Amazon.co.uk problems

Help. It’s clearly not my week for website success. Everywhere I visit seems to be breaking.  I just wanted to pay for these books I was buying on Amazon, and an error, with no explanation. Some bit of code in the system must know whats wrong! Oh its so frustrating. I hate technology. I hate the web. I hate the internet.

OK so I dont … I just hate the people who code this stuff without doing it properly. There is no reason not to give more reasonable errors. “Sorry, something has gone wrong. I dont care what. Go away and do something else”. Hmm, my opinion of the Amazon brand just dropped a point.

4OD OD’s

Well perhaps its not so suprising and I was rather expecting after a few glitches earlier in the week, but the 4OD service (Channel 4’s on-demand service here in the UK, offering some pay for downloads of programs and some free) had this page up to day, most of the day while I have been trying to access it.

 

The first thought was “I wonder how they chose who is getting to visit?” . Actually, I guess I know the answer to this. It is probably luck. However, one would hope that in this day and age, they would keep access to the log in pages open and restrict access to this users as a priority who have actually purchased something. Many of the downloads are free, but others start at 99p ($2) . I’ve paid for downloads atleast 5 times in the last 10 days. That -by my guess- probably puts me in the top 5 or 10% of users. They should reward these revenue generating users by giving them priority access to bandwidth. May be they are already … except of course, I just know they are not.

Internet users are demanding, picky and impatient. I’m no exception. If it doesnt work, I lose faith. Fast. Especially when there is so little explanation; and apparently no gratitude to those people who have supported the service early on from BETA as I have.

Saving my mobile life

Was great to read about this flat in Spain which provided visitors a mobile phone charger of every major phone type. That is attention to detail and customer service … AND bloody useful!

A little bit of wisdom about choosing a co-partner in business

Recently on the MomoLondon list, a chap asked advise regards finding co-founders and building a team. I’m far from a sage but did my best to help. His question was essentially:

“I somehow don’t find my self comfortable with this “Find” i would love to “Discover” Him\ Her . i don’t mind having a few co founders but what i worry is how can we assure there is a Proper Chemistry between us ?obviously it takes time to develop trust .Specially when we are planing to do it Part time first with Equity sharing mode. i somehow get a gut feeling that a “skill based association” won’t stand the hardship . What do you feel ??”

Clearly its very difficult to find the right partner. Of course, there should be some synergy – an ability to work together. But firstly, you wont always know this straight away, and secondly, that person who you can work with, may not be the person you think it is. Sometimes, having someone who feels comfortable like “a friend” can be less helpful than having someone with whom there is mutual respect but with whom there is also divergence of opinion and approach.

Also, don’t underestimate the importance of a skills match – Potential VCs will look for complimentary skills sets; and just at a practical level, you need this. So, in short, don’t look for a clone of yourself, however tempting. You of course DO need someone enthusiastic and committed; that is probably a pre-requisite even over their skills. No point having “the best” person in their field, if they are going to jump ship 6 months in, or when the water gets choppy.

Blogmarks site down

Having chosen my bookmarking site carefully, and settled on Blogmarks, I was frustrated to find the site down (00:04 GMT) Of course, maybe it is a routing problem and maybe it will reappear in the next few minutes, but it has been down for 5 or 10 minutes now. Having run a web development company and still being actively involved in consulting for web projects of all sizes, those in the business -including me- have all had our moments where something has simply gone wrong. But even being someone who has been on the receiving end, it if the site I want is down for even 5 minutes, it leaves an indelible black mark, a bad smell, around the brand. I’m frustrated. I am an internet king speed demon. I want the website NOW. I NEED it NOW. If it is down now, what happens if its down when I REALLY need it next time? Reliable hosting is an absolute pre-requisite in this online world. But so many companies get it wrong.

The only thing worse than a site that is down and unavailable, is a site that is slow or broken! www.pcwb.com gets my custom because it has a good product range, good prices, I can pay on invoice, and I like the simplicity of their site. But every 15 page loads, their “SpeedTrap” stats software causes a freeze on the page load, for sometimes up to 15 or 20 seconds; I know its the SpeedTrap server because it just sits there stuck on completing the page load, waiting for a response from speedtrap.pcwb.com . It drives me to the point of instant insanity.

They have so nearly lost my business because of it. Infact, for one larger order of laptops, they did. Being the good Internet user that I am, I emailed them to point it out. Did they reply? Of course not. That was 2 months ago. They have lost my business, or atleast part of it. And as soon as I find a permanent alternative, they will lose my business in full. How can the owner of DSGI not care about this? Does he not use his own site…? Don’t answer that. Of course he doesnt. Ivory Towers and all of that.

Atleast, thanks to the SpeedTrap software, PC World Business should be able to track all those frustrated users, leaving the site in disgust. I surely but surely, cant be the only one whom it bugs.

Ignore the simple stuff at your peril. Small things can be big things to otherwise loyal users. Never ever forget this if you own a webiste; and ALWAYS use your website yourself – even if you use the web for nothing else. Over and out.

 

Desperate marketing ploy?

I thought this was a bit of a sad promotion direction from Plazes. I’d think it was tounge-in-cheek, except a) Plazes is a German site -should not fuel streotypes especially as my own gf is German, but they dont really “do” tounge-in-cheek very often- and b) there is no hint at this on the ad itself. It’s a banner on TechCrunch. Hate to bash the Doughty-Hanson funded opposition (although admittedly they are not direct competition exactly). I’m not convinced stalking – even in gest – is something I’d be encouraging. Perhaps Plaza’s intention is to get a user base of hard core geeks to market technology too…

 

YCombinator comes to Europe …well, nearly

A clone of YCombinator has been started, to run in Vienna. About time too. TechCrunch reports in full: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/25/y-combinators-european-clone/

 

I think the similarity of name is actually great – inclusion of the “Y” meant I knew instantly what it was about.

Even Mark can make mistakes

Whether you see the logic in Mr Zuckerberg holding out for something better than Yahoo’s billion dollar offer for his ever burgeoning Facebook site, its good to know he (or Facebook atleast) can make more down to earth errors. Running a social network myself (to be the future bugbear of Facebook as we quash the young upstart in my future dreams) I cannot be too harsh as bugs and errors always slip throught the net. I suppose the very fact Facebook has been pretty reliable and has a clean organised interface, rather than the deborchery that is MySpace both in design and technical implimentation, is why I highlight this rather obvious bug when it errored for no security check code, but actually never asked me for one…

Computa says no…

SEO: Being seen on the information super highway

I regret the downfall of the “information super highway” as a description for the Interweb. It was wonderfully long and visual in its description. The metaphor in this case refers to getting your website seen by the drivers on this ever faster and ever extending high-speed network of digital roads. The latest report from those that know provides  an important insight. The fact is, whatever your company, if you have an internet presence (and if not, why not!) then this stuff is critical to the success of that online presence. Here then, is your 2 minute crash course on Search Engine Optimisation:

The top 10 positive factors for natural search ranking are as follows:

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag
2. Global Link Popularity of Site
3. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
4. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure
5. Age of Site
6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
8. Keyword Use in Body Text
9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
10.Topical Relationship of Linking Page

Top Five negatives are sighted as:

1. Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
2. Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index
3. External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites
4. Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links
5. Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages

Does your website stack up? If not, give my colleagues at my Urban Horizon development house; they may be able to help!

The deathnell for DRM?

Finally something interesting in the world of the never-ending DRM saga. I dont post much (or discuss much!) about the DRM and MP3 world in general. This isn’t because I dont like music – on the contrary there are times in my life that I would have gone insane without the wonder that is the human fettish for a melody.

However, today something interesting was announced: EMI to sell its entire digital library online without DRM. Finally, perhaps the music industry begins to wake up. I wonder when the mobile industry will have a similar moment of clarity about it’s own market’s barrier to entry?