Remarking later to my sister about the experience, I jokingly said that aside from using their showroom to test-drive various products, I had no real reason to go there again.

A few years after that, my sister and I decided to buy my mother a new TV for her birthday. Needing to get something quickly, we opted to buy a TV online at Best Buy’s website, and then pick it up in the store. I paid for the TV, but I wanted her to pick it up for me, since I had to catch a flight the following day. No option was available online to let someone else pick up the order for you, so I called the store to ask. I was transferred to a female manager who very curtly replied, “NO, we can’t do that, you have to pick it up yourself and BRING ID.” Then she hung up on me.

Fast forward to now, with this wonderful article from Forbes. Larry Downes has hit the nail squarely on the head with regards to Big Box chains.

Quoted for truth, from page 4:

[Amazon.com's] Phone support is instant, responsive, and knowledgeable. Returns are simple and unburdened by restocking fees and other gotchas. Inventory is precisely managed in a single system that spans all distribution points and third party partners.

Best Buy could have done all of this years ago, and done it better. It had decades of experience in retail, in customer service, in distribution, in forecasting, in marketing and sales. It had, one presumes, computer systems that could have been upgraded to integrate with a new online front end. It had expertise in the electronic products it sells, and potent leverage over key manufacturers to ensure favorable terms and access.

But Best Buy squandered all of those assets. And now, along with many of its big box peers, the company is caught in a death spiral.

It seems that the boxes have never really figured out. We don’t like going to your stores, we don’t like dealing with your incompetent staff, we only do it because of supposed convenience, or, in the case of Best Buy, exclusivity arrangements with manufacturers. And when you continue, year after year, to make those experiences even worse, customers will continue to reject you in favor of better experiences.

Amazon, on the other hand, gets it quite clearly. When they heard from customers that they wanted faster shipping more often, they introduced Amazon Prime. Flat yearly fee, and you get upgraded to free 2nd-day shipping on almost all items, nearly negating the biggest downside of ordering online, the wait. They’ve also started local delivery, having more distribution centers closer to their customers, allowing delivery the next business day without exorbitant overnight fees. Meanwhile, it took Best Buy over six years before they offered the option of having someone else pick up the item for you. And even then, they don’t have the items ready for you, the process takes forever, and often they bring out the wrong item or simply can’t locate it in the store.

Best Buy will go the way of Circuit City before we know it, but it won’t be soon enough.

3 hours of online shopping later…

Never one mind the implications for Motorola’s devices, the upcoming Droid Bionic, the next Nexus device, etc., and focus on what this buyout really means. This is a throwback to the nuclear arms race, or in other words, mutually assured destruction, by means of software patents.

The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to “protect competition and innovation in the open source software community” and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction. Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.

And when they talk about strengthening their portfolio, they’re not joking. Back when the Nortel patents went up for auction, Google was outbid by over USD $1 Billion for them, and all 6000 patents went to the Apple/MS/RIM consortium.

In comparison, Motorola has over 17,000 patents, a bounty nearly 3-fold over the Nortel portfolio.

This is ramping up to absolutely ludicrous levels, with all of the giants trying to level one another with a patent battle. If this isn’t reformed soon, it will eventually wind up taking down the industry here in the US.

Do not confirm or deny that any such software has been installed.
Do not attempt to remove or uninstall any malware software.
Do not send any escalations or contact Tier 2 for support about removing the software, or provide impact data.
Do not refer customers to the Apple Retail Store. The ARS does not provide any additional support for malware.

Ouch. This is in stark contrast to Microsoft, and even other OEMs like Toshiba, Dell, and HP.

Twitter:

can i do run away with you leme get lost wit you tomarow…

OKCupid:

I’m looking for someone who is athlete very attractive and intellengent

Facebook:

I’m good at food shoppin dude and fast I know like where everything is at acme and giant… and goldfish are good not a fan of ritas ice tea is good ur ganna need more pizza that good pbj is why to go pb jelly time all the way dude I love pbj… food interest me so much I don’t mind going shopping really I spent like an hr shoppin today for not much at all just bc I walk around the isles and look at shit and say to myself wtf did this price go up or I could make this or I want all of this. Other then that I culd spent ten mins in a store or n hr ir depends. Lol

Sean Lanigan’s 12 year old accuser:

it wuz a joke tho lyk always he picks up gurls as a joke nd I feel rlly bad. Nd I swear I dident wnt to go this far I told cuz some1 told me too nd I thought he wud just get a warning but no:(

Amazon album vs file pricing.

I wonder how many people have fallen for this.

Frankly, I never noticed, as all I ever used Bluetooth for was the occasional file transfer to my laptop.

Recently, however, I got a new car that has built-in Bluetooth connectivity, and when the dealer tried to sync my phone, it failed miserably. Guess which brand of car I purchased? Right, a 2011 BMW. Fiercely clowned.

Part of me just didn’t care, I don’t use my phone while driving, I’m actually pretty vehemently opposed to it as a matter of fact, but it was the fact that it didn’t work, even though I wouldn’t use it, that really bothered me.

Looking online, CyanogenMod fixes the issue, meaning that it’s not a hardware bug, it’s entirely the HTC implementation of Bluetooth. Apparently they used a 1.x stack in their 2.1 build, which caused the issue. HTC customer service stated that it wasn’t a bug, they wouldn’t fix it, adding further disappointment to many users’ expectations.

I figured I’d wait for the 2.2 OTA and if that didn’t fix it, root my phone. Well, I’m happy to say that I have my 2.2 OTA now, and officially, the Bluetooth stack is fixed. The phone syncs perfectly with the car, as soon as you sit down it pairs, etc. I tried it out the other day while parked in front of the house just to make sure it was working properly, and sure enough, it worked flawlessly.

So there you go, Incredible users. Get Froyo, get correct Bluetooth. (And 802.11n, and 720p recording, and mobile hotspot, and Chrome to Phone, and…)

Really let that sink in.

I am at a loss to come up with another language which shares that particular naming convention.