Best Buy secret web site

This kind of thing makes me reconsider whether or not I should ever shop at Best Buy again. I don't go there much but if I ever wanted to bargain with them based on a price on their web site, this would not make me happy. Best Buy maintains a secret web site with higher prices than you find on their public site, so when a customer comes in and asks for a price reduction based on what they saw online, a Best Buy sales person accesses the hidden side and shows that the allegedly lower price doesn't really exist.

From the Hartford Courant (via BoingBoing):

Under pressure from state investigators, Best Buy is now confirming my reporting that its stores have a secret intranet site that has been used to block some consumers from getting cheaper prices advertised on BestBuy.com.

and

This is not the first time the giant electronic retailer has gotten into trouble misleading customers. The firm, based in Minneapolis, operates more than 1,100 electronic retail stores in the U.S., Canada and China. It has more than 125,000 full-time employees.

Attorneys general in New Jersey and Ohio have accused Best Buy of deceptive sales practices, repackaging used merchandise and selling it as new, and failing to pay rebates and refunds. It paid $135,000 in New Jersey three years ago to settle that state's suit, which was based on hundreds of consumer complaints. The Ohio case is ongoing.

More night photography

I went to Old Town Temecula to photograph some buildings at sunset. Old Town does have some historical significance, and there are some buildings which are actually old, but many of them are just made to look old for the sake of tourism. It was interesting to be there as it got dark. I was able to get some good shots of a new building which is the home of a law firm. I wasn't sure if someone was going to run out and threaten to sue me for taking pictures. Across the street is a building which actually is very old. It had no lights, so my pictures there may not be as interesting, but the building has been sold and is going to be moved. I tried to shoot enough shots for some high dynamic range images. We'll see how that turns out. I think I should be using a heavier tripod to insure that the camera does not move at all.

NBA MVP

Kelly Dwyer at CNNSI says Dirk Ｎowitzki is the clear choice for MVP. He's a great player on the team with the best record, and maybe he will win the award this year, but my choice is still Steve Nash. Phoenix is the most exciting team, and Nash is the reason they win. He might not be the best player on his own team, but Ｉ think he's still the most valuable player. In another poll I saw, Nash was number 1 and Dirk wasn't even in the top 4. We'll see.

Ｓaving disk space

Ｗhen your hard drive is close to full, performance suffers. Ａpplications like to have room for virtual memory as well as to store temporary files and when you get down to just a little free space, it's a bad deal. Ｉ was reading an article today on the ＭacＷorld site about ways to get back some disk space that isn't really being used. Ｔhe author suggested Ｍonolingual for removing the many languages which are installed as part of ＯＳ Ｘ but which may never be used. Ｉ figured that was a good place to start and Ｉ saved 5 ＧＢ on my laptop and about 9 on my iＭac. Ｓeemed great until Ｉ went to actually use my laptop and found that Ｉ may have done something wrong and deleted the key layout or something. Ｎow Ｉ can't type a dollar sign -- Ｉ get this： ¥ -- and my text entry is in a strange font where the spacing is not right when Ｉ use capital letters Ｌike Ｔhis. Ｈmmm. Ｉ hope Ｉ don't have to reinstall the ＯＳ...

Ｐhotographing buildings at sunset

Ｉ spent some time taking pictures of the Ｂell Ｔower at ＵＣ Ｒiverside this evening. Ｉt was interesting how quickly things changed as the sun went down. Ｔhe Ｂell Ｔower is a nice structure to photograph, especially from the side in front of Ｒivera library where you can include the scalloped roof segments which repeat along with the columns along the walkway leading to the library. Ａnsel Ａdams took the same shot when he photographed ＵＣＲ in the early 1960's. Ｈe did a better job, but Ｉ did my best to get some interesting shots.

Ｓuper Ｄuper

Ｉ broke down and bought Ｓuper Ｄuper today. Ｉ figured Ｉ would back up my laptop with it. Ｎot so fast. Ａfter about 3 hours, it was only halfway done backing up the 80 ＧＢ drive. Ｉ'll have to do it overnight at that rate. Ｉ think Ｉ need to read up on how it works a little more before Ｉ start using it all the time, but at least this is a step towards regular backups.

The Cult of the Amateur

Dave Winer has a preview of the upcoming book, The Cult of the Amateur, by Andrew Keen. He read the first half of the galley of the book and doesn't have too many nice things to say about it. I was hoping this book might have an interesting perspective on the rise of blogging and related online activities, but it doesn't sound like it's that book at all.

MyPublisher BookMaker 2.0 for Mac

MyPublisher is a service to help you create your own books. I've read both good and bad reviews in terms of the quality that you get with their printing. I haven't tried this service myself. Yesterday they came out with a standalone application for putting together your book on a Mac. The PC version had been out for some time. I'll have to give it a try, but I think that Lulu and Blurb offer more printing options than MyPublisher. The advantage of MyPublisher might be that there are lots of coupons which bring the price down.

My Life as a Child

I was really looking forward to watching the new TLC series, My Life as a Child , on Monday night. Twenty children age 7 to 11 were given video cameras to document their lives over several months. They also recorded video diaries to go with the footage they shot. It sounds like a great show and even got a positive review in the LA Times. Unfortunately, the LA Times review also said the show was on at 7PM on Monday. It was, as long as you were in the Eastern time zone. In California, it was shown at 4 PM, so by the time I turned on the television, it was long over and they were showing some goofy show about video clips of kids doing goofy stuff. I'm sure the first episode will be shown again, so I'll look for that.

support for online learners

I attended a presentation by a couple of people from a company which provides 24/7 support for online learners. It was very interesting and certainly seems like a good business to be in considering the growth in online courses. What surprised me was that many of the support calls deal with logging in and managing passwords. In some cases, it can be 70% of the calls. I guess that's a good sign that you have a bad system and may need to do more usability testing. That kind of problem isn't going away until more people are comfortable doing things online.

phone moves

I went back to work today and found that my phone had been moved to my future office. I wasn't sure where to work, but when I checked the future office, I saw that all I had there was the phone. No chair. No desk. I figure in about a month or two I'll be able to move into the new location...

Palms for better test scores - dubious way to spend money

A "low-performing" school district in St. Louis has thrown their money at the Palm T/X in an effort to raise test scores. I found this one a little hard to believe. At $400 each, the T/X does cost less than a computer, but is there really any evidence that using one of these can improve test scores? Is there any software to help students with the tasks which are being tested? Is that even a good strategy to begin with?

A Jennings administrator acknowledged that the recent purchase was a gamble.

"We're rolling the dice on this," said Steven A. Schmitz, 53, the district's technology director. "It's unknown whether they'll raise test scores. But we're assuming."

Students in grades three through 12 are scheduled to begin using Palms in summer school.

The graphing calculator on the Palm is cited as the most useful feature for the students, but there's no research which supports a connection between this and test scores. The bigger issue is that it certainly is going to take years for teachers to adopt and integrate these devices into their teaching, and by that time, the test score issue will probably be a moot point. I don't think anyone is going to be happy waiting 3-5 years to see better test scores. This was a bad move. The million dollars would have been better spent on additional teachers, tutors, better instructional materials for math and reading or many other things which would have produced results in a shorter time frame than a hand held computer which has little or no software designed for students. Certainly there are successful projects like the HI-CE effort at the University of Michigan, but these use a totally different model of learning than one which would emphasize improving test scores.

BitTorrent goes the way of Napster

Napster never had much success becoming a paid service. I think it's hard to convince people who got things for free that they should start paying for the same things. Bittorrent is trying the same approach with their new service starting today. I believe their files use Windows Media DRM to allow for "renting" and of course that excludes non-Windows users. I think that's the same thing Wal-Mart is trying to do, with little success. I don't think this is going to be successful.

Another go with GoGoer

We bought some Runescape gold from GoGoer a few months ago. They advertise on their site that you'll get your loot in 15 minutes to 24 hours after you pay. In our case, it took 10 days and several email message and eventually some threats from me to write a bad review about their service on one of my blogs. After that we did get the money. I'm hoping there won't be any problems this time, but we'll see.