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  • “Apparently, you signed a software services agreement without fully understanding it.”

    - by Dave Ballantyne
    I am not a lawyer. Let me say that again, I am not a lawyer. Todays Dilbert has prompted me to post about my recent experience with SqlServer licensing. I'm in the technical realm and rarely have much to do with purchasing and licensing.  I say “I need” , budget realities will state weather I actually get.  However, I do keep my ear to the ground and due to my community involvement, I know, or at least have an understanding of, some licensing restrictions. Due to a misunderstanding, Microsoft Licensing stated that we needed licenses for our standby servers.  I knew that that was not the case,  and a quick tweet confirmed this. So after composing an email stating exactly what the machines in question were used for ie Log shipped to and used in a disaster recover scenario only,  and posting several Technet articles to back this up, we saved 2 enterprise edition licences, a not inconsiderable cost. However during this discussion, I was made aware of another ‘legalese’ document that could completely override the referenced articles, and anything I knew, or thought i knew, about SqlServer licensing. Personally, I had no knowledge of this.  The “Purchase Use Rights” agreement would appear to be the volume licensing equivalent of the “End User License Agreement” , click throughs we all know and ignore.  Here is a direct quote from Microsoft licensing, when asked for clarification. “Thanks for your email. Just to give some background on the Product Use Rights (PUR), licenses acquired through volume licensing are bound by the most recent PUR at the time of license acquisition. The link for the current PUR and PUR archive is http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/product-licensing.aspx. Further to this, products acquired through boxed product or pre-installed on hardware (OEM) are bound by the End User License Agreement (EULA). The PUR will explain limitations, license requirements and rulings on areas like multiplexing, virtualization, processor licensing, etc. When an article will appear on a Microsoft site or blog describing the licensing of a product, it will be using the PUR as a base. Due to the writing style or language used by the person writing areas of the website or technical blogs, the PUR is what you should use as a rule and not any of the other media. The PUR is updated quarterly and will reference every product available at that time working on the latest version unless otherwise stated. The crux of this is that the PUR is written after extensive discussions between the different branches of Microsoft (legal, technical, etc) and the wording is then approved. This is not always the case for some pages explaining licensing as they are merely intended to advise and not subject to the intense scrutiny as the PUR.” So, exactly what does that mean ? My take :  This is a living document, “updated quarterly” , though presumably this could be done on a whim and a fancy.  It could state , you are only licensed if ,that during install you stand in a corner juggling and that photographic evidence is required. A plainly ridiculous demand but,  what else could it override or new requirements could it state that change your existing understanding of the product or your legal usage of it. As i say, im not a lawyer, but are you checking the PURA prior to purchase ?

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  • Anyone got a nifty credit expiry algorithm?

    - by garethkeenan
    Our website uses a credit system to allow users to purchase inexpensive digital goods (eg. photos). We use credits, rather than asking the user to pay for items individually, because the items are cheap and we are trying to keep our credit-card/PayPal overhead low. Because we aren't a bank, we have to expire credits after a certain amount of time. We expire deposit credits after a year, but other types of credits (bonuses, prizes, refunds) may have a different shelf-life. When a buyer buys an item, we spend the credit that is going to expire first. Our current system keeps track of every deposit by storing the original value and the remainder to be spent. We keep a list of all purchases as well, of course. I am currently moving to a system which is much more like a traditional double-entry accounting system. A deposit will create a ledger item, increasing the user's 'spending' account balance. Every purchase will also create a ledger item, decreasing the user's 'spending' account balance. The new system has running balances, while the old system does not, which greatly improves our ability to find problems and do reconciliations. We do not want to use the old system of keeping a 'remainder' value attached to each deposit record because it is inefficient to replay a user's activities to calculate what the remainder of each deposit is over time (for the user's statement). So, after all of this verbose introduction, my question is "Does anyone else out there have a similar system of expiring credits?" If you could describe how you calculate expired credits it would be a great help. If all expired credits had the exact same shelf life, we would be able to calculate the expired amount using: Total Deposits - Total Spending - Deposits Not Due To Expire = Amount to Expire However, because deposits can have different shelf lives, this formula does not work because more than one deposit can be partially spent at any given time.

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  • Creating a form dynamically

    - by Nathan
    Hi, I use a search button that creates a form dynamically at the server side and returns it with Jquery syntax. After I fill-up the form and click on submit button, there is another .submit() Jquery function that suppose to be called to validate input before data is sent to the server. But, for some reason, this function is never called, and the data is request is sent. In more details: This is the form that the serach button creates dynamically at the server side and "prints" to html page with Jquery: <form action=... name="stockbuyform" class="stockbuyform" method="post"> <input type=text value="Insert purchasing amount"> <input type="submit" value="Click to purchase"> </form> And here is the .submit() function : $(".stockbuyform").submit(function() { alert("Need to validate purchasing details"); } But whaen I click on purchase button, the .submit() function is never called. Does it mean that I can't use another Jquery call with the answer I got in the first call?

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  • How to handle refunds or rebates via a payment processor?

    - by Tai Squared
    I need to handle online payments and am trying to choose a payment processor. One requirement is to handle refunds and rebates to the customer. These won't always be at the time of sale, and not for the entire amount of the purchase. Is this something all payment processors handle? I don't want to have to do this manually as there may be many rebates, and they may be for relatively small amounts. I see PayPal has a refund API, but other parts of their site talk about sending a refund within 60 days. Is this something also required by the API? Amazon FPS also has a refund API that seems a bit more flexible. The Google Checkout refund has an amout field, but it's unclear to me if you can do a partial refund as the description reads "The refund-order command instructs Google Checkout to refund the buyer for a particular order." What are some things to look out for when looking for a payment processor that can handle rebates and refunds? Is there always a time limit in issuing these refunds? Is using a merchant account better for this type of process? I was hoping to avoid that due to the increased cost and complexity, but would consider it if it meets all of my requirements. Update It appears the refund process is fairly simple and handled by all processors. Is there any additional information on rebates? I would like to avoid a process of sending live checks to customers, but I will have to send rebates in some small amounts that may be a few months after the initial purchase.

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  • How do I implement "cash out" on my site using PayPal?

    - by Alex
    I have a credit system set up on my site where user A can purchase a document from user B, let's say for 1 credit and user B's account gets credited, let's say for $1. User B can then "cash out" and recieve the money they earned from my (the site's) PayPal account into their PayPal account (let's assume that their email address is valid for now). When user A purchases a credit, they are taken to PayPal where they can login and complete the purchase, for this purpose I have an IPN listener set up on my site that stores credit information to my site's database. However, I can't find a mechanism to send the "cash out" information (i.e. user's email and amount to be paid) to PayPal. To elaborate: I understand that PayPal sends the IPN when someone purchases from me, but how do I post from my site to PayPal when the user clicks the "cash out" button? I have seen mention of Mass Pay, but can't seem to locate any code samples to go from. Am I missing something, or is there perhaps a different (and better) way to do this? Thanks!

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  • how to show all added items into another activity, like: AddtoCart and ViewCart Functionality

    - by Stanley
    i am trying to make a shopping cart app, allowing user to choose category then select item to purchase, once user will click on any item to purchase, then showing that selected item into another activity with item image, name, cost, qty (to accept by user) and also providing add to cart functionality, now i want whenever user will click on Add to Cart button, then selected item need to show in ViewCart Activity, so here i am placing my AddtoCart Activity code, please tell me what i need to write to show added item(s) into ViewCart Category just like in shopping cart, In ViewCart activity i just want to show item title, cost and qty (entered by user):- public class AddtoCart extends Activity{ static final String KEY_TITLE = "title"; static final String KEY_COST = "cost"; static final String KEY_THUMB_URL = "imageUri"; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.single); Intent in = getIntent(); String title = in.getStringExtra(KEY_TITLE); String thumb_url = in.getStringExtra(KEY_THUMB_URL); String cost = in.getStringExtra(KEY_COST); ImageLoader imageLoader = new ImageLoader(getApplicationContext()); ImageView imgv = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.single_thumb); TextView txttitle = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.single_title); TextView txtcost = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.single_cost); txttitle.setText(title); txtcost.setText(cost); imageLoader.DisplayImage(thumb_url, imgv); // Save a reference to the quantity edit text final EditText editTextQuantity = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.edit_qty); ImageButton addToCartButton = (ImageButton) findViewById(R.id.img_add); addToCartButton.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View v) { // Check to see that a valid quantity was entered int quantity = 0; try { quantity = Integer.parseInt(editTextQuantity.getText() .toString()); if (quantity <= 0) { Toast.makeText(getBaseContext(), "Please enter a quantity of 1 or higher", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); return; } } catch (Exception e) { Toast.makeText(getBaseContext(), "Please enter a numeric quantity", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); return; } // Close the activity finish(); } }); }}

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  • How to tell if leaving iOS app entered foreground from fast-app switching or manually?

    - by JPK
    Is there a way to tell if an iOS app enters the foreground from fast-app switching or manually? I need to know by the time applicationWillEnterForeground is called, so some specific code can be executed (or not executed) depending on the condition in which the app entered the foreground. EDIT: It turned out that this was more of a design issue for me. I moved my code to applicationDidBecomeActive. I also added a BOOL property to the appDelegate called fastAppSwitching (probably the wrong name for it). I set this to YES in application:handleOpenURL and application:openURL:sourceApplication:annotation. Then I added the following code to application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: if (launchOptions) { self.fastAppSwitching = YES; } else { self.fastAppSwitching = NO; } In applicationDidBecomeActive, I used the following code: if (fastAppSwitching == YES) { self.fastAppSwitching = NO; //stop, don't go any further } else { ... } EDIT2: MaxGabriel makes a good point below: "Just a warning to others taking the solution described here, applicationDidBecomeActive: is called when the user e.g. ignores a phone call or text message, unlike applicationWillEnterForeground". This is actually also true for in-app purchases and Facebook in-app authorization (new in iOS 6). So, with some further testing, this is the current solution: Add a new Bool called passedThroughWillEnterForeground. In applicationWillResignActive: self.passedThroughWillEnterForeground = NO; In applicationDidEnterBackground: self.passedThroughWillEnterForeground = NO; In applicationWillEnterForeground: self.passedThroughWillEnterForeground = YES; In applicationDidBecomeActive: if (passedThroughWillEnterForeground) { //we are NOT returning from 6.0 (in-app) authorization dialog or in-app purchase dialog, etc //do nothing with this BOOL - just reset it self.passedThroughWillEnterForeground = NO; } else { //we ARE returning from 6.0 (in-app) authorization dialog or in-app purchase dialog - IE //This is the same as fast-app switching in our book, so let's keep it simple and use this to set that self.fastAppSwitching = YES; } if (fastAppSwitching == YES) { self.fastAppSwitching = NO; } else { ... } EDIT3: I think we also need a bool to tell if app was launched from terminated.

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  • The Windows Store... why did I sign up with this mess again?

    - by FransBouma
    Yesterday, Microsoft revealed that the Windows Store is now open to all developers in a wide range of countries and locations. For the people who think "wtf is the 'Windows Store'?", it's the central place where Windows 8 users will be able to find, download and purchase applications (or as we now have to say to not look like a computer illiterate: <accent style="Kentucky">aaaaappss</accent>) for Windows 8. As this is the store which is integrated into Windows 8, it's an interesting place for ISVs, as potential customers might very well look there first. This of course isn't true for all kinds of software, and developer tools in general aren't the kind of applications most users will download from the Windows store, but a presence there can't hurt. Now, this Windows Store hosts two kinds of applications: 'Metro-style' applications and 'Desktop' applications. The 'Metro-style' applications are applications created for the new 'Metro' UI which is present on Windows 8 desktop and Windows RT (the single color/big font fingerpaint-oriented UI). 'Desktop' applications are the applications we all run and use on Windows today. Our software are desktop applications. The Windows Store hosts all Metro-style applications locally in the store and handles the payment for these applications. This means you upload your application (sorry, 'app') to the store, jump through a lot of hoops, Microsoft verifies that your application is not violating a tremendous long list of rules and after everything is OK, it's published and hopefully you get customers and thus earn money. Money which Microsoft will pay you on a regular basis after customers buy your application. Desktop applications are not following this path however. Desktop applications aren't hosted by the Windows Store. Instead, the Windows Store more or less hosts a page with the application's information and where to get the goods. I.o.w.: it's nothing more than a product's Facebook page. Microsoft will simply redirect a visitor of the Windows Store to your website and the visitor will then use your site's system to purchase and download the application. This last bit of information is very important. So, this morning I started with fresh energy to register our company 'Solutions Design bv' at the Windows Store and our two applications, LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler. First I went to the Windows Store dashboard page. If you don't have an account, you have to log in or sign up if you don't have a live account. I signed in with my live account. After that, it greeted me with a page where I had to fill in a code which was mailed to me. My local mail server polls every several minutes for email so I had to kick it to get it immediately. I grabbed the code from the email and I was presented with a multi-step process to register myself as a company or as an individual. In red I was warned that this choice was permanent and not changeable. I chuckled: Microsoft apparently stores its data on paper, not in digital form. I chose 'company' and was presented with a lengthy form to fill out. On the form there were two strange remarks: Per company there can just be 1 (one, uno, not zero, not two or more) registered developer, and only that developer is able to upload stuff to the store. I have no idea how this works with large companies, oh the overhead nightmares... "Sorry, but John, our registered developer with the Windows Store is on holiday for 3 months, backpacking through Australia, no, he's not reachable at this point. M'yeah, sorry bud. Hey, did you fill in those TPS reports yesterday?" A separate Approver has to be specified, which has to be a different person than the registered developer. Apparently to Microsoft a company with just 1 person is not a company. Luckily we're with two people! *pfew*, dodged that one, otherwise I would be stuck forever: the choice I already made was not reversible! After I had filled out the form and it was all well and good and accepted by the Microsoft lackey who had to write it all down in some paper notebook ("Hey, be warned! It's a permanent choice! Written down in ink, can't be changed!"), I was presented with the question how I wanted to pay for all this. "Pay for what?" I wondered. Must be the paper they were scribbling the information on, I concluded. After all, there's a financial crisis going on! How could I forget! Silly me. "Ok fair enough". The price was 75 Euros, not the end of the world. I could only pay by credit card, so it was accepted quickly. Or so I thought. You see, Microsoft has a different idea about CC payments. In the normal world, you type in your CC number, some date, a name and a security code and that's it. But Microsoft wants to verify this even more. They want to make a verification purchase of a very small amount and are doing that with a special code in the description. You then have to type in that code in a special form in the Windows Store dashboard and after that you're verified. Of course they'll refund the small amount they pull from your card. Sounds simple, right? Well... no. The problem starts with the fact that I can't see the CC activity on some website: I have a bank issued CC card. I get the CC activity once a month on a piece of paper sent to me. The bank's online website doesn't show them. So it's possible I have to wait for this code till October 12th. One month. "So what, I'm not going to use it anyway, Desktop applications don't use the payment system", I thought. "Haha, you're so naive, dear developer!" Microsoft won't allow you to publish any applications till this verification is done. So no application publishing for a month. Wouldn't it be nice if things were, you know, digital, so things got done instantly? But of course, that lackey who scribbled everything in the Big Windows Store Registration Book isn't that quick. Can't blame him though. He's just doing his job. Now, after the payment was done, I was presented with a page which tells me Microsoft is going to use a third party company called 'Symantec', which will verify my identity again. The page explains to me that this could be done through email or phone and that they'll contact the Approver to verify my identity. "Phone?", I thought... that's a little drastic for a developer account to publish a single page of information about an external hosted software product, isn't it? On Facebook I just added a page, done. And paying you, Microsoft, took less information: you were happy to take my money before my identity was even 'verified' by this 3rd party's minions! "Double standards!", I roared. No-one cared. But it's the thought of getting it off your chest, you know. Luckily for me, everyone at Symantec was asleep when I was registering so they went for the fallback option in case phone calls were not possible: my Approver received an email. Imagine you have to explain the idiot web of security theater I was caught in to someone else who then has to reply a random person over the internet that I indeed was who I said I was. As she's a true sweetheart, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and assured that for now, I was who I said I was. Remember, this is for a desktop application, which is only a link to a website, some pictures and a piece of text. No file hosting, no payment processing, nothing, just a single page. Yeah, I also thought I was crazy. But we're not at the end of this quest yet. I clicked around in the confusing menus of the Windows Store dashboard and found the 'Desktop' section. I get a helpful screen with a warning in red that it can't find any certified 'apps'. True, I'm just getting started, buddy. I see a link: "Check the Windows apps you submitted for certification". Well, I haven't submitted anything, but let's see where it brings me. Oh the thrill of adventure! I click the link and I end up on this site: the hardware/desktop dashboard account registration. "Erm... but I just registered...", I mumbled to no-one in particular. Apparently for desktop registration / verification I have to register again, it tells me. But not only that, the desktop application has to be signed with a certificate. And not just some random el-cheapo certificate you can get at any mall's discount store. No, this certificate is special. It's precious. This certificate, the 'Microsoft Authenticode' Digital Certificate, is the only certificate that's acceptable, and jolly, it can be purchased from VeriSign for the price of only ... $99.-, but be quick, because this is a limited time offer! After that it's, I kid you not, $499.-. 500 dollars for a certificate to sign an executable. But, I do feel special, I got a special price. Only for me! I'm glowing. Not for long though. Here I started to wonder, what the benefit of it all was. I now again had to pay money for a shiny certificate which will add 'Solutions Design bv' to our installer as the publisher instead of 'unknown', while our customers download the file from our website. Not only that, but this was all about a Desktop application, which wasn't hosted by Microsoft. They only link to it. And make no mistake. These prices aren't single payments. Every year these have to be renewed. Like a membership of an exclusive club: you're special and privileged, but only if you cough up the dough. To give you an example how silly this all is: I added LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler to the Visual Studio Gallery some time ago. It's the same thing: it's a central place where one can find software which adds to / extends / works with Visual Studio. I could simply create the pages, add the information and they show up inside Visual Studio. No files are hosted at Microsoft, they're downloaded from our website. Exactly the same system. As I have to wait for the CC transcripts to arrive anyway, I can't proceed with publishing in this new shiny store. After the verification is complete I have to wait for verification of my software by Microsoft. Even Desktop applications need to be verified using a long list of rules which are mainly focused on Metro-style applications. Even while they're not hosted by Microsoft. I wonder what they'll find. "Your application wasn't approved. It violates rule 14 X sub D: it provides more value than our own competing framework". While I was writing this post, I tried to check something in the Windows Store Dashboard, to see whether I remembered it correctly. I was presented again with the question, after logging in with my live account, to enter the code that was just mailed to me. Not the previous code, a brand new one. Again I had to kick my mail server to pull the email to proceed. This was it. This 'experience' is so beyond miserable, I'm afraid I have to say goodbye for now to the 'Windows Store'. It's simply not worth my time. Now, about live accounts. You might know this: live accounts are tied to everything you do with Microsoft. So if you have an MSDN subscription, e.g. the one which costs over $5000.-, it's tied to this same live account. But the fun thing is, you can login with your live account to the MSDN subscriptions with just the account id and password. No additional code is mailed to you. While it gives you access to all Microsoft software available, including your licenses. Why the draconian security theater with this Windows Store, while all I want is to publish some desktop applications while on other Microsoft sites it's OK to simply sign in with your live account: no codes needed, no verification and no certificates? Microsoft, one thing you need with this store and that's: apps. Apps, apps, apps, apps, aaaaaaaaapps. Sorry, my bad, got carried away. I just can't stand the word 'app'. This store's shelves have to be filled to the brim with goods. But instead of being welcomed into the store with open arms, I have to fight an uphill battle with an endless list of rules and bullshit to earn the privilege to publish in this shiny store. As if I have to be thrilled to be one of the exclusive club called 'Windows Store Publishers'. As if Microsoft doesn't want it to succeed. Craig Stuntz sent me a link to an old blog post of his regarding code signing and uploading to Microsoft's old mobile store from back in the WinMo5 days: http://blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz/2006/10/11/28357/. Good read and good background info about how little things changed over the years. I hope this helps Microsoft make things more clearer and smoother and also helps ISVs with their decision whether to go with the Windows Store scheme or ignore it. For now, I don't see the advantage of publishing there, especially not with the nonsense rules Microsoft cooked up. Perhaps it changes in the future, who knows.

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  • Another Marketing Conference, part one – the best morning sessions.

    - by Roger Hart
    Yesterday I went to Another Marketing Conference. I honestly can’t tell if the title is just tipping over into smug, but in the balance of things that doesn’t matter, because it was a good conference. There was an enjoyable blend of theoretical and practical, and enough inter-disciplinary spread to keep my inner dilettante grinning from ear to ear. Sure, there was a bumpy bit in the middle, with two back-to-back sales pitches and a rather thin overview of the state of the web. But the signal:noise ratio at AMC2012 was impressively high. Here’s the first part of my write-up of the sessions. It’s a bit of a mammoth. It’s also a bit of a mash-up of what was said and what I thought about it. I’ll add links to the videos and slides from the sessions as they become available. Although it was in the morning session, I’ve not included Vanessa Northam’s session on the power of internal comms to build brand ambassadors. It’ll be in the next roundup, as this is already pushing 2.5k words. First, the important stuff. I was keeping a tally, and nobody said “synergy” or “leverage”. I did, however, hear the term “marketeers” six times. Shame on you – you know who you are. 1 – Branding in a post-digital world, Graham Hales This initially looked like being a sales presentation for Interbrand, but Graham pulled it out of the bag a few minutes in. He introduced a model for brand management that was essentially Plan >> Do >> Check >> Act, with Do and Check rolled up together, and went on to stress that this looks like on overall business management model for a reason. Brand has to be part of your overall business strategy and metrics if you’re going to care about it at all. This was the first iteration of what proved to be one of the event’s emergent themes: do it throughout the stack or don’t bother. Graham went on to remind us that brands, in so far as they are owned at all, are owned by and co-created with our customers. Advertising can offer a message to customers, but they provide the expression of a brand. This was a preface to talking about an increasingly chaotic marketplace, with increasingly hard-to-manage purchase processes. Services like Amazon reviews and TripAdvisor (four presenters would make this point) saturate customers with information, and give them a kind of vigilante power to comment on and define brands. Consequentially, they experience a number of “moments of deflection” in our sales funnels. Our control is lessened, and failure to engage can negatively-impact buying decisions increasingly poorly. The clearest example given was the failure of NatWest’s “caring bank” campaign, where staff in branches, customer support, and online presences didn’t align. A discontinuity of experience basically made the campaign worthless, and disgruntled customers talked about it loudly on social media. This in turn presented an opportunity to engage and show caring, but that wasn’t taken. What I took away was that brand (co)creation is ongoing and needs monitoring and metrics. But reciprocally, given you get what you measure, strategy and metrics must include brand if any kind of branding is to work at all. Campaigns and messages must permeate product and service design. What that doesn’t mean (and Graham didn’t say it did) is putting Marketing at the top of the pyramid, and having them bawl demands at Product Management, Support, and Development like an entitled toddler. It’s going to have to be collaborative, and session 6 on internal comms handled this really well. The main thing missing here was substantiating data, and the main question I found myself chewing on was: if we’re building brands collaboratively and in the open, what about the cultural politics of trolling? 2 – Challenging our core beliefs about human behaviour, Mark Earls This was definitely the best show of the day. It was also some of the best content. Mark talked us through nudging, behavioural economics, and some key misconceptions around decision making. Basically, people aren’t rational, they’re petty, reactive, emotional sacks of meat, and they’ll go where they’re led. Comforting stuff. Examples given were the spread of the London Riots and the “discovery” of the mountains of Kong, and the popularity of Susan Boyle, which, in turn made me think about Per Mollerup’s concept of “social wayshowing”. Mark boiled his thoughts down into four key points which I completely failed to write down word for word: People do, then think – Changing minds to change behaviour doesn’t work. Post-rationalization rules the day. See also: mere exposure effects. Spock < Kirk - Emotional/intuitive comes first, then we rationalize impulses. The non-thinking, emotive, reactive processes run much faster than the deliberative ones. People are not really rational decision makers, so  intervening with information may not be appropriate. Maximisers or satisficers? – Related to the last point. People do not consistently, rationally, maximise. When faced with an abundance of choice, they prefer to satisfice than evaluate, and will often follow social leads rather than think. Things tend to converge – Behaviour trends to a consensus normal. When faced with choices people overwhelmingly just do what they see others doing. Humans are extraordinarily good at mirroring behaviours and receiving influence. People “outsource the cognitive load” of choices to the crowd. Mark’s headline quote was probably “the real influence happens at the table next to you”. Reference examples, word of mouth, and social influence are tremendously important, and so talking about product experiences may be more important than talking about products. This reminded me of Kathy Sierra’s “creating bad-ass users” concept of designing to make people more awesome rather than products they like. If we can expose user-awesome, and make sharing easy, we can normalise the behaviours we want. If we normalize the behaviours we want, people should make and post-rationalize the buying decisions we want.  Where we need to be: “A bigger boy made me do it” Where we are: “a wizard did it and ran away” However, it’s worth bearing in mind that some purchasing decisions are personal and informed rather than social and reactive. There’s a quadrant diagram, in fact. What was really interesting, though, towards the end of the talk, was some advice for working out how social your products might be. The standard technology adoption lifecycle graph is essentially about social product diffusion. So this idea isn’t really new. Geoffrey Moore’s “chasm” idea may not strictly apply. However, his concepts of beachheads and reference segments are exactly what is required to normalize and thus enable purchase decisions (behaviour change). The final thing is that in only very few categories does a better product actually affect purchase decision. Where the choice is personal and informed, this is true. But where it’s personal and impulsive, or in any way social, “better” is trumped by popularity, endorsement, or “point of sale salience”. UX, UCD, and e-commerce know this to be true. A better (and easier) experience will always beat “more features”. Easy to use, and easy to observe being used will beat “what the user says they want”. This made me think about the astounding stickiness of rational fallacies, “common sense” and the pathological willful simplifications of the media. Rational fallacies seem like they’re basically the heuristics we use for post-rationalization. If I were profoundly grimy and cynical, I’d suggest deploying a boat-load in our messaging, to see if they’re really as sticky and appealing as they look. 4 – Changing behaviour through communication, Stephen Donajgrodzki This was a fantastic follow up to Mark’s session. Stephen basically talked us through some tactics used in public information/health comms that implement the kind of behavioural theory Mark introduced. The session was largely about how to get people to do (good) things they’re predisposed not to do, and how communication can (and can’t) make positive interventions. A couple of things stood out, in particular “implementation intentions” and how they can be linked to goals. For example, in order to get people to check and test their smoke alarms (a goal intention, rarely actualized  an information campaign will attempt to link this activity to the clocks going back or forward (a strong implementation intention, well-actualized). The talk reinforced the idea that making behaviour changes easy and visible normalizes them and makes them more likely to succeed. To do this, they have to be embodied throughout a product and service cycle. Experiential disconnects undermine the normalization. So campaigns, products, and customer interactions must be aligned. This is underscored by the second section of the presentation, which talked about interventions and pre-conditions for change. Taking the examples of drug addiction and stopping smoking, Stephen showed us a framework for attempting (and succeeding or failing in) behaviour change. He noted that when the change is something people fundamentally want to do, and that is easy, this gets a to simpler. Coordinated, easily-observed environmental pressures create preconditions for change and build motivation. (price, pub smoking ban, ad campaigns, friend quitting, declining social acceptability) A triggering even leads to a change attempt. (getting a cold and panicking about how bad the cough is) Interventions can be made to enable an attempt (NHS services, public information, nicotine patches) If it succeeds – yay. If it fails, there’s strong negative enforcement. Triggering events seem largely personal, but messaging can intervene in the creation of preconditions and in supporting decisions. Stephen talked more about systems of thinking and “bounded rationality”. The idea being that to enable change you need to break through “automatic” thinking into “reflective” thinking. Disruption and emotion are great tools for this, but that is only the start of the process. It occurs to me that a great deal of market research is focused on determining triggers rather than analysing necessary preconditions. Although they are presumably related. The final section talked about setting goals. Marketing goals are often seen as deriving directly from business goals. However, marketing may be unable to deliver on these directly where decision and behaviour-change processes are involved. In those cases, marketing and communication goals should be to create preconditions. They should also consider priming and norms. Content marketing and brand awareness are good first steps here, as brands can be heuristics in decision making for choice-saturated consumers, or those seeking education. 5 – The power of engaged communities and how to build them, Harriet Minter (the Guardian) The meat of this was that you need to let communities define and establish themselves, and be quick to react to their needs. Harriet had been in charge of building the Guardian’s community sites, and learned a lot about how they come together, stabilize  grow, and react. Crucially, they can’t be about sales or push messaging. A community is not just an audience. It’s essential to start with what this particular segment or tribe are interested in, then what they want to hear. Eventually you can consider – in light of this – what they might want to buy, but you can’t start with the product. A community won’t cohere around one you’re pushing. Her tips for community building were (again, sorry, not verbatim): Set goals Have some targets. Community building sounds vague and fluffy, but you can have (and adjust) concrete goals. Think like a start-up This is the “lean” stuff. Try things, fail quickly, respond. Don’t restrict platforms Let the audience choose them, and be aware of their differences. For example, LinkedIn is very different to Twitter. Track your stats Related to the first point. Keeping an eye on the numbers lets you respond. They should be qualified, however. If you want a community of enterprise decision makers, headcount alone may be a bad metric – have you got CIOs, or just people who want to get jobs by mingling with CIOs? Build brand advocates Do things to involve people and make them awesome, and they’ll cheer-lead for you. The last part really got my attention. Little bits of drive-by kindness go a long way. But more than that, genuinely helping people turns them into powerful advocates. Harriet gave an example of the Guardian engaging with an aspiring journalist on its Q&A forums. Through a series of serendipitous encounters he became a BBC producer, and now enthusiastically speaks up for the Guardian community sites. Cultivating many small, authentic, influential voices may have a better pay-off than schmoozing the big guys. This could be particularly important in the context of Mark and Stephen’s models of social, endorsement-led, and example-led decision making. There’s a lot here I haven’t covered, and it may be worth some follow-up on community building. Thoughts I was quite sceptical of nudge theory and behavioural economics. First off it sounds too good to be true, and second it sounds too sinister to permit. But I haven’t done the background reading. So I’m going to, and if it seems to hold real water, and if it’s possible to do it ethically (Stephen’s presentations suggests it may be) then it’s probably worth exploring. The message seemed to be: change what people do, and they’ll work out why afterwards. Moreover, the people around them will do it too. Make the things you want them to do extraordinarily easy and very, very visible. Normalize and support the decisions you want them to make, and they’ll make them. In practice this means not talking about the thing, but showing the user-awesome. Glib? Perhaps. But it feels worth considering. Also, if I ever run a marketing conference, I’m going to ban speakers from using examples from Apple. Quite apart from not being consistently generalizable, it’s becoming an irritating cliché.

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  • Using an ATA-100 Hard Drive with a Thermaltake BlacX External Hard Drive Dock

    - by Joe
    Is it possible for a Thermaltake BlacX HDD Dock to connect to and recognize an ATA-100 Hard Drive? I know that the specifications for the BlacX say that it only supports SATA & SATAII, but I was hoping for one of three things: 1) for it to still work even though it isn't supported 2) for there to be some sort of workaround to make this possible 3) for there to be another part of some sort that I could purchase to make this work

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  • Watchguard box VPN Access X700

    - by Paulio001
    We have a watchguard X700 box that we are trying to get VPN access through. We have had a play with the ports and tried to open the VPN access but still have no joy. Do we need to purchase a special licence to get VPN open on this box?

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  • PELSOFT LAB DELHI ELAN LAPTOP CHINEESE MAKE LOW QUALITY ONE [closed]

    - by PREETI HARI
    I have purchase one elan laptop from pelsoft lab delhi after a lot of follow up calls from their call centers , in one month i found this laptop is of no use, it is of no use ,company failed to provide service , in market on enquiry i got answer that this lap ttop is of chineese make and all components are of non standard and cannot be replaced or repaired , is any body know how to format and repair this kind of system ,other i will loos 22000 rs at astretch pl help

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  • Can I run more than 4 virtual machines using Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition as th

    - by James Holland
    I understand that a single Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition license includes 4 free guest virtual machines using Hyper-V. Suppose I do that, and have 4 VMs running, but then want to expand. If I separately purchase additional Windows licenses, or I consolidate a machine with an existing license, can I spin up a 5th, 6th virtual machine (presuming there are enough CPU/RAM resources on the host)? Or does the host OS limit the number of virtual machines allowed?

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  • Which are the best tools for Graphic Designing?

    - by Jen
    Hello, I want to take up Graphic Designing as my profession. I would be designing Logos, Icons, Stationery, Brochures, Handouts, Book Covers, etc. But I am thoroughly confused as to which tools are the best and which books/resources will help me learn these tools and graphic designing like a professional. I am ready to shell out money to purchase the resources. Please help me out! Thanks, Jen

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  • Which are the best tools for Graphic Designing?

    - by Jen
    Hello, I want to take up Graphic Designing as my profession. I would be designing Logos, Icons, Stationery, Brochures, Handouts, Book Covers, etc. But I am thoroughly confused as to which tools are the best and which books/resources will help me learn these tools and graphic designing like a professional. I am ready to shell out money to purchase the resources. Please help me out! Thanks, Jen

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  • Thoughts on Free Splunk

    - by dan_vitch
    I am considering implementing Splunk at my company but am leery about the financial investment. I noticed there is a free version of Splunk that seem to be good enough. Can anyone tell me if you are using the free version at your company? Do you find the free version to be adequate, or just a springboard for the eventual purchase?

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  • Moving Server to new Hardware - SBS 2008

    - by MikeT505
    Hi, We have very quickly out-grown our Small Business Server 2008 current hardware and have decided to purchase a complete new server. What is the best and easiest way to move the server to new hardware? It is one complete box, we do not have any SAN's or any complicated setup. We do have a couple of SQL databases running on the server and we also use Exchange. I'm sure there must be some easy way to move everything :-)

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  • Toast vs Disk Util?

    - by Grishanko
    I have several users that are insisting on the purchase of Toast. They will be using it to make backups of disks at possibly re-burn them if needed. I have used Disk Utility for that function. At this point there is no addition functionality needed. However, that can always change in the future. Is there any advantages or disadvantages to either solution?

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  • Access full BIOS settings

    - by FlxEx
    I recently purchased a Acer Aspire TimelineU M5-481TG-6814, only to discover that the sound isn't working. Through my research, it seems that the most probable cause is that the onboard audio is disabled in the BIOS. However, the option to enable the onboard audio just isn't present in the BIOS. So my question is: is there any way of accessing such settings in the BIOS? Some extra information: link my purchase System BIOS version: InsydeH20 Setup Utility Rev3.7, V1.05

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  • Second WAN/LAN in office, want to share printers between them

    - by ndavis
    My business is growing so I've decided to purchase a second DSL line, to separate two departments to allow for more bandwidth usage. Previously I had a network printer that served both departments. With the addition of the second DSL line, I'm potentially going to have two separate LANs. How can I set it up so that the new LAN still has access to the Network Printer, but ensure that they are still using the new DSL line?

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  • Is Displayport preferable to DVI for monitor connections?

    - by Sliff
    I'm currently running a single Dell 24" (2408WFP) screen, but am considering adding a second. The problem I've got is that I'm currently using the DVI connector to the on board graphics, so will need to purchase a new graphics card. The 2408WFP also has HDMI and DisplayPort inputs, so I was wondering if DisplayPort is worth considering at present over DVI? On the same subject, does anyone actually manufacture reasonably priced DisplayPort cards - all I've managed to find seem to very expensive workstation cards aimed at financial/design/simulation markets.

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  • Which keymap to use for wired mac keyboard in Gentoo Linux?

    - by Absolute0
    I just purchase the new wired mac keyboard: Running on Gentoo Linux it works mostly fine. The only problem i am having is the function keys and swapping the alt and command keys to resemble a regular pc keyboard. When I tried switching to the "mac-us" keymap in /etc/conf.d/keymaps I got garbage when typing (not even qwerty). Is there any specific keymap that I can use to get what I want?

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  • Can XP 32bit use the Windows 7 64bit upgrade?

    - by user295734
    Purchased a new computer, actually the parts to build one. Unsure what windows 7 to purchase. Need at least professional, seems to be around $200 upgrade to $300 full version. If I put the old XP on my new machine, will i be bale to use the 64bit windows 7 Pro upgrade instead of having to buy the full version? Will it still do a clean install?

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