Matt Mauldin

I took these pictures on by Blackberry while driving from DFW to East Texas.  This was during 2008 when gas prices were over the top, and diesel was even worse.

And the closeup:

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Here’s another example of one of the big guys getting new marketing trends wrong.

This went down at the at the  when a Papa John’s exec, started griping about their iPhone application and how they were really disappointed in the results.  It’s interesting that Jim pointed out that smartphones account for nearly all their traffic, and the iPhone alone about half.

Wait a minute, did you say “smartphones” were half the traffic from your iPhone app?  Yes. He did.

This guy is Jim McDonnell, the marketing manager, emerging channels, for Papa John’s, didn’t even recognize the difference between his mobile-ready site (mobile.papajohns.com) and an iPhone application!  And he said all of this at a OMMA Mobile conference!

Even better, he was quickly shown up by one of the other conference attendees who specializes in developing mobile apps. Lilly Gold, founder of New York-based Intuwin, quickly listed potential enhancements to their mobile marketing, such as delivering coupons, information on specials, payment systems and options for ordering “favorites.”

Papa John’s has also reported their “iPhone app” (a.k.a. their mobile site) has generated 1 million in sales. That ain’t no soggy dough!

Two lessons to learn here:

1. When you see some returns on a new marketing channel, especially one in a growing market like mobile, and with only ah half-assed effort like this one, then you should dig deeper.  You’ll probably find that you are sitting on a great opportunity.  Papa Johns could really take mobile pizza ordering to the next level, and I think it would be a real hit, but they would have to take a few risks to get there.  Hey Jim, read this post about learning to take risks.  Hopefully I can place an order soon on my Blackberry.
2. Don’t start griping until you have exhausted your options.  Seriously, they put out a mobile site, ran a few mobile banners, and the say it’s a dud.  I doubt that they put much effort into any of it. Guys, always test!  Test new strategy, new technology, new traffic channels, new ways to communicate with your customers.  Lilly Gold probably made this company many more millions with just her few suggestions noted above – if Papa John’s takes her advice. (Oh, and your options don’t run out that fast, so don’t get impatient)

Check ya later.

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This is the “Jon” from TLC’s “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ hit reality show of eight kids (twins and sextuplets) and their parents, Jon and Kate.

Anytime you throw eight kids together you are bound to get some funny stuff, and Jon’s a pretty normal guy. But the real drama of the entire show comes from Kate.

My wife and I used to watch it while I worked on the laptop in the evenings.  In almost every show, we would look at each other in disbelief at the crap Jon put up with.

Kate does nothing but whine, gripe, yell, freak out, and make demands on the entire family.  She’s the hardest on her husband, Jon.  I mean for any other husband to take the kind of crap she dishes out, he would have to be jobless, talentless, hopeless, worthless, and most of all – junkless.

So let me set this up:

• Jon Gosselin was caught drunk, sneaking out the back door of a bar and getting into a car with a woman – not his wife, by the way.  The incident, apparently happened on April 18th, was all over the news today.
• After US Magazine broke the story, Jon issued a statement saying he didn’t cheat, saying “family is the most important thing in my life.”
• This isn’t the first time Jon has been seen in bars getting drunk and hanging out with other girls. He did the same thing in February.
• Even other women ask WTF about Kate’s motives and antics.
• The show has taken a turn from a cute depiction of a real-life family to a full-on product placement playground and a documentary of where the family can go on TLC’s dime.
• There are so many signs that Jon and Kate are not happy together.
• Finally, Kate is a complete hooker.

Kate vs. Jody

One of the most hilarious developments regarding the show has been Kate’s disagreement with her sister-in-law, Jody, who was one of the nicest people to ever be on that show.  Basically, Kate is a horrible person who gets everything she wants from TLC, the product crew, and everyone else involved or she goes crazy, even to the point of cutting family members out of their life.

Jody was a huge help to Kate for a while, as documented on the show.  She always had a great attitude even when the kids were dumped off at her house all at once.  But when TLC offered Jody some money because of her constant reappearance on  the show, Kate freaked and refused to share any money, even with family.

To top if off, Kate responded to some of this story on SixGosselins.com, their website, in a letter to her fans:

“…there are jealous bystanders, family included, who for whatever reason insist upon telling hurtful untruths. We will continue to love these family members. We will not retaliate. We will leave it alone out of respect for them. But as a reminder, nothing that you read on the internet or in print is true unless it is approved by us.”   – Kate’s Letter

I added the emphasis at the end to point it out. Kate is saying “Hey everyone else is telling lies. Don’t believe anyone but me. I’m the one that gets all the money and I’m the only one that can say anything.”  Hooker.

SixGosselins.com Sucks

Let’s take this one step further.  Not only does Kate get everything she wants from TLC, but they obviously hired some overpaid braindead designer who knows nothing about web design for the family’s site at SixGosselins.com.  Seriously, the flash header that reloads on every page refresh is almost as annoying as Kate’s unending whining.

Holy crap! Their Q&A page has Google Adsense on it!

Their playlist is pushing ringtones!

They have a “page under construction”

…

…

Sorry, I had to close the browser.  That’s the worst site ever.

Conclusion

I could keep going on all night, but this has to end.  Basically Kate needs to be dropped (in several senses of the word).  No wonder Jon goes out to get drunk and hang out with other women – he doesn’t get treated like crap.

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Just over a month ago, I talked about the plugins I use on this site. Since then, I’ve refined the design a little bit and added three new plugins.

Breadcrumb NavXT – Good navigation is incredibly important for a good user experience on any website, especially a blog, and breadcrumbs are one way to improve navigation.  It helps show your visitors see where they are, where they can go, and helps them understand the heirarcht and organization of your site.  This plugin is great for automatically showing a breadcrumb trail on your blog.

All you need to do is install the plugin and copy a simple piece of code into one of the files on your template. It got a great admin to control how the breadcrumb is displayed on your category pages, tag pags, and archive pages.

For this blog design, my index page has a large block above the posts that pushes the content further down the page, so I though it was important that the breadcrumbs NOT show on the home page.  All I did was add an if statement in my main page like this:

<?php if (!( is_home() )) {
breadcrumb code here
} ?>

So my breadcrumbs to be loaded on any page except my home page.  Yep, this little code is more useful than a pocket on a shirt.

Really Simple CAPTCHA – This plugin creates CAPTCHA fields for some added spam protection on your forms.  The contact form I use automatically looks for this plugin and uses it to create the CAPTCHA field.  You can see it in action on my contact page.

ZD YouTube FLV Player -  This is a really simple plugin to use if you want to embedd .flv files or YouTube videos in your posts.  To post any of those, it gives you simple instructions to insert your video:

'ZD YouTube FLV Player' requires either a youtube video URL or FLV URL.

Usage: [zdvideo]url[/zdvideo]

By using this plugin, your video is wrapped in a simple media player.  But the real kicker here is that YouTube videos don’t show the stupid ads or follow-up videos at the end, so only the video you want to show is displayed to your readers.

The ZD Player is great for a rickroll, not that I’d ever do that to you.

Check ya later.

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A couple of months ago I told you how bad DirecTV sucks.  Well, they still suck and here’s more proof.

DirecTV’s Lame Attempts to Keep a Customer

So after I canceled my account, they called back about 7 times that first week offering me some lame deal – half off the basic price for TV service for 12 months.  The catch was I would still have to pay all the extra fees and crap they charged me which pissed me off in the first place.

Every time they called, I told them I would accept no less than this deal:

• I would pay 1/2 off their basic service
• Free upgrade to their best service
• Free HD service (normally an extra $10.month)
• Free additional boxes (normally an additional $5/month)
• Free movie channels (an additional $7-$21/month)
• They would guarantee this price to me for two years, not one, because I had been a customer of theirs for two years up to this point
• And to top it off, I told them they would have to refund the $300 I paid them for the HD box the “leased” to me.

From what I understand, DirecTV has been losing customers left and right, but they would still be insane to agree to my terms.  On each call, they tried to tell me that their original offer was a great deal. “No.” They may could wave one of the additional box fees. “No.” They didn’t have the authority to make that decision. “The stop wasting my time.”

My favorite was the last guy who, after I refused to negotiate, said “Unfortunately we won’t be able to keep you as a customer”

I responded, “That’s only unfortunate for you.”

I think I finally annoyed them enough because I haven’t had a call from them in almost two months.

DirecTV’s Incompetance … Again

So after they finally canceled my account and returned my receiver boxes, I had $8.43 in service fees that needed to be paid because I canceled 1-2 days into the new billing cycle.  I actually received a bill with this amount on it.  I’m a firm believer in paying what you own (even if the company completely screws you over and sucks in all other possible ways) so I called in and paid with my card to get it over and done with.

But this past month, I saw a charge to my bank account for $13.78, and then three days later I received another bill from DirecTV detailing those charges, but it was already paid.  What?

After reviewing this bill, I found that it was for three movies we rented in 2008.  That’s crap because the charge is supposed to be on the monthly bill that you rent the movie in.  And they went ahead and charged my card for it without telling me?  So I called to deal with these jokers one more time.

The idiot from DirecTV told me that for some reason they were unable to apply the charges on the bill because our receiver would not communicate with DirecTV at the time we rented the movies.  Instead, they had to manyally download the charges from the account card in my receiver after I returned the boxes.  When I asked why, he said because we probably didn’t have a phone line plugged into the back of the receiver.

Wait a minute, you can’t rent a movie without a phone line plugged into the back of the receiver!  Of course we had a phone line plugged in, because the fact that we rented movies proves it.

It wasn’t my fault their crap didn’t work – and here’s another example of them screwing up and asking me to pay for it.  No intelligible response from this genius, so I told him he needed to refund the amount.

He refused.

Some of you may say that I should have paid it because I rented the movies.  Well,

• It would already be paid if DirecTV’s crap worked anywhere near the way they say it does.
• I would have paid it if they called and told me about the charge first (call, email, send the bill first).
• I would have paid it if they hadn’t already sent me a “final bill” for $8.43 the previous month.

But to charge my card, without authorization, after I am no longer a customer, for something that should have been paid the previous year is ridiculous.

Credit Card Dispute to the Rescue

So I called up my bank, and for the first time ever I disputed a credit card charge.  It was for only $13.78, but I did it more out of principle than the money.  DirecTV, you just don’t pull that crap with your customers.  Oh, you DO pull that crap, but you shouldn’t.

DirecTV, go suck a fart.

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