Cyber Monday Deals

While some retailers pushed up their ‘Black Friday’ deals to Wednesday, and at least Thursday afternoon.  The cyber world (think Internet) has kept its tradition of Cyber Monday, since they figured you'd be in the stores Friday and not online.

The digital door-busters abound and perhaps this will be a good year for retailers as the economy and DOW have been stable recently and gas prices are falling.  It is likely that this illusion will cause us to spend more on the things that we want and think we cannot live without.

In the tradition of the non brick-and-mortar stores, all the major retailers also have their Cyber Monday deals online, one is even having a Cyber Week.

It's no surprise that the big online retailers like Amazon, TigerDirect, NewEgg, eBay, Sweetwater, zZounds, Overstock, and Engadget have deals on Monday.  Many of them have been posting deals the week leading up to Black Friday, and some will continue throughout the week with deals.

Since every major brick-and-mortar retailer in online, stores like Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, BestBuy, Staples, JC Penney’s, and other clothing outlets all have their Cyber Monday deals going on.

Remember the game - the best deals are limited to first come first serve.  They offer outrageous deals to get you on their site but you have to be early and quick.  Let the games begin!

Happy shopping

Stop Using Internet Explorer (IE) !!!

Why are people still using IE?  I’ve said this before.  I’ve said it for years…  Quit using IE!

If you’re using IE stop now!  If you do not have another Browser - that’s the thing your using now to view this page (I feel have to say that because I’m finding that too many people do not know basic terminology as to what they are doing today).

I’d also tell you what to do and where to go to download and install another browser but there again if you’re using IE you’re not likely to understand what I’m talking about.  Fear not.  I will provide you some links (the blue colored text below) that you can click on and will take you to where you can download a safe and usable browser.

Safe - because IE is known to be to porthole for viruses and many nasty things off the Internets.

Usable - because any (real) web designer knows that IE (Internet Explorer) is THE browser that does not render pages correctly and your code has to be ’tweaked’ to make it look somewhat like you intended it to, and what every other browser shows correctly.

You design in FireFox or Chrome, then you check it in IE to see how much work you have to do to fix it, or just care less because no sane web surfer would be using IE anyway.  When you find sites that only look correct in IE it is because the web designer does not know what they are doing and was using IE.  Go sit in the corner!

Chrome - Click on the blue button in the middle.
FireFox - Click on the green button that says Windows.

It's Black Friday - RUN!!!

It’s that time of year again.  Either you love it or hate it.

At least some of the major stores have decided to reduce the madness and trampling deaths by opening their doors early.   Radio Shack thought they would outdo them all by starting on Wednesday.  Wal-Mart started the savings Thursday (Turkey Day) afternoon.  Perhaps to eliminate the masses who were full from turkey and sleeping it off.

Every year we get further from the once long awaited day of savings, which soon became a day of madness.  Not so much anymore.  Now they try to spread it out or push it up to be the first store to get you in to by their specials.  It’s become a retail race for the retailers to be each other to the starting line.

When Black Friday first started retailers were only competing with each other, now the brick and mortar stores have massive competition with online retailers and even more so because many shoppers would rather escape the madness and shop from home online.  Are you one of those?  After all, here you are on the inter-web.

Practice safe shopping.

Let the games begin!

The Internet Is Broken — Should We Fix It?

There is too much data moving across the ether toady.  So much that it is overloading the entire system.  Bottle-necking.  You’ve seen it.  You know you have.  Things are loading slower.  You know it’s true but you do not want to admit it.  Else all your pet sites could be out of your reach.  Ahhhh!

Working with an ISP we have clients that will tell us that something is wrong with “our” Internet because they cannot load some file, "It's been stuck at 15% for an hour."  Meanwhile they are streaming videos or playing games online.  Logic, which I have come to the conclusion is nonexistent today, never enters their picture.  They are using megabytes of data over this ‘Internet connection’ but because they cannot get a simple 115kb file then something is wrong with their connection.  I don't even know how to respond to them anymore.  If your logic cannot sort that, what can I possibly say that can make them understand.

How did we get here?  Was it texting that took away our ability to hold real conversations with real people?  Was it reality TV that dumbed us down to believe that is reality and that we are not as dumb as those people?  (Yet we are the ones still watching them)

The Internet Isn’t Broke — We Are

No don’t fix the Internet, just walk away from it.  It has broke us.  We are paying the price everyday — mentally and physically.  The added stress and consumed hours that we spend online doing things that we do not need to do.  Things that 15 years ago were unheard of.  Are we any better of today?  Personally, computers have stolen more time and productivity from me in the last 15 years then I care to think about.  I was far more productive when there were fewer options.

"Then why don't you go back to that" I hear you saying.  I'm working on it.  Unfortunately, like many of you, what we have employed ourselves in has demanded that we are 'connected', and thus chained to our masters that promised us more time to do what we want, more productivity, and on.  Now that they have us in their grasp we find that they lied to us.  We power them, we give them energy — not just electrically but physically and mentally.  Yet we do not turn them on, the power switch is no longer ours — they turn us on.  They are our masters now, and we bow down to them.  After all, here we are.  Both you and I, on the Internet, on some computing device.  Sacrificing the time of our lives.

Technology in General is Broke

As ERM talks about in his post Technology takes a step backwards.