This picture shows the garbage containers of a residential apartment building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Taking into account the number of household items that are considered recyclable (newspaper, magazines, junk mail, phone books, scrap paper, cardboard, glass, plastics with a 1 - 7 inside the recycle arrow, milk cartons, juice boxes, detergent refill containers, aluminum cans, tin cans, steel cans, bi-metal cans and metal lids), is it a surprise to anyone that the normal garbage container, to the left, remains practically empty, while the much smaller recycling bin is always in a state of overflow?

TechCrunch writes about the problems caused for web developers by people still using Internet Explorer 6:

IE6 has long been a thorn in the sides of many web developers, offering limited support for many established web standards that often force devs to implement ugly, ugly hacks. It might not be so bad if there weren’t so many people still using the damn thing over eight years after its release (and two full browser upgrades from Microsoft), but it still has an alarmingly large following. Its poor performance, combined with its persistence, has made it one of the worst tech products of all time.

The article cites a poll made with IE6 users of the website Digg. IE6 corresponds to 5% of Digg's traffic, and three out of four users of the old version of the browser say they can’t upgrade due to some technical or workplace reason.

Graphic by Elliot P.

Statistics from W3Schools show that in June 2009 14.9% of their users were still using IE6 (a smaller percentage than shown in the graphic from December 2008 from the same source, but still very high).

To accommodate IE6 users, web developers have to spend many extra hours adjusting the code so that webpages work properly for this particular browser version. The main reason for its survival, according to the Digg poll, seems to be the lag in the installation of upgrades in corporate environments.

IT managers at big corporations, please schedule an upgrade! Or even better, shift to Firefox, the web browser most recommended by reviewers. IE6, if you haven't noticed, is broken.

What's your account number?

This question, so frequently asked by phone attendants, leaves no doubt of how little the company understands (or cares) about good customer service.

(Photo by mollycakes)

There's rarely any need to ask the customer for a number that only makes sense from an internal process point of view.

Companies can use internal ID numbers as much as they want to control customer information, but businesses with really good customer service don't require clients to carry around a number just for the business' convenience. In most cases it's just as effective to ask for personal information such as name, address, and phone number for identification purposes. "Please have your account number ready" is simply not a customer-friendly approach to customer service.

High-Yields Methods redesigns and streamlines office/service process. They haven't paid me to talk about them, and the reason I'm mentioning the company is that their website is the first example I have seen in months in which "free download" is not a misnomer.

In order to download articles from their site, you are asked to provide some information they can use to improve their site or contact you if authorized to do so, but all fields are optional.

High-Yields Methods truly uses the opt-in marketing principles described by Seth Godin in his book Permission Marketing, as opposed to misleading and interruptive techniques used by so many other businesses.

What about your website? Is your download really free?











(Photo by sp3ccylad)

Related post: Convince me first

In this blog post, Scott Adams talks about how valuable it is to talk to someone who has used the products and solutions we are interested in buying, before we make a purchase decision. Online reviews from strangers are not the same, as one wonders whether "the favorable reviews are planted by the vendor, and the bad reviews are planted by his competitors".

He offers a creative solution to allow potential buyers to connect with past consumers of products while protecting the latter from being flooded with a million e-mails asking how do they like their new can opener:

Imagine a system that works like this: When you buy a product, you agree in advance to answer up to four e-mails from future potential customers, beginning no sooner than one year from when you make your purchase. It's totally optional, but agreeing gives you access to people who already bought the product you're considering today, to help you make your own decision. It would strike you as a fair deal.

Starting to provide reviews one year after the purchase seems excessive (particularly for time sensitive things, like travel recomendations), but the general idea is interesting, allowing people to ask specific questions and get qualified feedback, as opposed to having to rely on reviews that aren't necessarily trustworthy and may not cover the points that are important for one's decision making process.