Tretakoff Musings

My old friend and mentor, Doug Fleener , likes to talk about the importance of great customer service, in keeping customers. He’s right: you’ve read about my travails with my recent webhosting issues: I switched to WebHostingBuzz.com . I expected very little in terms of service, and, truth is, I have few needs: some basic FTP functions and FrontPage support. All good. FrontPage would not publish, so I resigned myself to the black hole of trouble tickets, expecting an answer within a week, maybe. Imagine my shock when I got three responses within a day, explanation of the issues, expected resolution times, and updates. When it still did not work, they responded within an hour, and offered to port my site to a new server. I’m paying less a year than most pay for their monthly access, and that’s the level of service I got. Wow . Kudos, guys. Contrast that with the level of service I got from a company I usually have very good things to say about, Salesforce.com . We pay thousands

I'm putting my hands on a 1.7GHz computer with an inkjet printer as part of a deal I'm doing. $100 and it's yours, if you want it. Desktop machine, won't have Windows on it, but let me know!

For those who don't know, Google Talk is live. Yes, Google has launched their own IM and PC to PC phone service. Best news? If you already use Trillian Pro , you can access Google Talk through Trillian, via the Jabber plugin. If you want to IM me on Google Talk, it's jtretakoff@gmail.com.

If it means getting a ring for this man, I may have to embrace my hometown team for at least a season.

Sorry we've been "off the air" for a while. We recently had a fun webhost experience. This in an interesting business, with some strange characters. Now, before I start to relate this tale, let me make it clear: my site is a plain old website. That means I need just any webhost. My only qualifications are that they are cheap, and give me lots of space, and are reliable. There have to be 500 companies that meet those criteria. Here's how it goes: A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from my web host provider , saying they were having a "customer appreciation sale," and offering some good deals to upgrade my hosting. Now, I host two sites with this company, and rarely pay attention to the space, but no big deal. For my Tretakoff.com domain, I was paying about $8 a month for 500MB of space. Didn’t think much; just had my card charged every month. The host seemed to be run by one guy: Jay Higdon. Every now and then, I'd have an email exchange: always nice.

Here's an odd one: rent twice from Budget, and get two pounds of Dunkin Donuts coffee, free. I'm all in favor of it: a neat loyalty strategy.

Ok, I'm coining a term: Palmcasting . I've written about podcasting; this is similar. Imagine: being able to designate any website, document, or RSS feed to take with you to read on your Palm, complete with links, illustrations, pictures. Now, imagine you can have it, every day, update while you sleep, so the latest content is delivered automatically to your Palm. Pretty cool, eh? Here's what you'll need: A Palm-powered handheld with some good free space (or an SD card) Plucker , an offline document and HTML reader for the Palm Sunrise , for designating what sites to pull from, and when EZSync , for scheduling HotSyncs Now, of the above, the only thing that costs anything is EZSync; it's $14.95, but you can try before you buy. The rest are FREE. Here's what you do: Install all of the above. Start up the desktop application for Sunrise. First, create a new Document List by pressing on the icon in the top left of the application. Follow the

First stop: The California Academy of Sciences, for the Chocolate exhibit. Learn more about cacao then you ever thought possible! From there, into the Steinhart Aquarium, where we saw things I never expected to see in a warehouse on a busy San Francisco street. The Academy is temporarily located in SoMa in downtown San Francisco, while their new digs in Golden Gate Park get built. Hard to believe you can just walk in and see things like this! From there, we headed over to the Sony Metreon , Sony's version of a mall, for some exhausting rounds of Hyperbowl . Trust me, you have to play it to believe it. After that, we needed a rest, so we headed to the Sony Store for Charles to bask in the glow of the ultimate home theater. Finally, dinner at Il Fornaio, where a butterfly dropped by to say hello. And off Charles went; we had a GREAT time.

Charles Barletta , my brother, was here over a recent weekend. We hadn't spent any significant time together in years. Heck, thanks to my stupidity, we hadn't even spoken in years until recently. However, it was like not a day had been missed. I'm so thrilled to have him back in my life. Thanks, bro. What did we do? Wine country (while listening to Lewis Black's rantings in the car), the Jelly Belly outlet store (makers of JB's, the bext M&M style chocolate candy!), Charlie & the Chocolate Factory , Sushi Ran , the Chocolate exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences (noticing a theme?), and the Sony Metreon . Want a glimpse? First stop: Viansa. Good wine, great food, and what a view. Charles getting back in touch with his Italian roots. Amy enjoyed the sunshine of Viansa, too! Next stop: Kunde. Beautiful cave tour, decent wine and nice grounds. With temperatures over 108 degrees, the sight of any water was welcome! More on the next post.

No, it's not an exercise device or a new erectile pill. Instead, it's a way to make an elevator obey your commands, despite any other pesky people wanting the elevator to stop on THEIR floors! Take a look for yourself!