Stanford Men’s Basketball has come full circle. When I started following the team some 20 years ago, they were a team on the bubble - often in the NIT, occasionally in the NCAA tournament. In the 90’s, they became a perennial tournament team. And now, they’re back on the bubble.

After starting the season at 6-7 (0-3 in the Pac-10), Stanford has turned the ship around to reach 15-9 (9-5 in the Pac-10) with sole possession of 3rd place in the Pac-10. Wins over Cal, USC and UCLA have them back on track after losses to AU and ASU ended their 6 game winning streak and Dan Grunfeld blew out his ACL in the win against Cal.

It’s hard to follow a West Coast team from the wrong side of the country. The games are still underway when papers go to print and the local games dominate the television coverage. So it was a real treat to watch Stanford-UCLA on CBS yesterday. I didn’t even mind when they cut away to more competitive game midway through the second half.

A pox on the NHL league office. A group of incompetents who have allowed an exciting game to become a endless sequence of clutch and grab.

A pox on the NHL owners. A group of spendthrifts whose inability to keep their wallets zipped has demolished the economic viability of their own teams.

A pox on the NHL players. A group of foolish athletes who didn’t realize their salary demands were driving teams to bankruptcy.

A pox on them all. A foolish trinity who saw a cliff looming ahead and insisted on driving off the cliff to spite each other.

Thank you for the free trial. BrowserCam allowed me to view my latest weblog CSS update on a variety of browser/OS combinations. You’re an essential tool in any professional website developer’s toolbox.

Just one thing. I’m not a professional. I just need to view my weblog on a wide range of browsers and OS’s every now and then. And your current pricing of $19.95/day or $59.95/month is out of my price range.

I’d like to be a customer. If you offered a plan that provided two or three hundred captures for $19.95, then I’d sign up. As it is, I’ll just try to sign up for another free trial in another six months or so.

If you want my loyalty as a customer, then you have to make our relationship about me. The way that Purple Feet Wines & Spirits has made our relationship about me [and my partner]. Over the past three or four years, Marco Crettol has learned our tastes in wine and can be relied upon for a good recommendation. There are other wine stores closer and perhaps cheaper, but Purple Feet has my wine business as long as Marco understands our tastes and maintains reasonable prices.

My local pet store conglomerate doesn’t really have the right stuff for my customer loyalty. They try, with in-store grooming, training and veterinary care. But I started shopping there to purchase Nature’s Miracle for my duties as CSI, Connecticut. And while I’m loyal to the brands that they sell, they’re just a place where I buy those brands. If they fail to stock the brands I need, when I need them; then I’m out the door. Fortunately for both of us, they’re doing a better job with inventory now.

Sometimes it pays to be lucky. I just slipped the iBook into its protective sleeve and placed it the styrofoam cradle. I had no idea that I would earn extra points for my packing prowess:

Extra points: the sleeve was correctly put on the iBook so the sticker was up and facing the customer. Stunning.

Steve notes that he had some trepidation about a 12-inch iBook. Me, I’m a big fan of the 12-inch form factor. I might change my mind if Apple gave the 14-inch iBook a different keyboard or a higher resolution LCD. But as things are, I’d save my money and get the 12-inch iBook.

A month ago, I had one foot out the door. But a written apology, a promise to improve inventory control, a $20 bribe gift card, and sole source control of our cats’ favored kitty litter have brought me back in the fold. Which got me thinking about customer loyalty.

Life isn’t easy for the modern retailer. Once upon a time, there was a major difference in quality between brands. Nowadays, the truly bad brands have died out and competing house brands may be produced on adjacent lines at the same plant. With major name brands universally available and house brands roughly equivalent, most retailers can not stand out based upon the quality of goods that they carry.

And lacking an advantage in quality, too many retailers respond by aspiring to suck less. Don’t get me wrong, you need to suck less than the competition. But when We Suck Less becomes your be-all and end-all, you are defined by your competition. And every mistake that you make is an invitation to switch.

If you want my loyalty, then you need to provide a relationship centered around me. And trust me, we suck less is only a beginning.

8 Feb: Customer Loyalty is All About Me

I’m tired of hearing about Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and the Patriots dynasty. And deep down inside, I’d like for the Eagles to win. But I just don’t expect that to happen. The Patriots are too smart, too prepared and too composed for the Eagles to pull it out. Patriots 31 - Eagles 17.

PS: With my Super Bowl track record, that pretty much guarantees an good showing by the Eagles.

I know that it is a flawed movie that only works when it’s about baseball. I accept that the characters are trite and predictable. But I don’t care. I love For Love of the Game. And I couldn’t resist buying the DVD for less than $10.

Clear the mechanism.

Henning Koch emailed with some comments on URL Escrow. One point upfront, I’m wary of free services. I’m always looking/waiting for the catch, the plea for money or the closure from lack of funds. I think URL Escrow should be a funded service. Service providers trust that there will be no abuse of domain name access and clients trust that the escrow service will be there when it’s needed. I think that level of trust requires solid financials that are rare in a free service.

As I envision the service, clients/providers would pay an annual fee for URL Escrow. The client/provider would register a URL with the escrow service. And if the provider goes dark, then the escrow service would step in to provide a temporary redirection service. There might be two tiers of service: redirection to a single URL and extended path_info redirection (old_base/path_info → new_base/path_info). After a few months, control of the domain name would be returned to the service provider and redirection would end.

Paying clients would have an existing account where they could enter their new target url. Paying providers would maintain a list of clients at the escrow provider. If the service went dark, then the escrow provider would contact the clients and establish accounts for them to enter a new target url. Add some software magic to translate the database to redirection instructions and it’s good to go.

The financials for the escrow service are a bit tricky. It is similar to insurance, a fallback position in case things go badly with a lot riding on correct estimates of the frequency of failure. I doubt that the returns justify the capital investment in new infrastructure. But an existing hosting provider with a solid reputation could gain an additional revenue stream from URL Escrow with a minimal investment.

Let’s start by responding to a comment by MEH. Mike Shanahan was dubbed the MasterMind in ‘97. Wins in Super Bowl XXXII and XXXIII made the name stick. And his subsequent playoff record without John Elway has brought that into doubt. At the start of the season, I thought that this would be a make or break year for Shanahan. And the MasterMind Watch was my way of recording his progress.

The year started with a bold personnel move. IMO, I’d say that trading Portis for Bailey didn’t work out. The rushing attack didn’t achieve the consistency and red zone efficiency that it had with Portis. And Bailey wasn’t enough to shut down Peyton Manning and the Colts in the playoffs.

The year ended with another big personnel move. Plummer will be the QB for the immediate future. Keeping Plummer as QB is akin to keeping Shanahan as Head Coach - he’s not quite what you wished, but he’s better than the alternatives. I wish that Shanahan was as deft with personnel moves as he was with offensive X’s and O’s. And I wish that Plummer would show more composure as QB.

I think that the Broncos are destined to be the bridesmaid, but not the bride. Good enough to reach the postseason, but not good enough to go deep into the postseason. I think that can only be changed if Bowlen finds a personnel guru to advise the MasterMind.