This is not news in itself, but the willingness of these CEO’s to make a commitment to have a program in place in 2013 is a very positive development.

The presidents of Duracell, Energizer, Kodak, Rayovac and Panasonic began discussions in 2010 regarding getting a nationwide recycling program in place and now finally seem willing to commit to a date for a program roll out.

Certainly, the logistics and science in getting a program into place are complicated, but it is hard to see how plans and discussions could be going into their fourth year.

We would love to be able to point our customers towards a reliable recycling option in their community, regardless of where they live.

Check back here and also at Recyclebattery.org to track their progress.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. We are prod to feature extension cords from Hosatech.  Our Duracell Procell batteries are the real thing and we sell them “Satisfaction Guaranteed”.

While the standard hardware store blue tarp is the industry standard for quick cover ups in the rain, they can really cause you some problems when the rain is accompanied by a stiff breeze.

A simple modification in a cheap tarp can make it many times more useful when the raindrops start falling.

Turn the tarp into a plastic bag.

Just take your tarps, fold them in half, and stitch up the edges.  If you’re not handy with a sewing machine, gaffers tape or even a stapler will work almost as well.

Larger tarps can be turned into bags that will cover up your entire PA stacks, and you can make smaller bags for covering up things like monitors.

Since the tarps can be easily cut and normally do not unravel, you can take one large tarp and turn it into a lot of custom covers for things like your consoles and amp racks.  No hemming necessary.

Since the tarps have grommets, you will have some tie down points, but you probably won’t even need them.  Since wind can’t get inside the bag, the harder the wind blows, the firmer the bag stays in place.

Make sure you label each bag with a large label (try using a Sharpie marker directly on the bag) in letters large enough to be seen in the dark.

At the first mention of rough weather, place each bag close to the location where it will be needed and instruct stagehands or volunteers how they are used.

This might well be the best piece of sound equipment you ever buy.

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.  Lots more good ideas at our Twitter feed.

When the late Bill Graham, famous concert promoter of the 1960′s and 1970′s died, his memorabilia collection was sold to Bill Sagan, a west coast entrepeneur. This was no scrapbook. Graham had amassed a collection large enough to fill 25 forty foot tractor trailers.

The collection included millions of photos, posters, t shirts, banners etc. from some of the most famous names in rock-Hendrix, Joplin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, etc. The list of names goes on for pages.

Sagan has a unique, and really great business plan, for selling this memorabilia. The items that Graham has collected are for sale at the web site, and Wolfgang’s Vault streams (for free) hundreds of live concerts from this era, including some fo the best known from theFillmore West. They claim to have over 7000 different concert performances and you can listen any time you want by simply registering at the site.

The folks who run Wolfgang’s Vault are involved in a lot of legal litigation regarding who really has the rights to these concerts, so this may not last. Check it out while you can!

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, and lots of other great products for the concert production industry.

The first several times we got online orders from “usfirst“, frankly we thought they were coming from a bank or other financial institution.  I’m glad I took the time to look a little closer.

First sponsors a national program for for middle and high school students who design and build robots  and then compete against other teams.

It turns out that they use gaffers tape to lay out the “arena” where the robots compete.  The lanes and end zones are marked with different colors of cloth tape.

You can see an example in this video.

First was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, a well known inventor and entrepreneur probably best known for inventing the Segway.

To date, First has awarded millions in scholarships.  This year they will work with over hundreds of thousands of  students making up thousands of teams.

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.  We are proud to be asupporter of our local schools here in Chatham County, NC.

The XLR connector was first developed by James Cannon at ITT and was introduced to the audio market in 1958.  Amazingly, through all the changes in connector standards and component wiring, the XLR is still the audio standard for microphone and patch cables.

One reason for its long life is that the basics of the design, much like good computer software design, have moved into the public domain.  Anyone who has a better idea can bring their own version of the XLR connector to market.

A simple innovation developed by the Switchcraft company is an example of this design concept.

Cannon’s design for the XLR was for a round connector-a good idea since it fit well to a round cable and allowed the cable to be dragged along the floor without catching and tangling.  Cannon’s concept called for both round body connectors on the cable and a round body “chassis mount” connector-the mating female connector found on the equipment or multicable box that the cable connector mated with.

A simple innovation by Switchcraft-changing the body shape of the panel mount connector from round to rectangular-meant that more connectors could be mounted side-by-side in a confined space since they could now fit edge to edge.  You can see the value of that design change today by comparing a contemporary audio mixer to one built in the 1960′s or ’70′s.

Many minds contributing to the evolution of the XLR connector means that it will remain the audio industry standard for many years to come.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.  Our Hosa & MI cables use industry standard XLR connectors.

We’ve been working with the US Volleyball Assoc. over the last year to help develop some new floor marking products. Volleyball matches are often played on basketball gym floors and this means that a temporary playing court must be laid out over the existing basketball lines. Its a lot of work!

Gym floors require a tape that won’t damage the floor finish when its removed and we have been supplying Shurtape 724 to a number of college programs for their floor.

Laying out a playing surface on a synthetic floor requires a different product. Vinyl tape works better and this is where a really clever technique comes in.

Our friends at USA Volleyball put their vinyl tape in the refrigerator. They learned that when the tape is cold it doesn’t stretch, meaning that the lines are straighter and the tape is less likely to contract and pull up from the floor. It’s a great idea and it really works.

Need some tape to put temporary markings on the floor? Check in the refrigerator!

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So, what did I learn that I consider really valuable today?  I can coil cables, level stages, mix sound for live TV and focus lights from the top of a 20 foot ladder.  Those were all hard-won skills that served me well, but they don’t have a lot of value today.

The most valuable skill, by far, was being able to make decisions.   As a producer of large events and concerts, every day was a string rapid-fire decisions, all focused on the starting time of the show.  There was never a chance to kick around a lot of options or “sleep on it”.  There just wasn’t enough time.

Fortunately, these were not decisions of the life-or-death variety, and if I was able to get two out of every three right, I was usually a hero.  There was never the option of putting off the decision until later.  The show would be today whether I made a decision or not.  Choosing “not to decide” was the same as “choosing to fail”.

I reality, the more decisions I made in a day the more likely I was to get really good results.  Making a couple of decisions before my first cup of coffee always gave me new options that got me closer to an on time show.  That was the goal.

Actually providing good entertainment was the job of the performers and their hands on technicians.  My job was to make enough correct decisions to insure that they got to do their job.

Making lots of decisions can be risky, even painful.  Rarely will it do the sort of damage that is almost guaranteed by making no decision at all.

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 and OnStage Stand mic stands.  I enjoy sharing good business ideas with our readers and customers. Let me know what you think.

The industry standard for audio patch bays uses quarter inch connectors or something similar called “TT” (“TT” stands for “tiny telephone”) a standard left over from when telephone systems used physical switchboards. Early sound system patch bays actually used hardware intended for the phone company.

We quickly realized that using the “TT” standard, even though it was embraced by console manufacturers and recording hardware makers, was not the best solution for the job.

While not universally accepted for patch bays, using the XLR standard for these patch bays was a much better solution. It’s hard to come up with a connector design better than the XLR3 connector. It is durable. It can be used balanced (3 wire) or unbalanced (2 wire), it is readily available in places like Radio Shack, and it is inexpensive.

Best of all, it doesn’t require a different kind of cable from the other wires used in most sound system installations. If you have almost any kind of sound system, you are already using XLR3 cables, as these are what is used on almost all microphones.

We tried to include patch bays in several locations along an audio signals path (both inputs and outputs) so that rerouting, patching in temporary sound sources, routing signal to temporary output sources, etc. could be done without unpatching the primary console inputs and outputs.

Using XLR connectors allows you to pass both balanced and unbalanced signals, including phantom power when necessary and use standard XLR “barrel” type adapters like ground lifts and isolation transformers. The “TT” standard does not allow for any of these adaptations.

XLR cables can be patched together “head to tail” to make as long a cable as you need. XLR cables are available in short lengths for standard patch bay use, but any size XLR microphone cable can be used.

Unlike a two pole or three pole “TT” connector, the XLR3 connector can be patched without having to pass the tip of the connector through the ring(s) of the mating female connector. The likelihood of annoying and possibly damaging “pops” and “cracks” is greatly reduced.

Need to trace a signal? Standard tone generators and cable testers can be used with the XLR patch panel without any adapters. None of this can be done with a “TT” patch panel.

If you really want flexibility in your sound system installation XLR is the way to go.

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 . View our full selection of XLR cables at BuyMicCable.com

I’m always amazed at how much black magic is applied to the science of selling cables.  No one excels at this as well as Monster Cable, a manufacturer of high end cables marketed both to the pro and the home market.

Believe it or not, Monster sells a HDMI hi definition video cable for as much as $1000.00.  That’s not the price for the television.  Just the cable!

An archived article in the New York Times shed a little light on why Monster wires are so incredibly expensive.  Chalk it up (mark it up?)to a very special sort of high end marketing.

At last year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Monster sponsored an invitation-only concert featuring John Legend and Stevie Wonder.  A Monster party featured Dr. Dre and Diddy, along with Monster CEO  Noel Lee riding a Segway scooter trimmed in flames.

A Monster press conference featured Lady Gaga, who was in Las Vegas to introduce a new line of Monster headphones.

Talent like this doesn’t come cheap.

Study after study has shown that most of  Monster’s claims regarding the superiority of their cables is mostly hype.  One of our favorite  tests even compared their speaker cables to coat hanger wire and claimed to hear no difference in audio quality between the two.

Did I mention, the Las Vegas events were not for Monster customers, they were for Monster Cable dealers, the sellers who share in the astronomical markups sales of these cables genterate.  Those heaping plates of shrimp and the flowing champagne at the event hosted by Diddy and Dr. Dre were paid for by you,  if you’re a purchaser of Monster Cables.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.

After several years of not being able to find our address (on a private road) in any of the online mapping software, there we were on Google Street View.  Apparently a Google mapping survey vehicle had visited our neighborhood, and there was a picture of our loading dock-uncut grass included-for all the world to see.

While Google Street View may be useful for businesses, say a delivery driver who is wondering which dock is ours, its indiscriminate use, regardless of the address being sought out, is troubling.  I don’t mind someone being able to identify my businessaddress, I would prefer that not just anyone be able to identify which home driveway is mine and which is my neighbors’.

Of less concern in the privacy arena, but clearly of great interest to a business owner, is how unflattering the image Google chose to use was.  We have a very attractive building with a large landscaped front lawn fronting on a major US highway.  We take care in presenting a good face to the public and regret that Google chose to use a view of our facility that almost no one ever sees.

While we have no interest in manipulating accurate data that is in the public domain, we do feel that Google should take more care to present a balanced presentation of what their images really represent.

Here’s one of our favorite indicators. We call it the “PI” and it stand for pallet index.

Almost everything we sell arrives at our loading dock on wooden pallets-sometimes eight or ten a day.  They eat up valuable space and can be difficult to dispose of.  Until the beginning of the summer, we had to beg delivery drivers to take them back and even resorted several times to hauling them away and burning them.

For the last couple of months, they have been disappearing before our eyes.  Every time a driver shows up with a delivery, he seems to more than ready to take back a pallet and usually asks if we have any more.  If five or six have accumulated, his eyes really light up.

It seems that other stops on his route have a need (for the first time in months) for more pallets than they can get to ship their goods, and the driver is able to sell them our pallets when he makes a delivery.

This seems like a really positive sign to us.

Maybe it is time for MSNBC to add the “PI” to their list of leading economic indicators.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. What’s your favorite business health indicator?  Share it with our readers.

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Little did I know, these games (and others) are generating huge income for a company called Zynga.  Zynga develops incredibly popular social networking games and they make their money in an amazing way.

It appears that those who play the games are willing to pay real money for “virtual” goods.  That pink tractor my friend was bragging about having-it turns out she paid $3.50 for it.  Yes, the $3.50 was real, but the tractor is not.  Zynga needs no warehouses, no trucks and no maintenance facilities.  The pink tractor exists only on their servers and costs essentially nothing.  The bulk of their costs (minimal) are tied to the credit card transaction fee for the purchase.

This article in last week’s New York Times values Zynga at $4.5 billion dollars and estimates their annual revenues at $500 million, almost all of it from the sale of virtual goods.  The Times goes on the crown Zynga “the Google of Games”.

We sell real things, and the cost of warehousing, shipping and guaranteeing them is the majority of the cost of running our business.  If we could figure out a way to sell “virtual” gaffers tape, we could become the “Google of sticky stuff“.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.  Got an observation about social network gaming that you would like to share with our readers?  Let us know.

I recently went on a “round up” and moved all the domain registrations to a single registrar because it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with renewals.

I chose to use Godaddy.com because their pricing seemed a little lower and they offer hosting services as well.

Now I am reconsidering that decision.

Godaddy.com is the “hands down winner” of the contest for the “most characters per page contest” and they lead the competition by miles in the “most in-your-face upselling contest” as well.  It is impossible to complete any sort of transaction at their site without their making dozens of attempts to sell you more products and services, and completing any sort of complicated administrative tasks almost always requires a phone call.

There ought to be some way to turn off all the special offers, deals and contests and choose a simple menu option for the task you came there to get done.

It is past time for Godaddy.com to provide a simple-to-navigate option for customers who know why they came to the site.  We can save looking at the Danica Patrick pictures till later.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.  Got an alternative to Godaddy.com that you would like to share with our readers?  Let us know.

This article caught my eye in yesterday’s New York Times .  Matt Reynolds, an electrical engineering professor at Duke, is working on “self-powered” devices that use the radio waves all around us in the atmosphere to power electrical devices.  He has founded a company whose first product is a “beeper” built into a hard hat that can warn the wearer when he is too close to a piece of dangerous construction equipment.  The amazing thing about this beeper is it needs no external power source (no battery) because it is powered by radio waves.

Equipment on the job site transmits its location and when a wearer of the beeper-equipped hard hat gets too close, a warning buzzer lets him know to watch out.  Since the radio waves that provide power for the device are around all the time and free to anything that can utilize them,  this device has perpetual power-no battery change required-ever!

Radio waves are all around us in the atmosphere, produced by radio and tv towers, cell phone transmissions, Wi-Fi transmitters and lots of other sources.  Professor Reyonolds research and development allows harvesting of the the power from random waves without impacting those transmitted for a specific use.

Major companies like Intel have expressed an interest in this research and exploitation of  “random” waves has already proved that they can power some calculators and clocks, replacing a AAA battery.

Someday, your inability to “get that song out of your head” may be complicated by the fact that a radio wave powered device could actually be implanted in your head.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.

The most recent (and our favorite) way to solve the issue involves something dear to my heart-gaffers tape.  It seems that much of the problem caused by how you hold the new iPhone can be solved by putting a small piece of  gaffers tape over the part of the external antenna where you might normally touch the phone.  This keeps your hand from interfering with the antenna transmission.  (CBS News video of this solution)

Naturally, we are intrigued by the fashion statement that your choice of gaffers tape to stick on your new $300.00 smart phone would make.  Pink for Pink.  Neon green for Al Green,  and, of course,  black for Steve Jobs.

I was pretty excited about this potential new market, until I realized that a single roll of gaffers tape would be enough to handle every iPhone in North America.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.  Got an iPhone 4.  How did you fix yours?

By the time you reach my age, changing batteries in the remote control (or anything else) usually starts with a search for my reading glasses.  If I can put the batteries in the wrong way, I will.

Microsoft (go figure?) has come up with a really elegant and practical solution for this problem.  They have designed a battery holder that has both a positive and a negative terminal.  This means that no matter how the battery is oriented, it will still work.  Genius.

All these combinations are possible

By using this

Microsoft’s Instaload system is compatible with AA, AAA, C, D and CR123 (all the major battery types used in multiples) and it will require only a minor redesign by any manufacturer of a battery powered device that wants to integrate it.

Surprisingly, Microsoft is making this design available under a royalty free  license so that any manufacturer can adopt it.

Maybe Microsoft has finally come up with a winner.

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Companies like Microsoft and Google have paid billions in auctions to be able to control spectrum once used by wireless microphones and many believe that they will make their billions (and much more) back by being able to take advantage of this government mandated monopoly.

Little has been said about another windfall.  That is sales that will go to wireless mic manufacturers.  An article buried in the back pages of FOH Magazine about sound for Cirque du Soleil shows caught my eye.  Dave Stephens, a sound engineer for one of Cirque’s Las Vegas shows dropped the fact that the MGM Grand had spend $140,000.00 in order to replace their 700 mHZ wireless microphone equipment.  That’s just one entertainment center in one city.  Admittedly, the Grand is a major facility, but there are hundreds more of comparable size and complexity around the country and hundreds of thousands of churches, theatres,  schools and entertainers that will also be replacing their mics.

In theory, all of this activity needs to take place in the next three months in order to meet the FCC deadline.  While that will surely not happen, it is reasonable to assume that the majority of this “soon to be illegal” equipment will eventually be replaced, reaping multi-million dollar sales for companies like Shure and Sennheiser.

It’s a good time to be a manufacturer of wireless mics!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.

Taking on the problem of slow internet access that puts the US near the bottom of the world’s developed countries in internet speed could end up making Google a lot more wealthy and powerful than just online advertising ever could.

If Google is able to build and control the data delivery pipeline, then we have a clear historical example of what could happen next.  This is what broadcast television was about 70 years ago.  The moves that the three major tv networks made in controlling the airwaves gave them decades of exclusive control over the ability to deliver advertising to the entire country with little or no competition.

If or when Google builds and controls a data delivery system-particularly if it is better (read, faster) than what is currently in place, then the value of their advertising delivery capability to ad buyers will go through the roof.

If all you have to do in order to download a movie in minutes rather than hours is watch a couple of ads during the downlaod, then most people will happily watch those ads served up by Google while the download is going on.

If a doctor can stream 3D medical images at almost real time speed, then an ad from a pharmaceutical company being served up at the same time is, at worst, a minor annoyance.

Real time sports in high definition online?  I’ll click on the Budweiser ad.

Delivery of internet services by the telephone or cable companies is basically an “add on” that is burdened by infrastructure built for a very different purpose.  Their networks are already overloaded and their ability to expand has severe limitations.

When Google builds a network that shows consumers, advertisers and the government what really fast, open broadband networks can do, then they’ll have a choke hold on the ultimate ad delivery system.

Would I sit through a few sales pitches to have my internet speed increase by a factor of 10?  Can I have it now?

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.

There has been lots of speculation as to why Google was interested in getting into the hardware business, as they are primarily a search engine driven advertising company.

This article in Forbes makes it clear why Google has such a keen interest in this market.  The profit potential is amazing.

The Nexus One is sold directly from Google (web sales only) and can be purchased in one of two ways.  You can purchase a subsidized phone along with a two year contract for service from T-Mobile.  The price of the phone is $179.00.

Or, you can purchase the phone outright-unlocked (no service contract) for $529.00 and make a deal with your own choice of service providers.

Forbes estimates that the actual cost of manufacturing the phone is $174.15.  That means that Google’s gross profit on every phone is  $354.85, a whopping $204% markup.

If Google is successful in getting a phone to market that people will buy without a contract, then it might force cell carriers to open up their market and be more competitive when it comes to pricing.

Google’s decision to price the Nexus One at such a ridiculously high price means that this probably won’t happen any time soon.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.

All that is an intro to a new product announcement by Duracell. They are rolling out a new line of  automotive batteries.

Duracell is positioning this product line as a battery intended to meet the needs of today’s automobiles that have so many electrical accessories.  We gone from batteries that start your car and let you listen to the radio to needing a power source that will handle a two bedroom apartment.

There is no end to the electrical accessories that cars can have these days. Cars have become workplaces and auto batteries need to be able to power all sorts of devices when the engine is not running.  That’s a prescription for a dead battery.

Oddly, this line of auto batteries does not yet appear on Durcell’s web site, so detail are hard to come by.  They are currently available in limited areas and there has been no announcement about a national roll out.

We’ve been a distributor of Duracell Procell batteries for many years and are always surprised at how poorly this company uses the web to support product information.  It is amazing to me that the day after you announce a new product line that there is no mention of it on your corporate web page.

Duracell may not understand how to use the web, but they sure understand the value of their brand. Auto batteries by Duracell is a logical extension of how brands are leveraged and if this is a good product, they should be able to grab a big percentage of the market.

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 andOnStage Stand mic stands. You might enjoy our “How Not To Test A Battery” animation

These ever loyal Apple employees are apparently jumping at the chance to make a little more money.

According to The Loop, a tech blog that covers all things Apple, Microsoft is approaching managers of Apple Stores and offering them positions with Microsoft at significantly higher salaries.  Once on board with Microsoft, these managers are then contacting Apple Store employees who are apparently also succumbing to Microsoft’s generous offers. I guess that’s why Apple calls them geniuses!

After 20 plus years of banging my head against the wall over countless Microsoft software problems, I am really looking forward to being able to put a face on Microsoft. Getting a one on one explanation of why a simple OS upgrade takes two days and two dozen system reboots is something on my “must do” list.

Unless they lock the doors to anyone except purchasers of a new Zune, there are going to be so many angry MS customers lined up at the “Guru Bar” (Microsoft’s version of Apple Store’s “Genius Bars”) that people interested in making a purchase won’t even be able to get into the building.

As to those former Apple Store managers, they can go ahead and start thinking about what they’re going to do once  the plug is pulled  on this project.

Microsoft has really raised the bar on billion dollar bad ideas.

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A recent article in  the Telegraph highlights the discovery of bomber worms, an aquatic organism that lives in the Pacific ocean at depths of several miles.  These creatures, up to 3 or 4 inches in length, have the ability to release  fluid-filled balloons which glow in the dark as a way to apparently defend them from predators.  Once the balloons are released, the worms have the ability to regenerate more.

The chemical science of making glow tape is complicated and requires a multi-step process which creates some environmental waste disposal issues.  A way to do this organically would be a great advance.

Maybe someday the organic process used by the bomber worm will lead us to making glow in the dark products that can regenerate and dispose of themselves.

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While it is fine for casual phone calls, business users who are trying to make an impression or make sure that detailed information is transmitted accurately run into lots of problems.  VOIP calling (voice over internet protocol) is still not ready for these users.

The biggest problem we have encountered is receiving customer calls that we don’t realize are being made on an internet connection.  The call sounds clear but there is a delay between the time the customer speaks and when we hear them. When there is a delay, you tend to talk over each other’s words and both parties to the conversation can appear that they are being rude to the other.  At worst, its embarrassing.  At best, it can still be confusing.Until this technology is perfected, I wish I had a button on my phone that would tell me that the caller was speaking through a computer.  It would make things a lot easier.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.