One of the interesting parts of my job is that I’m expected to “think ahead”. One of my favorite things to ask myself in this role is, “What could go wrong?” Not surprisingly, my education helps frame this examination–a broad understanding of issues makes it easier for one to understand the actors at play. And of course, even those with strong academic backgrounds in a subject still make stupid mistakes. But one really bad mistake was recently written about in the Washington Post.

Call me crazy on this one, but there are some big corporate names included as victims of this one–doesn’t anybody think about the implications of their actions? Haven’t we all gotten E-mails that have “do not reply” addresses or E-mails where somebody hits “reply all” by mistake? Put them together and you have this! This has got to be one of the best tactical-media-projects-that-should-have-been of all time!

Monocle has a great photo feature in May 2007’s issue about “the brands that make our lives work”. In this particular instance, Monocle examines the Finnish fire department, and looks at what brands are represented when laying out the department’s equipment.

In addition to the obvious infrastructure tie, I think it’s interesting to look at the brands (i.e. companies) that are behind our daily lives. That’s infrastructure itself. Of course, it’s from Europe where they have a broader view of what’s behind the scenes, and they aren’t afraid to bring it out into the open…

(Though you can’t see the brands due to Monocle’s subscription requirement, know it’s mostly Siemens and other European companies. No surprise… but do pick up Monocle if you see it!)

I feel it’s a mainstay of any modern person’s holiday experience: returns. You asked for a medium, but need a small, or got a 38″ belt, but need the 34″. At least, that’s my story. As somebody interested in processes and corporate interactions (and making them better), I found two really obvious needs at two separate retailers this holiday season.

Problem one: American Apparel. They have nice products; they are well made, in America with supposedly sweat-shop free labor. “It’s consumption you can feel good about.” I asked for a blue velour top of theirs for Christmas. I got it, but it was a little too big. I decided to take it back to the local A.A. retail store that is ~1 mile from my home to get a small instead.

When I went in (with the receipt, by the way), the clerk told me they could not accept returns of products ordered through the website. “We’re two separate companies. We don’t take returns from the online store. They have to be sent back to the online store returns department.” Are you kidding? “Two separate companies?” WTF? But it gets better…

Today, I get an E-mail that my return has been received by the returns processing center. Rad. The disposition of my return? Backordered. The replacement item is backordered!?!? So let me get this straight: customers can’t return products ordered from the online store to the local retail store (even though every other store allows this), *and* they want me to waste my time, money and fuel sending something back to California (when they are probably going to send another back to my local store eventually to restock), *and* they are going to waste fuel, money and time of theirs sending me something (from California) I could have picked up less than one mile from my home? Wow. That’s a lot of inefficiencies–and it frustrates customers. Seems like a no-win on everybody’s part. The fix is really easy, too.

Problem two: maybe not really a problem, but it could be improved. The story is that I received a 38″ belt from Urban Outfitters for Christmas. I really needed the 34″ belt. I went to the local store and, unlike American Apparel, they accepted the return (without a receipt), and issued me a gift card. Fair enough. I then, conveniently, used this card online to order a replacement in the right size. So far my experience was great, except when I got the belt, it looked sort of “dead”.

Physically, it was in good shape–but it looked “manufactured” and untouched by any human. Intellectually, I think we all know the items we buy are not made just for us–but we like to think so. I think we all yearn for the sense that a product is perfect for (just) us and somehow “special”. That “necessary illusion” is broken when you receive merchandise with tracking barcodes and protective plastic wrappers still on them. When a company like Urban Outfitters tries so hard to make shopping an “experience” (in their retail stores), why do they break the experience this way? I guess the alternative is to remove the wrappers and risk damage during shipping, but how about tissue paper? Or branded wrapping? Isn’t consumption supposed to feel *good*?

If there’s one thing that gets old really fast, it’s upgrading Wordpress everytime a new release comes out. Finally fed up enough to look for a solution, I found this script that promised to automate the job. Unfortunately, it has a number of flaws including not copying the “uploads” directory and being overly complicated.

Next, I found this script. Not only is it simpler, but it also downloads the source for you. Perfect! It seems to work–below is my modified version, however, that is a little less “finicky” about where it is run from, and properly cleans up after itself. Of course, you need to change the second and third lines of the script to suit your needs.

I hope this saves somebody some aggravation…

#!/bin/bash

BLOGDIR=”/home/jmaki/webopticon.com”
SITEURL=”http://www.webopticon.com”

echo Updating Wordpress in $BLOGDIR
cd $BLOGDIR
cd ..

echo 1. downloading latest build
wget -q http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

echo 2. unpacking latest build
tar zxf latest.tar.gz
cd wordpress/

echo 3. replacing old files with fresh ones
tar cf - . | (cd $BLOGDIR; tar xf -)

echo 4. updating your blog
wget -q -O - ${SITEURL}/wp-admin/upgrade.php?step=1 > /dev/null

echo 5. removing unneeded files and directories
cd ..
rm -f latest.tar.gz
rm -rf wordpress

echo 6. all done !

Recently listening to the police scanner, Alex and I heard a call come across the air to summon the fire department to “Allegheny Center Associates” on the North Shore in response to a fire alarm. For those unfamiliar with Pittsburgh, “Allegheny Center Associates” refers to what is known locally as Allegheny Center Mall, a retail space/mall from the 1960’s that has now been turned into office and living space(!) in an effort to revitalize both the facility and the Northside as a whole. The mall’s living spaces have a local reputation for being student living space for both Point Park and Art Institute of Pittsburgh students. What is most interesting about the mall, though, is its conversion from a retail to office/living space and the story behind it.

I don’t know all of the back story, but when you go into the building, what clearly used to be an “anchor store” is now a home loan bank customer service center, and what used to be smaller stores off the main concourse are now mostly telecom companies, one of which was my destination: switch and data. Even the kiosks and platers from the building’s former retail life remain untouched–everything is “dated” in appearance; the building empty and quiet.

The Pittsburgh Business Times printed an article back in 2000 on the building’s transformation from a mall to an office space, and termed the facility a “telecom hotel”. Evidently, (and not surprisingly) the building’s manager has had a hard time finding companies that want to locate in the mall. Instead, they’ve found a eager and willing audience in telecommunications companies. Reasons cited in the article for their interest include the cement architecture of the building and its close proximity to the power grid, both important to companies looking to keep computers cool, protected and running 24/7/365.

What I also find interesting, and not mentioned in the article, is the necessity of fiber optic links to run a telecom company in today’s global age. Conveniently, and perhaps one of its failings as a retail mall, there is a major freeway (I-279) and multiple railroad tracks just south of the mall (map). These imposing rights of way may cut off the mall from the rest of downtown, but they also usually carry fiber optics (freeways and railroads usually being places safe from digging). The mall’s close proximity to the office towers that house Pittsburgh’s (few) large multi-national companies make the mall a more cost-effective, but still convenient place to keep associated communications and IT equipment.

It’d be an ironic turn of fate for something that may have killed the building’s original purpose to be the thing that saves it from the wrecking ball. It also just proves that when you have an asset (especially a tangible one), there is always both an audience and a way to present that asset to that audience, that can turn the asset into a sustainable, revenue generating part of your organization. “It’s all in the presentation…”