How to get free delivery on any Prime Now order

While pulling out our holiday decorations, we realized we needed a lot of fresh batteries to power our Peanuts Christmas toys (similar to these). We knew Amazon had great prices for batteries, but sometimes waiting 2 days seems like an eternity.

Fortunately, Prime Now, Amazon's 2-hour delivery service, had plenty of options. However, there was one catch: we had to order $35 or more to avoid a $5 delivery fee.

After a little bit of experimenting, I found there's an easy way to avoid this Prime Now delivery fee, provided that you're likely to buy something again from Amazon in the future. Here's how:

1. Add your desired items in your Prime Now cart.
2. If the items total less than $35, search for an Amazon gift card in an amount that will bring your cart total to a total greater than $35.
3. Check out.
4. When your gift card arrives, simply add it to your account to pay for future purchases. 

This simple workaround makes it easy to use Prime Now to shop for small purchases where time is of the essence. Of course, you're paying Amazon for a future purchase, too. But if you're like me, it won't be hard to find a reason to spend that gift card amount.

My foolproof recipe for Aeropress coffee

Aeropress makes great coffee, fast. It's inexpensive and easy to use. It's also a fun way to experiment with different techniques.

Here's my recipe for consistently great Aeropress coffee.

1. Grind two level Aeropress scoops (about 30g) of your favorite coffee to a fine grind. I grind 15 seconds in my Krups grinder. It's cheap, but it works.
2. Pour the grounds into an inverted Aeropress. Don't know what that upside-down business is all about? Read about it here.
3. Heat water to 185-190 degrees Fahrenheit. I measure the temperature of the water with an IR laser-guided thermometer, because it makes me feel like I'm in the future.
4. Pour the hot water over the grounds. Stir for 10-15 revolutions, or about 5-7 seconds.
5. Cover the Aeropress with the filter. Set your timer for 90 seconds. Wait patiently.
6. When the timer is finished, flip the Aeropress over a mug, and press. I press for about 8-10 seconds all the way down.
7. Top off 1:1 with hot water, clean up, and enjoy!

Is this the only recipe? Of course not. Feel free to share your own in the comments section.

Twitter Moments is a hit. But, is it too late?

6 days ago, Twitter launched a new product. It's called Moments. Described as "the best of Twitter in an instant", Moments is a curated list of tweets on current events. So what's interesting about this product?

1. It's curated. There are people selecting both the stories (say, the premiere of a TV show, a football game, or a convention) and the tweets for each story.
2. It doesn't require a sign-in. You can view Moments without having a Twitter account, at least on the web site.
3. It doesn't require follows. You don't have to decide which accounts are worth following, and you don't have to read a feed to find interesting tweets.
4. It's pretty darn good. The content is interesting, visually engaging, and quick to scan and digest.

Moments' origin shouldn't be a big surprise. Shows and events have been trying to use hashtags as a way of pulling together tweets on a topic (but consuming those tweets was always a pain). TV news programs have even been spending time reading tweets on the air pertaining to a news story. They effectively (if awkwardly) test-piloted Moments before Twitter built it.

What's interesting about Moments is more what it isn't than what it is:

1. It's not about people tweeting their thoughts in 140 characters.
2. It's not about hashtags. 
3. It's not about direct messaging.
4. It's not about back-and-forth conversations between two or three people.
5. It's not about tweetstorms.

Moments is a recognition by Twitter that they have one of the best sources of current news in the world, and tries to solve the discovery problem around it. If Twitter doubles down on it (and I hope they do), they have to also recognize that a lot of what people do with Twitter today isn't what the Twitter of tomorrow will be known for.

So, my question now is: is Moments too late? As an example: Facebook has Trending Topics. They could make that product way move visible, or maybe even pull it into a separate app, and compete fairly effectively to a much larger audience. I think the answer depends on how well Twitter focuses on products like Moments, and how well they move beyond their legacy of short, SMS-based broadcast communication and try to become the world's best real-time newspaper.

Everyone Copies

Apple recently announced the iPad Pro, and with it the Smart Keyboard and Pencil accessories. Many in the tech community, including several tech reporters, drew parallels to Microsoft's Surface line of tablet-laptop hybrids. And some used the word "copy" to describe what Apple did.

Here's the thing: everyone copies. It happens in art. It happens in music. And it most certainly happens in technology:

• Apple copied Google in adding public transit to Apple Maps in iOS 9.
• Apple copied Windows in adding weather, stocks, and sports to Spotlight Search.
• Apple copied Windows in adding "snap" support to apps, letting them run side-by-side.
• Microsoft copied Apple in making an app store for desktop and mobile, and a retail store.
• Microsoft copied Google in providing snapshots on tap on Android.
• Microsoft copied Sony with their announcement that independent game developers could publish on Xbox One.
• Google copied Apple when adding Google Photos and Android Pay.
• Google copied Amazon when announcing Google Shopping for Suppliers, a competitor to AmazonSupply.
• Google copied Microsoft when releasing instant, visual previews of pages in search results.

The point? Patents aside, it's not about who or what you copy. It's about how you execute and what you deliver to customers. Plenty of the above examples show that you can take an idea and execute it way better (or way worse) than your predecessor.

Tech insiders and the tech press care about who you copied and who came first. Customers don't care. They just want products that are useful, solve their problems, and are delightful to use.

Focus on delighting your customers.

What I'm listening to

Podcasting is finally coming of age. 11 years ago, podcasting was this funny new word that was a way to time-shift radio or to hear shows too niche to be on radio. Now, podcasting has blossomed into a medium with breakout shows like Serial and startups like Gimlet that are giving birth to a suite of new shows.

However, we're not in the golden age with podcasts are we are with television. Only 17% of the US population listens to podcasts each month, and the money that Netflix and Amazon have poured into new content isn't there (yet) with podcasts. Despite this, there are a number of great podcasts out there that have audiences that number in the millions.

Here's a list of the podcasts that I listen to on a semi-regular basis.

• Serial - the blockbuster itself. A true crime investigation. If you haven't listened to it, you need to put this one at the top of your list. You'll probably do a lot of web searching, reading, and hypothesizing during and after your journey through this one.
• StartUp Podcast - a show about startups. The first season was an introspection on how the host/producer himself started the podcasting company that birthed the show. How meta! Season 2 is about a dating startup. Season 3 is pending.
• Radiolab - topics about science and culture combined with interesting editing and sounds. Lately Radiolab has moved towards less hard-science topics but it's still an interesting and varied show.
• 99% invisible - a show about design and architecture and the mostly unseen activity that shapes our world. Well-produced, and thankfully all advertisements are at the end to avoid breaking the spell while you're listening.
• Mystery Show - seemingly commonplace mysteries that unfurl into interesting stories. It's all about the journey, not the destination. Some are hits and some are misses in my opinion, but the wide-eyed curiosity of the show brings me back.
• Reply All - a show about the Internet. A more grown-up Internet culture show than others I've heard. 
• Invisibilia - a show that analyzes how our thoughts and emotions shape our actions. 
• GeekWire Podcast - a local Seattle tech institution that recaps the week's tech news and interviews tech influencers. More of a radio format than the other shows (because it's broadcast on the radio).
• a16z - VC Andreessen Horowitz's podcast about tech trends. Topics range from bitcoin to how tech is evolving in the developing world. 
• Freakonomics Radio - Combining simple questions with lots of data to come to some surprising conclusions. 

Try one or more out. And, let me know what podcasts you listen to, and why.

Beyond the feed

Note: this was originally posted on Medium. I'm reposting it here. If you like it, go to the Medium post and click "Recommend" at the bottom so others can see it.

I’m a fan of Twitter. I use it to keep track of news, communicate with friends, and interact with companies large and small. I use Twitter daily and post at least a few times a week. Like most daily users, I don’t mind the hashtags and at-replies, and I work around the 140 character limit. However, there’s one problem with Twitter that I’m finding increasingly hard to stomach and that I’m glad Twitter is finally looking at addressing with things like While You Were Away and the upcoming Project Lightning:

The endless, chronological, mixed-topic feed.

One feed to rule no one

A feed is a simple, predictable concept for consuming Twitter’s content. At the top, you have the most recent posts from those you follow. As you scroll down, you have posts or retweets that were made previous to the top item. Each tweet is very likely about a different topic than the prior tweet. And, with few exceptions (such as promoted tweets and the occasional conversation view), that’s basically it.

Simple and predictable. But the use cases of Twitter have significantly outgrown this concept, and Twitter hasn’t done enough to keep up.

Here’s a few scenarios. Note: I pulled these examples quite a while ago. Despite their age, the points remain the same:

I want to see what’s going on with a particular event, such as the Winter Olympics. If I’m not following accounts that post about the Winter Olympics, or I don’t see them at the top of my feed, I have to execute a search. A search for “Winter Olympics” defaults to “Top” results that includes these wonderfully irrelevant tweets:

• https://twitter.com/AuburnJokes/status/437737736787619840
• https://twitter.com/dizzyfeet/status/437705665759301633
• https://twitter.com/sickipediabot/status/437677469089288192

Let’s see: an Auburn joke, a comment about The Walking Dead’s ratings, and a joke about porn. All of these were in the first 2 pages of results for the query “Winter Olympics”.

Granted, the search results did also yield some accounts for me to click-through to or follow. But I don’t want to necessarily follow a bunch of people or read their tweets individually. I want the gestalt of the Olympics today (scores, standings, photos, etc.)

I want to see what people of a particular group are tweeting about. Yes, I know about Twitter Lists. And, I don’t want to (nor should I have to) create and maintain lists just to view a subset of people on my feed (tech journalists, co-workers, people I went to school with, musicians, companies). Instead, I encounter sequential posts in my feed as follows:

• https://twitter.com/berkun/status/437749072191946752
• https://twitter.com/KING5Seattle/status/437748882340986880
• https://twitter.com/Stammy/status/437748315736645632
• https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/437748313576992768

Let’s see: a post by a former Microsoftie-turned-author-and-speaker, followed by local news, followed by an uncaptioned picture, followed by an amusing pic by George Takei. If I want an unfocused, relatively random stream of content to wash over me, this is great. But if I want to actually focus in on, say, local news or tech news or stuff about what authors think or funny memes, how do I view posts relating to just these topics, preferrably one topic at a time?

I want to contribute to the conversation about a topic or event. Let’s say I want to post a comment about the closing ceremonies of the Sochi Winter Olympics. Hashtags are currently the best way to add metadata to my post in order to include it in others’ searches and filters, including those that don’t follow me. But which is the righthashtag to use? Here’s the recommendations I get when I start typing:

• #Sochi -> #Sochi2014, #SochiProblems, #Sochi, #SochiFail
• #Olympic -> #Olympics2014, #Olympics, #OlympicHockey, #OlympicPickupLines

Which one do I use? My post can only contain 140 characters, allowing for one or at most two tags.

Discover and Activity: variations on the same theme

Twitter put forth a design change in their iOS app that included a Discover and Activity feed, next to the default Home feed. They’ve since reverted these changes, but it’s worth exploring what they were.

While these feeds did attempt to boost relevance by showing content that is not necessarily in chronological order, they still fall into the mixed-topic trap.

Discover was a mish-mash of various different content types: trending topics, tweets from people your followers follow, people one of your followers follows, and some promoted tweets thrown in. The best scenario I can articulate for this feed is “I have no idea what I want to see, and I want to be showered with a mixture of tweets, topics, and accounts.” Where else do customers want this level of information overload and heterogeny, besides when their attention span is particularly short?

Activity showed tweets that your followers were marking as favorites. Some tweets were from those you follow, but many were not. This feed also included some sprinklings of who your followers follow. Presumably this was all an attempt to get you to follow more people. However, there was very little if anything to tell you why you should follow someone, such as a sample of what they typically tweet about. This feed also felt random and unfocused.

Follow, follow, follow

Twitter cares a lot about getting you to follow people. The more people you follow, the more varied your feed will be and (hopefully) the stickier the experience will be in order to serve you more advertisements. Following people on Twitter is a one-tap operation, and suggestions of who to follow are everywhere on Twitter’s apps and in the emails sent to you every few days. Twitter generates a reverse-chronological feed from the posts of those you are following.

The trouble with this approach is three-fold:

1. The topics you care about are tweeted by both people you follow and people you don’t follow.
2. The people you follow tweet about multiple topics.
3. The people you follow don’t tweet about the same topic at the same time.

Twitter tries to solve the first problem by suggesting more people to follow. Retweets aid this by letting followers advertise posts from people they like. However, following new people can exacerbate the other two problems.

Twitter tries to address problems two and three with trending topics, hashtags, and search. These solutions are noisy at best, and demand quite a bit of labor on the part of the user to hone in on the information they care about. Often, the result is yet another unfocused set of tweets that you have to flip through and mentally filter out noise from signal.

Topics >> People

While following people is great, the real thing Twitter should let me do isfollow topics. And, when presenting me information, it should let meexplore and dive into topics I care about.

Let me take you on a time machine back to when these things called “newspapers”. These printed sources of information divided their content into sections. If you cared about the stock market, you would go to the Finance section. If you wanted to see the score from the baseball game last night, you would pull out the Sports pages. Within those section’s pages you could be reasonably guaranteed that the articles would be about the topic in question.

I follow people on Twitter because I care about what they have to say. But the reason I come back again and again is to read information on various topics I’m interested in.

Project Lightning appears to be headed in this direction, but I would say Twitter needs to go beyond trending stories to showing me topic-centered categories of stories.

Changing the model

Fortunately for Twitter, they have copious amounts of content, millions of engaged users, and passionate investors. They also have efforts that seem to be finally heading in the right direction. I hope they continue. Twitter is too important not to.

My early review of Jet.com, an online retailer betting on low prices

Recently, online retailer Jet opened its doors to a small audience for feedback on their Beta. I've been using Jet for a few days, and wanted to share some early thoughts.

Note: Jet's terms of use require me to tell you two things: Jet.com is still in Jet Beta Phase, and I've been provided early access.

What is Jet?

Jet is an e-commerce startup headed by Marc Lore. Marc created Quidsi, which operates sites like Diapers.com. Marc sold the company in 2010. Now, he's back with a new venture with a different model.

Jet is a subscription-based shopping club. For $50/year, you can shop their inventory, which ranges from grocery items to household goods to electronics. The company currently offers free 6-month memberships for customers to kick the tires, and promises low prices, free shipping, and free returns.

Price is the killer feature

Jet's killer feature, the thing that everyone will talk about and the thing that will draw people back, is their prices. In my experience, the majority of Jet's products are priced at a discount to other retailers, sometimes significantly so. In addition to low prices, Jet adds ways to move the total price down as you shop:

• As you add more products to your cart, Jet provides an additional discount if the products ship from the same place, up to a limit of 5 products. In my experience, around 80-85% of products offer this additional discount.
• You can waive the right to return a product in your cart, knocking off another small amount from thee price (somewhere between a nickel and a quarter, usually).
• At checkout, paying with a Visa or Mastercard credit card gives you an additional 0.25% discount. Paying with a debit card gives you an additional 1.5% discount. Amex users get no discount.

The result is something that feeds the deal hunter habit: shop for low prices, and shop more for an even better deal.

Jet also gives discounts by offering kickbacks for shopping on other sites. Called Jet Anywhere, the idea is to shop at another online retailer and get a percentage of your order's value added to your Jet account as JetCash. Unfortunately, you have to both remember to click through to the other retailers' sites from Jet and you have to forward your order confirmation email to Jet in order to earn your JetCash. These two steps are enough to lead most people to not bother with this, though some kickbacks are significant (as of this writing, Anthropologie, Gap, J. Crew, and Macy's get you 30% back in JetCash).

Selection is decent, but can improve

Jet has a broad selection. Categories include products for the kitchen, bathroom, pantry, office, and toy room. I was expecting primarily a grocery and home supply selection, so I was surprised to find laptops and fishing lures alongside cereal and dishwashing detergent (figuratively speaking). Jet's category depth is somewhat lacking however. For example, I was excited to find that Jet carried the 12.5oz cans of Wellness cat food I usually buy, but was disappointed that Jet did not offer the 5.5oz size. A search for a particular kind of Kiss My Face shampoo yielded one or two varieties, but the company offers many more. Jet also appears to have just one of the many varieties of Dry Soda. The issue does not appear to be universal, as I didn't have this problem when it came to a search for deodorant. An email from the company promised to add one of the products I contacted them about, so I assume they are actively looking to improve this.

Customer service appears to be quick and friendly

I've been sending Jet feedback as I've been using the site. If the email responses are any judge, Jet's customer service team is quite good. I've received emails back within a few hours and responses are in a friendly, conversational tone. Followup emails get answered just as quickly. I haven't had to process a return or ask a complicated question, but based on these interactions I would expect a positive experience.

Site usability leaves room for improvement

Jet's website is decent, but has plenty of room for improvement: 

• Jet's product imagery is often a single, low-resolution image. This is fine for products you're familiar with, but practically a non-starter for things like grocery goods where you want to look at the ingredients and nutrition label on the box.
• The color scheme is a little hard on the eyes. Purple and light blue on white is not the best text accent color.
• Search results are sometimes unpredictable. The cat food options that comes up when searching for "wellness cat" do not come up when searching for "wellness", and vice versa.
• The site is very search-driven, and there's not much a browse experience to speak of. Curious what cereals Jet has? You have to hover over Grocery, then over Cereals under Breakfast, and click. The resulting page is a category filter of products that match Cereals. Curious about what's new or hot in Cereals? There's apparently no curated category page for that. Curious what products are tagged Breakfast or Grocery overall? It seems you can do that by deleting category filters on the left bar, but I was unable to make that work.

Are these problems bad enough to make people stop using the site? I don't think so. But with a web-only, search-driven site like Jet is today, problems searching and finding what you have in mind seems like a fairly significant problem.

Summary

So, is Jet worth the $50/year fee? Like other subscription programs, it depends on how much you buy, which depends on price and selection. I think Jet has price down pat, but their selection can be improved. A trial subscription will let you evaluate their catalog and consider how much you'll spend annually to decide if it's worth it.

I'll post some followup thoughts as Jet evolves and opens up its site to a broader audience. 

• Pros
• Great prices
• Better prices for ordering multiple products, waiving returns, and paying with a debit card.
• Products across lots of different categories
• Friendly customer service
• Cons
• Depth of selection in some categories
• Site usability
• Cumbersome Jet Anywhere rewards program

LED bulbs that won't incessantly buzz when you dim them

I was excited to swap out the incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs in my house with LEDs. LED bulbs provided the low power consumption of CFLs with the dimmability of incandescent.

I went to my local Costco and found this 3-pack of Feit LED bulbs. Dimmable, soft-white, and a 3-pack. What could go wrong?

Well, one thing did go wrong: buzzing.

Depending on the dimmers in your home and the bulbs you use, your dimmable LED bulbs may emit a buzzing sound when the dimmer is engaged. The dimmer the light, the louder the buzz. I installed two of the Feit bulbs on a pair of wall fixtures, turned on the lights, and dimmed them. The buzzing sound was very noticeable. I unfortunately had to move the bulbs to some non-dimming fixtures and continue my search for something that wouldn't drive me crazy.

After some research online, I decided to go with Philips LED bulbs. Every Philips bulb I've purchased is high quality and emits no audible buzz unless you put your ear right up next to the bulb.

I'm starting to switch out my 60-watt equivalent bulbs with the Philips 10.5 watt dimmable soft white, and my 100-watt equivalent bulbs with the Philips 19 watt dimmable soft white. They're not the cheapest, but you're paying for a great bulb that should last for years.

Here's what the bulbs look like - fairly similar to incandescents.



Note: Philips also makes a Slimstyle LED bulb that buzzes a lot. Avoid it. It looks like this.

Folex is the greatest carpet cleaner on the planet

When you have kids, cats, and adults living in the same house, accidents will happen. Sometimes those accidents involve stains, and sometimes those stains fall onto the hardwood for easy cleanup. This post is not about those times.

I've tried a number of carpet cleaners over the years, and my two complaints about them have been as follows:

1. They don't clean very well. This is especially true on old stains.
2. They have a strong, synthetic odor to them.

On the hunt for a carpet cleaner that doesn't smell like the fake lemon scent of a convenience store bathroom, I spotted a fairly plain, white bottle of Folex sitting on the shelves of a drugstore. Reading the bottle, "non-toxic" and "odor-free" caught my eye. I decided to give it a shot.

Here's what Folex has been able to get out of my carpets and rugs:

• Tomato sauce
• Jam
• Blueberries
• Coffee
• Tea
• Milk
• Soil
• Mud
• Cat hairballs
• Cat vomit
• Cat poop
• Other hard-to-identify cat-related things
• Dry-erase marker (!)

The best part is the smell: there's practically no odor. I don't feel like I have to air the house out after spraying this on my rug. 

I sometimes find Folex at Bartell's here in the Seattle area. You can also find Folex in quart-sized bottles on Amazon. The price is higher than what I've seen at drugstores, but it's a quart so it should last you a while. Give it a whirl and let me know if it works as well for you. 

No one has ever had to sleep on the couch for buying an iPhone

Despite a general lack of awe and surprise (and in some cases disappointment) after the announcement, Apple sold a record number of iPhone 5 devices on the first day they were generally available. My impression was that this iPhone announcement had the least "bang" to it when compared to ones past. Competitors are seizing on this sentiment and publishing advertisements mocking the device and its feature set.

Apple does appear to have a solid, marketable device in the iPhone 5; so, why the disconnect between the post-announcement sentiments and the record sales? The old sales axiom comes to mind: "No one ever gets fired for hiring IBM". Here's what I mean.

When the iPhone first came out, it was seen as a smartphone with a high-quality "it just works" web browser. That, combined with its nice build and touch-first story led many enthusiasts to jump on it, even though the base price was $499. That's expensive for a phone that was kind of slow, lacked 3G, and didn't even have an app store at launch. As Apple revved its iPhone offering annually, they improved the build quality, lightened the phone, made it lighter and sleeker, and most importantly brought the price down.

In addition, Apple launched the app store in mid-2008 (around the time of the iPhone 3G launch) and pushed its platform to developers. Devs initially responded with the fart apps and simple games, but soon higher-quality apps and games began to show up on iPhone screens.

It took a while, but other phone manufacturers did pivot and did revise their hardware designs and software platforms. Recent offerings from Samsung and Nokia show that you can get a nice, sleek, quality phone outside of Apple. And, browsing the Android and Windows Phone app marketplaces shows that a lot of the popular apps are available today across multiple platforms.

So where does that leave Apple and their loyal customer base? Besides brand loyalty and inertia keeping people on their platform, we have the axiom above. Or, adjusted to fit the situation: "No one has ever had to sleep on the couch for buying an iPhone". 

Customers are not buying iPhones just for the hardware quality or the current apps. They are also buying them for the future apps that will be released on the device (often first available on iOS). Apple boasts having sold 400M iOS devices, is projected to have sold 1B by 2015, and has over 700,000 apps available for purchase and/or download. These numbers draw more and more developers into the fold.

As a result, Apple has is this aura of safety. "Buy us," they imply, "and you'll get all the apps your friends have." Or don't, and risk your significant other complaining that his or her phone can't get the cool app that everyone else has.

Sure, other platforms have differentiated app experiences that are not available on iOS, but given the install base that Apple has, some level of iOS integration with competing applications is inevitable.

For competitors to succeed, they'll not only have to match or exceed Apple's hardware designs, build quality, dev platform, and app library. They'll also have to shake this notion that iOS == future proof and other platforms == app envy. Until then, the fear of sleeping on the couch will remain.

How Dollar Shave Club Is Ripping You Off

I'm a man. Like many men, I shave my face on a fairly regular basis. And, like many men, I purchase disposable safety razor cartridges that attach to handles for shaving. Now, these cartridges don't come cheap, especially the newer, multi-blade, aloe enhanced, buzzing kind.

One day, thanks to the power of social media and a viral video, I discovered Dollar Shave Club. What a snarky company! What a funny video! And they send you cheap razor cartridges every month for way less than what the big names charge! What's there not to like?

Plenty, it turns out.

You see, Dollar Shave Club resells cartridges* made by a South Korean company by the name of Dorco. Dorco also sells cheap cartridges directly to consumers. And they do so at way better prices than Dollar Shave Club.

Here's an analysis of Dollar Shave Club's pricing.

Option	Package price	Price per blade
The 4X	$6.00	$1.50
The Executive	$9.00	$3.00

The Dollar Shave Club cartridge prices includes shipping, handling, and a free handle.

Here's an analysis of Dorco's pricing.

Option	Package price	Price per blade
The 4 blade system	$24.74	$0.95
The 6 blade system	$25.00	$0.96

The 4 blade system is a combo of a 4 blade razor handle and a multi-pack of blades plus basic shipping. The 6 blade system is a combo of a 6 blade razor handle and a multi-pack of blades plus free shipping (minimum $25). The 4 blade system cost goes down if you buy a bit more to bring the total above $25 to earn free shipping.

What bothers me about this is that Dorco and Dollar Shave Club are selling the exact same thing. It would be one thing if Dollar Shave Club were selling a product direct to consumers that consumers couldn't otherwise get at retail. But Dorco is selling the exact same product directly to consumers that Dollar Shave Club is selling. Dollar Shave Club is taking that product, slapping a little marketing snazziness on top, and charging way more. The only difference I can see is that Dollar Shave Club makes it easy to purchase a small amount of blades and get a free handle (with the hope you'll stick to your subscription), whereas Dorco encourages (but doesn't require) you to purchase $25 to get free shipping. Not a significant difference in my book.

You may be doubting that Dollar Shave Club sells Dorco blades. But they are the same as far as I can tell. Here's a picture that I took recently. On the top is Dollar Shave Club's "4X" handle and blades. On the bottom is Dorco's equivalent. The only reason Dollar Shave Club's lubrication strip is a different color is that I used the blade once right before taking the picture.

So, if you're interested in Dollar Shave Club, my advice would have been to save yourself some money and buy Dorco blades. But my advice is actually to save your face and avoid these blades completely. They're not that sharp, they drew blood every time I used them, and they're just not worth it. Go with something tried and true that's still fairly cheap (like those classic Sensor blades) and your face will thank you.

*Dollar Shave Club sources their 4- and 6-blade cartridges from Dorco. I'm not sure where they get their 2-blade cartridges.

- - - - -
Do you have stained carpet? Read about the best carpet stain cleaner that I've ever used.

Recycle Your Car Seat In Seattle

When it was time for us to recycle a car seat here in Seattle, we found it especially tough. Neither the fire department nor the police were willing to take it, and all we could find on the web was a single collection event a few years ago at IKEA. Not willing to just trash the seat, we kept searching for a better option.

Fortunately, I ran across the Washington State Safety Restraint Coalition. A quick email to them led me to Goods For The Planet, a store in Seattle that not only sells green goods but also recycles a variety of different items. A quick trip to the store and $8 later, and the seat was gone.

Goods recycles many things for free, including laptops, monitors, and computers, and the rest costs somewhere between $1 and $20. The staff was friendly and quick with the transaction. They're centrally located on Dexter Avenue.

My Office Door Made It On "There I Fixed It"

The door to my office doesn't want to stay open. It's as if the building leans slightly, causing the door to close ever so slowly.

With the help of a colleague, I rigged up something to keep it open. And, apparently There I Fixed It found it funny enough to post.

see more There I Fixed It

Costco vs. Amazon: Who Has The Best Deals?

As both a Costco and an Amazon Prime member, I've been wondering who has the best deals on the stuff we regularly buy. Costco is well-known for its bulk sizing and Kirkland-brand private label products, while Amazon has Prime 2-day shipping and multi-unit, brand-name offers at prices that often undercut what you can get at physical stores.

I went to Costco yesterday and inventoried the stuff we usually buy.

Glide floss, 6 count	$12.99
Pacific Natural Foods Chicken Broth, 6 units of 32oz each	$9.79
Dave's Killer Bread, 2 loaves	$6.99
Kirkland Organic Peanut butter, 2 jars of 28oz each	$7.89
Fage 0% Greek Yogurt, 35.2 oz	$5.79
Cascade Dishwasher Gel, 125oz	$8.99
Kirkland Paper towels, 12 rolls of 80 sheets each	$14.99
Kleenex square boxes, 12 boxes of 85 sheets each	$15.49
Kirkland baby wipes, 900 total	$18.99
Ziplock quart freezer bags, 4 boxes of 54 each	$9.69
Ziplock gallon freezer bags, 4 boxes of 38 each	$10.79
Kirkland diapers, size 5, 168 total	$37.99
Kirkland toilet paper, 36 rolls at 425 sheets per roll (1912 sq ft)	$17.99
Laughing cow cheese, 4 wheels	$8.35
Total	$186.72

Next, I looked for comparables at Amazon. Here's what I did:

• I looked for the exact same brand and product. When it wasn't available, I went for something comparable.
• When the amount of product on Amazon differed from Costco, I went with a per-unit pricing (ounces for the yogurt, square feet for the toilet paper).
• I always went for Amazon Prime products.
• When the product wasn't available at Amazon, I priced it at AmazonFresh (as in the case of the yogurt).

Here's the comparison chart:

	Costco	Amazon	AmazonFresh	Notes
Glide floss, 6 count	$12.99	$20.28
Pacific Natural Foods Chicken Broth, 6 units of 32oz each	$9.79	$18.66
Dave's Killer Bread, 2 loaves	$6.99		$10.98
Kirkland Organic Peanut butter, 2 jars of 28oz each	$7.89	$8.82		Substituted O Organics
Fage 0% Greek Yogurt, 35.2 oz	$5.79		$9.18
Cascade Dishwasher Gel, 125oz	$8.99	$12.49
Kirkland Paper towels, 12 rolls of 80 sheets each	$14.99	$22.15		Substituted Bounty
Kleenex square boxes, 12 boxes of 85 sheets each	$15.49	$28.79
Kirkland baby wipes, 900 total	$18.99	$25.00		Substituted Earth's Best
Ziplock quart freezer bags, 4 boxes of 54 each	$9.69	$16.49
Ziplock gallon freezer bags, 4 boxes of 38 each	$10.79	$26.94
Kirkland diapers, size 5, 168 total	$37.99	$41.28		Substituted Earth's Best
Kirkland toilet paper, 36 rolls at 425 sheets per roll (1912 sq ft)	$17.99	$31.39		Substituted Cottonelle
Laughing cow cheese, 4 wheels	$8.35		$19.56
Total	$186.72	$292.01

As you can see, Amazon comes out to over a 50% premium to Costco. In fact, I found not one product that was cheaper via Amazon. Add to that the $79 Prime membership versus the $50 Costco membership, and the disparity grows.

Am I going to give up Amazon Prime? Nope. Amazon has plenty of stuff that Costco doesn't have, and at good prices compared to traditional retailers. But for many things, Costco's combination of private-label products and bulk sizing yields way lower prices. So, I'm sticking with both.

Amazon Prime Has Completely Changed My Shopping Habits

I remember Neil at work telling me about Prime. "Your recycle bin will be overflowing," he said, as he described the free 2-day shipping offer from Amazon and the number of items he purchased from it. At the time I didn't think paying $79 a year for the privilege of shipping was worth it. Then, last holiday season we had a bunch of presents to ship across the country, so we decided to give the free trial a shot. And we haven't looked back since.

Why is Amazon Prime such a hit? Two reasons:

Shipping speed

When I need something, I can categorize that need in terms of time as follows:

• Right now!
• Today-ish
• Soon
• Sometime this month, maybe?
• Eventually, when I get around to it

Amazon Prime succeeds because it hits on all but the first bullet point. Need a whisk? Or some granola? How about some toilet bowl cleaner? If you need this stuff RIGHT NOW then Amazon Prime isn't for you. But if you can wait a day or two, then it's a great fit.

Prices

Amazon has some pretty competitive prices on a variety of goods. These are usually name-brand products in multi-packs (6 bags of granola, 4 packs of toothpaste) that come out to less than what you pay for a single unit at a retail store. Amazon doesn't ALWAYS have the best prices (nearly 7 bucks for Bon Ami?) and doesn't ship EVERYTHING as Prime. But its hit rate for us is a solid 70-80%.

Indeed my recycle bin is overflowing with cardboard boxes, Neil. Amazon's getting a fair amount of my coin these days. Prices and shipping speed together result in a convenient way to buy all but the most urgent of things.

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Henry Blodget Is A Whiner: The IPhone Is A Dream To Use

I just read Henry Blodget's first impressions of the iPhone, after he switched to it from his Blackberry. While it's good to hear that he's overall happy with the phone, I pretty much disagree on everything he thought was faulty with the phone. Perhaps I'm not as sensitive as he because I'm not cybernetically linked to my mobile device 24/7/365. Here's a quick run-down of my opinions based on his:

• Battery life. It's fine. Come on, it'll last you a day, and you plug it up at night. Turn off push may help. If you run out after 5 hours maybe you should spend a portion of those 5 hours doing something other than fiddling with a phone.
• Speed. It's fine. It's fast enough. Really, do you need blazing quad proc speed to check your twitter status updates?
• Setting up email. I got all 3 accounts (including Exchange) on my first try.
• Typing. Indeed it's great. I was worried about my ramp-up and speed but both are awesome. The autocorrect is about 90% accurate for me.
• Email. No syncing? What? When I delete a mail from my iPhone it's gone from my Inbox. Not sure what problem he is having.
• Orientation. A quick turn of the wrist fixes this when it happens. If it happens.
• Video. Awesome indeed.
• Popups. Yeah these can be annoying. I've been conditioned to dismiss them quickly. But I agree on this one.

I predict Henry will get used to some of these minor problems after a week or two. After installing and playing with some great apps, he'll wonder why he didn't switch earlier.

Advertising Experiment: Results

OK, so I more or less did the (work)-week advertising experiment. What did I learn?

• I perceive a lot of ads. Radio and TV are the main sources. Print is moderate. Some billboards. Backs of cars were a surprising blip (license plate frames, bumper stickers). I rarely perceive ads on the web.
• I see or hear a lot of the same ads over and over. Same time of day, same medium (drive into work, watch the evening news).
• Most of the ads were for things I don't buy or use. So it was easy to live by the "don't buy or use it if you see it advertised" rule. I took some exceptions near the end here, though: NBC advertised 30 rock and I was not about to go sit in another room while it was on.
• Once you pay attention to ads, you realize how many you are exposed to. You also realize how many you are likely to perceive subconsciously. It's one thing to be made aware of a product or service. It's another to be inundated by relentless messaging.

Could I take this experiment forward for longer than a week? No way. I would eventually be unable to buy or use more and more things I want or need to buy or use. The critical mass started to build near the end of my week (see 30 rock) so I'm glad I stopped when I did.

Any changes moving forward? I'm going to mute the TV more often and stop looking at billboards, that's for sure.

An Advertising Experiment

I'm going to try an experiment with advertising over the next week.

• I'm going to record every advertisement that I consciously perceive.
• I'm not going to purchase any product or service advertised in the list above.

Now, the caveats:

• I'm not going to stop purchasing or using products and services I'm already using. For example, if I see a Netflix ad, I won't cancel my Netflix subscription.
• I'm not going to count advertisements that I see at the place of business. A Shell station advertising Shell gas via its signage does not count.
• I'm going to focus on perceived advertisements. Yes, I realize that the subconscious plays a part, but I'm not going to count those ads. This will be especially true in the Internet ad space.
  

Why am I doing this? Two reasons: I want to see how many advertisements I perceive over the course of a week, and I want to see how it changes my habits, if at all. I'll post updates as I go.

Conversion Of An Email Junkie

I've always been a fan of mail. I get excited when the postperson arrives and drops off letters at my house. It's a surprise of sorts: what will I get today? Sure, some of it is junk, some of it I was expecting (like bills), but some is a true unexpected delivery of news, a letter, a card, or the like.

For a long time, I've felt the same way about email. I remember when I first got an email address (through a BBS, before the web), and found it way cool that my friends and I could leave messages for each other without picking up the phone or writing a letter. I would share my email address out, which would result in more people sending me email. More letters appeared in the virtual mailbox for me to open, as a result.

As I moved from BBSes to ISP-provided email to web-based email, my virtual mailbox became much more than a way to exchange messages with friends. E-retailers used it to help me track the status of my order. Newsletters sent me digests of information. And, yes, junk mail started pouring in from faceless people I'd never met.

For a while, I put up with it, as the ratio of letters-from-friends to all of this other stuff remained high. But slowly it waned. The spam piled up, the automatically-generated news and alerts piled up, and my email address became much less personal. The email I received was broadcast at people like me, but not actually penned to me.

Like many others I started trying out social tools like Facebook and Twitter. Slowly, I found myself spending more and more time reading up on what people were doing via these tools, as well as posting and sharing what I was up to. Daily status, pictures, interesting stuff on the web, news...these are all things I used to use email for. But now, here's this web site or app that has all of the people I would email on it anyway, where I can share this stuff. And, I get the side benefit of others being able to look over my shoulders and comment on what I'm doing, which email doesn't easily allow for.

With the arrival of our little one, there was a lot of electronic communication happening last week. The sharing of pictures, status, and congrats was done either over the phone (family, some friends) or on Facebook (family, friends, coworkers, acquaintances) or Twitter (friends, coworkers). Reflecting on that event and the amount of stuff that was communicated about it, email was used very little. I rarely checked my email address during the past week. I was instead primarily using Facebook and Twitter, and occasionally our parents blog.

Truth be told, we did send two emails: one from my wife's personal email account to friends & fam, and one from my work email to coworkers. But there was a fair bit of overlap between these two emails' recipients and the Facebook/Twitter crowd above. And the reason we sent those emails is because not everyone is on Facebook or Twitter. At least, not yet.

So, I think I'm done getting my kicks from email. Sure, I'll still have email addresses to communicate with those not on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever the next social app comes around may be. But as long as my email address resembles my post box (mostly junk, occasional news, once-in-a-blue-moon letter), it's just not doing it for me.