Category: The Web

The power of ecommerce supremacy

2005-02-16 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

A while back, I posted a letter from the president of eBay about how they are having to perform some strategic back-pedaling to recover from their sense of supremacy in the online auction world. [here]

Today I read a post on how Google may be having an impact on the auction business as a whole. It also posts to a fictional description of how Google achieved true online supremacy. [here]

It is true that other companies have all of the apps that Google has; the genius in Google is that they will be unified on a single patform, tied together to deliver a fully-realized work/home/play/buy tool. Why go anywhere else, when Google can find it for you? Which is faster: Amazon’s native search, or Google’s search that points to the appropriate link on the Google site?

Google drives people to e-commerce sites. It is how buyes find sellers. All players need to realize this, and get on the bandwagon, or they will get lost in unfriendly, and unprofitable, territory.

A worthwhile tirade on UIs

2005-01-24 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

Johanna Rothman has nailed a credit card company with a stupid UI.

I liked it, because I agree that a core component of Web performance is transparent and seamless Web design. I particularly enjoyed this TakeAway:

Why do you care what browser your users use? The world is full of browsers.
That’s why we have Java. Accommodate all the browsers. Sure it means that you have to write code more carefully and test on many platforms. Is it worth losing any customers because your developers were too lazy to write good code?

I often ask myself the same question.

QoS — Something to consider

2005-01-12 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

From Down Under, some QoS questions that every manager needs to consider.

When the tracking site goes down…

2004-12-17 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

So, what is a geek to do when SiteMeter goes down? He writes his own tracking code and embeds it on his blog page!

Really simple PHP Code:

<?php
include([DATABASE CONNECTION INCLUDE]);
$logtime = date("YmdHis");
$ipquery = sprintf("%u",ip2long($REMOTE_ADDR));

if ($REMOTE_ADDR != [EXCLUDE SOME IPS]){
        $query2 = "INSERT into logger.blog_log 
		values ($logtime,$ipquery,'$HTTP_USER_AGENT','$HTTP_REFERER')";
        mysql_query($query2) or die("Log Insert Failed");
        mysql_close($link);
}

print "<META HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="0; URL=[IMAGE FILE]"/>";

?>

Then I create a table in my logging database to trap the results. Once I have that, I created an IFRAME call in an MT Typelist and away we go!

There is always a geeky solution to a customer service issue. If this works, I will cancel my SiteMeter subscription.