LandlordMax Customer Testimonial
As all you long time readers know, I really love to share some of the best customer testimonial we get for LandlordMax Property Management Software. Today’s comes from KK Chan:
“Your support and response time on this matter has been awesome. Am glad I bought your software.”
– KK Chan
Thank you. It’s great to receive such positive feedback as yours!
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HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray: From the Consumer's Perspective
As an HD (High Definition) consumer here’s what I want from my HD player:
1. I want it to play ALL available movies. Exclusivity is the opposite of what I want. I want one player for all movies. I don’t want to have to take sides. I don’t want to buy multiple players (an HD-DVD and a Blu-Ray player). I just one one player for all my movies.
2. I want it to be affordable. HD-DVD is now very affordable, at about $250 for a basic player (I’m willing to pay some premium to be an earlier adopter but not Blu-Ray’s current premium). Blu-Ray isn’t affordable, about $1200 for the latest version. I’m ignoring the PS3 option because I don’t really want the PS3 gaming system, I just want an HD player.
3. I want to be able to rent movies from the local video rental store. I don’t want to have to buy all my movies. Where I live there are really only two major chains. Blockbuster and Rogers. Of course Blockbuster has signed an exclusive agreement with Blu-Ray. Rogers on the other hand has a 66% Blu-Ray and 33% HD-DVD selection. that means that if I want to rent a movie the odds are that I have to rent a Blu-Ray movie (and hence buy the very expensive player). And I can only rent movies from certain stores depending on which player and movie I want. The opposite of what I want again!
4. I would really like to be able to play my new HD movies on a regular DVD player For example it would be great if I can play my HD movies on my portable DVD player in the car. Only HD-DVD offers this with their combo releases.
Am I asking for too much? I don’t think so. So what’s happening? The reality is that the two formats are fighting each other instead of working together. This means that people like myself who desperately want to view movies in HD aren’t willing to spend money on an HD player because we don’t want to make the mistake of spending our hard earned cash on something that might be gone tomorrow. We don’t want to buy today’s Beta.
There are dual players coming out soon, and hopefully that will alleviate the issue. But at the end of the day I just want an affordable a movie player to play any HD movie I rent at my local video rental store.
It’s too bad these companies aren’t listening to their customers (a big mistake!), otherwise I’m absolutely convinced that they’d both have already made significantly more revenue. The adoption of HD players would be much much higher. I know I’d be buying an HD player today!
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Spyware on Facebook: It Was Only a Matter of Time
We all know about spyware and viruses, and how they affect our computers. And we all know Facebook lets you install widgets to your account. Therefore it was only a matter of time before someone created a widget to infect your computer with spyware. Well that time has come.
It might not be the first, but it’s the first time it’s come to my attention. One of the latest Facebook Widgets installs spyware on your computer.
Now before you panic, please note that for the widget to install itself you probably need to actively give it explicit permission past strong warnings! You know those really annoying but important “High Security Alert!!!” messages that a lot of people ignore. They’re there for a reason. Yet people still ignore them. When will we learn?
I guess we’ll never learn. This is social engineering at it’s best.
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Now That's Motivation!
It’s amazing how simple things really energize and motive a team. Small simple things can sometimes be incredibly effective. A great example I’ve just read about for the umpteen time came from the latest book I’m reading called The Old New Thing. The book is about the history and evolution of the development of Windows, but importantly there’s one poignant story that sticks out. It’s also referenced in the book Rapid Development as a great team motivational example, and many others. I’ve also read this same story on countless websites and blogs. It’s become folklore. It was very effective!
To quote The Old New Thing:
During the development of Windows 95, application compatibility was a high priority. To make sure that coverage was as broad as possible, the development manager for Windows 95 took his pickup truck, drove down to the local Egghead Software store (back when Egghead still existed), and bought one copy of every single PC program in the store.
He then returned to Microsoft, unloaded all the software onto tables in the cafeteria, and invited every member of the Windows 95 team to come in and take responsibility for up to two programs. The ground rules were that you had to install and run the program, use it like a normal end user, and file a bug against everything that didn’t work right, even the minor stuff. (Of course, you had to provide the program to the person investigating the bug upon request.) In exchange for taking responsibility for ensuring that Windows 95 was compatible with your adopted programs, you go to keep them after Windows 95 shipped. If you did a good job with our two, you could come back for more.
The cafeteria was filled with Windows 95 team members, browsing through the boxes upon boxes of software like bargain hunters at a flea market. And there were the inevitable “What’d you get?” comparisons afterwards.
If Microsoft had decided to keep all the copies of the software they had just purchased for testing I can assure you there would’ve been a lot less enthusiasm in testing as many applications as possible. It would have made more financial sense, why give away everything you just purchased. Especially if you might need to re-test these same software applications when you updated Windows 95, or for future versions of Windows such as Windows 98, etc..
However this simple, very simple, idea of just letting the software developers take home the software they properly tested created great excitement and energy on the team. I have no doubt that if Microsoft had to re-buy all the software afterwards, they still would have been ahead financially with all the extra effort, energy, and goodwill they got.
Frequently in business trying to scrape the bottom line financially isn’t always the best thing. Often it’s worth looking at alternative options. Simple acts can sometimes be more valuable than giant acts.
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