How not to do ecommerce

Years ago when I started with ecommerce, email was an acceptable way to do this including sending credit card information (or at least no one knew better). Today, informed consumers know that email is not the right way to do ecommerce.

I'm ordering new toothbrushes for my son (he was given a "Collis-Curve" toothbrush which is quite effective. If you goto the company's web site and want to order, you see 3 ways to order: phone, fax, or email. Yes, email! The form on their page is meant to be printed and faxed. To top off the email, it says to submit half of your credit card number in one message and the other half in another message! I almost fell out of my chair when I read this; setting up a secure ordering form isn't rocket science. Needless to say, I'm not ordering from them.

EeePC

Several weeks ago, I received an ASUS EeePC 901. I've been looking at them for awhile now and finally had an opportunity to play with one. The first thing that happened when I first pulled it out of the box was I cut myself on the box! It was one of those corrugated cardboard boxes that kind of looked like a picket fence. After that unpleasant experience, I was excited to power it up. I was easily able to get it on my WiFi network and began surfing away.

So far, it is performing well. I'm using it to read the morning paper (sometimes) as we now only get our paper on the weekends. It's a bit sluggish at times, but otherwise it works well. I've managed to get a Cisco VPN client working on it as well as a Windows RDC client. I did have some hiccups as I applied all the ASUS updates (I got the Linux version) and effectively ran out of space as it is partitioned with a small system partition. I reinstalled several times just to get things setup the way I wanted; reinstalling was easy because everything is in firmware for reformatting the box.

Are netbooks the wave of the future? They have a ton of potential as more and more services are being moved to the "cloud". Would I like to see Mac based netbook? Absolutely! I wouldn't have said that a few years back as I like having just one machine. However, with most of my work being web based these days, my mind has changed. Will Apple do it? I don't know; I can't see huge profit margins in a very inexpensive device.

New job

As some of you that follow my blog have inferred from my posts, I have a new job. I started with alwaysBEthere, Inc. as Director of Technology. alwaysBEthere was a client of mine for several years, and I was offered a full time job. Switching from a contractor (I was a contractor for over 5 1/2 years) to an employee again wasn't that hard for me. As part of joining the company, I made it a requirement that I be able to work for home, so that part didn't change. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis with a small office here in San Diego. So while I have the option of going into our office, I only do it now and again; I find that I can get much more work done at home without having to commute.

So what do I do? I don't have much of a clue on a day to day basis! I handle all kinds of requests ranging from our internal IT to working on projects that could affects customers. Now that I'm six months into it, I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on part of my job.

What will the next six months bring? I don't know. Do I have any regrets about not being self employed anymore? Not really. I didn't become self-employed out of choice, but out of necessity (the last company I was with didn't have any work for me and frankly, I was bored, so we parted on good terms). I stayed a contractor because I was doing well and didn't think I could find a job with as much flexibility as I had. I like what I'm doing and it presents much different challenges from when I was self-employed. As long as I'm challenged and feel like I'm accomplishing something, I think I'll be happy.

Paperless 1.0 Shipped

Mariner Paperless (the new name for ReceiptWallet) 1.0 shipped last week! I'm quite happy to see ReceiptWallet moving forward. While this 1.0 version of Paperless has mostly cosmetic changes, I'm sure that more changes will be coming soon.

There is so much that can be done, I just didn't have enough time to dedicate to it.

Congratulations, Mariner!