I wrote this a while ago (on actual paper!) intending to post it here but it got burried until now. So here it goes:

I spent part of the weekend looking for a camcorder. That in and of itself is not an easy thing to do. There are very few reliable sources of information out there and what's worse is that they don't do comparisons between models from one manufacturer or of simalar models across manufacturers. But that's not what I want to write about today.

Today I want to write about my experience bargain hunting on-line. There are some great sounding bargains to be had out here on the internet. The camera I finally settled on ranges in price from $504 to $699. Nearly a $200 difference. Wow. Before I jumped at one of the "discount" websites I did some reputation research. Let me tell you that was an eye opening experience! 4.38 of 5.00 sounds great until you read the horror stories of people with bad experiences. Some ordered overnight delivery, got charged for it, and then recieved the product 3 weeks later. Some ordered products advertised as new "factory sealed" but got used merchandise instead. Still others got extra accessories and were charged for them without actually ordering them.

All of these companies were from Brooklyn NY based. I'm not sure if there's a pattern but sorry Brooklyn camera dealers, you're not getting my business until you clean up your reputations online. Although $200 is a quite a bit of cash, it seems worth it to me to be sure that I'm not getting ripped off, or have to go through a lot of hassles to get what I ordered.

I've been reading a bit about buzz marketing, mostly prodded by Seth Godin's Purple Cow and Free Prize Inside (a must read by anyone, not just marketing dweebs). Its really interesting the reaction people have to it. I think 60 minutes (or maybe dateline) did a story about it that was very negative alluding that this was trickery. They showed a couple with an Erickson phone camera asking people to take their picture. I don't really see that as trickery. They also showed a guy who was playing video games with a digital glove at Starbucks. People would approach him and ask him about it. Not really deception.

Well here's a great example of a bit of buzz. Its really brilliant actually. Its a thing called "Making over Mona" that has a little story about the Mona Lisa being a little too old and needing a little "work" done. It then let you give her Botox, colagen etc. to your hearts content and then at the end tells you about a better way, some sort of face cream. So here I am talking about it. I won't buy the product, but I'm talking about it, giving them a link, a minor page rank boost, and of course a few more eyeballs who may turn out to be customers. Briliant stuff.

I've fixed up the template so that it looks ok under Firefox and IE now. What a pain. Plus I'm not really happy with the results. I liked the old look better, but if it doesn't render in all browsers, I guess it doesn't really matter. I've just a few more little fixes to make. Currently the blog entries look just fine in FireFox, but IE renders them with a bit too much space between the top and the first entry. Though the links column renders a bit too high now in FireFox. And I don't like the way it resizes. Oh well. I guess I'll play with it some more, though its looking like a really good idea to grab one of the standard ones from blogger and just go with it. They've added a few nice ones lately.

Well I've been using FireFox for quite a few months, and I haven't really been blogging during that time. I just noticed that the CSS that I used for this site really only works for IE 6. FireFox renders it really miserably. I don't blame FireFox for this, I designed it using only IE and with it being my first CSS design I didn't really consider other browsers. Well, I'll re-do it soon.

You left me a comment on the last post. Sorry about the delay, in fact, I have no idea when you actually posted your comment. Its been a while since I posted to the blog, and the comments are fairly well hidden from view, but I hope that you read this some time soon and respond back.

If you want my email address, you can piece it together from the URL. I won't post it here since its just spambot bait. But to give you a clue it ends with cox.net and the URL's directory is also my email address.

Hope to hear from you soon.

For those of you grumbling about the high price of gasoline you may be interested to know that your own driving habits are making that tankfull extra expensive. In an Wall Street Journal article over the weekend ("Fast Driver? You Lose" by Andrew Blackman) it was pointed out that cars in the US are really truly honestly optimized for 55-60 miles per hour. Every 5 mph over 60 that you drive is like paying an extra 10 cents a gallon more for gas. Optimal fuel economy is at about 55 mph. Also, if you like to accelerate into red lights or stopped traffic on the freeway take heed, that's costing you 33% more fuel. By driving less aggressively you can shave 60 cents off each gallon making it go further. Plus its much better on your engine and brakes. Here are some tips from the good ol' Dept. of Transportation

I've added the comments feature. So make some comments, that is if it works...

I just ran across an article called The Right to Read by RMS that is a must read by anyone who owns a TV, VCR, CDs, books or computer. I've long been whining about the DMCA and other legislation (and technology) that nibbles away at the intent of fair use. "The Right to Read" is a short story of a disutopia, a prognosis of what can happen if the trend continues as it has. We've already seen shrink wrapped textbooks with licenses similar to the licenses of software in the last few years, break the shrink wrap and you've agreed to the book's license. This story just points out what could happen if this sort of thing progressed.