Ed Bilodeau

This weblog had moved: http://www.coolweblog.com/bilodeau/

# Notice (Oct 19/05): So ends my stay here on Blogger. This morning Google implemented an anti-spam 'feature' that forces me to answer a challenge phrase when I want to post to my own blog. No notice of the change, nothing. Worse is that it doesn't even work! I type the phrase, submit, "An error occured", post deleted. Damn you, Google. Chances are I will revive my blog somewhere else, sometime soon. I'll post the new coordinates here as soon as they become available. (BTW, I'm unable to post anything to my RSS stream, so I'd appreciate it if readers could spread the word and ask people to take a look at this notice)

Update (Oct 19/05, ~noon): After a frustrating few hours (and not just trying out alternatives to Blogger), I've decided that this is a good time to take a break from all this. A day? A week? Who knows. But I need to step away from it before I pass a heavy magnet over the whole mess.

Update 2: According to this post, the reason I'm seeing the CAPTCHA (challenge phrase) is that Blogger has classified my blog as spam. Thanks. User for five years and now I'm spam. I searched the Blogger site, but there is no mention of how to get the spam flag turned off. There is also no way of contacting anyone at Blogger. Wow. Spam they say I am, so spam I must be. Maybe it is time to take a break.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

# Japanese retailers using electronic paper to post prices : From the retailer's point of view, this is a god-send. Just having daily price changes implemented immediately and accurately is a huge benefit.

I can remember in my retail days walking through our stores and cringing whenever I saw product still ticketed with old (usu higher) prices. We were fairly agressive at getting better costs from our vendors, which almost always translated into lower prices for our customers. So when the store failed to advertize that lower price on the shelf, it was a bit of a kick in the teeth, since it meant lost sales and left-over inventory that would have to be marked down or returned.

From the consumer's side, though, I can see reason to be wary of this technology. There is lots of opportunity for retailers to abuse this power (ex. price changes continually, so the price at the cash may be different then the price you saw on the shelf).

Also, you can't argue with a printed piece of paper. An electronic price tag? Must be something wrong with the system.

Ed Bilodeau

Thursday, April 07, 2005

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