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E-Commerce Sites - How to Lose a Customer in 5 Days

Today, five days after placing an order on Buy.com, I got this email:

Hello Marcus,

Thank you for shopping at Buy.com.

At Buy.com we strive to provide the widest assortment of high-quality products at the lowest prices on earth. However, sometimes circumstances beyond our control affect our selection.

We were recently informed that the item listed below from order #55555 is no longer available from that supplier. Please accept our sincere apologies for this inconvenience.

Your order for this product has been automatically cancelled and you will not be charged.

....

Sincerely, Customer Support Team

I can see getting an email a day after I placed the order, or maybe even two, but a week later? Sorry, I'll go elsewhere to avoid waiting a week for something then, about the time it's supposed to arrive at my house, find out it's been cancelled.

New Features In Firefox 1.0

Until Maqx.com starts to get a little more noticed, I'll cross link some articles here. This article goes over some of the features you can expect to see in the yet-to-be released Mozilla Firefox 1.0.

Which OS Are You?

I like operating systems, but I never thought I would BE one. According to bbspot I'm OS X. Nice... I've known was destined to use a Mac since OS X was released.

I found the link on PocketPC Thoughts, my favorite PocketPC site. If you're interested in Operating systems (or if you take the test and get labeled as an OS you're unfamiliar with), check out OSNews (I've been published there several times). It's a good blog for all things operating systems.

Transfer Email from Outlook to Entourage

Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, did not use a the same file format for email between Outlook and Entourage (their Mac version of Outlook). The solution I'm using to get mail from Outlook to Entourage is to first upload the mail to an IMAP mail server in Outlook, then download it again in Entourage. Nothing is lost--attachments, formatting, everything is retained. I'm going from Outlook to Entourage, but I'd guess the process is the same both ways.

If you're like me, you probably don't have an IMAP server sitting in your closet. Luckily, there are alternatives. I found St. Georges International Email Service. They offer 3gb (yes, gigabytes) of free IMAP email. No ads, no crazy sign up process, nothing. How they do it, I have no idea, but I'm using it to transfer mail and it's working fine.

Back to Business - New and Improved

My weblog sabbatical is over. In the past few weeks I've done the following:

• Started work on Maqx Software Awards which is still very much in development both conceptually and technically. I didn't plan on linking to it yet, but it looks like it's going to take awhile before it's perfect. In the meantime, I figured there's no harm in opening it now.


• Started work on Queenthings--my wife Jenny's weblog. Again, this one still has quite a way to go as far as design but she's already writing on it and it's some good stuff.


• 
  Switched. Yes, I got a Mac. It is good. The difference in speed between my 1.6ghz G5 at work and the Dual 2 at home is incredible. The price wasn't bad either. I did my homework, compared everything available and for the speed and quality, nothing in the PC world came close. I got mine refurbished so it was less expensive than the ones on their site now, and I'm feeling good about the whole thing.

  If you keep reading this site and Maqx.com there will definitely be more on the software I'm using and specifics on why I'm pleased with the switch.

Other stuff has happened as well, more to come. Many more good things to come.