Tails within the tail

Just reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. It’s easy to read, and there is lots of excellent, detailed content – the sign of a good writer/editor. Even though I’m not quite finished it yet, I highly recommend reading it.

I’ve followed some of the book content and the discussion about it through his Long Tail blog, but today I was really struck by his description of the microstructure of the tail – actually a series of tails within the tail. For me, it added some clarity to the definition of niche, and I hadn’t seen that discussed before, or at least I wasn’t receptive to it when I did.

Good stuff. I have a feeling that this is one book I’ll have to read a couple of times to absorb all the ideas and what they mean to me.

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Bookends

Driving around town this afternoon, I was struck by how much potential Surrey’s City Center (aka Whalley) has. The City has been trying to redevelop this area since Skytrain was extended through to Fraser Highway, back in the early 1990’s. A lot of the old crack houses homes in the area have been demolished, and development signs are sprouting up on several empty properties in the area.

It’s coming along, but slowly. Right now we have bookends. That is, we have new, and nearly new developments at either end of  City Center.

The Central City Mall and new the SFU campus tower are at the south end (no, it’s not tilted, I was ;-):

Central_city_tower

 The Infinity condo project is also underway across from Central City. It’s supposed to hold a couple of thousand people when it’s done, and the first phase sold out in a day:

Infinity_project_in_whalley_060802

 And we have Scotia Tower and Gateway settlement at the north end:

Gateway_towers_in_whalley

There are residential complexes close to Gateway as well. But if you look closely at part of the middle of the area near Central City (as seen via the City’s Cosmos utility), you’ll notice a lot of parking open space.

City_center_via_cosmos

 Actually, the middle of City Center is much like an open canvas right now, and we can make it into whatever we want to. That’s kind of exciting actually, and hopefully the City will take advantage of that potential to attract some community minded business folks. With about 70,000 people in the area now, and several thousand more moving into new condos over the next couple of years, there’s got to be a customer base for enterprising folks.

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CBWPRMC

Early last month, I was honoured with a Certificate in Business Writing, Public Relations, and Marketing Communications from SFU’s Writing and Publishing Program. I guess I can add CBWPRMC after my name now 🙂 Ok, maybe not.

Seriously, I’ve been writing professional stuff for a long time, but most of my training has come through short courses, picky editors, and plenty of practice. That, and a short stint years ago as an English and History major at UBC, has served me well. But for some reason I thought I’d formalize things a bit. Ergo, the courses at SFU.

Continuing education is always good, and you just never know where it will lead you. Eons ago in another life, I quit a boring janitorial job and started working as a pest control technician for a small company. I found a related correspondence course at Purdue University and signed up. That got me started towards even more formal education, and ended up with me working as an extension biologist, managing a research and development group. Go figure.

So where is this new accolade going to take me? Who knows. Don’t care. I enjoyed the courses, learned a lot, met some new people, made a few friends. Anything else is gravy.

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Warm fuzzy feelings for Canon Canada today

Kudos to Canon Canada. They’ve exceeded this customer expectations by fixing a camera that was well out of warranty – for free. Turns out it was a manufacturers defect, and they’ve been resolutely dealing with it for quite some time.

And kudos for JS Electronics of Surrey for being part of that ( sorry, they don’t have a website that I can find. Try 202-12899 76th Ave). Sure, they were probably as skeptical about it as I was, so they charged me an ‘inspection fee’ before taking a look. But, in the end, the camera is fixed, the charges were reversed, and I’m happy.

Here’s the story.

Back in November 2003 I purchased a Canon ZR70MC video cam. I managed to use it a couple of times before life just got in the way.  I had to put it aside, and it sat in the case in a cabinet until about December 2006, when I had more time to play.

When I pulled it out around Christmas to try again: dead. Well, not completely dead. Everything seemed to work except the view finder and  LCD screen. Fine, I could take my video (I think), but not know exactly what I was taking a video of.

I ended up putting it back in the cabinet until a week ago, when I pulled it out again, bent on seeing what I could do to get it working for the summer.

First step: google “canon  ZR70MC”, of course. At that point I ran across a few reviews mentioning a similar problem. It sounded like Canon was offering to fix that model, no matter what the warranty situation. Apparently it was a manufacturer’s defect in the CCD that came to light soon after the camera was released. However, there didn’t seem to be any dates on the reviews.

OK, off to Canon’s website, where I found a technical note. Sure enough, it was true. They were offering to fix the problem. But what about now; after 3 years, and no extended warranty?

I phoned the help line mentioned on the website. Yikes. I got someone on the line in a matter of seconds. After explaining what I was looking at (or rather, not looking at) the rep just said to take it into a repair center. They would repair it at no charge. He provided the local address for JS Electronics without a beat.

Off to JS Electronics, just a few minutes way. The fellow there that I talked to explained that yes, the repairs could be made for free, as long as the CCD was the root of the problem. Other things could also be at fault. It would cost me $50+tax for them to have a look and be sure. I’d know in a week.

I dutifully made a note to my skeptical self to give them a call a week later. Today, before I could call them, they called me. My camera was ready, there would be no charge, and they would be refunding the deposit I’d made.

All’s well. Talk about a warm fuzzy feeling. Today I’m a raving fan of Canon Cameras and JS Electronics in Surrey. So there.

Well done folks!

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How to win the newspaper war?

I see in the Vancouver Sun today (p. D6) that Sun Media Corp. in Toronto is cutting 120 jobs. (Sorry, the story seems to be behind the firewall).

Most of the lost jobs will be those of  “journalists, editors, photographers, librarians, freelancers and some management.” According to the report, the company wants to introduce some new technology, shore up it’s online business, and expand its free local papers – like 24 hours. I suppose in the future they’ll be using some (more) centralized newsroom to create their news.

You’ve got to wonder…a media company…and the first thing to go when they want to save a few bucks are the content producers. Is there some logic in that? It sounds like a manufacturer saying “Oh my, we’re not doing that well. Let’s shut down the production line while we think about it.”

It seems to be the way things are moving though. CanWest does it now. As I sit on the couch in the morning, reading the Vancouver Sun newspaper and listening to Global news on TV, I’m amazed at how often I’m reading the exact same story that I’m hearing. And when I pick up the local community newspaper, half the same news is in there too. Sigh.

I wonder what new model for content will grow as more and more bored people start leaving mainstream media. I see blog posts about services like Scoopt Words and BlogBurst that offer to link bloggers with the mainstream press. Perhaps that’s the next model for fresh content in independent community newspapers, or on community websites – content from local bloggers commenting on their communities, i.e. citizen journalism. There’s been lots of talk about that too, but there’s still not much of a model for linking content producers with payment. That’s a stumbling block for all but the most dedicated.

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Dogs attack, wildlife retaliates

Sorry, just had to laugh during the Global news tonight in Vancouver. One of the top stories was about a dog that had attacked a deer in a Kelowna Park. Seems the owner had let him off the leash at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and the dog had chased down the deer, wounding it.

Of course the ‘people’ stories followed with rants about those bad dog owners that do that – let their pets off the leash.

I guess the birds had seen the incident too, and rapidly spread the news about the wayward dog. It has to be, because the next story was about the deer in Princeton, BC. Apparently they’d got to know the community so well they were staying in town all summer, and not just in winter when the snow was deep.

Anyway, turns out the deer in Princeton have started attacking the local dogs now, and the town is thinking about a cull (of deer).

Maybe the poor animals were just getting back for the Kelowna dog-deer incident?

Got to wonder…

 

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Kentucky Chicken just lost a customer

I admit it. I’ve got a weakness for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Calories, cholesterol, and unknown secret ingredients included. Whatever.

But tonight I’m no longer a customer, and I’ll tell you why.

For the last couple of years “4 pieces of chicken, original, with fries, to go” has been a regular order for me. While I often had to repeat at least part of my order, and then turn down salad, desert, and extra chicken, it seemed to work very well. I’d go in once every couple of weeks or so and enjoy two pieces and fries for one night’s dinner, a piece each for the next two nights with salad.

For a long time the price was about $6.94, and that was acceptable to me. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed it had gone up to about 7.50. I thought for a minute, but paid it. After all, prices go up with wages and taxes, etc. Fine.

Well, tonight I went in and made my order. It came to $8.40. Huh? I mentioned the price increase, and the young lady at the till turned around to another young lady in the kitchen who dutifully explained that they were now restricted to selling ‘packages’ of items, and couldn’t sell them separately. That meant that I could pay for four pieces of chicken, a salad (that I didn’t want), fries, and a pop (which I didn’t want), or walk.

I walked.

Sorry Colonel Saunders. Don’t try to supersize me. I can get a whole barbequed chicken at Safeway for less than $9.00. That would last me most of the week.

You’d think that these days, with all the individualized and mashed up services being offered, companies would have learned that their customers are sick of the on-size-fits-all approach to their products. But I guess not.  

 

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Marketing 2.0

I picked up a post from Jim McGee at Corante tonight that talks about how marketing is changing. It’s a good summary of some of the effects of ubiquitous computing and web 2.

    

“The Elements of the New Marketing ReMix

   

The remix is from Place to Presence; from Promotion to Persuasion; from Positioning to Preference; from Price (static) to Price (dynamic); and from Product to Personalization.  These are the key elements of the new marketing remix.”

[update: I should have said that the clip above was from Sviokla’s Content.]

What really hit home for me was the discussion of promotion. It use to be in the marketer’s hands, but now, word of mouth marketing and the availabilty of online information is taking that power away.

I read somewhere once that doctors were having a time of it because patients come into the office only after researching their symptoms; and car dealers often knew less about the cars they sell than buyers coming onto the lot ( sorry, no links).

We live in interesting times.

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To most people they’re just bugs

Thanks to Science Blog today for the summary of an article in BioScience – as usual, seems you have to be a ‘member’ to read the BioScience article.

The paper provides some thoughts on the contributions insects make to society. It seems, in the US alone, the contribution of insects is at least $57 Billion, despite the losses from pests. Science Blog’s post is short, but it’s well worth the time for a read.

This must be national insect day or something, because just this morning I came across a link to Igor Siwanowicz and his collection of insect photos . Wow. Who says insects can’t be cute 😉

Of course, I spent quite a bit of my career studying insects, and I might be a tad biased.

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