Hot Koehl

I recently made the decision to store times on Fwd:Vault systems in Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT. I decided to do this because I have time-sensitive events happening along several dimensions. Email coming into the system has several timestamps associated with it: the user’s initial delivery, relay from their mail server, and receipt by the Fwd:Vault mail server. Payment receipts come into Fwd:Vault from our billing provider, which gets stored in my system and made available to the user.

Up until now, my server time was set for the US Eastern, where both I and the server physically reside. Then I started building the code to display local time based on a user’s selected timezone.

Ugh.

Here’s the problem: displaying local time requires at least one time conversion, from server time to the user’s timezone. If the time is initially set to anything other than no-offset GMT, you have two calculations to do, from the server timezone to GMT, then GMT to user timezone. You can do it, of course, but who really wants to write even more code?

Now add to this equation the fact that most data-delivery systems have settled on sending time data in GMT. A very good practice, to be sure, but presents the need to do another timezone conversion when the data come into your systems. Going back to my example, I had to convert payment times from GMT to US Eastern before dropping them into my database.

Finally, add to the mix the potential for time data coming in from more than one source with more than one offset. Again back to my case, payment data is GMT, as is the Twitter feed I store and display on the site. Meanwhile, email was set to US Eastern. This matched the server and MySQL database where all the data ends up residing, so I was still looking at just one time conversion. But what happens down the road, when my server configuration changes, or I move to another timezone?

Tying this information to me makes as much sense as tying it to any one of my users. It’s the same rationale that data service providers use when delivering GMT time data, it applies to me, and it applies to you too.

I’m just too lazy to try and keep all that timezone switching straight in my head.

If you find yourself in the same scenario, save your sanity and your future support efforts. If you run a website that (a) displays time-sensitive data, and (b) allows users to create an account, you really owe it to everyone involved to store time in a neutral fashion and adjust time displays according to the user’s selected timezone.

After my post discussing how vendor-client relationships are complete crap most of the time — which was really a thinly veiled excuse to post a funny vid — a friend of mine posted a response on my Facebook page:

While you’re right that you in essence ‘get what you pay for’ in this economic climate you’d be surprised how much lower vendors will go in order to keep a customer satisfied (which in turn could bring in more work…)

This is quite true, and I’m sure she wasn’t alone in her opinion, so here’s some additional insight. The problem isn’t the act of dropping prices, but the speed with which we as vendors come to that decision. Many vendors drop their prices at the first hint of customer disapproval. Clients know they can feign disappointment to try and get a better price (that’s what makes the video funny!), but if a vendor has a solid product at a reasonable price, they should ignore that impulse to cave to such requests.

Consistently dropping prices unnecessarily has a lot of long-term penalties. The customer who gets a discount once will ask again, further decreasing the bottom line on that client work. Those bits of discount add up really fast, yet the companies I’ve worked with rarely stopped to calculate how much they are actually losing in discounts. Only when the customer was obviously taking the business to the cleaners did they give it a harder look.

Plus there are more “fuzzy” net effects, like price perception. A product’s value is tied to the price that a customer actually pays, not what you “might have” charged them before you offered that on-the-spot discount. Decreasing the price decreases the value a customer places on the goods they receive. Luxury goods live and die by this rule. Why are Diesel jeans, Oakley sunglasses, and Coach purses considered premiums in their respective markets? An expert could talk about product quality, but the vast majority of people couldn’t identify these tangible advantages. The pricetag is the number one conveyor of luxury status.

I’m not saying “never give discounts,” just that companies should be more selective in doling them out. Most of the time, clients already see the value of goods and services, and *will* pay for it, they simply want to squeeze as much value as they can out of it. Standing up to these scare tactics, as illustrated in the video, can save companies tons of trouble down the line.

Saw this post come across the community section the official Digg blog today discussing changes to the ads they’re running in the PC Games section. The mind-blowing line:

And if advertising skins just aren’t your thing, one of our users provided this story on how to disable them.

They not only acknowledge that people are going to remove ads, but actually link to instructions on how to remove it. Sure, it’s a bit of a challenge for non-techies (although installing AdBlock Plus makes this super-easy in Firefox), but the vast majority of the audience in the PC Gaming section is going to be able to figure it out.

You want your users to love you? Don’t BS them. An overt effort to tell the cold hard truth, especially when it hurts most, will win over people far more often than it will lose. Real relationships are built on trust, after all, and you can’t fake real.

This is one facet of business that I simply never understood, and always drove me nuts. My boss would ask me to “get a better price,” and I’d have to go back to the vendor and essentially beg them to drop the price. How often does the purchasing company really have any leverage to ask for anything? The price is the price. You don’ like it, go elsewhere. It’s nonsense.

Good to see I’m not alone! I particularly enjoyed the comparison to other services. Taco stand vs. filet mignon? “It’s cow.” See this mindset all the time in web development. Somehow the services you got from your 16-year-old neighbor are equivalent to a professional shop with 15 years of experience. How do people make these mental leaps!?

(Click through to get a very nice HD version)

Came across this BusinessWeek article (published on Yahoo!) today discussing companies that “embody the creativity and resiliency common among today’s entrepreneurs.” They do make it clear that it’s a new recurring segment, so maybe they’re still getting their feet under them. That’s what I’m hoping anyway, because I see nothing but a bunch of me-toos and also-rans in this list.

Read the article, and see if my summary (and accompanying snarky comments) jive with what you read:

• Name: Batter Blaster
  No-BS Summary: Late-night infomercial
  I can see the demonstration of the “old alternative” now, where they make some doofus have a spasm while pouring Bisquik on a skillet.
• Name: InterShelter
  No-BS Summary: Portable dome housing
  This never-ending dome idea needs to be dragged out back and shot.
• Name: ParkingCarma
  No-BS Summary: Website for parking spots
  I see “Website for [insert handy information].” Handy, but nothing special here.
• Name: Mota Motors
  No-BS Summary: Sell cars online.
  Another “Website for [insert handy information].” A competitor to cars.com, eBay motors, and Edmunds, touting extra middleman-ness. Who doesn’t want more middleman in their lives?
• Name: Greenmaker Supply
  No-BS Summary: A “green” Home Depot
  Similar to the last two, I see “Sustainable/green [insert physical product].” The green movement in general drives me nuts. There’s no proof any of it makes a difference on the planet (for or against), and some products actually create more waste and cost more to make than their “ungreen” counterparts.
• Name: Wedding Payment Plan
  No-BS Summary: Financing Service
  They specialize in weddings, but how is this loan any different from any other loan? If you’re looking to finance a wedding, the economist in me says you need to dial the event back a bit.
• Name: ExpoTV
  No-BS Summary: Video consumer reviews
  Yet another “Website for [insert handy information].” I would imagine that video-based reviews presents something of a hurdle for most consumers. I’ve known many a non-techie who could barely manage email, and you want them to shoot, possibly edit, and upload a review to the web?
• Name: Freeline Skates
  No-BS Summary: New way to break your neck
  Come on, the guy isn’t even wearing a helmet! The clincher for me is this line: Farrelly says he has turned down Wal-Mart Stores as a retail outlet. Why? Bad for Freeline’s street cred. Yeah, and saying “no” is horrendous for your bottom line. Or do you like bumming on your friends’ couches at, what, 30?
• Name: HomeMade Pizza
  No-BS Summary: Bake at home pizza
  At this point I’m convinced the researchers were just looking to round out the list at an even…umm…nine. Good choice too, because where else can we go for make-at-home pizza besides Little Ceasars, DiGiorno, Red Baron, my grocer’s entire frozen food section and a limitless number of fundraiser catalogs?

Don’t get me wrong, these aren’t bad ideas — except for the sneaker wheels, how much more hazardous can we make our free time? — but I certainly wouldn’t put them in the “most promising” category. They’ve all been done before, and/or being done right now!

Where are the game changers, the ones doing things that improve daily lives on a fundamental level? I don’t think Fwd:Vault is going to shatter our world-foundation, but at least it’s a fresh approach for tackling a known problem. Who finds pancake batter to be a real blight on their lives?

I was submitting a good business-oriented discussion about SEO just now to StumbleUpon and I noticed they’ve changed how submissions of a new site work. Before, you picked a category for the site, offered a description, and included any worthwhile tags. It wasn’t a whole lot, but I have done the internal “groan” when presented with this to-do list.

Now, if the page is new to their systems, they simply asked if the site is “Safe for work.” That’s it. Sweet.

Looks like this is part of the rollout for their latest version. According to that post, and some poking around, it looks like the service has seen major work in the usability department. I can see the in-house discussion…

• “Why does the user have to do this?”
• “Isn’t this a task that our system could handle?”
• “How many more submissions could we get if we reduced the friction associated with doing so?”

Score another one for simplicity and ease of use.

Do you have the same concern for your product? Everyone loves it when things are easy and obvious, both online and off.