Why I haven’t been around as much recently….
In case anyone is wondering why I haven’t been around as much recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time over on my new neighborhood blog - Bergen Carroll. Bergen Carroll began a few months ago as a little pet project to provide the best area in Brooklyn - Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook - with a robust community resource, covering neighborhood developments and cultural events in addition to providing an outlet for residents to chat, comment and connect with each other. While it’s still only in beta, the site has begun to catch fire. We have four talented writers involved and several other neighborhood loyalists with online publishing experience putting together an exciting list of programming and features. Traffic is starting to flow, even though we haven’t really told anybody yet:) So….if you don’t see me here for a few days in a row, come on over to Bergen Carroll and check out what’s happening there.
One of the best YouTube videos….ever
Go straight to the top
If you’ve followed my blog for the past few weeks, you are likely aware of a tiff I’m having with FedEx over a PC that was shipped from SF to NYC, but arrived severely mishandled and damaged. Two weeks ago, after being told my damage claim would be denied, I sent a two-page letter to Dave Rebholz and Rodger Marticke (the CEO and COO of FedEx Ground) with 6 pages of supporting documentation that included photos, packing slips, etc. Yesterday, having not yet received a response, I called FedEx HQ and spoke to Rodger (Dave was travelling). We had a nice conversation and he thanked me for following up before promising they would be in touch by the end of the week. I know this doesn’t mean they’ll do the right thing, but it feels like we’re one step closer. I’m keeping my fingers crossed….
Why glue traps are evil and mice love mint
Last week, while drinking a beer and shmoozing with a neighbor at my apartment one evening, we heard faint squeals emanating from the corner of the living room. At first, we ignored them, thinking it was coming from outside, but when the squeals continued, I walked over to investigate. As luck would have it, a baby mouse had gotten himself stuck on a glue trap left by the exterminators. This thing was teeny tiny. Being the soft and gentle warrior that I am, we quickly moved the party to the deck and collected the necessary tools that would we required for an emergency dislodging - namely a sharp kitchen knife. Operating ever-so delicately, we worked diligently for 10 minutes to remove the baby mouse from the glue bed on which he lay. At first, it was a game of see-saw….we’d get his feet loose, only to see him do a nose-dive into the glue. Eventually, after some skillful freehand maneuvers (think a cross between a sushi chef and a heart surgeon), we managed to free the little guy, dropping him into my herb garden tray, strategically placed in the mint section. I figured the peppermint aroma might help him recover from his trauma and if he wanted to eat some of the mint for nourishment, I didn’t mind. He suffered some injury to his left front leg, and it wasn’t clear whether the damage was permanent. My friend, Gian, suggested we place a soda can beside the mint for shelter, in case the little guy needed a home in which to rest. In the end, we decided to let nature take its course, and by morning, the mouse was nowhere to be found. I’ve since collected all my glue traps and tossed them in the trash.
Customer service shitlist: Frontier Airlines and FedEx
Two weeks ago, I wrote enthusiastically about Zappos.com, a company that is excelling, seeing 100%+ annual revenue growth largely attributed to phenomenal customer service. Today, I’m beginning a new feature entitled “customer service shitlist” to highlight companies that severely underperform in the customer service department.
Frontier Airlines - I flew to Denver Sunday for work and decided to give Frontier a try as they were the lowest available fare. Upon checking in for my flight, the machine took creative license to reassign me from my aisle to a middle seat. After some strong protests at the gate, the flight agents corrected the situation. Unfortunately, checking in for the return flight, I experienced the same scenario. It also turns out that the seats selected on the web interface that shows a map of the plane with the occupied and unoccupied seats only represents a request, not an assignment on Frontier. Interesting. Frontier must be the only airline to operate this way. Their slogan “a whole different animal” certainly rings true in this case. Where Frontier gets an “F” is in not realizing that I’m a new customer and in this case a lost one.
FedEx - Until my most recent experience with FedEx, I really admired this company. A month ago, I shipped a high end pc to my friend in SF for updates and repairs. When it arrived, the box had been punctured and the computer scratched and case cracked. In addition, several internal components were damaged. The box had clearly been carelessly handled and/or dropped - all this despite the red “fragile” stickers plastered on each side. I declared a value of $3,000 for this package, but when I filed a claim for $875, the runaround began. Two different inspectors, multiple equipment and repair invoices. A claims process that was promised to be resolved in 5-7 days lasted five weeks before it was denied. Why? Because the box used for shipment (which incidentally was the original box for the case with original molded styrofoam) was certified for 14 lbs while the shipment weighed 34. Now, if the pc had fallen out of the box, I could understand this rationale, but the box arrived in tact, just damaged and in much worse condition than when shipped. FedEx CEO, Fred Smith, will be getting a nice letter from me later this week as I continue to plead my case. It will be delivered UPS overnight.
Cool new local Brooklyn blogs & Wordpress
I received an IM yesterday from someone I didn’t know. This doesn’t happen very often because, after all, it’s not so easy to find my instant message handle unless I want you to have it. Turns out the guy had found my new neighborhood blog/website - Bergen Carroll (still in alpha mode, pre-publicity) - through a google search. He visited the about page, found my name, and tracked me down on IM, sending the following message:
Hi, Joshua…please IM me when you get back; I’m a longtime resident of Carroll Gardens, former About.com Senior Editor now doing bus dev. I know most of the business owners and local eccentrics in the neighborhood here pretty well, to the point where I’m sure I could generate a lot of sales for you…
When you’re taking a risk, investing your time and money in a project like Bergen Carroll, this is the kind of anonymous message you love to receive!! It validated my vision and gave me a little push to get the site up and running. Combined with the overwhelming interest in the editor role that I posted on CraigsList last week, I’m getting my second wind to finish this little pet project.
I chose Wordpress for Bergen Carroll and have since gotten to know the management team over there a little bit. I am totally impressed by this company, their technology and their product offerings. The simple fact that someone found Bergen Carroll before I had taken the time to make sure it was being spidered by the search engines is a testament to how well the Wordpress platform works and how easy it is to use. (It’s also not something I can say about Typepad, the platform on which this blog runs.) Wordpress is an open-source platform and the number of cool applications and plug-ins that have been developed for it is mind-blowing. The software and publishing platform has improved leaps and bounds in just the few months that I’ve been playing with it. In my opinion, both the free hosted platform at Wordpress.com and the open-source software at Wordpress.org (requires independent hosting) have become the two best products in their respective categories. I think this speaks to how powerful open-source communities can be. The speed and quality of development that comes with large-scale network collaboration is more efficient and effective in many instances than the best team of developers one could assemble. Wordpress’ growth has outpaced all their competitors over the past year. The free hosted “dot com” version has over 1 million bloggers, 44 million unique readers and 190 million monthly page views. When you combine another 1 million “dot org” blogs that are harder to track because they are on independent domains, but account for a ton of traffic (many are brand names), it makes Wordpress among the most trafficked sites on the Internet, and this company is still relatively new and unknown. Like most successful internet darlings, Wordpress has a charming young founder, Matt Mullenweg, who gave a compelling interview on CNET two weeks ago. Below is a chart from Quantcast that compares Wordpress’ traffic with that of their primary competitors, Typepad and Blogger, over the past six months. I think the trend speaks for itself. Needless to say, I plan to switch this blog over to Wordpress as soon as I find the time.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at "All Things D" Conference
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were interviewed together yesterday at Walt Mossberg’s All Things D Conference in SoCal. The transcript is pretty entertaining and there appears to be more love between these guys now than there has been in the past. I would imagine it has something to do with Apple’s re-emergence and the fact that Steve Jobs is feeling pretty good these days. Even more entertaining is this video clip of the two of them with Mitch Kapor in the 80s playing the dating game.