I've written a few posts on the quality of Wikipedia and its move to make the entire wiki available to developing countries free, and my concern that we (those of means) provide high quality information to students who don't have access to competing information.
I wasn't alone; Wikipedia continues to draw attention from others who want to compare its content to other sources like Encyclopedia Britannica. Now you can track all the articles written about this on Wikipedia's External Peer Review.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Personalized Starbucks Card: Round 2
I just went through customizing a Starbucks card - I can't tell you who for because it's a family member. It wasn't quite as much fun as I 'd hoped. There were quite a lot of choices, but frankly, I was hoping to upload a design of my own creation.
Oh well.
My second issue - and this is more of a beef -you don't find out until the very, very last page that there's a $4.00 customization fee. This is in addition to loading the card to buy coffee. And that's my other, related issue - you can't load the card for less than $15.00. Yet without a doubt, if you send this card to someone who goes to Starbucks regularly, they will load and reload this card. The gift should really be in taking the time to create a cool card.
Of course, for Starbucks, that means that each order is a minimum $19.00.
I won't be giving too many friends a $19.00 card. And that's too bad, because I'd take the time to design a LOT of these if the total amount I had to pay was, say, $10.
Next up: how the card looks. Stay tuned ...
Oh well.
My second issue - and this is more of a beef -you don't find out until the very, very last page that there's a $4.00 customization fee. This is in addition to loading the card to buy coffee. And that's my other, related issue - you can't load the card for less than $15.00. Yet without a doubt, if you send this card to someone who goes to Starbucks regularly, they will load and reload this card. The gift should really be in taking the time to create a cool card.
Of course, for Starbucks, that means that each order is a minimum $19.00.
I won't be giving too many friends a $19.00 card. And that's too bad, because I'd take the time to design a LOT of these if the total amount I had to pay was, say, $10.
Next up: how the card looks. Stay tuned ...
Apple Leaves A Customer High & Dry
Last Sunday, while standing outside on the patio at the end of an event, my partner brought our friend Susan over to me then delicately beat a hasty retreat.
Susan's hard drive had crashed. And her back-up hadn't backed up properly in a year. (Note to self: check your back up every now and again.)
She'd been trying to get some assistance from Apple and it wasn't going well. Even though she'd bought a replacement Mac, she still needed her hard drive salvaged if at all possible. When she asked at the Apple store how to do this, they gave her a handful of companies where she could take her hard drive.
That's it.
So Susan was reduced to asking me - a non-Apple user but, okay, a bit of a geek - what I thought she should do. I might add that she was fairly spittin' mad at this point, and talking about returning the Mac she'd just bought. She felt ill-used, in fact; a non-geek amongst the scary techies.
Many of you may have followed Heidi Miller's and Shel Holtz's experience last year when her hard drive failed. Believe it or not, that was the information I drew on to give Susan some advice (with all the appropriate caveats, of course).
Uh-oh: we have PC people repping Apple!
I haven't spoken to Susan since regaling her with all the horrors she can expect from Apple's infamous customer service, but I'll be seeing her in a few days and will get the details then.
Susan's hard drive had crashed. And her back-up hadn't backed up properly in a year. (Note to self: check your back up every now and again.)
She'd been trying to get some assistance from Apple and it wasn't going well. Even though she'd bought a replacement Mac, she still needed her hard drive salvaged if at all possible. When she asked at the Apple store how to do this, they gave her a handful of companies where she could take her hard drive.
That's it.
So Susan was reduced to asking me - a non-Apple user but, okay, a bit of a geek - what I thought she should do. I might add that she was fairly spittin' mad at this point, and talking about returning the Mac she'd just bought. She felt ill-used, in fact; a non-geek amongst the scary techies.
Many of you may have followed Heidi Miller's and Shel Holtz's experience last year when her hard drive failed. Believe it or not, that was the information I drew on to give Susan some advice (with all the appropriate caveats, of course).
Uh-oh: we have PC people repping Apple!
I haven't spoken to Susan since regaling her with all the horrors she can expect from Apple's infamous customer service, but I'll be seeing her in a few days and will get the details then.
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