In case you didn't hear back in April, eBay is entering the desktop arena with a forthcoming program dubbed "San Dimas" which allows users a venue other than a web browser through which they can access eBay. Personally I am in favor of this type of application, and I hope it opens eBay's mind a little bit in terms of allowing third party developers to create add-ons that make it easier for eBay users to find and buy what they are looking for. Not too long ago eBay thwarted an attempt made by a third party to crawl their index of products so auctions could be displayed to users and managed in methods different from the traditional eBay results pages. I know eBay wants people to come to eBay.com to view auctions and probably aren't thrilled about other companies profiting off their search results, but at the end of the day, the more people you have buying and selling through eBay.com, the better profits will be, So I believe that opening up to developers will increase interest and activity at the eBay.com site.
I digress a bit though. The purpose of this post was just to let you know that beta testing for San Dimas has begun, and you can still sign up to attempt to be a beta tester at http://www.projectsandimas.com
The first beta accounts have already been handed out, so it may be to late. I was a bit late to the game myself, if I end up becoming a beta tester, depending on the terms of the licensing agreement, I will share what I can about the program here.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
New Price Point for Open Source Products
As you may know, we have distributed several open source products via our web site for some time now. We do charge a fee, which covers the cost of making the product and the labor involved. It also covers the cost of shipping, as there is no shipping charge added on to the software product cost.
In the coming weeks we will be adding a number of new titles to our offerings, and to get ready for that we have established a new price point for our open source titles, a flat $3.00 which still includes shipping. The reason for this price drop is because we have been able to cut material costs, and also have experimented with smaller shipping containers which has allowed us to cut costs there. Additionally, we will no longer be adding an additional amount for labor, the time it takes to create, package, and mail the CDs will be our contribution to the open source community.
Right now we have two titles available on our web site, both for $3.00. Check out our OpenOffice.org and Mozilla package at:
http://rokland.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=49
and check out Knoppix at:
http://rokland.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=278
In the coming weeks we will be adding a number of new titles to our offerings, and to get ready for that we have established a new price point for our open source titles, a flat $3.00 which still includes shipping. The reason for this price drop is because we have been able to cut material costs, and also have experimented with smaller shipping containers which has allowed us to cut costs there. Additionally, we will no longer be adding an additional amount for labor, the time it takes to create, package, and mail the CDs will be our contribution to the open source community.
Right now we have two titles available on our web site, both for $3.00. Check out our OpenOffice.org and Mozilla package at:
http://rokland.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=49
and check out Knoppix at:
http://rokland.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=278
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Web 2.0 Customer Service
I have noticed an annoying pattern in companies that claim to be Web 2.0 oriented. They seem to be copying the poor customer service techniques of the Web 1.0 generation.
In the last several weeks I have contacted the customer service department web sites of three different companies, which I will leave nameless. I did get a response from each one, but none answered the specific question I asked. Instead, whichever "representative" was in charge of responding to my request gave a response which merely included text that related to my question. For example, one question I asked was where to find out how miscellaneous "fees" charged to an account were calculated. The representative responded with a block of text explaining that from time to time various fees will be charged, and it listed what the names of the fees along with a brief definition of each one (all of this information was already present on their web site FAQ page by the way). But there was no explanation of how they were calculated, which is what I had asked in the particular request, since that information was not answered in their FAQ.
Why have companies decided this is an acceptable way to handle customer service? It's almost as if during training representatives are told "whatever you do, don't answer their specific question- instead, just give them some information related to their inquiry." Imagine if you just moved and you called your phone company because you couldn't remember your new phone number. What if instead of telling you what it was, they just told you that the Yellow Pages is a helpful place to find phone numbers you need? It sounds ludicrous, but that is the unfortunate approach that original Internet companies took to customer support, and it seems a number of Web 2.0 companies are prepared to let history repeat itself.
I understand we live in a world where it seems the customer is no longer always right. But does that mean customers need be treated like idiots? I don't know, but as a part of Rokland LLC, the parent company of Rokland.com, I know we would never even think of treating our customers in this manner.
In the last several weeks I have contacted the customer service department web sites of three different companies, which I will leave nameless. I did get a response from each one, but none answered the specific question I asked. Instead, whichever "representative" was in charge of responding to my request gave a response which merely included text that related to my question. For example, one question I asked was where to find out how miscellaneous "fees" charged to an account were calculated. The representative responded with a block of text explaining that from time to time various fees will be charged, and it listed what the names of the fees along with a brief definition of each one (all of this information was already present on their web site FAQ page by the way). But there was no explanation of how they were calculated, which is what I had asked in the particular request, since that information was not answered in their FAQ.
Why have companies decided this is an acceptable way to handle customer service? It's almost as if during training representatives are told "whatever you do, don't answer their specific question- instead, just give them some information related to their inquiry." Imagine if you just moved and you called your phone company because you couldn't remember your new phone number. What if instead of telling you what it was, they just told you that the Yellow Pages is a helpful place to find phone numbers you need? It sounds ludicrous, but that is the unfortunate approach that original Internet companies took to customer support, and it seems a number of Web 2.0 companies are prepared to let history repeat itself.
I understand we live in a world where it seems the customer is no longer always right. But does that mean customers need be treated like idiots? I don't know, but as a part of Rokland LLC, the parent company of Rokland.com, I know we would never even think of treating our customers in this manner.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
A Coffee Table Computer About Coffee Tables?
Maybe that's something we'll see when Cosmo Kramer gets a look at this new device from Microsoft.
Monday, May 28, 2007
On this Memorial Day...
...we give a heartfelt thanks to all of the women and men who have served our country, past and present. May everyone have a blessed Memorial Day, and our prayers are with all soldiers and their proud families.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Microsoft's Plan to Profit from Open-Source
Our CEO Weighs In-
I've always wondered what the plan in Redmond was to deal with open-source. There is no question that open-source solutions have been cutting into their market share in recent years, and having witnessed Bill Gates' ability to corner markets before, I expected at some point Microsoft would emerge with a strategy to use open-source to their financial benefit. I had no idea they would take the "SCO Group" path of intimidation.
Microsoft knows that you can bully all of the people some of the time, and you can bully some of the people all the time. But evidently they have decided to try and bully all of the people all of the time. For those unfamiliar with the situation, Microsoft has announced that (according to them and them alone) various open-source projects violate 235 of their patents. They want users of the software to pony up by way of licensing agreements with Microsoft, or face the possibility of expensive lawsuits. To be clear, a patent violation does not necessarily mean that someone has swiped Microsoft code somewhere and put it into open-source programs. It generally means that a patented "process" is being used without permission. A process, of course, is a way of doing something. When new ways of doing things on the Internet are discovered, the inventors usually get a patent. After GoTo.com patented their process of serving up ads in search engine results, Google found themselves on the business end of a lawsuit when they launched their own similar process at Google.com. Google settled the dispute.
What is happening here though is that Microsoft has come to the table with nothing other than words. They have not named any specific infringements, nor pointed to any actual code they feel may be in violation. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, summed this issue up perfectly in a recent article by Charles Babcock of InformationWeek.
In Babcock's article, Torvalds went on to make an interesting statement about Microsoft, saying
So Microsoft has decided that they cannot join open-source (and make it profitable) so they are going to try and beat it. Much like with SCO Group, the strategy here is to hope that enough large businesses will determine that it is cheaper to pay Microsoft licensing fees than to fight them, while enough small business become so fearful that they abandon (or avoid) open-source products altogether, sticking with expensive Microsoft "solutions".
As the CEO of a company heavily involved in the use and distribution of open-source software (and the development as well though to a lesser extent), I can say without hesitation that Microsoft has severely underestimated the open-source community. They may get some companies to bite, as SCO Group did, but in the end they will create a new generation of enemies, and the negative buzz surrounding their actions will only help their competitors. Alienating and scaring one's customers is simply not good business practice. It may work for dictators of third world countries where the "customers" are citizens with no ability to fight back. The open-source community, and consumers of software in general, can and will fight back.
Jason Opdyke
CEO- Rokland LLC
I've always wondered what the plan in Redmond was to deal with open-source. There is no question that open-source solutions have been cutting into their market share in recent years, and having witnessed Bill Gates' ability to corner markets before, I expected at some point Microsoft would emerge with a strategy to use open-source to their financial benefit. I had no idea they would take the "SCO Group" path of intimidation.
Microsoft knows that you can bully all of the people some of the time, and you can bully some of the people all the time. But evidently they have decided to try and bully all of the people all of the time. For those unfamiliar with the situation, Microsoft has announced that (according to them and them alone) various open-source projects violate 235 of their patents. They want users of the software to pony up by way of licensing agreements with Microsoft, or face the possibility of expensive lawsuits. To be clear, a patent violation does not necessarily mean that someone has swiped Microsoft code somewhere and put it into open-source programs. It generally means that a patented "process" is being used without permission. A process, of course, is a way of doing something. When new ways of doing things on the Internet are discovered, the inventors usually get a patent. After GoTo.com patented their process of serving up ads in search engine results, Google found themselves on the business end of a lawsuit when they launched their own similar process at Google.com. Google settled the dispute.
What is happening here though is that Microsoft has come to the table with nothing other than words. They have not named any specific infringements, nor pointed to any actual code they feel may be in violation. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, summed this issue up perfectly in a recent article by Charles Babcock of InformationWeek.
"Naming them would make it either clear that Linux isn't infringing at all (which is quite possible, especially if the patents are bad), or would make it possible to avoid infringing by coding around whatever silly thing they claim."
In Babcock's article, Torvalds went on to make an interesting statement about Microsoft, saying
"It's certainly a lot more likely that Microsoft violates patents than Linux does. If the source code for Windows could be subjected to the same critical review that Linux has been, Microsoft would find itself in violation of patents held by other companies."
So Microsoft has decided that they cannot join open-source (and make it profitable) so they are going to try and beat it. Much like with SCO Group, the strategy here is to hope that enough large businesses will determine that it is cheaper to pay Microsoft licensing fees than to fight them, while enough small business become so fearful that they abandon (or avoid) open-source products altogether, sticking with expensive Microsoft "solutions".
As the CEO of a company heavily involved in the use and distribution of open-source software (and the development as well though to a lesser extent), I can say without hesitation that Microsoft has severely underestimated the open-source community. They may get some companies to bite, as SCO Group did, but in the end they will create a new generation of enemies, and the negative buzz surrounding their actions will only help their competitors. Alienating and scaring one's customers is simply not good business practice. It may work for dictators of third world countries where the "customers" are citizens with no ability to fight back. The open-source community, and consumers of software in general, can and will fight back.
Jason Opdyke
CEO- Rokland LLC
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
802.11n Draft Coming This Summer
Sorry folks, it's not a new beer, but it is pretty exciting. The newest wireless standard, 802.11n, is coming. 802.11n draft products are expected to hit store shelves this summer. Though 802.11n will not become a ratified standard until 2009, 802.11n draft products will be a big step up from the current 802.11 "pre-N" products you can currently buy in stores. Though the technology of each is based on the 802.11n standard, which supposedly provides speeds up to five times greater than 802.11g WiFi products (and does a better job rangewise as well), 802.11n draft products will work with other brand 802.11n draft products, and will also work seamlessly with older WIFI gear. Currently, most pre-N equipment does not play nice with other brands, and is not necessarily backward compatible with WiFi stuff you already have. Once the products hit the shelves, you can of course find them here at Rokland.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Where Do You Get Your WiFi Information?
As you may know, at Rokland.com and stores.ebay.com/rokland we sell a lot of wireless networking equipment. We are compiling an information list of where people go to find the information they need about wireless networking. What are your favorite sites about wireless technology? How do you find information you need such as advanced details about products, the location of drivers, etc.? Do you generally use a search engine to hunt the information down? Do you have a favorite forum web site where you like to post comments or ask for help? Please let us know by adding a reply to this blog post. Thanks!
Friday, May 04, 2007
The iPod killer?
When I was a young man, I loved getting a new tape cassette to put in what we kids referred to as a ‘ghetto blaster.’ When CDs became all the rage I traded in my tape collection a few pieces at a time to get the CDs of as many musicians as I could afford. At the time I was using an old 286 PC from IBM, and as I tried to think of what might replace the CD someday, I never thought about music on a PC. But I do remember thinking one day, as I changed CDs in my stereo, how awesome it would be to have a box that had every song every recorded inside, and all you had to do to listen to any song you wanted was simply select the song title and artists from a simple visual interface. The device I had in mind back then looked more like a big juke box, and the thought seemed on par with hovercrafts and personal jet packs.
Of course we all know how music has since progressed- computers turned songs completely digital, and now we have a wave of competing MP3 players on the market, chief among them the iPod. In all the buzz the iPod received when it launched, I was never really that interested. Not because I didn’t think it was a good product, I just felt there was something better and cheaper that would come along. And by cheaper I don’t mean the cost of the player, but the overall cost of listening to a lot of music month after month. At 99 cents a download, listening to one new song a day via iPod/iTunes came with a price tag of $30.00 a month.
When RealPlayer Rhapsody launched several years back, I was happy because here was a product that gave access to hundreds of thousands of songs, including most all newer artists, and the cost was just a flat $9.99 a month. That meant I could listen to 5 new songs a day, and my cost would be $9.99 via Rhapsody vs. $150.00 at iTunes. Of course the original Rhapsody service had its drawbacks. If you wanted to burn a song to a CD or MP3 player, you had to pay for the download (though it was only 79 cents a track). I loved the product primarily because my job required me being at a desk for long periods of time, so I could listen to music often, and could do so very cheaply. But I could see why Rhapsody had not replaced iPod/iTunes. Though it’s downloads were a little cheaper, it wasn’t a revolutionary product considering most people preferred to listen to music on a stereo or take their music with them (via CD or MP3 player) and not be tethered to a computer. People would rather pay 99 cents a track with no monthly fee than $9.99 a month and 79 cents a track. Plus the iPod was a part of pop culture and a lot of folks wanted an iPod just to be in the “in” crowd. But the iPod as a fad will eventually give way to another coveted device. The question is, which device will it be?
Here we are in 2007, the iPod is still the top dog, the CD is taking its last breath, and RealPlayer has launched Rhapsody to Go. Ladies and gentleman, I have seen the iPod killer, and it is this. This product is revolutionary. You can download any song to your PC (via the Rhapsody music player) or MP3 player without paying a download fee per track. You pay $14.99 a month. The Rhapsody MP3 player (from Sansa), which is the only compatible player for this service, looks a lot like an iPod (though a wee bit thicker and heavier), and comes in 2GB, 4GB, 6GB, and 8GB flavors, with more on the way. It plays video as well. So you can put 500 songs on your Rhapsody MP3 player, listen to them while jogging, in a car, or anywhere else for that matter, and all you pay is $14.99 a month. Using a simply auxiliary cable you can connect the device to your home or car stereo and get full digital sound. You can save the songs to your computer too. There are no individual download fees unless you want to burn the tracks to a CD (but who does these days?).
Naturally I thought Apple would not be far behind, and would simply adjust and make RealPlayer Rhapsody a short lived service. Evidently Steve Jobs (and a number of music journalists) just don’t get it. Or more likely Jobs gets it, but wants to buy some time before admitting it. This article from Wired shows why.
According to Jobs, Apple won’t offer a subscription service like that of RealPlayer Rhapsody because “customers don't seem to be interested in it…The subscription model has failed so far." That was a quote from Jobs. The article’s author, Leander Kahney, added “Jobs is right. There's no mainstream demand for music subscriptions. The music business isn't built on long-term rentals; it's built on one hit after another. It's confectionary. Tunes are addictive for a while and then discarded. It's like the drug business: Users are always looking for the next hit.”
I can see why Jobs is downplaying the subscription model- because his company doesn’t plan on going in that route yet, and he wants to help deflate any buzz other services might get in the press. But the concept that a subscription model is “renting” music vs. “buying” just doesn’t fit. Primarily because no one actually ever “buys” a song- the song always belongs to the record label. When you download a track from iTunes you are merely renting that song until you accidentally delete it, reformat your hard drive, or possibly until iTunes cancels its service or changes their file formatting on a future device.
What Kahney says about songs being “addictive for a while and then discarded” actually hurts his argument since subscription services allow you to listen to the next new tune as soon as it launches without any additional cost, whereas with an individual download you have to pay more money for each tune you want to hear, all while knowing that you paid 99 cents a track for a bunch of tracks that you already have, as Kahney would say, “discarded.”
A pay-per-download model will in theory allow you to amass a library of songs you can continue to listen to in the future without paying, but it all comes back to the cost. Want to compile a library of 10,000 songs? That’ll be $10,000.00 on iTunes. It’ll take 667 months, or 55 and ½ years before I spend that much on my RealPlayer Rhapsody service. I remember how much I spent to amass my collection of tape cassettes only to trade those in and spend more money to amass a collection of CDs, only to have since sold many of them online for a fraction of what I originally paid. In 55 years no one will be listening to an iPod, we can assume that much. So is it really worthwhile to spend all that money to amass a collection of songs you may only listen to for a few years? If 10,000 is too high for you, even downloading 1000 songs would cost the equivalent of 5 and ½ years of Rhapsody service. And in that 5 and ½ year period, while you can only listen to the 1000 songs for which you have paid, I can listen to hundreds of thousands via Rhapsody to Go. The subscription model simply makes sense, and this most recent attempt by Jobs to dismiss it seems like he just wants to buy time until Apple is ready to publicly accept this reality. With all I know about him, I cannot imagine for a minute that Steve Jobs really believes the pay-per-download model is the wave of the future.
Of course we all know how music has since progressed- computers turned songs completely digital, and now we have a wave of competing MP3 players on the market, chief among them the iPod. In all the buzz the iPod received when it launched, I was never really that interested. Not because I didn’t think it was a good product, I just felt there was something better and cheaper that would come along. And by cheaper I don’t mean the cost of the player, but the overall cost of listening to a lot of music month after month. At 99 cents a download, listening to one new song a day via iPod/iTunes came with a price tag of $30.00 a month.
When RealPlayer Rhapsody launched several years back, I was happy because here was a product that gave access to hundreds of thousands of songs, including most all newer artists, and the cost was just a flat $9.99 a month. That meant I could listen to 5 new songs a day, and my cost would be $9.99 via Rhapsody vs. $150.00 at iTunes. Of course the original Rhapsody service had its drawbacks. If you wanted to burn a song to a CD or MP3 player, you had to pay for the download (though it was only 79 cents a track). I loved the product primarily because my job required me being at a desk for long periods of time, so I could listen to music often, and could do so very cheaply. But I could see why Rhapsody had not replaced iPod/iTunes. Though it’s downloads were a little cheaper, it wasn’t a revolutionary product considering most people preferred to listen to music on a stereo or take their music with them (via CD or MP3 player) and not be tethered to a computer. People would rather pay 99 cents a track with no monthly fee than $9.99 a month and 79 cents a track. Plus the iPod was a part of pop culture and a lot of folks wanted an iPod just to be in the “in” crowd. But the iPod as a fad will eventually give way to another coveted device. The question is, which device will it be?
Here we are in 2007, the iPod is still the top dog, the CD is taking its last breath, and RealPlayer has launched Rhapsody to Go. Ladies and gentleman, I have seen the iPod killer, and it is this. This product is revolutionary. You can download any song to your PC (via the Rhapsody music player) or MP3 player without paying a download fee per track. You pay $14.99 a month. The Rhapsody MP3 player (from Sansa), which is the only compatible player for this service, looks a lot like an iPod (though a wee bit thicker and heavier), and comes in 2GB, 4GB, 6GB, and 8GB flavors, with more on the way. It plays video as well. So you can put 500 songs on your Rhapsody MP3 player, listen to them while jogging, in a car, or anywhere else for that matter, and all you pay is $14.99 a month. Using a simply auxiliary cable you can connect the device to your home or car stereo and get full digital sound. You can save the songs to your computer too. There are no individual download fees unless you want to burn the tracks to a CD (but who does these days?).
Naturally I thought Apple would not be far behind, and would simply adjust and make RealPlayer Rhapsody a short lived service. Evidently Steve Jobs (and a number of music journalists) just don’t get it. Or more likely Jobs gets it, but wants to buy some time before admitting it. This article from Wired shows why.
According to Jobs, Apple won’t offer a subscription service like that of RealPlayer Rhapsody because “customers don't seem to be interested in it…The subscription model has failed so far." That was a quote from Jobs. The article’s author, Leander Kahney, added “Jobs is right. There's no mainstream demand for music subscriptions. The music business isn't built on long-term rentals; it's built on one hit after another. It's confectionary. Tunes are addictive for a while and then discarded. It's like the drug business: Users are always looking for the next hit.”
I can see why Jobs is downplaying the subscription model- because his company doesn’t plan on going in that route yet, and he wants to help deflate any buzz other services might get in the press. But the concept that a subscription model is “renting” music vs. “buying” just doesn’t fit. Primarily because no one actually ever “buys” a song- the song always belongs to the record label. When you download a track from iTunes you are merely renting that song until you accidentally delete it, reformat your hard drive, or possibly until iTunes cancels its service or changes their file formatting on a future device.
What Kahney says about songs being “addictive for a while and then discarded” actually hurts his argument since subscription services allow you to listen to the next new tune as soon as it launches without any additional cost, whereas with an individual download you have to pay more money for each tune you want to hear, all while knowing that you paid 99 cents a track for a bunch of tracks that you already have, as Kahney would say, “discarded.”
A pay-per-download model will in theory allow you to amass a library of songs you can continue to listen to in the future without paying, but it all comes back to the cost. Want to compile a library of 10,000 songs? That’ll be $10,000.00 on iTunes. It’ll take 667 months, or 55 and ½ years before I spend that much on my RealPlayer Rhapsody service. I remember how much I spent to amass my collection of tape cassettes only to trade those in and spend more money to amass a collection of CDs, only to have since sold many of them online for a fraction of what I originally paid. In 55 years no one will be listening to an iPod, we can assume that much. So is it really worthwhile to spend all that money to amass a collection of songs you may only listen to for a few years? If 10,000 is too high for you, even downloading 1000 songs would cost the equivalent of 5 and ½ years of Rhapsody service. And in that 5 and ½ year period, while you can only listen to the 1000 songs for which you have paid, I can listen to hundreds of thousands via Rhapsody to Go. The subscription model simply makes sense, and this most recent attempt by Jobs to dismiss it seems like he just wants to buy time until Apple is ready to publicly accept this reality. With all I know about him, I cannot imagine for a minute that Steve Jobs really believes the pay-per-download model is the wave of the future.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Welcome Aboard Mac USB Wireless Adapter...
Our CEO recently got his first Macintosh, and he is loving it. Our first order of business was to find him an outstanding wireless adapter that would be easy for him to use (he is a Mac newbie afterall), but that would also be fast and get great range. He also wanted something he could use on his laptop, which is a PC, not a Mac. That ruled out many products, but then he said he didn't want to spend more than $30.00. Not being eager to let the boss down, we went digging long and hard for an adapter that would please. When we finally found one, we discovered we could get it cheaper than virtually any other retailer on the market. So we got a few of them (one for our CEO, and a couple for us to play around with), and we were so pleased (as was our CEO) we decided to officially begin retailing these adapters so that other Mac and PC users could experience this low cost wonder.
We have not integrated it into our web site yet, but have a quantity listed at a special sale price via our eBay account. Click this URL below to go to the auction page now before this special ends soon:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110112924212
If you don't have an eBay account or don't want to buy on eBay, fear not, we will have them available for sale on our web site very soon.
We have not integrated it into our web site yet, but have a quantity listed at a special sale price via our eBay account. Click this URL below to go to the auction page now before this special ends soon:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110112924212
If you don't have an eBay account or don't want to buy on eBay, fear not, we will have them available for sale on our web site very soon.
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