Seavista Software Blog : Internet Developer Ramblings

Found this very interesting, about Google and its size and positioning to become a monopoly.

Hats off to Jesse Liberty who discusses the layout system in Silverlight in good detail.  Another great two part series.

Well, it really isn’t really surprising, just a little disturbing.  Facebook is holding your rights to everything you do there, even if you leave their service.

Update to TOS: 

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

Get the full report over at Mashable.

After seeing the new Kindle 2 leaked photos, i am still left to wonder.  Why would anyone buy one of these?  Slim sexy, but very narrow in it’s usability.  It reminds me of buying one of those kitchen top appliances that gets used one in a blue moon and then just takes up way to much space.  Much like the Ronco Dehydrator

Hey turkey jerky sounded like a great idea to many at first too.  Maybe someone can enlighten me on why they would purchase this for $350+.  You know it will be in the cupboard (or bookshelf in this case) collecting dust in months.

I think it is dead on arrival.

New look for our blog, it more acurately reflects one of my new loves.  Espresso, is a like great code.  Crisp, elegant, simple and powerful.  Enjoy!

Well I just got off the phone after an exceptional conversation that I wanted to share.  About 6 months ago SuperPages.com contacted me with their sales pitch on utilizing their listing service for my web design and software development company.  I was way too busy to deal, but they called back this morning.  I have no real interest in using them, but as a business owner, I am always interested in marketing…so I listened.

The process worked much like the car sales games, you know, this is the best I can do …but let me talk to my manager.  Well comically this escalated to my junior guy handing off the phone to his manager for the numbers.

The manager (”Closer”) gave me a price, but only for a limited finite regional market….I sell services which I market nationwide.  I explained this to him, and he gave a newly formulated number which got a whole lot bigger. 

I told him, I did not see how this was going to be a cost effective decision vs. pay-per-click or organic/social marketing.  This office “closer” blindly spewed standard “reservation responses”, and would not even listen to my perspective.  Thinking I might actually being able to help him address this common concern more effectively in the future, I pressed him.  But, he just started talking faster and louder, with a growing “ugly” tone.

Well, they “closer” soon became frustrated with my opinion and his voice level and desperation increased.  After about 5 more minutes of the circus,  finally, I simply said “At this time I do not see the value of service in evaluation against alternatives, I am not interested.”  He replied, “Have a good da….click”…I can only imagine the next words out of his mouth after that.

I once learned a great lesson from a client whom employed many salespeople.  In his opinion the worst thing he could do for his company was employ a “starving salesman” (not to be mistaken as hungry salesperson).  What he meant was that a desperate salesperson will say or do ANYTHING to land a sale/deal, for which you will have to stand behind long after them stumble onto another opportunity. 

Salespeople starve for two reasons

1. They just are not good at what they do

2. They are selling the unsellable. (SuperPages) in this case

So instead of the manager politely saying, “Can I try to contact you in the future to see if your needs change?” or something to that effect, he blew the bridge.   So instead of me going on my merry day, I’m blogging about an obviously desperate company whose employees are “starving”.  I didn’t even use SuperPages, but now I will make sure to let everyone choose to not use it as well.

Just so you know, the SuperPages “closer” was willing to discount the service offering by over 60% off the original number within 5 minutes of pressing.  So if you have an account, call and negotiate your rate down today!  They will bend easily.

IMHO, SuperPages.com your sales techniques are super sleazy and leadership of your company seriously need to review the process of which they market their products.

Have any other good SuperPages stories? I’d love to hear them.

The United Arab Emirates is planning a bunch of “personal rapid transit” devices: driverless taxis that run on electricity and could hit the streets of Masdar as early as this year.

Morgantown, West Virginia has the the only PRT system in place right now, built in 1975 when the cost of the technology was many times higher. An equivalent system to the Masdar one (though to a much smaller degree) is currently under construction at Heathrow airport in London.

I cannot decide if I think this is a good or bad thing.

Tim Heuer, a true assest to the Silverlight community, has posted a great list of controls for developers.  So save yourself a bit of time and bookmark this page.

Ready for sub-atomic storage?  ZDNET reports

Researchers at Stanford University have demonstrated quantum holographic storage, shattering long-held assumptions about the information limits of matter…