Hey Bob!  What about Office 2003 and the Promised XML Support?

Since I have no ability to communicate with anyone at Microsoft when they do something that I just plain don't understand, I thought that I'd address this question to my favorite Microsoft advocate -- Robert Scoble. 

Dear Robert,

I know that you and I share differing opinions about Microsoft and despite what some might perceive as my animosity, all I really want is for Microsoft to a) make good products that don't crash and b) play by the rules like other businesses.  In specific, I think Microsoft needs to address their all too frequent ethical lapses like this latest bait and switch campaign with Office 2003's XML support.  Specifically:

For more than a year, Microsoft has touted Office 2003's support for Extensible Markup Language (XML), a highly anticipated new feature of the productivity suite. But Microsoft now plans to fully deliver the feature only in the two high-end versions of the product, one of which will be available only to businesses subscribing to Microsoft's volume-licensing program.

...

At no time during two phases of testing, one in October and another in March, did Microsoft make it widely known that XML support would not be available in all versions of Office 2003. The most recent beta test version, available to an estimated half-million testers, delivers the full XML feature set promised by Microsoft. 

...

The change also means that Microsoft has quietly redefined the meaning of Office Professional without clearly communicating the difference to customers.

"Previously, the SKU difference related to the app included, but all apps functioned the same," said Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg. "Here, it's really caveat emptor."  More...

I know that you've met with Microsoft folks before and you seem to have a better perspective on the company than I do.  Can you explain this to me?

Yours truly,

Scott

Now I'm actually an Office developer (Inbox Buddy) and things like this make a big difference to third party ISVs since they make your life nightmarish -- "what version does the customer have?  Oh and what features are in that version?"

Note: I'm starting to get really, really tired of pointing out issues in MS products and ranting about crashes and the like.  I think its time for me to start treating Windows as a legacy system I need to migrate away from.  Other than Radio, Outlook / Inbox Buddy and compatibility testing in IE, I don't have to use Windows at all so perhaps I should move my day to day "everything else" off Windows.

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Great Resource: RSS Aggregator Directory

Hebig put together a great directory of available aggregators.  Thanks man.  There are even two native aggregators for Linux which I know people have been looking for as well as a series of cross platform aggregators.

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Another Really Bad Ecommerce Site

Go here.  Now riddle me this -- is the way you find out the price for these computers intuitive?  Or is it moronic?  I'd never have thought those would give me model info and price info.  Now this is another page on their site which is better so what happend on the 1st one?  Webmaster brain fart I guess.

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Its Astonishing How Ecommerce Still Sucks Lots of Times, Isn't It?

I've had not 1, not 2 but 3 crappy ass ecommerce experiences in the past three days.  I mean I've been buying stuff on the net since 1996 and there are still major issues.  Here were the three things I tried to buy:

1. Subscription to Blogrolling.com
2. Lindows computer from Walmart
3. Lindows computer from Tiger Direct

And here's what happened.

Blogrolling

I finally got tired of manually updating my list of blog roll entries the other day -- an "I can't take it anymore" scenario so I surfed over to Blogrolling.com and signed up.  2 hours later I had imported my 120+ blogroll entries and I figured "good job" and I should actually sign up for this.  What happens?  A Paypal message "We are offline for maintenance.  Please return after 5 am PST".  **Buzz** Nope.  I might but I'm not going to stick around and wait for you to get your ass together.

Note: I did later return and try again and I couldn't remember my Paypal password.  When I first went to buy, I had just made Blogrolling work and I was all hot to buy so I'd have dealt with the password issue. Now when I just tried again, its just another annoyance.  And then when I backed up to try again, I got the "Warning: Page has expired" message and its just too damn annoying to bother with.  I'm sure I will sign up but right now I'm frustrated and I'm going to skip it.

Walmart

I'm just plain sick to death of Windows instability and now that even my clients are buying Lindows boxes (yeah -- the $199 Walmart Lindows box) to evaluate, I figured that I need to get my stuff together and do the same.  Now this isn't some flaky dot com that's doing it -- its one of the most respected medical publications in the world with a staff over over 400 -- they aren't a fly by night operation at all and they've bought half a dozen to evaluate.  One staffer is even starting a "30 days without Windows" experiment (well Windows free except for Inbox Buddy for mail but that's another story).

So anyway I surfed over to Walmart, found the $199 cheapie box and figured "Its time".  Now Walmart won't let you buy anything unless you first "register as a member".  That was ecommerce stupidity #1.  In the time it took for me to register, I could have bough the product.  So I finished filling out the forms right down to credit card authorization and then got distracted by an IM and then by the time I got back to it, IE 6 had, once again, crashed and taken with it every other browser windows on the system.  **Poof**   So do you think I went right back and filled it all out again?  If you answered no then please do pass go and do collect $200.  I probably will but the momentum is lost and now I'll look at the other Lindows vendors.

Note: To all ecommerce designers -- if someone isn't a member then register them as part of the order transaction, not as a separate atomic action that just plain wastes time.  Everything in a "join as member" transaction is encapsulated in the purchase transaction.

Tiger Direct

So this morning I surfed over to Lindows.com to see who else sells Lindows computers and then I chose I vendor I used to patronize -- Tiger Direct.  The link on the left is a redirect to the Tiger Direct page specifically for Lindows stuff.  Now when I follow it from the Lindows site it 1st goes to the right page and then the Tiger Direct site automatically takes me to the home page.  I guess they don't like inbound links.  Or they're just plain dumb.  Or whatever.  Either way I don't much care.  If they don't value me enough to care that I know where I want to go then why do I want to buy from them?

Amazon

Oh and I almost forgot that I had another experience this weekend -- I bought YABFA -- yet another book from Amazon -- and it was so painless that I didn't even remember it.  Just point, click and buy. 

Conclusion

When you come right down to it this wasn't all the merchant's fault -- although sites could be better, I'd put a lot of the blame right on the browser.  Internet Explorer is just plain unstable and doesn't deal with its stability issues by least offering things like autorecover ("Open all windows that were open the last time I crashed") or a reliable means to remember passwords.  I'm the only one who uses this computer and I've bought stuff from Paypal before but Internet Explorer in a demonstration of mind boggling stupidity seems to forget all your passwords just because you upgrade versions.  That's helpful.

Now, that said, shopping experiences could be lots better.  If Walmart had just accepted my order rather than a 2 step process, I'd have bought the computer.  If Paypal didn't decide to turn its systems off (can you imagine Visa / MasterCard / American Express doing this?), I'd probably be a subscriber to Blogrolling.  If Tiger didn't let me a) go where I wanted and then b) take me away, I might have bought.

So here are three final points:

1. As a general observation, given that everyone on the planet has access to an absolutely flawless ecommerce implementation -- Amazon -- the amazing thing is that people don't just sit down and say "Lets do it the their way".  I recently recommended to one quasi-client that they model their ecommerce approach along Amazon's lines and they've reported back to me that its been favorable.
   
2. People don't really like to spend $.  Particularly not in a down economy like today so if you have any hiccups along the way, they'll abort and only maybe return.
   
3. Make the shopping experience as few steps as possible.  Pay attention to the customer's goals (buying something) not yours (making them a "member").

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