dear verizon:
your cancellation process is already complicated enough. if you MUST put me on hold 3+ times per department, PLEASE to not accompany the experience with a panflute rendition of “my heart will go on”.

thank you,
alex hillman

Tags: verizon sucks, my heart will go on, panflute, kill myself

finally ditching verizon dsl and moving to comcast’s triple play package (cable/voip/internet).

my old dsl couldn’t break 768k down to save its live. cable, on the other hand:

plus, since i got a real router instead of the garbage one built into the dsl modem, i have things like virtual servers and dynamic ip support, so I can now VNC securely into my mac from anywhere, as well as my development environment. so hot.

Tags: verizon sucks, comcast, vnc, remote, dyanmic ip

I’ve been doing a lot of research about e-commerce solutions recently. I’m just wrapping up my first custom Shopify store. It was one of the best experiences working with a third party system, ever..which is even more surprising because shopify is a HOSTED application. For those unfamiliar, shopify allows anyone to create an instant store, load in products and sort those products into collections, and sell those things. The store is free until you make a sale, at which point shopify skims 3% off the top (up to $10,000 and then 2% after that $10k mark). They have a fairly extensible skinning platform called vision, that has good documentation and a well supported forum. In a very short period of time, I was able to build new skins to match the customer’s existing site, and integrate the shopify store to their existing web presence seamlessly. Very nice. I can sell and implement those kinds of solutions all day long. Does it work for a large online store? of course not. But it does handle a few hundred products with ease. And one of the nicest administrative consoles of any web app I’ve ever seen

Today i found RightCart, which has a similar commission based model, but a whole new experience. They use script embeds to place remotely hosted content in your pages. So, lets say you have a line of scarves your girlfriend/wife/mother knits in their free time. You want to help them make some money off those scarves, so you offer up to your blog’s readership, “hey, so and so has these scarves, they are this much, they make great presents!”. Instead of dealing with transactions manually, you can use RightCart to manage the products, their prices, etc. The system then places a nice floating and ajaxy cart wherever you like on the page (though it seems the default is on the RIGHT), which allows the user to add items to the cart, sign up for an account, and checkout, all without EVER leaving out page! My UX guy just had an orgasm. This is checkout workflow at its simplest/finest.

Lets say you dont have someone’s scarves to sell. Lets say you write a tech blog (not unlike myself). Lets say you write about a certain technique outlined in a book. You can use RightCart to post that book from amazon directly on your blog, same pretty checkout process, everything is handled by amazon, and you make commission for advertising for the ‘Zon! COOL!

Does this have room for abuse? Sure. Just like people abuse adsense and blog-spam to get adsense revenue, people will abuse this as well. But think about the positive uses? Very cool, very innovative, I approve.

Tags: online shopping, e-commerce, rightcart, shopify

Ok, so maybe this game wont make it to the shelves of your local toys-r-us, but I definitely see the fun and positive results that can come out of organizing a game called “Half Baked”. Recently executed at CitizenSummit, this game involves the mashing of seemingly unrelated words (which reminds me of some of these fun tools), and in a matter of minutes a small team turns the new pseudo-word into a business model, complete with revenue model, marketing tactics, tagline, and logo. And like many board games, I’m pretty sure that this one gets better with a couple of drinks, too.

From Dave McClure’s blog:

Act 1: start by having people yell out ~50 random words.

Act 2: split into 5 teams, each chooses 2 words + “.com”

Act 3: each team has ~10 min to prep their BlankBlank.com biz plan

(biz plan = product idea, revenue model, marketing plan, logo, tagline)

Act 4: each team does a 5 minute pitch on their product to a VC

Act 5: vote on who did the best job, then celebrate the insanity :)

Check out the winning pitch:

Is it a good fit for CreativeCamp? We’ll give it a shot, cuz it looks like a LOT of fun.

Tags: games, half baked, marketing, barcamp, citizen agency, creativecamp, Dave McClure

Microsoft, take a note. While your updates make my computer slower, Apple’s latest EFI updates have restored my boot time to that of a brand new, clean install…and all apps are running noticeably snappier.

After the fiasco 2 weeks ago with having to reload my OS on my work computer (guess which one it is) due to the worst case of 8 month Windows-rot (ok, ok, i gave the answer away).

Windows, I hate you. Mac OS X, thank you for reaffirming your place in my heart.

Signed,
Your biggest fanboy not so secret admirer.

Tags: os x, windows, EFI update

…or in screws.

Maybe I’m simple, but seeing my name as a brand always makes me chuckle.

Tags: hillman, screws

I’m watching my newsreader this morning, and it looks like microsoft is getting swept into the shadows once again. With the impending release of the Zune, Wii, and Playstation (in that order, if i’m no mistaken) the gadget with the most realistic chance of being able to touch RIGHT NOW is getting the least press.

Not that I’m particularly excited for the release of any of the holy trinity, but if I had to pick, I’d say the Wii is gonna be pretty cool (maybe I’m just a sucker for Zelda).

Tags: zune, wii, playstation 3, zelda

…are in order for the ENTIRE fearnet team (not just the empathylab part) on creating a website which surpassed it’s baseline competitor’s registered user base in almost exactly 1 week. Thats right, we’re past 12,000 and almost at 13k. Insane.

To commemorate, I’ve created a little tribute that includes about 1500 user icons arranged into the fearnet logo. Sorry it’s biggest res is 1024, I’ll work in a higher res one with more icons later, if people like this one.

Tags: fearnet, mosaic, user icons

I’m admittedly not a big fan of recruiting agencies/head hunters. I was pleasantly surprised when I met MaryHelen Votral and the CM Access crew back in September at Creative Camp and saw a completely different kind of recruitment process.

CM Access is definitely an agency that “gets it”. The understand the value of relationships in the business world, and instead of being focused on meeting quotas they work with employers and talent to find matches that will work for the long term. Relationship building and the shared value of networking play a key part in barcamp events, so having these guys backing up the event was a perfect fit.

MaryHelen clued me in to the launch of the CMAccess blog a couple of days ago, which should be another tipoff that they “get it”. Utilizing technology in an effective manner to spread a message and provoke both thought and involvement…right on!

I’m looking forward to CreativeCamp v2 on December 2nd.

Tags: cmaccess, barcamp, blogging, recruiters

So FEARnet, that little thing I posted about a week ago, has broken 12000 registered users in a week, and with over 1,000,000 uniques that puts us at just shy of a 10% registration turnover.

Thats insanse.