Scott Brenner » E-Commerce

$213 for a hammer?

Scott — Fri, 02 May 2008 03:08:12 +0000

Reality Distortion Field in Effect

Scott — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 01:44:01 +0000

Most laptop and notebook computers on the market are black or charcoal. Lately more and more have a metallic finish. For a premium price you can get a fancy color like blue or red. It isn’t as bad as Ford’s offer of any color Model T, as long it is black but odd are high that any given laptop is black. And the cheaper the laptop the more likely the laptop is black

That is unless you are looking at an Apple laptop. Apple’s are white or metal, not metallic but actual aluminum. You can get a black MacBook for an extra $150. Yes you can get a less distinct more common colored laptop from Apple for $150 more than the same laptop in white.

This is the notorious Steve Job’s Reality Distortion Field. This distortion field has been spoken of for decades. At first one might dismiss the folklore and accept that Jobs is more persuasive than others; that he can convince consumers to pay more for a better product. But this underestimates his powers of persuasion and denies his ability to distort reality. Steve can make a common black laptop more desirable and more expensive than distinct white.

This is an amazing distortion of reality.

Amy Africa’s Blog is Live

Scott — Wed, 31 May 2006 19:55:59 +0000

Amy Africa has started her Qlog blog. Amy covers all things e-commerce and internet marketing.

Her blog can be found at amyafrica.com

TalkCrunch Covers Amazon’s Grid Storage- Plus a Suggestion

Scott — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 10:04:02 +0000

I just listened to very lively and well produced TalkCrunch podcast from Tech crunch about Amazon’s S3 service and online storage in general.

I am very excited to see some great S3 applications, but the pricing is still way too high. All the online storage solutions seem out of touch with other bandwidth/storage pricing.

For example, Dreamhost offers 20gb of storage and a terabyte of bandwidth per month for $9.95. $7.95 if you commit to two years. In addition your alloted storage and bandwidth increase every week.

Assuming you used the full capacity, the same service through S3 would cost:

20 * .15 = $5.00

1000 * .20 = $200

Total $205

About $195 a month more that a basic hosting account. Even if you only use a tenth of the bandwidth S3 is still off by a factor of 3. What is more, as mentioned in the podcast, S3 appears to the be the low cost online storage provider. The other providers are off by even more.

A real opportunity exists in building an ftp/http/webdav backup utility. Something like Apple’s .mac Backup application.

Or maybe an open source online storage front end that can run on any ISP’s Apache server. Host your own OmniDrive.

Easy Quimble Poll

Scott — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 07:52:48 +0000

I saw this new site for creating ajaxy polls so I thought I would give it a try.

Grand Funk Railroad Featured in BusinessWeek

Scott — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 04:12:40 +0000

Great, short article discussing the declining market for Rock & Roll and especially second- and third-tier rock bands. John Fine reminds how much the music industry has changed in thirty years:

Average Rolling Stone’s concert ticket in 2005 - $134
Buyers don’t listen to albums they prefere singles
New York and Philadelphia dont’ have any radio stations devoted to “modern Rock”

The article is free to read but you must register:

Rockers Keep Your Day Jobs