EmptyPort - Brian's Blog

Subscription Renewals In A Time Of War

I have always had a love-hate relationship with subscription services. College was the first time I really subscribed to any kind of content service. When you're in college, getting value from a subscription is a tricky balance - You often have a lot of time, especially late at night, but you have limited money to use to subscribe to them. There are all kinds of flashing lights and blinking things you can buy, and it's a question of what's most important to you to have. 

If you're blessed enough to have a job after graduation (like I was), you end up with a lot of disposable income but no time to use it in. I made a lot of good and bad choices about subscriptions in those days. For example:

The Economist - This is one of those great underappreciated magazines. The editorials and writing is top-notch, they have a voice, and they do their job very well. Reading this cover to cover each week will keep you better informed on the world than any of you peers. Reading a 70 page magazine about dense political and economics issues each week isn't easy though - This isn't like breezing through TIME or Us Weekly. I'm a faster than average reader and it would take me five or six hours total to plow through the magazine.

The high price tag for a full subscription doesn't make it easier really - I think I was spending about $250 or so for a six month subscription. Especially in college, that was a serious dent in the beer and pizza fund. In the end, I'd buy a six month subscription, read maybe half of them, cancel my subscription, and then resubscribe a few months later. I found a few good economics blogs online instead and wound up getting most of the coverage I wanted for free, and I wouldn't feel guilty for not reading every post. So yes, zero hedge and naked capitalism replaced a lot of the economist for me.

Pandora - Pandora is without a doubt one of the greatest freemium services on the Internet. This is probably one of the best $50 investments I've ever made. Being able to stream the high-quality music, no ads, and the desktop app for a year was well worth it. Unfortunately, Pandora's subscription system has two problems:

1. Their renewals system sucks. There's no way to know if your renewal actually went through or not, and so you are left anxious and worried that you're about to get cut off from your supply of good work music. (This, by the way, was the inspiration for this post.)
2. There is no increasing value to being a subscriber for a long period of time. I've had a Pandora One account for over a year, and I'm getting exactly what I bought a year ago. That can be a nice thing in some situations, but there's also been no new features or improvements to their service. Magazines get new writers, software gets new features, Pandora is streaming the same 192 Kb music with the same limitations as last year.

Overall, Pandora is definitely one of the best subscriptions I've ever had.

PASTE - This is that magazine that I wanted to love but that slipped away by accident. The writing was good, the music was very solid, and I agreed with their criticisms at least half the time. Magazines in general are having a hard time in the new media world though, and when I went to renew my subscription, I sent them a check for another $11 (so cheap!) and my renewal card. Even though I'd tried to continue, my issues stopped coming, and my was check never cashed.  At the time, they had no way to renew your subscription or change information online, and no telephone subscription support. Basically, physical mail was the only way to do anything, and they weren't responding to my letters. I think PASTE lost me as a subscriber just due to sloppy bookkeeping on their part. 

 

What were some subscription services that you liked or that you still love today? (Or, if you work at PASTE, can you please get my subscription turned back on?)

New Post by me on the HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog

I just wrote a new post on the HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog about Ben & Jerry's dropping email marketing in favor of social media. Check it out:

Ben & Jerry's Drops Email Marketing In Favor of Social Media:  http://bit.ly/9dFUjZ

Beats in Space Podcast

If you like music, and you don't listen to the Beats in Space podcast from Tim Sweeny, you're probably doing something wrong.

It's one of the only podcasts that I subscribe to, but it's two hours a week of dependably awesome music for doing anything to. Writing, reading, chilling out, anything. I've been listening to it weekly since 2007 and love it. There's also some cool interviews and narration here and there from guest DJs, but there's always plenty of music and the DJs he brings on are really cool. The Beats in Space show airs live on Tuesday nights, and it's usually up on iTunes on Thursday or Friday. The genres played depend a lot on the guest DJs and what's going on, but there's a fair amount of electronic, hip-hop, and other genres that get mixed in to make up each two hour episode.

You can subscribe to BIS here via RSS, or on iTunes here. 

Windows 7 After Three Months

For the last three months, I have made Windows 7 my primary operating system. This wasn't easy to do - I've been a die-hard Mac user for over 20 years. That made much of this psychological. A month later, I'm still using Windows 7 daily though for most basic stuff... at least until I get a new Mac. 

There's a lot of great stuff in Windows 7 though. You can rearrange and pin icons to the system menubar at the bottom - A big pet peeve of mine for years in older versions of Windows. It makes it a lot more like an OS X Dock ripoff, but I'm very okay with that. Some applications will also give you more options when you right-click on their icons - Such as a list of recent documents, one-click tasks (think previous/pause/next in iTunes), or other tools. I find in general this saves a lot of clicking around inside the application. Being able to start a closed application from there is great as well - Better than digging through the Start menu and trying to remember where something was placed and where that item fell in the list.

Speaking of the Start Menu, let's talk about that for a minute. It is without a doubt the most quintessential part of using Windows. They made some very good and big changes here. You can easily pin and order items in the menu just by dragging and dropping, or right clicking to delete an item you want. In the end, you can get the Start menu that you really want with much less digging and struggling and Googling for answers. I really like that. The other great change in my mind is the Search bar at the bottom left. Its primary search works on items in your start menu, so you don't need to remember where or in what folder an item was sorted to. I can type in "gimp" and Gimp comes up without any digging or thinking about "where is this on my computer". You can't ask for better than that. 

The new "Library" system works in a similar way. Instead of thinking about specifically where on your computer files are, you now have libraries inside of your personal user folder that works much like if every Documents folder in your account spit out its contents into one larger folder. You don't need to think about navigation or where those files are inside of your personal folder anymore. They're just listed with their folders there, and you can copy, delete, open, and act on them in any way like you were at the actual file. I think this is an example of Microsoft taking a big cue from Apple's iPhone/iPad strategy of no direct file system. You do have files but you don't think about their location ever. The OS manages all of that for you and you can just operate on them easily.  

There are still a couple nits that I have though. I've somehow wound up with at least two Downloads folders, in different locations. I think this is a result of the Libraries system, where depending on the item things can be downloaded to what is really my Desktop, or ~/Downloads, or ~/Documents/Downloads. I'm not sure what the rhyme or reason is to the different locations at different times, and so I can't fix it right now. That is frustrating.

Overall, this is definitely a real competitor to the modern Mac OS now and passes this flop of Vista by far. It's up to Microsoft now to get people to replace the "Good Enough" Windows XP that people are still using ten years later. Microsoft's battle is not to build a better OS than XP - It's to convince people that they need a new computer and OS from the XP that they're used to.

WWDC 2010: My Predictions

Alright, I have ten minutes to write this before the keynote starts. Here are my predictions on what will be at the WWDC 2010 keynote:

• iPhone OS 4 ships this week. Many apps already updated, some still waiting. iPad OS 4.0 will ship in August. 
• iPhone HD/v4. More video capabilities, more video editing, other features covered elsewhere in depth already.
• CDN available now that will hold your music purchased from iTunes store for streaming to any Apple device you own. Related to lala acquisition. You can stream via wifi 192 Kbit AAC copies of anything you've bought, and video. Not much local storage required that way. You can still download and hold locally if you want though. 
• No mention of Mac OS 10.7 or new Mac software except for XCode updates.
• Bluetooth touchpad now available for $89, for Macs and iPads. Full size touchpad like from a 17" MBP. Supports all the iPad/Mac OS smart gestures.
• Demos from Valve and one other game publisher (Activision? Using StarCraft 2?) on how they've started bringing game development back to the Mac, and how new Apple technology helps them do this more easily.

Article: The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash

This is the smartest/best thing I've read all week. Tough, smart, visionary, and probably accurate, all in one: 

The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash

 

Don't comment here - comment on that article. It deserves it.  

Apple's iPad Rocks

I don't own one yet, but I have used one, and I know a lot of people who own them already. In fact, I know more people who own iPads than palm phones, kindles, nook readers, or most other popular mobile devices. This device has been out for two weeks and is already kicking the ass of every other mobile device out there.

Pretty cool. I wish I had one to play with. For now I'll settle for playing with the iPhone OS 4 beta that I got on Friday. 

Quick: 5 Genius Things About The iPad

Here's my big 5 list on the genius things about the iPad:

1) Proven content. Nobody can ask "Who will code for this?" or "Will it have an audience?" Proven library of 140,000+ applications from the widely recognized and trusted App Store. Major publishers (newspapers, books, etc.) have already endorsed this and are providing content.  

2) "Late-March" ship date is pure Marketing genius. Everyone in the USA will be getting their tax refund in late March/early April. A new $500-800 toy with major sex appeal will be hitting stores as much of America finds their wallets a little thicker than usual. I am certain this is a deliberate effort by Apple. Maybe they're ready to ship in 2-3 weeks, but they're delaying intentionally to have a very splashy first week where people go out in droves.

3) Familiar UI/OS. Everyone who has seen or used an iPod Touch or iPhone already knows how to use this. Everyone who has seen a TV commercial is familiar with the basic moves. Pinch, swipe, tap. The OS is safe and proven.

4) Physical keyboard available. This is what will help it crush netbooks. Basic word processing/formatting/spreadsheet apps, on a cheap computer that is VERY portable, with a full physical keyboard  is a killer combination for a lot of people. People who carry netbooks around their office/life will be able to switch to the platform. Light, fast, powerful.

5)  720p video playback is very nice. There's some serious hardware inside of this thing, including the never-before-seen Apple A4 processor. No grainy/pixellated AVIs here. You can watch real HD video from the iTunes Store or from your home computer. I dream of an h.264 version of Hulu here for streaming TV shows to the device over wifi. 

These are my thoughts. What are yours?

 

Really nice write up on the value of Yahoo Answers

There is a great post today on SEOMoz there's a really great writeup on the value of answering questions on Q&A forums for businesses. A metal roofing company spends a few minutes every day answering questions, and generated over 500 website visits with a cost per click that is well below their usual Yahoo! CPC rates.

Do you use Q&A Forums for your business? Tell me about your experience. 

Martha Coakley Doesn't Serve Massachusetts' Interests

 

Not often that I dig into politics here (In fact, this is the first time ever.) But I feel strongly on this subject. For anyone who doesn't know, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is a front-running candidate to fill Ted Kennedy's empty Senate seat in a month. She announced today that she is with Joe Lieberman and against health care reform for America. (Coakley won't vote for health plan with abortion limits; rivals say stance is short-sighted)

 It has nothing to do with the separation of church and state, it's a human life and the quality of that life. In 2004 I saw Ted Kennedy speak about how in the 1989, health care reform came up in Massachusetts and was around one vote away from passing here. He refused to vote for it because he felt the reforms "did not go far enough". As a result, hundreds of thousands of MA residents went without health insurance, dying, being ill, missing work, and going bankrupt, because he felt health insurance reform did not go far enough. His refusal to vote for a gradual step resulted in a tragedy for our state for over twenty years more. 

The United States only has one chance to enact health care reform. If it doesn't happen now, it likely never will. Coakley is talking about letting 40 million Americans go without cancer treatments, to be forced to cut their AIDS and HIV medications in half, to force children to go without checkups and shots, in the name of free abortions. She should be ashamed of herself. The bill doesn't even suggest banning abortion, only that the Federal government should not subsidize abortion.

It is only once in a hundred years that the Democrats control the House, Senate, and Presidency simultaneously. If they do not do it now, it will never happen, and millions will go through agony and die.

I think the right to health care in America is more important than anything Coakley can come up with while stumping for votes at a homeless veteran's shelter. 

Coakley is happy to make all the same mistakes her predecessors have made in the name of making a name for herself. We should not only learn from our own mistakes, but learn from those around us.

 

The Stupak Amendment (The item in discussion above):

"No funds authorized or appropriated by this Act or an amendment made by this Act may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the health plan that includes coverage of abortion, except in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, or unless the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest. 

Nothing in this section shall be construed as prohibiting any nonfederal entity (including a state or local government) from purchasing separate supplemental coverage for abortions for which funding is prohibited under this section or a plan that includes such abortion, so long as 

1) such coverage or plan is paid for entirely using only funds not authorized or appropriated by this Act; and (etc.)"

So, the Stupak amendment prevents federal money from being spent on unnecessary abortions, but does nothing to prevent state, local, or private money from being spent providing unnecessary abortions. Massachusetts can offer separate "Choice Insurance" if they want to, Boston can offer further "Choice Insurance", and your local insurance broker can offer their own "Choice Insurance" plan if they also so desire.