Q1 - Cookies: The Oreo cookie is an American favorite, whether drenched in milk chocolate, loaded with extra creamy filling or dipped in a glass of milk. Now the Oreo is headed overseas to Britain where it's manufacturer, Nabisco, hopes to please the British palate (can you say "Oreos and Tea"). In any event, what is your favorite type and/or brand of cookie?
Q2 - Music: Helping to alleviate pain and stress in premature babies could be as simple as offering them a few verses of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" -- at least that's what a new study conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children shows... that music could help premature babies get out of intensive care units sooner. What role or impact if any does music play in your life or in the life of your friends and family?
Q3 - You: What do you think is the biggest misconception about you?
Q4 - Spending Your Own Money: Jared Polis, a 30-something Internet generation entrepreneur--who together with his parents founded and then sold an online greeting card website (bluemountainarts.com) for $780 million back in 1998--is now running for a seat in the United States Congress (2nd Congressional District--Colorado). According to recent reports, Polis, who legally changed his last name in the late-90s from Schutz to Polis, is said to have already self-funded his campaign to the tune of nearly $3.7 Million, which according to the Boulder Daily Camera is three times as much money as he has raised from contributors, and dramatically more than any of his opponents have been able to raise or contribute themselves to their own campaigns. Do you think it's okay for people to self-fund their race for public office in such large amounts--like Jared Polis and other wealthy American politicians have done over the years--or, should limits be placed on the amount of money people are allowed to pour into their own campaigns?
Shopping cart abandonment--an important metric to online retailers--is increasing, according to eMarketer.com (citing recently released data from MarketLive). Savvy shoppers have always searched for bargains online and compared prices before completing purchases, and in this economy we're bound to see of the same, which leads to more and more online shoppers abandoning shopping carts.
eMarketer's article reminded me of an article I wrote last year while on assignment at Doba. For anyone interested...
Curb Shopping Cart Abandonment
By Mikal E. Belicove, [former] Director - Community & Education, Doba
In traditional retailing, customers rarely abandon their shopping carts. They may take one or two items out at the last minute, but you don't see many full shopping carts just sitting in the aisles. Online, retailers, on the other hand, estimate that 30 to 35 percent of shoppers leave their shopping carts behind.
A well-designed checkout process can reduce these abandonment rates significantly. This article offers some suggestions.
Streamline the checkout process
Online shoppers want instant gratification, so make the ordering process as smooth as possible:
Use a consistent design. Don't throw something totally new at your customers--keep the design and functionality of the checkout process consistent with the rest of your site.
Don't require registration. Make registration optional.
Eliminate unnecessary steps and clearly indicate at each step where the customer is in the ordering process. People like to know when the end is in sight.
Don't force shoppers to enter their address twice, such as a billing and a shipping address, if those addresses are the same.
To see a well-designed checkout process in action, visit Amazon.com or LL Bean. At Amazon.com, a first-time buyer can order an item without registering in about eight simple steps.
Eliminate surprises
Nothing sends a shopper running for the exits faster than a nasty surprise late in the checkout process. From beginning to end, keep the shopper well-informed:
Post the estimated shipping charge in your listing or on the product description page.
Display the estimated delivery time in your listing or on the product description page. Amazon.com does an excellent job of this. When a product is in-stock, a message appears saying something like, "Get it by February 12, 2007 if you order now."
Display a running total of the order, including shipping charges at every step in the checkout process.
Highlight any inventory issues--for example, in-stock or out-of-stock.
Highlight any ordering deadlines for holidays.
Add any customer satisfaction guarantee you offer prominently on each page of the ordering process.
Offer multiple payment options
Not everyone has a PayPal account. To appeal to the greatest number of shoppers, offer multiple payment options:
PayPal
Visa, MasterCard, and American Express
Checks and money orders
Gift certificates
Nearly every payment option available is vulnerable to some sort of fraud. To reduce your vulnerability to fraud, protect yourself. Check out, "Fraud Protection: Avoiding Sham Orders and Unscrupulous Customers." [Note: site registration may be required to read this article.]
Advertise your webstore's security
Shoppers are hyper-aware of identity theft and online fraud, so they're likely to shy away from any store they don't completely trust. Throughout your site and especially in the checkout process, advertise any security measures you have in place, such as a secure server. If your business is a member of the Better Business Bureau or has a secure site certification, display the fact prominently. For more suggestions on how to build customer trust in your site, refer to the series, "Competing on Trust." [Note: site registration may be required to read this article.]
Offer multiple ship-to options
If your store carries products commonly purchased as gifts, implement a shopping cart feature that enables the shopper to ship selected items from the shopping cart to different recipients with a single payment. Clearly describe how any gift receipts will be handled.
Enable customers to remove items from the shopping cart
When shoppers can't easily remove an item from their shopping cart, they feel trapped. Instead of canceling the order and starting over, they may simply leave. During each step in the ordering process, allow customers to remove items from the shopping cart or change quantities.
When shoppers add products to their cart, they're very close to actually purchasing those products. Don't blow the sale by creating a confusing and convoluted checkout process. Do everything you can to earn customer trust and make the checkout process as hassle-free as possible.
About the Author:
Mikal E. Belicove is an expert at building and supporting online communities of practice and Business-to-Business-related social networks. As Doba's {former] Director of Community & Education, Mikal oversees the company's efforts to educate retail business owners and connect customers with one another. Mikal is the author of 2007 Edition of the Internet Yellow Pages (Que Publishing/ Pearson, 10/06), co-authored with Joe Kraynak.
Note: You are invited to reprint this article in your own newsletter or on your blog or website, provided that all content--including this signature--is included and remains unchanged.
Latest Congressional Approval Ratings Suggest You Should Not Vote a Member of Congress into The White House
According to the latest Congressional Approval Ratings (secured May 8-11, 2008, by Gallup), the U.S. Congress' approval rating is now tied for the lowest mark ever in Gallup's history of seeking such information. When asked, "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job?" only 18% of Americans indicated they approved.
With these numbers in mind, why would voters choose to elect a sitting member of Congress as President? Seriously, if you ran a restaurant and went in search of a new general manager to replace the one you currently have (who by the way has an approval rating of his own of that is the lowest in the history of your entire restaurant chain), and I told you that all of your finalists were from the same restaurant--a restaurant that less than 20% of the time satisfied its customers--wouldn't you restart your search?
And for those of you, who think the low approval rating is synonymous with a Democratic Party-controlled Congress, think again. Republican voters and Democrat voters alike are equally dismayed by Congress' performance.
(Note: If your eyes are as bad as mine, the above chart shows 20% of Republicans approve, versus 16% of Democrats -- average two and that's where Gallup gets its 18% overall approval rating.)
What's the point in mentioning all of this? It's simple... a friend once told me that Benjamin Franklin coined the popular definition of insanity when said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I ask you... what is not insane about electing a member of Congress to the highest office in the land... a member of Congress, mind you, who has already been elected to serve a term in Congress that they will vacate to fulfill the duties of the office of the President... a member of Congress who right now--at this very moment (and for the last 12 months or so)--has not being doing the very job they were elected to do by the voters in their district because they have instead chosen to vie for the Commander-in-Chief's job instead.
President George W. Bush's legacy -- presented by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann -- in 12 minutes and eight seconds. If you have 12:08, sit back and have a look:
Sadly, I have to agree and couldn't have said it better myself.
For anyone who wants to follow along word-for-word, here's the entire transcript (shoutout to Crooks & Liars for capturing this in its entirety):
Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on two topics a lot of us had foolishly thought, had naively hoped, we would not again have to address… and a third topic nobody thought a president would ever seriously mention in public unless perhaps he’d just been hit in the head with something and was not in full possession of his faculties — how he expressed his “empathy” to the families of the dead in Iraq — by giving up golf.
The President has resorted anew to the sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation of an administration — of a public life — dedicated to realizing the lowest of our expectations.
And he has now applied these poisons to the 2008 presidential election, on behalf of the party at whose center he and Mr. McCain lurk.
Mr. Bush has predicted that the election of a Democratic president could, “eventually lead to another attack on the United States.”
This ludicrous, infuriating, holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong statement came yesterday during an interview with Politico-dot-com and on-line users of Yahoo.
The question was phrased as follows: “If we were to pull out of Iraq next year, what’s the worst that could happen, what’s the doomsday scenario?”
The President replied: “Doomsday scenario, of course, is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States.
The biggest issue we face is — it’s bigger than Iraq — it’s this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives.”
Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created, includes ‘cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives’?’
They are those in, or formerly in, your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.
Through your haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives?
‘This ideological struggle,’ Mr. Bush, is taking place within this country.
It is a struggle between Americans who cherish freedom — ours and everybody else’s — and Americans like you, sir, to whom freedom is just a brand name, just like “Patriot Act” is a brand name or “Protect America” is a brand name.
But wait, there’s more.
You also said “Iraq is the place where al Qaeda and other extremists have made their stand — and they will be defeated.”
They made no “stand” in Iraq, sir. You allowed them to assemble there!
As certainly as if that were the plan, the borders were left wide open by your government’s farcical post-invasion strategy of ‘they’ll greet us as liberators.’
And as certainly as if that were the plan, the inspiration for another generation of terrorists in another country was provided by your government’s farcical post-invasion strategy of letting the societal infra-structure of Iraq dissolve, to be replaced by an American Vice-Royalty enforced by merciless mercenaries who shoot unarmed Iraqis and then evade prosecution in any country, by hiding behind your skirts, sir.
Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush!
It was a Yahoo user who brought up the second topic upon whose introduction Mr. Bush should have passed, or punted, or gotten up and left the room claiming he heard Dick Cheney calling him.
“Do you feel,” asked an ordinary American, “that you were mis-led on Iraq?”
“I feel like — I felt like, there were weapons of mass destruction. You know, “mislead” is a strong word, it almost connotes some kind of intentional — I don’t think so, I think there was a — not only our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was.”
Flawed.
You, Mr. Bush, and your tragically know-it-all minions, threw out every piece of intelligence that suggested there were no such weapons.
You, Mr. Bush, threw out every person who suggested that the sober, contradictory, reality-based intelligence needed to be listened to, fast.
You, Mr. Bush, are responsible for how “intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment.”
You and the sycophants you dredged up and put behind the most important steering wheel in the world propagated palpable nonsense and shoved it down the throat of every intelligence community across the world and punished anybody who didn’t agree it was really chicken salad.
And you, Mr. Bush, threw under the bus all of the subsequent critics who bravely stepped forward later to point out just how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy you had embraced, and adopted as this country’s policy — in lieu of, say, common sense.
The fiasco of pre-war intelligence, sir, is your fiasco.
You should build a great statue of yourself turning a deaf ear to the warnings of realists, while you are shown embracing the three-card monte dealers like Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
That would be a far more fitting tribute to your legacy, Mr. Bush, than this presidential library you are constructing as a giant fable about your presidency, an edifice you might as claim was built from Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction because there will be just as many of those inside your presidential library as there were inside Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Of course if there is one over-riding theme to this president’s administration it is the utter, always-failing, inability to know when to quit when it is behind.
And so Mr. Bush answered yet another question about this layered, nuanced, wheels-within-wheels garbage heap that constituted his excuse for war.
“And so you feel that you didn’t have all the information you should have or the right spin on that information?”
“No, no,” replied the President. “I was told by people, that they had weapons of mass destruction…”
People?
What people?
The insane informant “Curveball?”
The Iraqi snake-oil salesman Ahmed Chalabi?
The American snake-oil salesman Dick Cheney?
“I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction, as were members of Congress, who voted for the resolution to get rid of Saddam Hussein. And of course, the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes.”
Mr. Bush — you destroyed the evidence that contradicted the resolution you jammed down the Congress’s throat, the way you jammed it down the nation’s throat.
When required by law to verify that your evidence was accurate, you simply re-submitted it, with phrases amounting to “See, I done proved it,” virtually written in the margins in crayon.
You defied patriotic Americans to say “The Emperor has no clothes” — only with the stakes (as you and the mental dwarves in your employ put it) being a “mushroom cloud over an American city.”
And as a final crash of self-indulgent nonsense, when the incontrovertible truth of your panoramic and murderous deceit has even begun to cost your political party seemingly perpetual congressional seats in places like North Carolina and — last night — Mississippi, you can actually say with a straight face, sir, that for members of Congress “the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes” - while you greet the political heat and try to run and hide from your presidency — and your legacy — 4,000 of the Americans you were supposed to protect, dead in Iraq, with your only feeble, pathetic answer being, “I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction.”
Then came Mr. Bush’s final blow to our nation’s solar plexus, his last re-opening of our common wounds, his last remark that makes the rest of us question not merely his leadership or his judgment but his very suitably to remain in office.
“Mr. President,” he was asked, “you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?
“Yes,” began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans — on our history.
“It really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died, to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”
Golf, sir?
Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq?
Do you think these families, Mr. Bush — their lives blighted forever — care about you playing golf?
Do you think, sir, they care about you?
You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed.
Sir, to show your solidarity with them - you gave up golf?
Sir, to show your solidarity with them — you didn’t give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war.
Sir, to show your solidarity with them — you didn’t even give up talking about Iraq — a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?
Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn’t give up your presidency?
In your own words — “solidarity as best as I can” — is to stop a game? That is the “best” you can?
4,000 Americans give up their lives and your sacrifice was to give up golf!
Golf.
Not “gulf” — golf.
And still it gets worse.
Because it proves that the President’s unendurable sacrifice, his unbearable pain, the suspension of getting to hit a stick with a ball, was not even his own damned idea.
“Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?”
“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life. And I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it’s just not worth it any more to do.”
Your one, tone-deaf, arrogant, pathetic, embarrassing gesture, and you didn’t even think of it yourself?
The great Bushian sacrifice — an Army private loses a leg, a Marine loses half his skull, four thousand of their brothers and sisters lose their lives, you lose golf… and they have to pull you off the golf course to get you to just do that?
If it’s even true…
Apart from your medical files, which dutifully record your torn calf muscle and the knee pain which forced you to give up running at the same time — coincidence, no doubt — the bombing in Baghdad which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello of the U-N… and interrupted your round of golf, was on August 19th, 2003.
Yet there is an Associated Press account of you playing golf as late as Columbus Day of that year — October 13th — nearly two months later.
Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you, six-and-a-half years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people but the war in Iraq is Not. About. You.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about what your addled brain has produced in the way of paranoid delusions of risks that do not exist, ready to be activated if some Democrat, and not your twin Mr. McCain succeeds you.
The war in Iraq — your war, Mr. Bush — is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths — for nothing.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game!
And, sir, if you have any hopes that next January 20th will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heart-felt Thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice:
When somebody asks you, sir, about Democrats who must now pull this country back from the abyss you have placed us at…
When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation…
When somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead…
Q1 - Breakfast: If you could have had anything other than what you ate for breakfast this morning, what would you have ordered up?
Q2 - Opinions: A friend of mine recently decided to try online dating, and one site asked the following question: "Imagine that your friends had to choose the best four descriptions of you from the items listed below. Click next to the four items that they would be most likely to pick." My guess is that hardly anyone ever asks his or her friends to supply the answer. If you are/were single, would you [ask a friend to supply the answer]?
Q3 - Trading In: According to a recent CNN.com poll, approximately 50% of Americans say they are seriously thinking of trading in one or more of their cars for a vehicle offering better fuel economy. How about you?
Q4 - Possessions: If you could own one item that a friend of yours currently owns, what possession of his or hers would you make yours?
As many people may already know, I serve on the Advisory Board of the Cottonwood Institute--a Colorado-based nonprofit that inspires students to become active community leaders and environmental stewards through an exciting blend of adventure, wilderness survival, and environmental service.
The following video (2:51 in length) was produced entirely by Cottonwood Institute students.
Q1 - Junior: The most common name suffixes are "senior" (Sr.) and "junior" (Jr.), and are far more frequently applied to men than to women. What do you think it says about a person (or a couple) who chooses to name a child after himself or herself?
Q2- Parking Meters: In the state of California, automobile drivers with handicap parking permits are allowed to park anywhere except in private lots and in designated no-parking zones. In addition, drivers with handicap permits do not have to put anything into that device used to collect money in exchange for the right to park a vehicle in a particular place for a limited amount of time. In other words, people with handicap permits get to park for free, even in metered spots. How do you feel about this?
Q3 - Language: How do you feel when you're surrounded by people, all of whom speak a language you do not understand (e.g., in a nail salon, a restaurant, beauty supply store, someone's home, etc.), and there's no one there to translate?
Q4 - Seatbelt: Edward J. Hock invented the seatbelt first used by the Ford Motor Company as standard equipment, while he was on active duty with the military as a flight instructor. In 1955 the U.S. Navy accepted his idea, and Hock was awarded $20.50 for his invention. The original schematic and blueprints shows he utilized scrap parachute strapping to implement his idea. He was never awarded anything other than the $20.50, a letter of recognition, a picture with military brass, and a newspaper article to his credit. When you're driving a car, do you start the car first and then fasten your seatbelt or do you do it other way around?
Random Thoughts - Barack Obama on The Role of the United States
CNN is reporting that Presidential contender Barack Obama told CNN's Wolf Blitzer (in an interview scheduled to air later today on "The Situation Room") that the most important thing he could do as President of the United States would be to "deal with Iraq and the threat of al Qaeda in Afghanistan while improving our influence around the world."
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Obama running for the Democratic nomination? Sure sounds like a Republican to me.
From CNN:
Obama said he thinks the United States' influence around the world has been diminishing.
Really. Ya think?
"The world wants to see the United States lead. They've been disappointed and disillusioned over the last seven, eight years." ~ Barack Obama
"I think there is still a sense everywhere I go that if the United States regains its sense of who it is and our values and our ideals, that we will continue to set the tone for a more peaceful and prosperous world." ~ Barack Obama
Did he just say "the world wants to see the United States lead?" Please, not in his wildest dreams does the rest of the world want the U.S. to lead. I have friends living all over the globe--from Germany to Australia and from India to Ireland--and from everything I have heard for the last 25 years, the rest of the world just wants to be left alone, isn't looking for a hero, and cannot stand the role the United States' plays in foreign affairs, environmental stewardship, and capital markets.
The only countries with a need for the United States to lead are those overrun by warlords, absolute dictatorships, and natural disasters, and even then, it's not the countries themselves that often want our help... instead, it's the citizenry on the ground/in country that need us to lead. The people of the Sudan, for instance, readily come to mind, as do the famished and malnourished in Chad, Ethiopia, Bolivia, the occupied Palestinian territories, and elsewhere.
More from Obama (again, from CNN):
Americans want to succeed, he said, "but we're going to have to make some investments and ensure that the dynamism and the innovation of the American people is released."
"It's very hard for us to do that when we're spending close to $200 billion a year in other countries, rebuilding those countries instead of focusing on making ourselves strong," he said.
Not that I'm abdicating an entirely black or white approach to political leadership, but unless CNN just did a really awful job of editing Obama's interview, it sure sounds like the candidate is trying to be all things to all people. From that latest quote, he sounds like a Democrat.
When asked to respond to John McCain's supporters who have said Obama is not ready to be commander in chief, Obama said he thinks what people are looking for is "good judgment."
"I think I've consistently displayed the kind of judgment that the American people are looking for in the next president." ~ Barack Obama
Really? Seriously? Do you call ignoring your responsibilities as an elected member of the U.S. Senate just so you can run for higher office "good judgment"? I certainly do not, and to everyone else out that thinks there's noting wrong with an elected official running for another office other than their own while still in office, it's time to get your head out of the sand and get a good whiff of the political halitosis that's mucking up the very air we breath. These people will say anything to get elected, including the absurd, like the rest of the world wants the United States to lead.
Aside from the people I already mentioned, the only other people who want to see the United States position as a world power full restored are those U.S. citizens who live in the past and hold onto the notion that we as a people are somehow better than everyone else manning the globe. It's time those people and our political leaders face facts. The world's a different place today than it was five, 10, 15 and 25 years ago, and it's going to be different tomorrow than it was today. Living in the past--or making public statements to appeal to those who do--is foolish.
Q1 - You Choose: History starts now... what kind of world do you want?
Q2 - Counting: Do you count the money you receive from ATM/cash machines or do you trust that the machine provided the correct amount?
Q3 - Dying to See: What entertainer--dead or alive--would you give your first born or left arm to see in person (not literally but you know what I mean)?
Q4 - Read Me a Story: For some weary travelers, the perfect antidote to a sleepless night might be a warm glass of milk or, perhaps, a bedtime story. Now guests at London's Andaz Hotel can order just that... a personal reader to come to their room for an hour and read them a story. There's even a menu of books to choose from. If this service were offered by the next hotel you visited, would you take advantage of it?
Last night, against my better judgment, I ate a tortilla-wrapped sandwich from KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) that I believe is the cause my swollen left eye (above) and smaller hives near my right wrist and on the bottom of my left foot. I took a look at KFC's website, and they do a fairly decent job of providing nutrition information and safety warnings for their menu items. From the site, I'm able to see the ingredients that went into preparing my sandwich (it's called the Toaster Wrap with Tender Roast Chicken): lettuce blend, tomatoes, chicken, wheat, MSG, gluten, soybeans, and something called pepper mayo.
Since people in my family have similar reactions to pepper and MSG, I'm going to go with the combination of both as the cause of my reaction, but since I hardly ever have such a reaction to either ingredient, I'm wondering if it could have been something else. For example, is it possible that KFC uses an over-the-top amount of MSG or perhaps uses Splenda in preparing the Ranch Dressing that was slobbered all over my sandwich/wrap?
Has anyone else experienced similar allergic reactions or food intolerance with KFC products?
