Thursday, November 20, 2008

10 reasons I hate CafePress

In no particular order....

10. Their usage policies are vague and arbitrarily enforced.  Campaign materials for both candidates were featured on the home page, but technically anything featuring the likeness of a celebrity is in violation.

9. Their web interface is poorly designed, and requires far too many page refreshes for the world of web 2.0 to deal with.

8. They don't let you see records of sales for periods less than 3 months.

7. If you make less than $25 on your account, they never pay you

6. There's no easy way to change the design on all of your products at once; you have to do it for each individually.  Want to resize that image on the 20 different types of shirts you sell?  Better block off an hour.

5. The ability to design shirts is ridiculously constrained.  You can upload small images that will be displayed in small areas on the front and back only.

4. It's really expensive.  $12 for a plain white t-shirt.  You only get a percentage of your mark-up.

3. Their customer service is frustrating.  When one of your images gets blocked, you receive a completely un-informative form email informing you of the block without telling you why.  It's up to you to guess and then reply with reasons they should turn your account back on.

2. They require your social security number "for tax purposes" when it's likely they'll never send you a check.

1. DesignAShirt.com and CustomInk.com are easier to remember.  It's weak, but I needed a 10th.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Watch Scott Adam's draw Dilbert

A cool insight into the way technology has innovated drawing comics.  Scott uses Photoshop and a really cool drawing touch screen.

The video is on Amazon, who of course doesn't let me embed it.  You have to visit the link so they can try to sell you the new Dilbert book. :)

Friday, November 7, 2008

Adobe ADC email FAIL

Like the rest of you in the Adobe Developer Community, I got this email this morning:

"Dear RJ,

introNetworks has sent you an introMail regarding: IMPORTANT MESSAGE

Please log in here <http://adc.intronetworks.com>  to retrieve your messages.

Sincerely,

The Adobe Developer Connection team"


SPOILER ALERT: The special message was this:

IMPORTANT MESSAGE 

Please note that as of November 10, 2008 the Adobe Developer Connection introNetworks application will no longer be available.  Be sure to copy any important content or contacts you want to save prior to that date.

If you have any questions or concerns email Edward Sullivan at esulliva@adobe.com.

Why the hell did I have to log in to your system for that?  Why couldn't you just email me that important message in the first place?  There's nothing remotely important or secret about it.

Making people login, remember passwords, etc. unnecessarily is a huge user-experience FAIL.  Most likely the reason you're canceling the ADC is that none of us have logged in since MAX last year.