BMW Marketing Consultants Ripped Off Our Work

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

This really just makes me sick to my stomach and at the same time, angry enough to rip the head off a Chia Pet. BMW Marketing Consultants ripped off our work - pretty much in its entirety.

When developing the Kelly Homes site, we worked with Bonnie Williams of BMW Marketing Consultants. The project, under careless misdirection and disregard for the cost that Kelly Homes was footing, took a 2 month timeline and turned it into more than 6 months.

Months later, we received an RFP from BMW Marketing Consultants for the Silver Palms RV Resort site. The RFP was a spiral-bound book that rivaled the thickness of the phone book for Vermont.

We sent out a quote, and never heard back from BMW Marketing Consultants. A few weeks ago, I was reminded about this when I found this "book" during our move to our new office. Curious to see what happened with the project, I decided to pull up the site.

Lo' and behold:

Funny, guess they couldn't find their "own place in the sun"

Kelly Homes

The CSS, HTML, and most of the images were ripped off. If you pay close attention, you can even see some images were not completely ripped off.

Note the beige/orange color from the Kelly Homes site on the left edge of the banner image).

BMW's response? Well, from what I hear, the response was "well all sites on the internet are templates and can be copied." One of my favorite articles about this subject is Scab at Airbag Industries regarding the Joyent / Corkd design theft. Talking about Ray from Falkner Winery, the company that ripped off the designs…

Ray continued to tell me that all designers borrow ideas from other designers and that his web site design was no different. That line of thinking is the biggest cop-out, bullshit excuse (can't think of a more appropriate term) used over and over by those who simply don't care about how this affects the person who's work has been copied.
…
A real designer does not cut-and-paste the work of others, change some colors and resell it … that would be called a hack. The web is filled with hacks because the web makes it easy to hack. Hacks have about as much talent as the guys who "create" stickers at mall kiosks typically featuring Calvin either pissing on an auto manufacturer's logo or praying before a cross.

Couldn't agree more. Granted, I did not design this site - but I feel the same way about the months of work I put into it. I know Jeremy feels the same way.

No one wants their hard worked ripped off. Least of all, by the company hack that sends you the RFP for the project.

More to come…

Update: Googling "bmw marketing consultants" wields this post as the 2nd hit... got to love the Google juice, eh Hallett?...

Posted in Rants, Who We Are | 3 Comments »

Missing acts_as_conference

Friday, February 8th, 2008

Well. It's 8:30, and I'm sittin' here at my office instead of attending acts_as_conference. Why? 4 projects are comin' in for a landing next week, and in our business, the "billable" hour is gospel. I'm not mad or anything, you just have to prioritize this stuff and getting to do the "fun stuff" has to come after the bottom line.

I've known about acts_as_conference for months, and planned as best as I could, but I have got 2 projects (both launching next week) that walked in the door last week. What's a guy to do?

In a way, it's kind of like college. One attends college to go to class, not sit around and play Halo 3 all day.

Although, if I truly believed that, I'd be at the conference.

Posted in Rails, Rants, Who We Are | 2 Comments »

37 Signals It’s a Bad Friday

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

Today was moving day so I was all over the place trying to coordinate network installers, furniture installers as well as Verizon finishing the point to point connection between our two locations (think herding cats). I was able to take free moments and catch up on e-mails/IMs that I had missed and one in particular was from a client trying to upload something to our Basecamp site (OK, so the client was also my sister Alyson).

She said she was getting an error when trying to upload a file which I instantly thought was strange, so I went to check it out. Imagine my surprise when visiting our Basecamp site and seeing this...

Hm, so I guess there is a problem. Well, it was no biggie, we could wait. Here are a few observations on this, though:

• Working in Web development over the years I completely understand the "oh crap" feeling you get when something goes down. That feeling is only compounded by the potential number of people affected by the outage. I'm sure this was beyond "oh crap" and well on it's way to "holy shit."
• 37signals (makers of Basecamp) did a great job of keeping us updated on the situation. Updates were posted regularly, with my favorite definitely being the one coming somewhere near hour two that said "This is not how Fridays are supposed to be.
• They make sure to point out that your data is just fine.
• This sort of thing just doesn't happen a lot with Basecamp (or ever that I can remember). We've been using it for project management for 2+ years now and I can't remember this happening before. I can forgive a little down time every now and then.
• They fessed up. Very admirable. They've also offered to make things right if anyone feels they did not receive the level of service they expect. There is no service level agreement with Basecamp, so that makes their concern in this situation that much more sincere.

These situations are never 100% avoidable. With so many stakeholders involved in their service there are quite a few things that could cause an outage, it's just nice to see it handled so well. I'm putting together a little Ta-da List in case I need to refer back to how to handle this type of situation.

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Live Blogging the MacWorld 2008 Keynote

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

So today my lunch was spent tracking Steve's keynote at MacWorld 2008. Since there's no live video stream, that left me keeping up via those who live blogged the event. No problem, if only those sites stayed up. Here are the sites I tried to use and how they worked for me:

• Engadget - My first choice for keeping up. Worked about half of the time and that half when it did work the page would take minutes to load. Super.
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog - My backup plan which sadly worked about as well as Engadget.
• Valleywag via Twitter - Well, let's just say the reliability of Twitter pretty much sealed their fate.
• TechCrunch - TechCrunch really pulled through. Pages loaded quickly and the updates were concise. Hooray TechCrunch.

My biggest gripe is that sites like Engadget and TUAW gave no consideration to the fact that thousands of people would be sitting on one page and hitting the refresh button every 15 seconds. By this I mean that the usual images/backgrounds/navigation/styles were all there as normal. Is it really necessary that all of this is loaded? As I and thousands of others sit and hit refresh do we care about other "Breaking News" or "Featured Stories"? No. I understand that the ads need to load so they can pay the bills, but everything else should be low frills.

After the fact, Engadget recognized the problems, which was appreciated. Let's hope next MacWorld will be different.

Oh, and I'm absolutely lusting after that MacBook Air.

Posted in Random Stuff, Rants | Add a Comment »

An Open Rant…

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

I'm really sorry that after a seemingly long period of no activity, that I have to come out guns blazing with a post like this. But I got to get it out.

A lot of people think because I'm fluent in computers, that I love nothing more than to sit around and provide free help and advice about anything computer related.

Those people couldn't be any more wrong.

I have no problem teaching people how to do something on the computer. I have always tried to keep the "teach a man to fish" philosophy when showing someone how to accomplish a task on the computer.

But how many times does the man have to be taught how to fish? No matter how many times I repeat and demonstrate, it always seems to go in one ear and out the other.

This inexorably leads to an "over-dependence" on my help and advice which yields such questions as "I can't find the order receipt e-mail for the fishing pole" to requests for MySpace page layouts and optimized iPhone backgrounds of said person's favorite college football team.

This "over-dependence" has the tendency to evolve into plain old apathy and laziness on said person's part. The simplest issues require calling me or sending me an e-mail. Issues that if investigated for maybe 10-30 more seconds would resolve themselves. Issues like "So how do I get the worm on the hook?".

Stop.

At this point, it's safe to say I sound like a pompous ass who isn't willing to help anyone and anyone who uses a computer that doesn't know what I know about it is a complete twit who will only bollocks it up. And I can see where you would think that.

But I don't think that's the case. Like I said, I have no problem teaching or helping until people become over-dependent on that help and start to abuse it. I become a 24/7/365 support line. I might as well go buy a VW Bug, put on a short-sleeve button down and funny little tie.

During the day, when I'm working, is usually the worst (except for lunch when I become an avid Warhawk player). A lot of this work requires concentration, planning, testing, configuring, troubleshooting, etc. These are clients that are paying for my time. So when the IM box appears with someone asking me if they can forward their "better send this to 20 people or you'll have bad luck" crap mail and how to do it - guess what? It just completely derailed what I was doing, thinking about, concentrating on, striving for, etc.

Everyone is guilty of it. Friends will call/IM and ask me when is the best time to format their hard drive and re-install Windows. Strangers will ask if I can come over to their houses and remove spam mail on their computer. My own flesh and blood, my family, will call and ask me "What's a good personal finance program for Mac?" and "How do I install iWork/iLife?". The homeless guy on the park bench in downtown Winter Haven will even ask me if it's completely necessary to include the "ProxyPreserveHost" directive when configuring Apache to proxy to a cluster of mongrel instances.

OK, maybe not that last one. But the one thing they all have in common is they fail to ask me anyone of these sets of 3 simple words: "How are you?", "Are you busy?", "Got a sec?", and "Hey, what's new?". At the very least, you could ask how I'm doing before the onslaught of questions that could be answered if you spent an extra 20 seconds attempting to solve the problem on your own.

So from now on, my answers will be simple. Simple like that movie Rounders when Mike McDermott was asked by Johnny Chan "Y'have it?".

Sorry, I don't remember.

Posted in Random Stuff, Rants | 2 Comments »

OS X Leopard - My Favorite 5 1/2 New Features

Monday, October 29th, 2007

My brand new copy of Apple's latest OS, Leopard, arrived on Friday. I chose to upgrade, and in less than an hour, I was back up and running. Now that I've had some time to explore, here are my favorite 5 and 1/2 new features about Leopard.

1. All the web developer tools (that I use anyways) ship standard and up to date. Apache, PHP, Ruby, and MySQL all setup and ready to go.

It did take some tweaking to get MySQL to work again with some apps and phpMyAdmin (thanks to Angry-Fly for the fix.)

2. Spaces! Who needs multiple monitors when you can have multiple desktops? Spaces allows you to quickly and easily switch between desktops, and features the ability to control which "space" an application should launch in by default. Sure, most Linux distros have been doing this for a while, but it is a great feature to finally make it to the Mac.

3. Quick Look No more waiting for Adobe Reader to launch, simply select the file and tap the spacebar. So far it's worked out great for looking at PDFs and other documents, although it loses some formatting when looking at office documents.

4. Tabs in Terminal.app Sure, it's not a jaw-dropping, main feature addition - but like Spaces, this has been long overdue. In addition to tabs in Terminal.app, you can now create and save color customizations and each tabbed terminal window can have it's own "theme". Very useful for having a visual indication for the different uses of Terminal.app

5. Time Machine This is a great feature to keep routine backups of your data and to restore folders and files from any point in time. Well, not any point - it just depends on how much space your Time Machine storage medium has available. Microsoft fanboys will tell you that Vista already does this, and did it first with "Shadow Copy" - but what good is a backup system that keeps your backups on the same drive and is only accessible on Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions ($299 and up).

...And a 1/2. Not really a feature on this one, just a comical statement of the obvious. When connected to a network, nearby computers are displayed in the left column of any given Finder window. This is the icon that Leopard uses to represent a Windows server/share. Yup, the infamous "Blue Screen of Death". (This was also pointed out by Jason at 37signals.com)

Posted in Random Stuff, Rants | Add a Comment »

Your Blog Shouldn’t Be Your Personal Exercise In Communism

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

I ran across an interesting article in last month's Wired titled Mr. Know-It-All: Is it OK to ban someone from posting comments on my blog?

From the article:

A personal blog is pretty much an autocracy, so you're technically free to ban whoever rubs you the wrong way. But going all Joe Stalin on your commenters — even the ones who annoy you with their nit-picking or wacko views — doesn't jibe with the Internet's spirit of openness. The best blogs are supposed to be a conversation. And anyway, if you're going to publish what you write, accept the fact that the responses are going to be neither 100 percent positive nor 100 percent civil. Journalists have known this since the invention of the letter to the editor.

The article goes onto say:

And if a racist, abusive, or otherwise abhorrent guest is putting a damper on your shindig, you're well within your rights to kick the hooligan to the curb.

A blog is supposedly a conversation, right? By censoring your comments its the equivalent of standing in a room, expecting everyone to hang on every word you say, only to plug your ears and scream "I'M NOT LISTENING!" when someone has a response. You open up a forum for people to give their opinion, and when they do, you slam the door in their face if you don't like what they have to say. People will ask themselves "why did my comment get censored?" when they really should be asking "who is this person to even censor my comment...?"

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for removing spam comments, and banning abusive, racist, repeat offenders. But I think a warning should be enacted first or some sort of "3 strikes and you're out" - not turning on "Moderation" and clicking "Reject" to the first person that rubs you the wrong way.

Over time, I would imagine that readership would decline. The amount of comments received in a month, or a week or a day takes a dive. Not because the amount of comments being rejected increases, but because people stop bothering attempting to leave comments. It's a one-sided conversation - if you can even call it that - where the only comments that get approved are in line with the author's views or idea of what a comment should be.

If you're willing to write pieces that draw and attract some sort of response, either positive or negative, but not willing to share those responses - then maybe blogging isn't for you.

Posted in Rants, Social Media | Add a Comment »

Progress Energy Thinks You’re Stupid

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

Last week I sat down to pay my usual end of the month bills. My power company is Progress Energy.Upon logging into the web site, I click "One-Time Payment". I'm presented with a screen that clearly states my account number and an option to start the payment process. So I grab my account number and copy it to the clipboard because I know I'll need it, and click "Pay My Bill Using EasyPay".I am then presented with a screen to provide my account number and my zip code to verify who I am. I paste in my account number, type in my zip code and click "Validate". And then...

Customer validation failed. Please enter valid customer information.

So what went wrong? The wrong account number, the wrong zip code? The box says to put all 10 digits of my account number in, but to leave off any leading zeros. Where can I go for help? Other than the submit button, there isn't any other links on the page. It just reeks of thoughtlessness for the user, un-professionalism and plain stupidity from whoever developed this system during their "Intro to Computers" class.After several repeated attempts to re-submit by changing the account number and making sure I copy pasted it right, I finally give up. Being 150% positive this problem was no fault of my own, I sent them an e-mail through their "Contact Us" section on the web site.Today, I received a response:

Thank you for contacting Progress Energy Florida.I do apologize for any inconvenience you are experiencing, please make sure you log out completely and re-type www.progress-energy.comIf you have any further questions or concerns, please reply to my e-mail or you may also call Customer Service Monday through Friday from 7:00 am to 9:00 pm, toll-free at 1-800-700-8744.Thank you for using Progress Energy's online services.Ms. XXXXXXXXCustomer Relations

Really? That's it? Log out, re-type the URL, and log back in? Wow, I must be stupid. I don't develop web sites or anything, and I'm definitely not familiar with copy-paste.And what if I wasn't savvy enough to know that I'm not in the wrong? The e-mail offers no real support answer other than to call and talk to some drone who will read predetermined responses from a computer screen - an experience on par with walking through the ever-worthless 'Windows Add New Hardware Wizard'.So what can I do? Pay it by phone, sure. I have nothing better to do than spend 10 minutes doing something that takes me less than 2 minutes. In all seriousness, I'm probably not doing anything that important that I couldn't spend 10 minutes to call the payment in. But it's the point. It's $1.00 more to pay by phone - something they call a "Convenience Fee" - although I don't think anyone knows who this is convenient for. But that doesn't bother me, it's the point.I could write to Progress Energy, but at the end of the day I'm just a price-tag and they just don't care.I could not pay my next bill, but then I wouldn't have power to charge my laptop so I can write such enthralling posts like this.

Posted in Rants, Usability | Add a Comment »