GoodBuyGuys Blog

So, I’m watching a Metacafe video of the drummer for The Dave Matthews Band (Carter Beauford) while the site serves ads for “printer drums”, drum heaters” and “ear drum” protection.

I realize that keyword driven advertising has a long way to go before it can be counted on to deliver up relevant ads, but this is ridiculous.

What most advertisers don’t seem to recognize that only they are in a position to be specific about how their ads are served up.

It would be fascinating to know what percentage of keyword advertising is  totally irrelevant to the subject matter being delivered.

Just a quick thought!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands. Sometimes we have some interesting ideas about web development too!  Click here to sign up for our newsletter.

As part of our new marketing strategy built around goodideaguys.com, I am trying to work on a new social media presence for our business.

I have resisted using sites like Facebook and Twitter to date, partly because they can be pretty complicated to use effectively, but more importantly, they are so difficult to read.

I’m not talking about actual postings (not too hard to read a 140 character twitter posting).  I’m talking about reading the instructions for setting up profiles.

I realize that most of these administrative pages are intended for eyes younger than mine, but who thinks that green type against a blue background is easy to read, even if you are a twenty-something?

The basis of good design may be negotiable on the web, but the presentation of information that requires the reader to comprehend instructions and actually do something still call for good contrast, an easily readable font and text size large enough that you don’t have to constantly zoom the text in order to get the job done.

The standard settings for web text that present black type against a white background are one of the most powerful tools the web has for presenting information and it is something that most people take for granted.

Just because it’s the “default” doesn’t mean that it isn’t also the best!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands. Sometimes we have some interesting ideas about web development too!  Click here to sign up for our newsletter.

I keep my Google News Alerts set for stories about the manufacturers products we sell.  Today I got this one about Shurtape, a tape manufacturer in Hickory, NC.

Sun Kwak, a Korean artist, is using over three miles of black masking tape to create an abstract art installation at the Brooklyn Museum.

Deploying a special six inch width black masking tape provided by Shurtape, Kwak has developed a method of applying and then tearing the tape she applied to columns in the museum’s rotunda.  This appears as wavy lines and patterns contrasted against the museum gallerie’s walls.  The effect is stunning.  To a casual observer, it looks like thousands of feet of painted patterns.

The artist has spent almost 300 hours on this installation and it will be on display until July 5.

After that,  its three miles of tape headed for the landfill.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment ONe extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands. Click here for lots of useful graphic arts supplies.

I subscribe to a news alert service provided by Forbes Magazine and find that about once a day I will click on a link to one of their business-oriented stories.  They are useful and well written.

This morning they sent me a link to a new service from Yahoo that they called “Yahoo’s Intelligent Search“.    It sounded interesting so I clicked over to Yahoo and entered the search term “Yahoo’s Intelligent Search“.  Not only was there no information on this new service at the top of the page-the first result was for “Extraterrestrial Intelligence” and the second was something about ebay-there was no reference to  “Yahoo’s Intelligent Search” anywhere on the first two pages of search results.

It’s easy to see why Yahoo lags so far behind Google when they are not able to push their own new products to the top of their own search results.

We continue to show good search results for many of our products at Yahoo, but it becomes more and more difficult to understand how they can survive in the search business.  They should have sold Yahoo Search to Microsoft when they had the chance.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands, and lots of other useful production supplies.

One of the highlights of this week’s inauguration ceremony was the performance of a John Williams piece by a well known classical quartet made up of Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Itzhak Perlman (violin), Gabriela Montero (piano) and Anthony McGill (clarinet).  It was (at the time) an impressive presentation.

I was particularly interested in this, after reading about Yo-Yo Ma’s plan to play a new carbon fiber cello that was supposed to be immune from effects brought on by cold weather.

It turns out that what the audience (and the world) heard was a little world class karaoke.  The whole thing was a recording, and the public was kept in the dark until today.

In an interview on National Public Radio, Mr. Ma explained that the performance was impossible because of the temperature and that he had even gone so far as to use soap instead of resin on his bow so that his cello would not make any sound.  A piano technician “decoupled” the piano keys from the hammers so that played keys would make no sound.

Maybe it was a great idea to plan to make this performance part of such an historical ceremony, but why not chose performers who could play live regardless of the weather.  There are lots of instruments and performers who can play in cold weather, as was apparent over and over again during the inaugural parade.

I, for one, am incredibly disappointed to learn of this sham, and am sorry that it mars, for me, what was, otherwise a ceremony for the ages.

Want to pretend you had a front row seat at the inauguration.  Click here.

Want to record your own inauguration “lip sync“.  You’ll need a microphone, a mic cable and a microphone stand.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands, and lots of other useful production supplies.

It’s  a long standing business business practice that the “seller sets the terms“.  While its true that you can bargain with a vendor if you think they will sell at a lower price,  in the end, if you are not willing to meet the seller’s price, you’ve got to walk away.

Apparently, customers hoping to walk out of a bankrupt Circuit City store with a $1.99 flat screen television aren’t willing to extend the seller that priviledge.

Lots of shoppers who showed up last Saturday for the beginning of Circuit City’s liquidation sale not only left the stores empty handed, they left mad as well.

Unbeknown to most of these vultures, once Circuit City declared bankruptcy, the court turned their assets over to a liquidator whose job is to get as much money for Circuit City’s creditors as they can.  The management of Circuit City really has nothing to say about pricing.

I, for one, will miss Circuit City.  While neither their selection nor their pricing was  anything special, the competition they provided for Best Buy was good for both the local and national electronics marketplace.

Unfortunately, those customers who waited to show up at Circuit City until it was time to turn out the lights are now finding that liquidation pricing is not even as good as sale pricing was before the bankruptcy.

Lots of challenges for retailers and bargain-hungry customers will be presented in the next few months as our economy works through a really difficult retail environment.  Circuit City’s experience has lessons for all of us.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Enterainment 1 extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables.

I wrote a piece  sometime back regarding where new concert sound techs were going to come from.  The pro sound industry continues to “gray” and pursuing jobs in concert production attracts fewer and fewer young people interested in this career.

A recent story in the online version of Pro Sound News points out what is happening in the pro sound field.  This story highlighted the “retirement” of Paul Owen, after mixing monitors for Metallica for 22 years.  That’s right.  22 Years!

While it is a little surprising that anybody could live through the Metallica soap opera for this long, it is certainly no surprise that there are touring sound techs out there who are actually reaching retirement age.

Paul Owen has logged 1340 Metallica shows and reads lips so well that no one realizes that he has been deaf since 1994.

Metallica’s lead singer James Hetfield honored Owen from the stage at this week’s concert in Detroit.  Wonder if his replacement will be under 40?

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands, and lots of other useful production supplies.

If you think that those who work in the arts field or in businesses that provide support for the arts will be exempt from the economic downturn?  Think again!

I recently came across this article in the The Daily Tar Heel, the newspaper of my alma mater, UNC Chapel Hill. The article quotes Emil Kang, UNC’s Executive Director for the Arts.  UNC arts programs have been valued customers of ours for many years.

Here’s what Mr. Kang had to say:

“If you talk to anyone who manages a budget they’ll tell you that they’re worried.  The arts sector, like most sectors that are not financial markets, are always lagging behind. I’m included; we’re worried.”

“We are at the mercy of people’s disposable income. Unfortunately the arts are about six months behind,” he said. “I think we are going to see a lot of worse news over the next couple of years.”

Those arts organizations that count on private donations and government appropriated funds for their core support are already planning fewer shows for upcoming seasons.  Donations from patrons and foundations are falling off and their return will trail the recovery of the economy as a whole.

Most arts funding not directly related to ticket sales is usually appropriated a least a year in advance, giving a false sense that the arts are not facing the same sort of downturn as General Motors and DHL.

Recent closing of Broadway hits like Hairspray and Legally Blonde reflect the current softness in ticket sales, sales that come almost exclusively from people’s discretionary income. Poor  sales for this year’s touring productions of shows like The Radio City Christmas Spectacular and Backyardigans will slowly and surely filter down to those who are employed in the arts and to the businesses that count on the arts for much of their sales.

If you make your living in the arts or derive a significant portion of your income from arts organizations, get ready.  Rough seas are on the horizon.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Enterainment 1 extension cords  & OnStage Stand mic stands . We are a proud supporter of the arts community in Chatham County, NC.

The interest in acquiring the broadcast spectrum currently used by many professional quality wireless microphones has been raging for a while.  Everyone knows that some changes will take place in February 2009, when the FCC reallocates some of the spectrum in the 700 mhz range.

I have written before regarding these licensing requirements and speculated at the time that the FCC could really make things chaotic for the entertainment industry. Get ready for a new player to turn up the heat!

As reported in Forbes, The Public Interest Spectrum Coalition, a coalition of consumer’s rights organizations has filed a complaint with the FCC regarding the failure of almost all wireless mic owners to obtain an operator’s license for what is essentially a low power radio transmitter.  This complaint accuses manufacturers like Shure and AKG of deceptive advertising in how their products are marketed.

This is a complaint that could potentially impact millions of microphone owners.

More importantly, it makes a very powerful argument on behalf of those companies that are vying for use of this part of the broadcast spectrum when digital televison comes online in February 0f 2009.

Bids of as much as $19 billion dollars have been placed for access to these airwaves and lots of major players are vying for the space.

While the FCC has rarely, if ever, enforced the licensing requirements for wireless mics, the law is not new and it may not be possible to ignore it any longer.

Want to know more?  Here’s a link to the FCC rule.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Enterainment 1 extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables.  We’ve also got cables for “Wired” microphones!

I spend part of everyday working to improve how our websites perform with major search engines like Google and Yahoo.  Its tedious work, requires patience to see results, and can be pretty mysterious.  Still it is incredibly satisfying (sometimes lucrative as well) to see one of the search terms for a product you sell move onto the first page of search results.

Occasionally, the results can catch you offguard.

Ever heard of a hexayurt?  I hadn’t either.  It turns out a hexayurt is a temporary structure built  from plywood or foam panels.  It is particularly popular as an accommodation for those who attend the Burningman Project, a festival that takes place at the end of August. It is also being promoted as a quick and inexpensive shelter for use after disasters or in areas where there is a need for any kind of shelter in a hurry.

Because we sell tape, a critical component in building a hexayurt,  several of our websites have been listed as a source for one of the critical products needed for building the structure, a tape called “bidirectional filament tape“.  We do sell a bidirectional tape, but, unfortunately, it is not suitable for outdoor use, as it can’t stand up to long term exposure to sunlight.  Like lots of other tapes, when exposed to UV rays, the adhesive dries out and the tape delaminates.

About once an hour for the last several weeks, we have gotten a phone call from someone looking for the tape needed for a hexayurt.  We are always (well almost always) happy to hear from a prospective customer, but, in this case, I’m afraid that the response from our customer service folks has started to sound like a broken record.

I contacted  Vinay Gupta, with the Hexayurt Project about our problem, and he was able to provide some additional information about the requirements that this tape needs  to meet.

We are going to work with one of the suppliers that provides our 2″ bidirectional tape in hopes of coming up with a solution for this problem.

For the moment, please hold your calls!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables. Specialty tapes are our specialty!