Philadelphia
Monkeying Around with Postal Pallets
Monkeying around with postal equipment
From the Dead Tree Edition
Where have all the pallets gone, U.S. Postal Service officials sometimes wonder.
The Postal Service spends millions of dollars annually replenishing the supply of pallets, tubs, mailbags, and the like because so many get diverted to other uses each year. Pat Donahoe, USPS’s COO, explained to the Mailers Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC) recently that, sometimes, getting the pallets back is no easy matter.
He displayed the following photo from a major U.S. zoo to prove his point.
Do you suppose there’s an Intelligent Mail barcode on these orangutans?
Two Maine newspapers test the future of newspapers’ web plans
Richard Anderson, publisher of Village Soup
By Galen Moore of MHT, The Journal of New England Technology
Competing business models to save the newspaper industry are breaking ground not in Boston or New York, but in Down East Maine, as two local publishers try web-based strategies that couldn’t be more at odds.
Village Soup Inc., a chain of four local papers with headquarters in Rockland, last year blurred the line between advertising and editorial by letting local merchants pay to post their blogs on its Village Soup family of websites.
Last month, the Ellsworth American took a turn in the opposite direction, replacing its online presence with a site called Fenceviewer, which features summarized versions of the paper’s articles. The full Ellsworth American is available weekly as a PDF download to those willing to pay a $32 annual subscription.
“Beginning around the first of the year there was a swelling of opinion inside the news industry that we couldn’t continue to give it away for nothing,†said Ellsworth American publisher Alan Baker. The company toyed with a micropayment strategy, as had other newspaper sites nationally at the time. But in the end, Baker said, “We decided we’d hold our nose and jump.â€
Nationally, the newspaper industry is desperate, grasping at straws such as e-book readers to make up for plummeting print ad revenue. Yet in the microcosm of small-town Maine, local newspapers are trying new strategies — and one publisher has an idea he hopes to export nationwide.
Village Soup, which also has a paper in the state capital, is now under contract to expand its online model to five newspapers in Alabama and New York state via a software-as-a-service model hosted on virtual, cloud-based servers. Village Soup publisher Richard Anderson claimed that his strategy is already a success, saying the sponsored blogs generate 19 percent of the company’s $2.5 million annual ad revenue, according to a May 1 piece he wrote on the media blog Reflections of a Newsosaur.
In Anderson’s model, advertisers pay to blog, and their posts appear under a home-page “bizBriefs†column with a headline and a byline that look exactly like news articles. BizBriefs posts are supposed to be confined to informative postings, and many do — like a mortgage broker’s post on Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke’s comments, or sewing tips from a fabric store. About 600 people clicked on a local dentist’s post about the dangers of oral piercing, Anderson said.
The click-throughs for display ads don’t compare, he said. “Banners and buttons, no matter how closely you target the content … it’s difficult to get people to read what you have to say.â€
It’s a strategy that makes sense, said Dharmesh Shah, chief software architect and founder of Cambridge-based Hubspot Inc. According to Shah, when businesses post informative content, web users tend to find it and click on it. However, the model may be difficult to duplicate outside Village Soup’s hyperlocal context, he said.
Community businesses likely to blog on a newspaper’s site are very aware of who’s reading and why, he said.
“When you narrow the focus and most people know the individual/business posting, you’re less likely to be an idiot,†Shah said in an e-mail. “It would be like walking into a neighborhood cocktail party and starting to scream about the new promotion you’re having at a car dealership. It just wouldn’t work.â€
The Ellsworth American’s payment strategy serves an even narrower niche. From 12 percent to 15 percent of its subscription revenue is in mail subscriptions — typically snowbirds who get the paper by mail during winter months. Problems with the postal service have taken their toll.
So far, about 100 readers have subscribed online, said Chris Crockett, the paper’s IT manager, but it’s still early in the process. There have been “some comments,†about the new model, he said, but many people have been satisfied to be pointed to the paper’s trimmed-down free site.
“This is such an interesting time,†Baker said. “We are optimistic. We think this is an opportunity for us, with the economy soft.†The subscription downloads may cost more, but they offer more: they are searchable and include ads as they appear in the print edition, he said. “We want to come out of this recession with an even stronger business model than we had going in.â€
10 Geeky Ways to Deliver Mail: U.S. Postal Service Technology
By Chris Sweeney
Published on: May 4, 2009 in Popular Mechanics
The USPS has a deep sense of history—since the first Postmaster General was put in place in 1775, the USPS has changed its structure and delivery methods numerous times thanks to war, economic turmoil and emerging new technologies. Here, we look at 10 of the geekiest ways the postal service has delivered the mail.
Mule Mail
19th century-present
(Photography courtesy of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum)
Mule Mail 19th century to present
Animals have always played a major role in delivery services—from the Pony Express to horse-drawn carriages—but only one beast is still hauling mail today. A handful of donkeys and deliverymen still embark on a six- to eight-hour journey through the Grand Canyon five days a week to deliver mail and other supplies to residents of Supai, Arizona. This is the last route being serviced by mules.
Pneumatic Mail Tubes
1893-1953
Pneumatic Mail Tubes 1893-1953
New York, Boston, St. Louis, Chicago and Philadelphia all relied on an underground system of pneumatic tubes to move mail during the early 20th century. The two-foot long canisters held 600 letters as they moved through the tubes at speeds up to 35 mph. There were about 27 miles of pneumatic tubes running through New York City, including routes stretched across the Brooklyn Bridge, linking Manhattan with Brooklyn. The proliferation of delivery trucks and expanding urban centers contributed to the demise of this system. Private contractors leased the pneumatic tubes to the USPS, and by 1934 rates were as high as $19,000 per mile per year. Today, many of the tubes remain intact under city streets.
The Snowbird
1921
The Snowbird 1921
Though this vehicle was never officially part of the USPS fleet, a handful of carriers relied on the Model-T Snowbird attachment kit to plod along snowy routes, providing an alternative to horse-and-sleigh. Snowmobiles are still used in places like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Alaska for winter deliveries.
Highway Post Office Bus
1941-1974
The Snowbird 1921
This post office on wheels was inspired by railroad service and designed to reduce lag time by allowing postal workers to sort parcels while in transit. The first batch of buses, built by the White Motor Company, came equipped with distributing tables, letter cases and enough space to hold 150 mail sacks. Advances in automated sorting and a major restructuring of the postal system eliminated the need for on-the-go organization. In the early 1970s the decision was made that mail would be sent to a central location where high-speed sorters would route it.
Victory Mail
1942-1945
Victory Mail 1942-1945
In order to keep correspondences flowing between soldiers and the home front without sacrificing precious cargo space, the postal service introduced stationery that was shrunken into microfilm before being shipped. Upon arrival, the letters were enlarged to a fraction of their original size, sorted and delivered. A single sack of V-Mail was the equivalent of 37 sacks of regular mail, although letters were limited to 700 words.
10 Geeky Ways to Deliver Mail: U.S. Postal Service Technology
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is facing a potential $6 billion deficit in 2009. Earlier this year it asked Congress to consider cutting a day of delivery from its six-day schedule. On May 11 the price of stamps will jump another 2 cents, and in Idaho, the last continental route serviced by bush plane is about to be cut. The USPS has a deep sense of history—since the first Postmaster General was put in place in 1775, the USPS has changed its structure and delivery methods numerous times thanks to war, economic turmoil and emerging new technologies. Here, we look at 10 of the geekiest ways the postal service has delivered the mail.
The Mailster
1957-1967
The Mailster 1957-1967
The Mailster was a three-wheeled vehicle that weighed 500 pounds, boasted 7.5 hp and allowed each delivery person to haul an unprecedented 500 pounds of mail. Its compact size and maneuverability were ideal for getting around recently developed suburban areas. By the end of the 1950s, one-third of the USPS fleet was comprised of this vehicle. While higher-ups in the postal service were more than enthusiastic about the Mailster’s potential, the people actually driving it hated it, according to Nancy Pope of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Complaints from letter carriers assigned to Mailsters ranged from the front wheel getting stuck in trolley tracks to constant breakdowns, Pope says, and even one report of a massive dog toppling the vehicle. After many complaints and malfunctions, the postal service opted for the more reliable and sturdy Jeep to serve as the centerpiece of its fleet.
Missile Mail
1959
Missile Mail 1959
In the years following the second World War, the volume of mail increased by more than 30 percent. Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield called for a new means of delivery to satisfy the growing demand—from this, Missile Mail was born. On June 8, 1959, the Navy submarine USS Barbero launched a Regulus cruise missile filled with 300 commemorative letters off the coast of Florida. The missile made a flawless descent after soaring for 22 minutes, but the letters still would have needed to be removed, transported, sorted and routed had it been an actual delivery. Following a successful demonstration, Summerfield declared, “before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.” Despite the success of the initial experiment, the USPS never revisited the idea of missile mail.
Segway
2002
(Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Segway 2002
Soon after it was unveiled in 2001, the Segway was introduced as an experimental vehicle into the U.S. postal fleet. By attaching courier bags, the Segway promised to reduce physical strains associated with lugging sacks of mail while increasing the rate of delivery. But experiments in Virginia quickly proved that it wasn’t efficient for deliveries. While a sidewalk in disrepair or curb can be tricky enough on a Segway, a flight of steps is impossible. Also, in areas where a letter carrier would just walk across front lawns, they were now forced to go up and down every driveway. The postal service eventually abandoned experiments with the Segway.
USPS and EVs
2006
USPS and EVs 2006
The USPS has had their eyes on electric vehicles for a few years, with a number of plans still in motion. In 2006 the USPS tested a 2-ton van developed by the Azure Company, but the test was short-lived and inconclusive, according to a postal service spokesperson. In April, Chrysler announced its intent to apply for a federal grant that would allow it to build a fleet of electric postal minivans. Ruth Goldway of the United States Postal Regulatory Commission has also been pushing for stimulus money to go toward transforming the postal fleet to electric. By converting 142,000 delivery trucks, Goldway wrote in a New York Times editorial, the USPS would save 68 million gallons of gasoline.
Hydrogen Fuel Cell
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Present
Within the next 10 years more than 140,000 postal vehicles will be retired, leaving vacancies that need to be filled. The USPS is currently testing a third-generation GM hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that’s based on the Chevy Equinox. While hydrogen vehicles have much potential, says Darlene S. Casey, a USPS spokesperson, they have a long way to go, particularly when it comes to the necessary infrastructure.
1. RE: 10 Geeky Ways to Deliver Mail: U.S. Postal Service Technology
I feel slightly deceived by the title 10 Geeky Ways to Deliver mail. I thought we were talking the way the modern Post Office delivers mail. PM needs to do a story about OCRs,DPS, DBCS with PARS and intelligent barcodes. Although I did find the pneumatic tubes interesting.
2. RE: 10 Geeky Ways to Deliver Mail: U.S. Postal Service Technology
Why would they even invest in the Chevy Equinox? That vehicle is just way too large to be useful as a mail delivery vehicle. One question I have is could the new 2 person model segway be useful for mail deilvery or maybe even smart cars or mini-coopers? USPS think smaller and efficient, not bigger with heavier payloads! The smaller vehicles could also be hybrids or fuel cell too if the technology is there or maybe even convert them to CNG. I would highly recommend they re-work their trucking fleet to run CNG or Bio-diesel too!
3. RE: 10 Geeky Ways to Deliver Mail: U.S. Postal Service Technology
*USPS is a private, not government entity. *All of the huge SUVs would be stupid for mail delivery. Too large to manuver.
4. RE: 10 Geeky Ways to Deliver Mail: U.S. Postal Service Technology
Website: http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/May-June-08/On-this-Day–U-S–Postal-Service-Attempts–Missile-Mail–for-First-and-Last-Time.html
Nice feature ! According to this story, missile mail was never expected to be feasible, but rather was a way for the Dept of Defense to show off our missile capability during the cold war. http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/May-June-08/On-this-Day–U-S–Postal-Service-Attempts–Missile-Mail–for-First-and-Last-Time.html
5. RE: 10 Geeky Ways to Deliver Mail: U.S. Postal Service Technology
the Postal Service is full of idiots. They waste money and are losing billions of dollars. This article is a perfect example of why they are doing so poorly. Typical Government entity, overpaid and wasteful.
6. RE: 10 Geeky Ways to Deliver Mail: U.S. Postal Service Technology
i wish my mail carrier would read this. my mail keeps arriving soaking wet. bring back the burro!
Postal detectives crack the case of messy, missing addresses
Barbara Trumpp (bottom center) and Arlene Jones (bottom right) process mail at the United States Postal Service Glendale Remote Encoding Center.
The Arizona Republic
Without leaving their cubicles, U.S. Postal Service sleuths in Glendale solve more than a million mail-delivery mysteries daily for post offices nationwide. Their wits and their computers are their only tools.
Is that a 3 or an 8? Senvisa or S. Envisa? Is a letter addressed “FCCI, Georgia” intended for the southern state’s FCCI Insurance Group in Duluth? Because it could be meant for the Floyd County Correctional Institute in Rome or the Fellowship of Companies for Christ International in Atlanta.
Sloppy handwriting and incomplete addresses, it turns out, almost succeed where snow, rain, heat and gloom of night fail in staying mail carriers from completing their rounds.
But those hard-to-read addresses usually don’t slow carriers because data-conversion operators using their best detecting skills are at work around the clock at the USPS Glendale Remote Encoding Center, save for the 10 hours it’s closed on Sundays.
The Glendale center is one of five in the United States – there were 55 when the postal service opened them in 1995 – devoted to interpreting scrawls and squiggles, blurs, smudges, missing information and otherwise ambiguous addresses.
In other words, the stuff that stumps the postal service’s sophisticated optical character-recognition software.
“This work makes me take a few extra minutes when I address my own envelopes,” says Debra Napier, one of more than 700 data-conversion operators, called keyers for short, employed at the site.
She’s seated in the midst of long rows of cubicles in a room adorned by little more than signs with U.S. cities’ names. Her eyes rarely stray from her computer.
Electronic images of envelopes sitting in 41 mail-processing plants across the U.S. flash onscreen, one after another, calling on her ability to decipher the shaky handwriting of a letter writer with arthritis or to see past the stickers obscuring an address. Twelve years as a teacher prepared her well for this job.
Napier also has learned a thing or two along the way. When addressing Christmas or birthday cards, she painstakingly prints rather than writing in cursive. She uses white envelopes even for Christmas cards, because addresses are hard to read on dark backgrounds. And forget silver ink.
Although most of the mail that keyers puzzle over is hand-addressed, they also see pieces printed with ink cartridges long overdue for replacement or displaying printer-produced addresses haphazardly positioned on envelopes.
In most cases, a machine at a mail-processing plant reads the address on an envelope, sprays on an ink barcode and sends the envelope on its way, keyer Steve Karr says. When the machine fails to read the address, an electronic image of the envelope is sent to a remote encoding center.
In the Glendale facility, the fastest keyers, like Karr, may handle an eye-blurring 900 to 1,000 images in an hour. Keyers succeed with as many as 75 percent of the pieces they process, says Chuck Van Dyke, manager of the Glendale Remote Encoding Center.
Aided by the postal service’s more than 2 petabytes of online data (think 4,000 years-plus of songs on your MP3 player), keyers examine the slightest clues – two digits of a ZIP code, a street name without house numbers, the first letter of a state abbreviation – and draw conclusions.
Postal abbreviations for four states start with an “A.” That letter coupled with a ZIP code beginning with 8 tells keyers the mail should go to someone in Arizona, not Alabama, Alaska or Arkansas.
Kerr, with 13 years on the job, peers at his screen and sees a sliver of a number, determining what it is based on its position between other numbers. On another envelope, he notices that a sender who inadvertently reversed positions for the mail and return addresses has scrawled arrows to indicate the mistake.
The goal is turning around each piece in no more than 20 minutes, Van Dyke says.
But the process usually is far speedier. As staff members work, they’re thinking about the child eager for a birthday card or the person looking for her W2 form so she can file her income-tax return.
“Back at the plant that has the indecipherable letter, there’s a truck getting ready to carry the mail,” Van Dyke says, “and it leaves by 10 p.m. local time. The times are lined up on the computer so keyers can see which of the pieces of mail they’re working on are becoming critical timewise.”
Such scenarios occur less frequently these days. Advances in technology have made the postal system’s optical scanning equipment capable of reading 95 percent of handwritten envelopes, up from 2 percent when the centers opened, Van Dyke says.
With demand for their work decreasing, three of the remaining remote encoding centers will be closed, the Glendale facility in May 2010.
Still, even the most advanced optical scanning and the best efforts of data-conversion operators fail at times to divine a letter’s destination. Then, once more, a human must intervene.
A letter addressed “Jane Doe, Second House Around the Corner from the Barber Shop, St. Peter, MN”?
That will go to Minnesota, where a mail carrier in the small town of St. Peter knows exactly whose mailbox to tuck the letter into.
Paper Firms Cashing In Before Loophole Plugged
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Federal government payments to the U.S. paper industry continued to mount during the first quarter, as companies raced to take advantage of a loophole that richly rewards them for a long-established method of burning byproducts of the pulping process.
During the first quarter, the Treasury pumped $540 million in cash and tax credits into the coffers of International Paper, one of several paper companies that qualify for billions of dollars in alternative fuel tax breaks under legislation that experts say was written for other purposes.
The tax benefits reward companies for burning a pulping byproduct known as “black liquor,” a practice that has been common in the paper industry since the 1930s. International Paper said $145 million of its total has been delivered in checks from the Treasury; because the tax credit is “refundable,” it can result in direct payments to companies with no tax liability.
The huge payments are being made under a tax credit clause in the 2005 highway bill that was designed to promote the blending of biofuels with gasoline or diesel for use in vehicles. In an energy bill adopted in late 2007, the clause was altered slightly to help the Alaskan fishing industry in the home state of then-senator Ted Stevens (R).
Late last year, paper companies began to apply for the credits. PricewaterhouseCoopers pushed the idea, according to industry and congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because of their access to confidential conversations. David Nestor, a Pricewaterhouse spokesman, would not comment on guidance provided to clients. The tax credit expires at the end of the year.
Senior lawmakers, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), are weighing amending the legislation to put an early end to the lucrative payments. Canadian and Brazilian trade associations have also protested that the payments give U.S. firms an unfair advantage.
“Unless we plug this loophole, the federal government is liable for billions in credits for black liquor in 2009 alone, even though the credit was never intended for this fuel,” Baucus said at a hearing last week. “We are working to undo that unintended consequence.”
Because the Internal Revenue Service deemed that paper companies were eligible for the credit, the Joint Committee on Taxation has had to raise its estimate of the cost of the credit nearly 50-fold, from $61 million to $3.3 billion. Wall Street analysts put the cost as high as $8 billion.
Last week, Doyle R. Simons, chief executive of Temple-Inland, said that the IRS had approved payments to his company. He said Temple-Inland will use 550 million to 650 million gallons of black liquor this year. Because the tax credit is worth 50 cents a gallon, that would yield $275 million to $325 million in credits.
“They ought to change the law, but you can’t blame the paper companies for saying there’s money on the table and we’re going to pick it up,” said Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice.
The United Steelworkers and other unions are backing the ailing paper industry. “Many companies are depending on this tax credit to keep mills running. In short, this credit could not come at a more appropriate time,” Michael V. Draper, a vice president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, wrote to Senate Finance Committee members this week.
Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), a Senate Finance Committee member, defended the credit’s use. “This tax credit is a lifeline,” she said, for an industry “hanging on for survival in this economic crisis through no fault of their own.”
Many economists and environmentalists say that the paper industry shouldn’t reap rewards for old practices. Snowe argued that the paper industry was “ahead of the curve.” But analysts note that the industry burns black liquor because it is toxic to fish. Leaks are punishable by fines.
Some analysts cautioned that in the midst of the auto industry bailout, Congress would block a program resembling another bailout.
But a UBS analyst’s report said: “At the very least, this is creating debate, slowing the process. . . . In the meantime, the industry can continue to claim credits. The longer the delay, the more cash they stand to collect.”
Corporate Social Responsibility News
4.30.2009 – 12:04pm ET
CSR News from: SustainCommWorld
News Categories: Sustainability
The Big Debate: Print or Digital Media – Which is more Sustainable?
Strategic Business Leaders with answers to address The Green Media Conference
(CSRwire) MERCER ISLAND, WA. – April 29, 2009 – Which is more sustainable, physical mail or email, a magazine page or a web page, a book or an ebook? Which has the larger carbon footprint and what is the risk to a brand if their messaging says one thing and their media supply chain choices say another?
Publishers, advertisers, marketers and supply chain professionals are increasingly being challenged to make decisions that address climate change and that are consistent with the principles of sustainability.
Carbon Dioxide has been ruled a pollutant dangerous to human life by the EPA, climate change legislation is pending in congress, and the leaders of 192 nations, including the US, China and India, will meet in Copenhagen this December to agree on a climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. With an eye to the future, what efforts can be taken to measure the carbon footprints and otherwise qualify and quantify arguments for the sustainability of print and/or digital media?
Leaders from publishing, the postal service, and printing who are addressing this issue now, will be speaking at The Green Media Conference, June 9 in Washington, DC. They will be speaking in a session entitled: The Great Debate. Addressing the audience will be:
Hans Wegner, Vice President, Production Services, National Geographic
Mike Fanning, Manager Business Development, United States Postal Service
Dave Podmayersky, Director of Sustainability, Earth Color
Quote: Don Carli, Conference Chair and Executive Vice President, SustainCommWorld and Sr. Research Fellow at The Institute for Sustainable Communication
“Sustainable supply chains and climate action are becoming mainstream priorities for leading brands and for government. Just as their governance policies, products, packaging and messages are being scrutinized, so to are their media supply chain choices – print, websites, emails, direct mail, advertising, brochures, tradeshows and events – all are being scrutinized as the next big area for improvement in sustainability and greenhouse gas emissions.
“Key questions that our speakers will address include:
What standards and best practices can be employed to assess the sustainability of your operations and your media supply chain practices?
What are the most significant challenges you face in reducing their carbon footprint and making them more sustainable?
How will your media supply chain need to change in response to these issues, and what are the firms most likely to survive and thrive going to look like?
What risks do the precarious state of the printing, papermaking and publishing industries present to government, business and society?
What risks do the energy demands of IT, e-waste and the ephemeral nature of digital media present to government, business and society?
“These conferences bring thought leaders together with a focus on graphic communication, marketing, publishing and to discuss, challenge, learn and drive implementation of best practices in the greening of print and digital media supply chains.”
With the theme of “Expanding Lean & Green Opportunities,” The Green Media Conference brings together practitioners, best practices and real world case studies on the production of sustainable media and illustrating how to make money at the same time. Attendees to SustainCommWorld events are marketing and advertising professionals who need the latest information to make sustainable advertising, printing and web decisions as well as analyses the businesses within their supply chains.
This June there will be two conferences, one in Washington, DC on June 9 and one in Chicago on June 23. Each city will have a different group of speakers addressing these issues. For more information on conference program and additional speakers, visit: http://www.GreenMediaConference.com
About SustainCommWorld
SustainCommWorld is focused on educating communication professionals from corporations, institutions and government agencies how to develop sustainable green workflows and supply chains to lower their carbon footprint. SustainCommWorld currently produces major events including The Business of Green Media Conference in cooperation with the Cal Poly Graphic Communication Department and the Graphic Communication Institute at Cal Poly, and The Green Media Conferences.
SustainCommWorld staff consults with institutions and enterprises on issues related to sustainable communication – the production of sustainable media and the associated business challenges and opportunities that face the graphic arts community, enterprise marketers and those involved in media production. Senior executives are frequent speakers at conferences around the world.
To further spread their green message, SustainCommWorld produces a bi-monthly newsletter Green Media Newsletter, Communicate Green Radio, a radio show debuting next fall and sponsors GreenMediaConnect, a social networking site featuring forums, blogs and resources. For more information visit, http://www.sustaincommworld.com
For more information please contact:
Lisa Wellman, CEO
SustainCommWorld
206 275 9992
206 236 0354
www.greenmediaconference.com
Second is the new First
So, I was at this meeting last night and there were several round table discussions going on. The thing that struck me most was that people with these high tech software solutions were lamenting the fact that they could not get people to understand how they would help their business and that their sales cycles were 2 years or better.
It dawned on me that it might be a better strategy to copy and improve rather than innovate. Think My Space and Facebook, or Ford and Toyota or MP3 players and Ipods. There are many more examples where companies that may not have been first to market took a concept and improved it and made it so much more customer friendly that they blew away the originator. So the real key goes back to the old fashioned concept of customer service. When I think about it, the guys who were talking last night were more focused on how great their software was and how amazing the technology is, but I did not hear much-ok I didn’t hear anything-about how much their customers loved the product.
Newspaper Association Kills Off Print Magazine — Goes Online Only
I think the comments to this blog are actually more interesting than the story. Seems most don’t care about the printed piece!
Failures by Mike Masnick
Thu, Apr 30th 2009 2:25am
From techdirt http://techdirt.com/articles/20090429/1827544698.shtml
The Newspaper Association of America, who just recently has been out pushing the value of a print product as opposed to an online-only product, seems to not be taking its own advice. According to Romenesko, the NAA has not only laid off nearly 50% of its staff, but it’s also switching its own print magazine to an online-only production. Seems difficult to take the group seriously when it claims print is somehow fundamentally a better product, doesn’t it?
4 Comments | Leave a Comment..
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by Matthew – Apr 30th, 2009 @ 6:01am
Actually, I don’t find this behaviour especially hypocritical. I happen to agree that print magazines are somewhat higher value to me than online publications. Most people would agree, though, that online publishing is LESS EXPENSIVE than print publishing. It could well be that, despite print being a superiour format, they’ve opted to go all-online in order to reduce costs. (One could disagree with their assessment of the value of print; I’m just saying, it’s not hypocrisy.)
You’re Right
by kirillian – Apr 30th, 2009 @ 7:22am
You’re Definitely Correct. Print does provide more value – it provides thermal insulation for those that can’t afford more expensive material to keep themselves warm…and SOMEONE has got to provide the fuel for all those trash can fires…
define fundamentally
by Stray Dog – Apr 30th, 2009 @ 7:28am
only when you want to line the bottom of a birdcage or some other task,, no this is not multi tasking, it’s recycling
Print
by Rick – Apr 30th, 2009 @ 7:52am
Disagree. Print still has value and I still enjoy reading while turning actual pages, but perhaps being a lithographer since 1970 has colored my judgement.
People Try Twitter One Month, Then Fly
From PC World Wednesday, April 29, 2009 4:22 AM PDT
It’s good to know I am not alone: Many other people use Twitter a few times and can’t think of a good reason to come back. With all the hype about Twitter’s 140-character version of living, I’d gotten the impression that I’m the only one on Twitter who doesn’t get why Twitter matters.
Not so, according to Nielsen data that shows 60 percent of people who use Twitter one month, even at its peak popularity, don’t come back the next. While it used to be that 70 stayed away that improvement is not much to brag about–Twitter’s customer retention is prone to peaks and valleys.
Twitter needs to be concerned about this, especially since both MySpace and Facebook have failure to return rates only about half that of Twitter. Put another way, 60 percent of MySpace and Facebook users come back the next month, about the same percentage that do not return to Twitter on its best months.
It is easy to think of reasons for this. Twitter is a one-trick pony. If you do not like tweeting or reading the tweets of others, there are not a whole lot of reasons to return.
Both MySpace and Facebook, for all their problems, offer more services than Twitter. It is easy to see how places where users can do more things could make the two services “stickier” than Twitter.
This does not surprise me. Twitter feels really light to me. Some people, obviously, become addicted but large numbers of others just walk away. That is not such a big deal right now as Twitter is in major growth mode. Growth hides all manner of sins.
However, if that growth mostly results in new users sampling and leaving, the growth will not last. Worse, it may be hard to get those unhappy users to return should Twitter ever expand its product features.
It is not clear whether Nielsen’s measure of Twitter’s return rate counts people, like me, who use a third-party application for their twittering. I do not return to Twitter nearly so much as I return to TweetDeck.
Today, it would be much easier for TweetDeck to make money off my use of Twitter than it would be for Twitter itself. Again, I do not see how these social networks ever make the big money that investors are betting they will.
To be honest, I am using Twitter mostly because I think “it’s good for me,” like some sort of social network vitamin. Like most good intentions, it will be interesting to see how long that lasts. Nevertheless, I am pretty certain to make it into next month.
I’m sure Twitter will be happy.
David Coursey tweets occasionally, and reached by e-mail using www.coursey.com/contact.
Another Delay for Intelligent Mail?
From the Dead Tree Edition
Monday, April 27, 2009
With the Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMb) program veering off the tracks, prominent mailers called for the U.S. Postal Service to hit the brakes today on the much-delayed program.
“There is a general consensus that even if the USPS stays with their commitment of May 18 it will be almost impossible for the program to begin in a successful manner,†says a memo written by Jack Widener, a respected industry consultant, that Idealliance released today to its members. Widener, a former Newsweek executive, chairs the IMb users group for the major trade association.
Dead Tree Edition has previously noted that IMb, a major strategic initiative for the Postal Service, is “a train wreck waiting to happen” because of failures in coordination, communication, and planning.
Mailers and their vendors complain that the rules and procedures for IMb are still in a state of flux. Even today, the complex and critical “Service Type Identifier Matrix†in one USPS document contained the qualifier, “Final Revision will be completed as soon as possible.
“When will the changes stop so the program can by implemented by USPS,†Widener wrote. “There are 11 open issues that are not assigned and that must be resolved with only 21 days to go.â€
Among the “show stoppers†listed by another report Idealliance sent to members today is one that would force Periodicals-class co-mail participants either to “leap to electronic payment without sufficient testing or pull out of co-mail/co-pall.†The report lists other restrictions for various classes of mail on co-palletization, co-mail, palletization, and firm bundling that would result from glitches in programs related to IMb.
Perhaps postal executives realize, Widener writes, what even their underlings admit — that USPS will not be ready on May 18 date.
If so, he argues that they should “tell us now so that all can plan accordingly and alert their customers and suppliers in the mailing supply chain. And don’t blame it on their customers; if they do this it will be not due to lack of mailer preparation. We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and invested people’s time to implement as soon as information was received from the USPS. But we must be given adequate time to implement the numerous changes that are happening.”
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