oos: Kodak EasyShare CD82 12MP 3x Optical/5x Digital Zoom HD Camera (Blue)

ShopSafe® is a free credit card fraud protection service that allows you to create a temporary card number each time you make an online purchase. This number links directly to your real credit card account number but keeps your card number completely private and protected. The ShopSafe number is used just like any other credit card—a merchant never knows it’s not your real credit card.

via Shop Safe | Credit Card Fraud Protection with Bank of America.

ShopSafe is a great concept. I think it is time to take something like this and make it an iPhone app. Or actually put in on a plastic credit card that changes numbers every 60 seconds. You can set the max amount so even if your details get stolen, the credit is useless.

Its amazing to see celebrities like Anne Hathaway have hundreds of thousands of dollars charged on their credit card.

Verify delivery with Delivery Confirmation. Our low cost Delivery Confirmation service gives you the date, ZIP Code™ and time your article was delivered. If delivery was attempted you will get the date and time of attempted delivery. You can easily access this information with our Track & Confirm tool.

via USPS – Delivery Confirmation.

The term “tracking” should be used for companies like UPS, FedEx, and DHL that actually offer tracking services. USPS offers tracking on Express Mail packages. It is this incorrect intermingling of terminology by USPS counter clerks and now eBay that causes a great deal of customer service issue for merchants. If a customer asks me why their “tracking number” does not work, it is because USPS delivery confirmation is not the same as tracking. ITS NOT TRACKING, DON’T CALL IT THAT!

Delivery confirmation (or confirmation of delivery) is not a type of tracking. If it was, customer service inquiries would be non-existent. My point is that eBay is not acknowledging this on a massive scale just creates more work for sellers. As for Item Not Received (Paypal claim) you can always provide delivery confirmation or tracking if a buyer puts in a Paypal claim. Its not necessary beforehand although it does help speed up the claims process.

Buyer peace of mind goes beyond receiving a notice that a package was shipped. Peace of mind also involves knowing exactly when you will receive the package and where the package currently is. That is what tracking by UPS or FedEx provides. Neither of that is provided by USPS Delivery Confirmation. It is very important to educate buyers and have them understand the service level difference between USPS and non-USPS shipping methods.

No one is saying to stop USPS. USPS provides a good value for standard post, media mail, first class mail, and no surcharge for rural locations. Since eBay is copying Amazon, you might as well copy their boilerplate on delivery times as wel…l. Systemic issues like service level differences between shipping carriers need to be clearly communicated by eBay. Sellers can augment, but since it affects the entire site, its really eBay’s job, not the seller. To say to stop using a specific carrier is not really an option when you have customers with PO Box, APO/FPO, and international customers that want value.

These are examples of how tracking differs from delivery confirmation. Tracking offers an estimate of day-definite delivery and sometimes time if you pay for Overnight or 2nd Day service. For FedEx, one would look under the “Estimated delivery” section for a delivery date. You can see based on a tracking link here:
http://fedex.com/Tracking?tracknumbers=291438514952377

For UPS see under “Scheduled Delivery Date”. As you can see with the tracking number below, there was the original estimated delivery date and the revised delivery date:

http://wwwapps.ups.com/etracking/tracking.cgi?tracknum=1Z7653900398290046

Do buyers care about service level differences?

They do. I get questions all the time about if I pay for XXX shipping method, will I get it by XXX date? The only accurate estimated delivery times you can provide is for UPS and FedEx. USPS is a failure since their minimum and maximum delivery times for packages vary so greatly. There are too many outliers to provide the balance for an accurate estimated delivery time. Be too aggressive and you have angry customers. Be too lax and you lose sales to other sellers. Its a lose-lose to provide estimates on USPS.

If you provide to the buyer the consequences of choosing between USPS and UPS/FedEx, it manages buyer expectation. By lumping delivery confirmation into tracking, you are raising expectations without being able to deliver on that expectation.

“Future price increases can be greatly alleviated if the Postal Service is given the tools necessary to be a more flexible, market-oriented company,” Robinson said.

Other highlights from the price filing include:

* First-Class Mail stamps would increase to 46 cents. A new Forever Stamp image will be available in October.

* First-Class Mail postcard prices would increase 2 cents to 30 cents.

* Periodicals would receive an 8 percent increase.

* Recommended increase for catalogs is 5.1 percent.

* Standard Mail parcels would increase about 23 percent.

via USPS News Release: Incentives Included in Price Filing.

The post office has to figure out a way to keep their pension under control. Definitely pay into it every day fully, but not more than they need to each year.

A 15-year-old girl died Tuesday of a suspected drug overdose after attending a rave over the weekend at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that had a minimum age requirement of 16.

via Girl, 15, dies after attending Electric Daisy Carnival rave in LA – latimes.com.

This tragedy could have been prevented with people looking out for each other.

You’d be hard pressed to find research that directly shows that ecstasy (MDMA) causes death in individuals. It sounds like from the article that it was overheating (lots of dancing and not enough cooling down via hydration and rest) and possibly her hitting her head on the floor depending onhow she fell and if she hit her head on concrete.

No doubt people will villify the event, but if you compare 185,000 attendees against the number of emergencies and (omg death), it is a very small number (less than 1%). This is a very unfortunate result, but a death could have been prevented. I wish there were safety monitors (not cops) that make sure all event goers are doing well. Have drug testing booths that will test pills for free. Free bottled water easily accessible. Lots of cool ventilation at the event.

You can severely hamper the visitor experience on various devices by using larger size images when they can easily be converted and made a fraction of their size.

via Reducing images smaller than 8k useful?.

The discussion is mainly focused on network packets, but even before network packets, you must consider disk cluster size. If a disk cluster size is 4kB, you should consider resizing your images your images in multiples of 4kB. This advice is not helpful if your image 1kB to begin with, but if we’re talking 10kB, reducing to 8kB would only require two cluster reads versus three cluster reads for a 10kB.

This is just another consideration when you are considering scalability of your web server.

The study also reported that retailers are finding value in social media marketing, but the ROI for driving online sales remains murky; 28 percent of respondents said social marketing has helped grow their business, but direct sales from social tactics are not widely measured.

via Online Retailers Are Going Mobile, Are Uncertain of Social Media Success.

Its not really clear what mobile retailing means for the small business. I can certainly understand Starbucks leveraging mobile to get customers to the nearest Starbucks when their customer is traveling. But for little oh me? I don’t know. I think it makes sense to test out your web site on your mobile phone and friend’s phone so that all the functions to be able to buy something is not hindered.