Five Easy Pieces (of Bad Marketing)

My newspaper bill came in the mail today. It's time to renew my subscription to the Arizona Daily Star. Well, I'd like to renew online and save time, money and space, but something is amiss.

Click on each image in order, from left to right, to see my attempts to pay my bill.



I really think everyone in the Star's direct marketing department needs one-on-one training in how to type a URL. Not to mention that some IT manager needs to wake up the yokels in Web support.

You know, it's been a decade since the Web went commercial. You'd think a media outlet would have a clue by now. Aw, heck. It's only a small town newspaper. You can't expect these guys to proofread.

How hard can this be, to get a URL right in 2005? It's not like I'm ordering plain toast, which isn't on the menu.

Spying on Earth

A few years back, one of the "better-known" mapping sites had satellite images. It used to be a hoot to pull up our house and show my daughter.

Everybody and their mother browsed to that site after September 11, just to get a top-down look at the horrible hole in the ground. Then suddenly, one day, the technology was gone. (assumes teenage stance) What a rip-off!

Now the ability to see a bird's eye view of our house is back.

At first glance I'm digging MSN Virtual Earth better than Google Maps: the close up view is closer. The houses are bigger and the pictures are clearer. -- Search Engine Lowdown

To the Moon, Google! To the Moon!

These days, I'm working on a team tasked with putting together a new Web site and along with it, a team blog. So I started to look around the Web at different team blogs and found some very interesting concepts.

Uhhh....wait. That wasn't where I was originally going with this post. (pause)

Well, to make a long story short, I stopped by the Google Blog and read a recent post on a new Google mapping feature.

After our satellite maps integration was completed, Chikai, a Google Earth engineer, had time to make his lunar dream a reality -- sort of. -- Larry Schwimmer, Software Engineer

Then I clicked through...

In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface.

Yeppers...Google has gone extraterrestrial. Check it out.

Google Moon - Lunar Landing Sites

Murphy's Law of Shopping

I have always had a theory -- I call it "Murphy's Law of Shopping." I'm sure you know this one.

Whatever you buy, whenever you buy it, it will go on sale or you'll find an applicable coupon immediately after your purchase.

Imagine my delight when Amazon.com made "Murphy's Law of Shopping" work in my favor.

Date: 16 Jul 2005 21:49:28 -0700
From: "Amazon.com"
Subject: Your Amazon.com Order for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6)

Hello from Amazon.com.

Good news! We've just lowered the price of "Harry Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince" from $17.99 to $16.99.

You don't need to do anything to get the lower price--we are automatically issuing you a $1.00 refund. This refund should be processed in the next few days and will appear as a credit on your next billing statement. We'll also send you a follow-up e-mail to confirm the refund once it has been completed.

Thanks again for shopping at Amazon.com. We hope you enjoy your book!

Let It Snow, Let It Snow Let It Snow

The heat of summer got you down? Yeah, me, too.

Try your hand at these games designed to kill time indoors, courtesy of the folks at Look and Feel New Media.

Make-a-Flake - snowflake

Buddy Lee Hangman

Duncan Man - Yo-Yos

Kohl's Crowd Control - Lee Dungarees

[ tags: paper crafts, games ]