service

TasteBook kicks homemade recipe books up a notch

Kristina Nielsen has a growing collection of recipes, culled from friends, family members, magazines, books, Web sites and the occasional food package label. She keeps some of them in a binder and some loosely shoved in a drawer; some are neatly printed, some hastily scribbled on notes. Others live online in her recipe boxes on various sites. Together they represent the culmination of the 10 years she's spent learning how to cook new dishes. Now, a company called TasteBook wants to take Kristina's recipe collection--and those of amateur chefs like her--into the 21st century.

TasteBook, which plans to … Read more

AT&T to prorate cancellation fees

AT&T wants to be more consumer-friendly.

On Tuesday the company said that it will prorate the $175 early termination fee it charges wireless customers who cancel their contracts based upon how much time they have left in their contract. This means that someone who cancels their service 23 months into a two-year contract will pay considerably less than someone who cancels the service after only six months. (All new customers are able to cancel their service with no penalty for up to 30 days after service begins.)

The company also said it will no longer require customers to … Read more

Napster gets a redesign for the Web

Other than its first reported quarter of positive cash flow, Napster has enjoyed a relatively unremarkable year--at least on the surface. It is now apparent, however, that plenty of tinkering has been going on in the background.

The company on Tuesday announced a fairly significant redesign to its music service and software. The new Napster, version 4, is lighter and a bit simpler--and it definitely appears to take some cues from RealNetworks' Rhapsody.

Of particular note are the launch of a Web-based version of the service, which will enable Mac and Linux users to join in the fun, and the … Read more

Suing, instead of serving customers at Lowes

I read with interest about Lowes (DIY/home improvement store in the US) and its attempts to silence a critical customer with a trademark infringement suit. Give me a break. Yes, Lowes (and everyone else) should protect its trademarks, but when you look into the facts of the case, it's fairly clear that trademarks aren't at issue.

Shoddy customer service is. Perhaps Lowes should care more about what this customer is saying rather than how the customer is saying it. I suspect doing the first item will take care of the second.

From the article:… Read more

Amazon's Mechanical Turk lets you make $$$, sort of

Like me, there are a lot of people who fantasize about making extra money in their spare time. We've all seen the "earn cash while you work from home" flyers taped to the street posts but there's always a hitch, like the need to pay $500 up front to get the materials to start working.

So, when I heard about Amazon's Mechanical Turk business opportunity, my interest was piqued. It's one of Amazon's Web Services in which it offers things like infrastructure, computing power and storage on an outsource basis to start-ups. With … Read more

Open source wins against SaaS

Mi amigo Dave Rosenberg has a thoughtful post on why open source wins against SaaS (Software as a Service). The answer, in a nutshell, is "community." SaaS sets up a one-way relationship with consumers, whereas open source breeds both consumers and producers, and so sustains itself better.

Dave writes:… Read more

'The New York Times' drops online subscription service

The New York Times has finally given up on the Web-subscription model, announcing Monday that the newspaper's online site will no longer charge for any content.

The decision comes two years after The Times began charging $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for Internet access to premium content, such as pieces by columnists and archived stories, according to a story that appeared in the paper.

The Times said that the subscription service met targets, acquiring 227,000 paying subscribers and generating $10 million a year.

Executives at the newspaper seemed to suggest in The Times' story … Read more

Open source offers a way to grow the market...even as companies "roll their own" software

Tim O'Reilly has an interesting piece about hedge funds as software companies. His post is a riff on Paul Kedrosky's analysis showing that Renaissance Capital has a higher ratio of software developers on staff than Oracle:

Oracle (56,000 empl.): 1 - 8 (one developer for every eight employees) Renaissance Technologies (178 empl.): 2 -3 (two developers for every three employees) It's not too much of a stretch to say that hedge funds are the new software companies.… Read more

Amazon wooing start-ups to its Web Services

When I think of Amazon, I think of all the money I spend there buying books and CDs. But the company isn't just focused on selling Harry Potter books online to school kids anymore.

Amazon is trying to lure start-ups to sign up for its Amazon Web Services, which offers storage, virtual server, payment and other services on a pay-per-usage basis. This makes sense for young companies that want to focus on their core business and not have to spend money on expensive hardware.

Five years after it launched its first service, the company is making a name for … Read more