iPad 0, Apple Support 1

Ok, I have an iPad, and I love it.  I use it everyday, all the time, awesome.

But, you knew there was a but right? Every time the battery gets down to 50% the thing would shut off without warning, not “10% battery left” no nothing just shut off.  So I restored the entire thing and convinced myself if that I gave it a couple of days everything would be ok.

So I did, and it wasn’t, damn.

I went to apples support site a found a new thing where you fill out this short form about your device and the problem your having and someone calls you right away, no waiting. nice.  So they called and not only were they super appologetic, they scheduled a time for me to go to my local apple store and have it exchanged, AND because they felt so bad about they offered me any accessory I wanted from the online store (under $50) just to make up for the hassle.

If all companies had support like that…. wow.

Membership discounts live

After much much much work we finally enabled membership discounts on our online store, shophousingworks.com today.  The feature give advocate level and above members 10% off everything they buy from us online.

While this feature might sound simple at first it was complicated because it involved a merging of our customer lists in shophousingworks.com database with our donor database in salesforce.com.  This opens the door to all sorts of things next including allowing donors to see all their donation histories online, update there email and phone number, and eventually renew their memberships and even send them as gifts to there friends, with all the data safely tucked away in salesforce.com.

Along the way we discovered about 30,000 user accounts in shophousingworks.com that never purchased anything online and therefore never made it into salesforce and also never started getting our email newsletter, invites to events, nothing.  This final dump almost doubled on online newsletter subscriber list which is now at around 50,000 for the thrift shop list alone!

Not bad…. next step is to eliminate the users table in shophousingworks.com all together.  Currently all data is being saved in both systems but if we move bids into salesforce, then we can move members and eliminate the need for those tables in the sql database at all, and insuring all the really important information is in salesforce and readable and understandable by all the staff on the online store team

This also opens the door to start managing the emails coming from the system within salesforce.com as well.  Managing them there makes them much easier to manage and would allow us to more easily put campaign specific messaging in these these emails since we can manage them all in one place.

Pretty cool stuff…

Fear of philanthropy (avert your eyes)

Peter Singer is famous for posing a stunningly difficult question, paraphrased as, “If you are walking by a pond and you see a child drowning, do you save her? What if it means ruining a very…

The Kickstarter Blog: Jeff Mangum & the Chris Knox Benefit

As you may have seen on Pitchfork this morning, on May 6 Yo La Tengo, Magnetic Fields, Sharon Von Etton, the Clean, Kyp Malone from TV on the Radio, and — amazingly — Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel will play a benefit show for New Zealand musician and legend Chris Knox at Le Poisson Rouge in…

One of the best PSA’s I’ve seen.  Extremely cheesy but somehow it brings a tear to your eye.

via 37signals

You Dropped Food on the Floor. Do You Eat It? my favorite path.. Did anyone see you > Yes, Was it a boss/lover/parent? > Yes, Was it expensive > No, Is it bacon > Yes, EAT IT!! via SFoodie

You Dropped Food on the Floor. Do You Eat It?

my favorite path..

Did anyone see you > Yes, Was it a boss/lover/parent? > Yes, Was it expensive > No, Is it bacon > Yes, EAT IT!!

via SFoodie

Google Announces Experimental Fiber Network

Shared by Keithmancuso
Where do i sign?

Google:

We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll…

QUOTE: All I ask of you is one thing: please don

All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going…

All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.
Conan O’Brien on his final show.

Daring Fireball: The Tablet

Its amazing with all the talk about the apple tablet that its taken this long for someone to really hit the nail on the head with this one.

The tablet is going to be a replacement for a laptop, not a product in-between the laptop and smartphone.  Sure traditional laptops will exist, even in apple’s product line, for a few more years, but after that portable computing devices will all look a look more like the apple tablet then any laptop we know today.

Of course this is all just hope and dreams really, but what makes me feel so good about all this is because the dream is finally being so clearly articulated that i cant be to far from reality.