By accident I stumbled on this announcement of the US Postal Service's intention to impose "new prices for mailing services" next month.
Can't find any news stories about it. The latest press release about prices in the USPS newsroom is from June of last year.
I'll keep you "posted."
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Co op and Marketing Development Funds
Haven’t blogged for a while. A new job is taking up quite a bit of time—yay!
One of my responsibilities there is a lot of fun. I’m the person who gets to spend the Marketing Development Funds (MDF) and co-op marketing money.
The way MDFs work is that if you sell a certain dollar amount of the vendor’s product, the vendor offers you marketing money to sell more product. The amount of money is based on your dollar sales. You have to spend it by a certain date, or the credit goes away.
Now I understand why there are so many branded tchotchkes out there. Oops! Your claim date is coming up and the boss’ll be irritated if you don’t act on it. So you order a couple thousand pens with the company logo on them just so you can say you spent the money. Bo-ring.
The perfect promotional item would be the one that delights the customer or prospect. It would make her or him say, “I didn’t realize how much I needed a radiation dosimeter. I’m going to wear this everywhere, with the logo facing out. I’m going to show it to my friends and colleagues and tell them what a great relationship I have with Katharine’s company.”
To evoke that enthusiasm, it better be a darned good gift. Spending MDF money right is obviously a challenge—one I’m looking forward to embracing.
One of my responsibilities there is a lot of fun. I’m the person who gets to spend the Marketing Development Funds (MDF) and co-op marketing money.
The way MDFs work is that if you sell a certain dollar amount of the vendor’s product, the vendor offers you marketing money to sell more product. The amount of money is based on your dollar sales. You have to spend it by a certain date, or the credit goes away.
Now I understand why there are so many branded tchotchkes out there. Oops! Your claim date is coming up and the boss’ll be irritated if you don’t act on it. So you order a couple thousand pens with the company logo on them just so you can say you spent the money. Bo-ring.
The perfect promotional item would be the one that delights the customer or prospect. It would make her or him say, “I didn’t realize how much I needed a radiation dosimeter. I’m going to wear this everywhere, with the logo facing out. I’m going to show it to my friends and colleagues and tell them what a great relationship I have with Katharine’s company.”
To evoke that enthusiasm, it better be a darned good gift. Spending MDF money right is obviously a challenge—one I’m looking forward to embracing.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Skirting Reproduction Issues
About those family photos I wrote about in the previous post, I just had a devious idea. If I donate the whole box of photos to the Summit Historical Society, I'm sure that they'll grant me reproduction rights to the two or three I want. Then their provenance on eBay becomes irrelevant. :)
I found lots of interesting illustrations, including the ad below, at the Historical Society. When possible, I do follow up. In this case, PSE&G was kind enough to permit me to use their images and recipes however I wanted in the cookbook.
I do try to observe the proprieties, but what kind of a researcher would I be if I gave up immediately and said, "Oh, I'll probably never be authorized to use that?"
For one thing, the cookbook wouldn't have as many pictures. Remember, order your advance copy now for $20.
Will these pictures get me in trouble?
Please don't bid against me, but yesterday I bid on a lot of photos on eBay. They're supposed to show a family in Summit, NJ, in the '40s and '50s. According to the seller, there are a few of the kind I want, that is, photos of kitchens, dining rooms, and of people eating home-prepared food in Summit.
What if I win the bidding? Can I use the pictures in my church cookbook? Obviously, I can. I have a scanner. But may I? I'm hoping the seller can either get the subjects' permission or give me permission as a family member. What if he doesn't know the subjects because he bought a box of snapshots at an estate sale?
Who holds the copyright then? If you have any helpful thoughts on this, please let me know. Otherwise I'll do my customary desultory research. Then I'll probably conclude that I'm running out of time because I need to get the file to the printer and run the pictures anyway, hoping that the subjects or their descendants never notice.
What was I saying about ignorance of the law being no excuse?
What if I win the bidding? Can I use the pictures in my church cookbook? Obviously, I can. I have a scanner. But may I? I'm hoping the seller can either get the subjects' permission or give me permission as a family member. What if he doesn't know the subjects because he bought a box of snapshots at an estate sale?
Who holds the copyright then? If you have any helpful thoughts on this, please let me know. Otherwise I'll do my customary desultory research. Then I'll probably conclude that I'm running out of time because I need to get the file to the printer and run the pictures anyway, hoping that the subjects or their descendants never notice.
What was I saying about ignorance of the law being no excuse?
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Webmasters need expertise--technical, graphical and legal
It's not enough to be able to buy a domain, design a style sheet and know how to transfer your files to the internet. As my friend Alan Norton, a writer for techrepublic reminds us, webmasters need to stay abreast of legal developments that affect their sites.
His article Do Webmasters need to add lawyer and legal counsel to their job description? points out that a morass of legal issues lurks to bedevil innocent internet publishers, especially online retailers.
Asked and answered, your honor. The question Alan addresses in the article above is one that people are still grappling with, for example on LinkedIn, where someone recently asked "Does an ecommerce retailer have to file taxes in each state it sold a product in?"
Unfortunately, as John Selden wrote in the 17th century,
All these heavy responsibilities on the webmasters' heads are one more reason why they should engage copywriters--lots of them. After all, even webmasters can't be experts at everything.
His article Do Webmasters need to add lawyer and legal counsel to their job description? points out that a morass of legal issues lurks to bedevil innocent internet publishers, especially online retailers.
Asked and answered, your honor. The question Alan addresses in the article above is one that people are still grappling with, for example on LinkedIn, where someone recently asked "Does an ecommerce retailer have to file taxes in each state it sold a product in?"
Unfortunately, as John Selden wrote in the 17th century,
Ignorance of the law excuses no man: Not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him.That means the short answer to Alan's question is, yes, webmasters do need to add legal counsel to their job descriptions, at least if they want to avoid legal hassles down the road and sleep easily at night.
All these heavy responsibilities on the webmasters' heads are one more reason why they should engage copywriters--lots of them. After all, even webmasters can't be experts at everything.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Free virtualization tutorial
Sure, I like free things. That's why I appreciate the Storage Networking Industry Association's posting free tutorials on their website.
When I downloaded the Virtualizations/Applications tutorial, though, I hoped for a simple explanation, preferably a video with one-syllable words, of the benefits of dynamic provisioning. Instead I found three PowerPoint presentations full of sophisticated network-speak.
So I did what any writer would do. I wrote down the phrases that appealed to me. Here they are:
Finally, slide 21 of Trends in Application Recovery by Andreas Schwegman makes it all worthwhile. So grab some popcorn and download those tutorials.
When I downloaded the Virtualizations/Applications tutorial, though, I hoped for a simple explanation, preferably a video with one-syllable words, of the benefits of dynamic provisioning. Instead I found three PowerPoint presentations full of sophisticated network-speak.
So I did what any writer would do. I wrote down the phrases that appealed to me. Here they are:
- Heuristic shifting
- Transparent on-the-fly reconfiguration
- Virtual disks
- Switch-based fabric topology is preferable to appliance-based failover mechanisms
- A smart switch comprises a metadata controller and a data controller
- A full block copy is better than a live volume
- Volume updates replicate to remote servers
- "Do not rely on only one network-based appliance or intelligent switch only"
- You use two redundant volumes, one active and one passive, stored in a mirrored backend. The passive one has host-based multipathing software
- Policy-based service level management handles error-prone administrative tasks such as storage provisioning. In fact, policy-based service must have no user interaction. This one made me think of Vonnegut's Player Piano.
- " Map storage to server volume(s) (online)!!" This one is obviously important because it has two exclamation marks
- Hypervisor This is a new word to me, and I like it.
Finally, slide 21 of Trends in Application Recovery by Andreas Schwegman makes it all worthwhile. So grab some popcorn and download those tutorials.
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