It’s very hard for anyone to take criticism. Whether it’s in the professional world, or the personal one. Also the tone sets the line between Criticism and Insult. you should never criticize something that cannot be changed, like the way someone looks or sounds etc. It’s hurtful and may cause undesirable consequences. That said, let’s talk about business and how to sell crap.

Sometimes companies don’t put things in their product or service descriptions, but the customer/client reads between the lines. So companies that are smart, will take the feedback from their customers and change the message, or better yet, change their offering to match the customer/clients’ expectations, even better yet, in addition to the latter, they add value by giving a little something above and beyond the expectations of the customer.

When I taught marketing at Cal Poly University, I would use examples, one of the examples was “Cracker Jack”. Of course Cracker jack had a little hidden gem inside and that was expected, so it really became a part of the product, some people bought it for the little toy, and threw away the actual box with the snack.

Customers expected this little gem, they knew it wasn’t worth $100, but imagine if every nth box had a real gem, like a real Gold ring. What would this do to the sales of Cracker Jack? Of course cereal boxes followed this model, also Publisher Clearing house etc.

Then along came Woot! A daily deals site that set the standard for hidden gems. They sold the unwanted and unsold inventory of companies for a good price, but every so often they put odds and ends in a bag and sold it for $1 and called it “Bag of Crap”. The limit was 3 of them, and the shipping was the same, $5 whether you bought one, two or three.

People started buying this “Bag of Crap” (BOC). The shipping cost $5 and the bag $1, for a total of $6 for one bag, $7 for 2 and $8 for 3. So it doesn’t take a genius to figure out, that it makes much better sense to buy 3 than it does 1, right? (Some people still buy 1 till today). Needless to say, when this BOC comes online, the servers crash, and within 1 minute, they have sold more than 5,000 Bags of Crap, or in proper English Bag-Of- Craps (I love it!).

When they first started the BOC program, they truly had junk and people didn’t expect much because they were telling you, “Hey, you’re getting a bag of Crap, so don’t expect anything”. But the tipping point was when every so often they put an Xbox or Large LCD TV, or something that’s worth a lot, but like I said, in most cases you got crap that didn’t sell on its own. So if they had 10,000 BOCs, they would have sold all of them, maybe even 20,000 or?

I like the fact that somebody at Woot was connected to the customers enough to see that there was a potential for a made up product like that. This person was interested in making it better in the future for the customer and of course, ultimately for the company.

A lot of companies get defensive and just blurt back at customers. Customers have nothing more to lose, but merchants do. The customer takes his/her money elsewhere but piles a whole lot of negative feedback online about the company and how they don’t care about the customer etc. If you’re a company with customer facing employees, send them to anger management training.

No one likes being told that their “Stuff” is not right or not valuable. Successful companies ask and find out what they can do to make it better, and get free and very valuable advice from the customer or client, which is the Holy Grail of marketing and commerce in general. I would rather hear honest feedback from a consumer that didn’t buy than a rosy comment from a buying customer, or worse yet, a great comment from a prospect that never even bought, and probably would not buy.

That’s why you MUST take the time to respond fully to customers and make sure to get their feedback. Also be ready to tweak your product or offering to satisfy the majority. In my classes I used to teach what I was taught when taking marketing courses, “You’re not the customer! The customer is the customer and the customer is not you!” always remember this.

You want the customer to fall in love with your company, put in things that were not included in your description and say, “I know we didn’t tell you about this, but you are such a valued customer that we included this too”. It doesn’t need to be much. A Mousepad would do fine for a software company. A list of sources to lookup if you are selling information, a small card with a mortgage calculating table if you’re a Real Estate agent, a card with useful conversion charts if you’re selling spices or food products online, etc etc. —– and take the chance to have them brag about you to their friends?

If you are a company that does this, you have earned my respect. Great job!

-D

*Disclosure: Woot was the original daily deals site (for me at least), they were acquired by Amazon
Mousepad.com is a company I have interest in. It sells custom printed mousepads and has some off the shelf pre-printed mousepads too that I found to be useful giveaways. PrismPlug is another company I have interest in. Prism Plugs are small removable covers that let you cover and uncover your webcam so you can make sure you have some privacy from hackers and other people that are not authorized to view through your webcam.

I taught Marketing courses as an adjunct faculty and guest lecturer from 2000-2003 at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona.

We don’t think twice before downloading and installing apps on our mobile phones. We go through screens of text pertaining to Terms of Use and Privacy statements without even reading a sentence. It is common practice to Just “Accept” at the bottom, to just be able to use the free app.

Well this is no different that someone doing anything for drugs. They will sell their brother’s iPad, watch or whatever for cheap just to get some. Actually it’s different because they are giving away rights that are much more expensive, and in some instances, IRREVERSIBLE.

Lately I’ve been noticing that most apps are telling me they will use such things as the  camera and the microphone on the device, “Without Permission”, the location of your phone, even the amount the phone is used and who you called and how long you called. When asked, the developers say, if they don’t get that permission, then every time you are going to use the camera it is going to need permissions (Between clicks),  or not having the right location will not give you the right location on the map and your navigation will be a problem. Or when your phone is lost or Stolen you won’t know where it is, etc.

This is Bull Shit with a capital B&S. Why would a Health app, that tracks my steps or distance and food and maybe heart rate,  if I have a monitor, need to use my camera and microphone and record without my knowledge or permission? This doesn’t make sense to me, and lately I’ve been a lot more careful with some applications that want to update and change these terms that I could have agreed to by default, as in apps that came pre-installed on the phone.

Is there a sinister plan? Is this information that will be used by the insurance companies to spy on the users? It is perfect to find out how much exercise you are or aren’t doing. What kind of foods are you eating. Where you are going (in the case of the location of your phone)

I like to have my location accessible by my phone because I always think, what if I was in an accident off of a mountain road or something, I would like my family or the search and rescue to be able to track my phone and find me, but not the retailer that wants to give me a coupon because I am passing by the store, or the health insurance company because I am going to too many parties or night clubs, etc, etc.

I think you get the picture. I would be careful before accepting these terms blindly and letting whoever it is have access to that data. BE CAREFUL! It might even be too late.

DISCLAIMER: No planets were harmed in making this blog. The distances to the planets were rounded and averaged based on close/far orbits. But this information about distances were taken from (Nasa.gov) and and it is assumed by me to be the most accurate info. The rest of the calculations are mine if not otherwise specified. The information is just for entertainment, Although Amazon might have the required number of punch cards (Not!) don’t try to put the number of punch cards necessary, one on top of another to prove the theory or the calculations, as this would not be good for the planet.

Comic Randall Munroe did an approximation and he came up with Google storing about 10 Exabytes (Of course give or take an exabyte or two 🙂 His answer to this question was in terms of  “5km of cards covering the entire region of the New England…”. What kind of answer is that? So as Tim the Tool man Taylor would say, ” I rewired it…”

After my calculations (If you feel the urge, you can see all the calculations below, I have everything written there for geeks that proofread the document that comes out of the photocopy machine. Yeah I’m an Engineer so what?). As I was saying, after all my calculations, we would need to stack computer punch cards from here to:

So, for 10 Exabytes, we need 80,966,841,812.5 km high stack of the old computer punch cards put one on top of another. This translates to:

Just an FYI, Distance to the Sun and other planets:

• 540 times the distance to the Sun (80,966,841,812.5/150 Million)
• 880 times the distance to Mercury (80,966,841,812.5/92 million)
• 1928 times the distance to Venus (80,966,841,812.5/42 million)
• 1038 times the distance to Mars (80,966,841,812.5/78 million)
• 129 times the distance to Jupiter (80,966,841,812.5/628 million)
• 65 times the distance to Saturn (80,966,841,812.5/1.25 Billion)
• 29 times the distance to Uranus (80,966,841,812.5/2.75 Billion)
• 18.6 times the distance to Neptune (80,966,841,812.5/4.35 Billion)
• 14 times the distance to Pluto (80,966,841,812.5/5.75 billion)

Distance to the moon (From the rock we’re standing on) is approximately 384,400km as an average (Of course the actual distance varies because the orbit is not the same over time, it varies between 363,000km and 405,000km approx) But 384,400km is close enough.

The thickness of punch cards is approximately 1/32″=.03125″=.79375mm=.079375cm=.00079375m=7.9375e-7km This means there are 1,259,842.52 punch cards per km of distance or height. and the moon is 384,400km so lets do the math again:

It takes 1,259,842.52X384,400=484,283,464,688 cards to reach the moon.

To sum it up and calculate:

1.0200547e+17 punch cards to store 10 exabytes

484,283,464,688 Cards to reach the moon

1.0200547e+17/484,283,464,688= 210,631 times the distance to the moon.

Let’s look at how far this is to other planets, because they have uneven orbits, we will consider their closest points (That should take care of the anal retentive among you)

So, for 10 Exabytes, we need 80,966,841,812.5 km high of cards put one on top of another. That translates to:

• 540 times the distance to the Sun (80,966,841,812.5/150 Million)
• 880 times the distance to Mercury (80,966,841,812.5/92 million)
• 1928 times the distance to Venus  (80,966,841,812.5/42 million)
• 1038 times the distance to Mars (80,966,841,812.5/78 million)
• 129 times the distance to Jupiter (80,966,841,812.5/628 million)
• 65 times the distance to Saturn (80,966,841,812.5/1.25 Billion)
• 29 times the distance to Uranus (80,966,841,812.5/2.75 Billion)
• 18.6 times the distance to Neptune  (80,966,841,812.5/4.35 Billion)
• 14 times the distance to Pluto (80,966,841,812.5/5.75 billion)

And this is if we stack them one on top of another, not end to end. If we were to put them end to end, then you would need to multiply everything by 236 times because the thickness of each card is 1/32″ but the length of each card is 7.375″ long. I chose to stack them one on top of another because if we ever wanted to prove the experiment, of course it is impossible to put them at length one after the other, but we could, theoretically, stack them one on top of another. Hey, it’s my blog and I say we can.

Info used from Nasa.gov
Distances from earth
Sun is 150 km,
Mercury is 92 million km,
Venus is 42 million km,
Mars is 78 million km,
Jupiter is 628 million km,
Saturn is 1.25 Billion km,
Uranus is 2.75 Billion km,
Neptune is 4.35 Billion km
Pluto is 5.75 billion km.

Distances of planets from the Sun
Earth 150 million km
Mercury is 58 million km,
Venus is 108 million km,
Mars is 228 million km,
Jupiter is 778 million km,
Saturn is 1.4 Billion km,
Uranus is 2.9 Billion km,
Neptune is 4.5 Billion km
Pluto is 5.9 billion km.

Here is what you get in the update
(Of course I am not including the usual fun NSA “Features & Benefits“ that are added by our beloved Governmental Advisors for “Our Safety“):

New Operating system (From 4.3 to 4.4.2 – KitKat) But please set aside about 20 minutes for the update, it is MAJOR!

THE FOLLOWING ISSUES HAVE BEEN FIXED:
• Shortcut Folders on Home screen (Never had this issue)
• Contact issue when using messaging and dialer apps (Never had this issue either)
• Backup Assistant Plus contact sync (Don’t even know what this issue is)
• Bugs when using KNOX app (Don’t use Knox so irrelevant for me)

THE FOLLOWING “IMPROVEMENTS” HAVE BEEN MADE:
• Phone book and contact syncing to some Bluetooth car kits (Oh Yeah? Prove it!)
• “Locked up” display and device heating (I get that sometimes, Hope the heating issue is still there, it comes in handy on cold nights ;-)
• Group messaging performance on the messaging app (I hope this works better now, that would be an improvement)
• Stability and power cycle issues (I would say the S4 has been a champion over the S3 that I had, so this might be making the unit outstanding)
• Wi-Fi connectivity (This is already great, so I am excited if they can improve it)
• Bluetooth audio disconnect when using Music/Navigation app (You can Karaoke all you want now, even when the witch inside the GPS is talking)
• ISIS activation issue (What? What is that?)
• Now supports roaming to Canada (TELUS) network (Thank God! In case I go to Canada someday! Nottt! Ay?)
• Improvements to Accessibility (subtitles) settings (?)

MULTI-WINDOW FEATURES
• More applications are available on the Multi-Window tray
– To access Edit mode, open the Multi-Window tray, touch more and edit
• Help Tip now offers pop-up
– Long-press on back key to access
• ‘Create Multi-Window Combination’
• Trip Advisor app has been added

THE FOLLOWING crAPPS ARE NOW PRE-LOADED:
• ISIS Wallet
• VZ Protect (version 2.0.0)
• Verizon Cloud
• Audible app (version 1.5.4)

THE FOLLOWING CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE (Repurposing and Rebranding):
• Google+ Photos is now Photos
• Play Magazine is now Play Newsstand
• VZ Security is now VZ Protect

THE FOLLOWING ADDITIONS HAVE BEEN MADE:
• SMS to Google Hangouts
• Google Printing framework (Now this could be interesting, I have to look into it)
• Google+ User Location widget has been added (I don’t like this)