no doubt. But as somebody who actually uses computers to get work accomplished I have to say I’m not impressed by Apple.

IMHO, Apple’s reputation of stability and performance stems from pre-Windows XP times. Frankly, PC’s were notorious for stalling, freezing and varying in performance when running on Windows 98 and anything earlier. Apple, running on its own proprietary Operating System, enjoyed better system stability. Their OS featured more advanced user stuff as well so the choice was obvious – get Apple. But that was until about six years ago or so.

Some old-school professionals (particularly movie editors and compositors) still love their Apple boxes. Final Cut Pro, Apple’s own video editing software, is indeed a mighty fine product. But so is Avid, so is Adobe’s Premiere Pro, so is Sony’s Vegas – and all run on PC.  I don’t know about you but personally I rather like having choices and not be forced to use one particular piece of software just because it’s the only one available for the computing platform.

I tested the oh-so hyped G5 boxes from Apple. And yes, they did great. A dual processor equipped machine can really do some fine things. But quite frankly, my current PC based boxes beat the shit out of any Mac G5 and at about half the cost. Oh, and I can run any program I need on it.

This brings me to my next annoyance with Apple: availability of software. Or the lack thereof.

The reason why PCs are claimed to crash more than Apple computers is that there are far, far more software titles available for PC than Mac. With a gazillion different pieces of software, some are bound to not work as well as others. And the first thing imperfect software causes problems with is the Operating System. Windows XP Professional itself is not less stable than say Apple’s Tiger OS (feel free to prove me wrong), but some software or products can screw any OS up. Since there’s more software for Windows-based Operating Systems there’s more of a chance of something going wrong. Makes sense?

It’s much simpler for Mac – there’s like ten software titles you can buy (okay, there are more but you get the point) so naturally most of them work very well with Mac. Some software titles are available for both Mac and PC but given the fact that significantly more people use PCs than Mac, some software creators put most of their efforts into developing the PC version. 

And Apple computers are not as stable as many people seem to think. Personally I worked with several different Mac computers and all of them had massive stability problems. Virtually everybody I know who works on a Mac (not many, I admit) has problems. So where does this stability nonsense come from? Why do some people still think Macs never crash and PCs always do?

Old myths. Again, years back Apple computers might have been more stable than PCs but that was years ago.

Another thing I really hate: Quicktime.

Used to be great, sure. But Windows Media really buckled up and delivered stellar performance since about version 9. Matter of fact, I refuse to deliver our movies in Quicktime now: it’s slower to work with, quality isn’t better anymore and more consumers have Windows Media Players than Quicktime players. (And Flash players but that’s a different story…a love story actually. I love Flash and use it extensively now to deliver our movies. More on that later).

(And yes, I know Quicktime is not a codec, it’s a wrapper like AVI and can use different codecs. The most popular being H.264)

Oh, and Quicktime seems to cause issues on PCs. Go figure.

Finally: Mac fanatics. Frankly, people: Quit talking about how great Apple is and how everything else sucks. Quit attacking people like myself who opt to work on what we feel is now a more professional platform, the PC. I understand that many years ago Apple computers were the way to go but that has changed. A lot. You really are embarrassing yourselves. Realize that most of the world uses PCs and therefore most everything, from software to media players will be produced accordingly. The days I wasted just to please two Mac users by encoding video for Quicktime could have been better spent on making more good content. So from now on that’s that: no more Quicktime.

Thought of the day: I wish Apple would just go away. Actually I don’t. Instead, I wish they’d stop making computers and focus on making more sweet gadgets like iPods and expand their music store. I like iPods and the general idea of iTunes but won’t use either because their usage terms are too restricting for my taste.

Final notes: I’m not particularly a fan of Microsoft or any PC company. I just happen to prefer those products over Apple products. I do think Steve Jobs is a genius and admire his wisdom. Furthermore, I do feel Apple products are designed very well and look much better than most PC products. But I buy computers to work on them, not look at them.

The rationale here seems to be that by getting rid of all liquids brought on a plane, this type of bomb-making (is it a bomb?) can’t happen.

Problem 1: you can still get water and soda on the airplane.

Problem 2: people still have bladders. A terrorist just needs to drink a bunch of water before he gets on the plane. Then he runs to the bathroom, pisses in a cup and voila! – there’s the liquid airlines worked so hard on getting rid of.

Are airlines going to force you to go to the bathroom before you board a plane? Are they going to get rid of all drinks during a flight? C’mon….

The reason these new regulations bother me is that they make no sense. There are other ways (examples referenced above) to get liquids on board. So forcing passengers to get rid of their liquid items is pretty pointless. And worse yet, it looks like the duty-free and airline shop industry is actually suffering from this too because passengers are not going to want to buy duty-free perfumes, wines, brandy.

Scumbuckets trying to hurt people will always find a way to do so. Terrorists win if we have to constantly restrict freedoms and change every aspect of our lives. And I really, really don’t want those fuckers to win.