Archive for the ‘Web Culture’ Category

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Nov 13 2007 at 2:03pm

Amazon.com just doesn’t get it (Canadian shopping)

Today I stopped by Amazon.com to do some pre-Chirstmas shopping and was greeted with this graphic:

Amazon.com suggestion to visit Amazon.ca

Front and centre, just under the search box. Now, I don’t know if this is always there… for some reason I think it might be a standard, but the recent rise in the value of the Canadian dollar changes everything. As of this morning, the Canadian dollar is valued at almost $1.04 US ($1.0382 to be more precise). This means that online shopping is a lot more attractive than it used to be when our dollar was worth 80¢. We don’t want to go to Amazon.ca where our dollar is worth $1, we want to shop at Amazon.com where it’s worth $1.04 (or $1.06 as it was last week).

To add to that, book prices are stuck where they were months ago when the books were printed. This means that the price for most books is $2-$4 higher on the Canadian site, if not more (I think Amazon may have adjusted these prices for the dollar value already). Buy a few books and you’ve covered the $5 + tax Canada Customs charges at the border (don’t get me started on that!). Oh, and I think the limit to qualify for free shipping is lower on the US site.

Another problem, which always applies to Amazon, is that the US site has a much broader product range than the Canadian version does, plus all those affiliated sellers. I can get a lot of stuff on Amazon.com that isn’t available in Canada at all. That’s why I want to shop there now.

For anyone running a US eCommerce site, now is the time to optimize your site for Canadian shoppers. Do you ship to Canada? Are the rates reasonable? You could even put up a little Canadian flag to welcome your neighbours from the North

Posted in General, Web Culture | 7 Comments »

Aug 09 2007 at 9:44pm

Surfing again with StumbleUpon

Has anyone tried StumbleUpon yet? I decided to check it out last week partly because we were getting a bit of traffic to our sites from it and I wanted to see what it was like. What fun! I can’t say that I’ve actually surfed like this in years. Probably not since the 90’s. Seriously.

Who just surfs the web anymore anyway? There’s so much crap out there, I can’t be bothered to sort through it. But I still like the web. I want to look at websites. I see a lot of websites and subscribe to a lot of feeds, but it’s just boring somehow. What sets StumbleUpon apart from other aggregation sites is that it’s just more fun! The randomness makes it entertaining, and you can pick from a wide range of topics. I don’t have to look at just tech news and even on that topic I’ve come across a ton of neat stuff I never would have found elsehwere.

That’s my 2 thumbs up for StumbleUpon What about you? Have you tried it or are you more into a different bookmarking site?

Posted in General, Web Culture | 10 Comments »

Feb 26 2007 at 3:05am

Where are all the Women in Web Design?

Eric Meyer had a post last week about gender diversity in the Event Apart conference series. What he’s saying, basically, is that he doesn’t believe in recruiting female speakers just for the sake of gender diversity. They want to get the best people, and I totally agree with that. I certainly would not want to be part of any project or conference just because I’m a minority.

Midway through the article Eric asks: ”So is the gender imbalance in the eye of the organizers, or is it in the very fabric of the industry?”

Hotmail: Most Annoying Registration Interface Ever (or not?)

Awhile back I needed to sign up for a hotmail account. Yes, hotmail. The last time I used that was around 1999. I had to sign up again so I could test some HTML emails. Most of our students use either hotmail or gmail, so the easiest thing to do is just to sign up for accounts and test them that way. Gmail is no problem - I already have an account.

So I went to sign up for a hotmail account, thinking it would be a relatively simple procedure. Was I ever wrong about that!

The W3C supporters page

Take a look at the W3C supporters page. It costs $1000 to become a supporter of the W3C and get your link on this page. This page is a PR 9. That’s right, PR 9. Now check out all the sites that are listed.

I’ll give you a sec to skim through that.

Didn’t I see some of those in my spam folder the other day? “Cheap Hosting Provider”, “Wholesale Childrens Clothing”, “Dubai Furnished Apartments”, “Online Gambling Guide”??? Many of the links appear to be for legit but it’s these spammy ones that caught my attention. The W3C is effectively selling PR 9 linkbacks from a highly respected site for $1000 apeice.

Just disgusting. And sad. You’d think that google would recognize that as a spam page with all those shady links on it. Maybe it does, I don’t know.

(This was pointed out to me by this post about digg spamming which really has nothing else to do with this post)

Posted in Marketing/SEO/Monetization, Web Culture | 4 Comments »

Nov 29 2006 at 4:03pm

Digg has turned to total crap

But you knew that already, right? Admittedly, it was a bit crap to begin with, at least since I’ve been using it. I did find some useful articles in there, and I had fun digging things up and down (especially comments!). It’s a bit of an addictive medium, but that only works when there’s good content coming up.

I have been subscribed to the digg design and tech news feeds for a couple of months now. I liked how the design section featured all types of design. It’s interesting to see what’s being done with cars, interiors, and industrial design. I think all design fields could learn a lot from each other.