It's Rishi

People who know me well know that for the past couple of months, my computer’s been messed up. All of a sudden, IE and several other Internet-based apps like AIM and Outlook would, immediately upon being launched, start sucking 100% of the CPU. The problem manifested itself one day and I spent hours upon hours trying to fix it. Those that know me well also know that there is rarely a Windows problem I can’t fix. But, I just couldn’t figure this one out even after going so far as to running the problematic apps in my Visual C++ debugger to try to pinpoint the issue.

So for the past couple months I’ve been working around the issue. IE not working wasn’t a big deal since I use Firefox exclusively. But workarounds like using Meebo instead of my AIM client was becoming very irritating. The fate that I was almost ready to accept was re-installing Windows. That was until a couple days ago when I was randomly poking around the options panel in IE7 beta that I had recently upgraded to (in hopes of it possibly solving the issue). Low and behold, I came across this button in the Advanced tab:

A Reset button! Note that this is different than the “Restore Defaults” button, which was present in previous versions of IE, that simply resets a few advanced settngs. Upon finding this Reset button, I quickly said “what the heck?!” and clicked it. After a few seconds of churning, magically IE was no longer sucking up 100% CPU. I fired up AIM and Outlook and I practically jumped out of my seat when I confirmed that they also stopped sucking up 100% CPU.

Now that IE is actually usable for me, I’ve played around with this new version and I must say that it is very impressive. Because of the various customizations I have in my Firefox, I won’t switch back to IE7 but this is definitely going to slow – if not halt – the exodus of IE users to Firefox.

If you’re having problems with IE and want to try the Reset button or simply want to get a sneak peak at the next version of IE, go to the Microsoft IE7 page to download it.

One of the most prolific symbols of the “Web 2.0″ generation has been the tag cloud (if you’re not sure what a tag cloud is, the top of the sidebar on the right of this blog is an example). Well, eat your hearts out tag clouds. I came across this at thebeststuffintheworld.com.

I’m not sure if these guys were the first to do it but it’s a very cool idea. This actually reminds me of the milliondollarhomepage.com.

Is a photo tag cloud more useful than a regular tag cloud? Not really. But then again, I often wonder if traditional tag clouds are really all that useful either. One thing’s for sure, photos are a helluva lot slicker looking than words.

And yes, just in case you were wondering, if you find this funny you are in fact a geek. =)

Labor costs money. The price of a product always factors in the labor costs associated with designing and manufacturing that product. The price of a service includes the labor costs associated with delivering that service. The higher the labor cost, the higher the price of the product or service. That’s pretty much a universal truth.

As markets become saturated and differentiation becomes increasingly difficult, companies are forced to compete on price. The cost of raw materials used to produce a product can only be controlled so much. Thus, companies concentrate on reducing the amount of manual labor required to produce their products. The trend towards automation has become so dominant that “handmade” products are now rare and often prohibitively expensive.

Well, what about services? Better service generally involves either more labor or higher-skilled labor (or both). Because the cost of labor has only been increasing over time, service is becoming increasingly expensive. Once again, businesses are forced to compete on price and, as a result, services are either reduced or eliminated altogether. The key thing to remember is that businesses are able to reduce the service they offer only because consumers are willing to sacrifice service for reduced cost. Given the option to pump their own gas or pay a bit extra, most people chose to pump their own gas so full-service gasoline pumps are all but extinct.

Let’s say you need to buy a new oven for your kitchen. You could go to the local mom & pop appliance store and receive a personalized shopping experience OR you could goto your local electronics mega-retailer like BestBuy, get minimal service but save a few bucks. Most people opt for BestBuy. Of course, the ultimate form of sacrificing service for price is on the Web. Web merchants can generally offer rock-bottom pricing because no physical presence means no inventory cost and no labor costs. Continuing the trend of preferring self-service and lower prices, consumers are increasingly hopping on the Web to shop.

When you pay for a service, you are paying someone to do something that you either lack the necessary skill or knowledge to do or simply don’t want to do. With the advent of the Internet, the barrier to acquire knowledge and skill has been shattered. Accordingly, the demand for services is diminishing. Why pay a plumber to fix my faucet when I can follow one of many DIY guides on the Web? Why pay a few hundred bucks to an auto broker to buy a car for me when I can now find model information, reviews, dealer invoices and submit quote requests to several dealers for free on the Web?

I think it’s time to analyze what the terms ’self-service’ and ‘full-service’ really mean. Self-service means that your request will only be fulfilled with further input of your time and energy. Full-service means that you make a request and it is fulfilled without any further input of time or energy by you. Nowhere in the definition of full-service does it say that your request is to be fulfilled by a human. Traditionally, people think that if you’re going on the Web to do something, it’s self-service. After all, it takes your time and energy. However, because there is often not much in the way of price differentiation between Web-based companies, these companies are forced to provide a higher level of service. Since employing humans to provide this service would kill their business models, technology is used to deliver higher levels of service.

One example is search engines. The search engine is technology’s replacement for the human librarian. Imagine that you’re planning a vacation to Australia. You could walk into your local library, tell the librarian “Hi, I’m planning a trip to Australia. Can you help me find some information on that”, and for a few minutes you’ll have your own personal research assistant. Unfortunately, having a personal research assistant at our disposal full-time is too expensive. Search engines like Google attempt to do the same thing. Instead of randomly poking around on the Web trying to find Australia travel information, we can use these technology-based services to help us locate the information we seek.

Dontbuyjunk was created to, in a sense, be a full-service shopping experience. You state what you want e.g. “I want a digital camera with good battery life and low-light shooting” and the system told you what to buy and where to buy it. To accomplish that, we developed a technology called TotalRank which essentially replaces a knowledgable salesman that you might find at a store.

Everyone likes good service. We all want the best experience with the least effort. Traditionally, good service meant extra cost and as a result good service is hard to find. But through technology, companies are once again able to differentiate themselves by offering better service. Long-term, I think we’ll see the return of full-service experiences. The difference will be that instead of people providing service, technology will. The result will be great service with minimal additional cost. Finally, consumers will get to have their cake and eat it too.