Schools Designed for Learning: The Denver School of Science and Technology, presented by the American Architectural Foundation, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, and Target, this video features the innovative Denver School of Science and Technology.

Building it was cheaper (per sq.ft) than a “regular” school, and the results are so much better. Fantastic. Take note everybody, and feel very embarassed if you dare to build any more “same old” school blocks!

On my MacBook, I use both Safari and Firefox anyway, so this is not a “browser switch” story… merely that Safari 4 beta is now available.

It feels fast, and has some pretty interesting features… does take some getting used to, particularly having the tabs all the way at the top now. And the size of the tabs scales with the # present, which I find to be a nuisance; I prefer them to be a fixed size, this also keep the closing button [X] in a consistent position if you close multiple tabs. I’ll work with it for some days.

No, I didn’t do it, honestly! ;-)
I just got an email from Sun (Open Query being a Partner and all) to participate in a survey, and this is the incentive prize. It’s kinda funny, but also a bit indulgent. I really don’t think that’s where OpenSolaris shines, so why even go there… just to prove that it’ll run in a tiny environment? Who cares? I mean, you’d usually run it on a nice 64bit multi-core machine with plenty of RAM and storage, right? Just like any other new server…

I don’t get it… perhaps someone else will offer a more plausible suggestion, but so far I’m guessing indulgence ;-)

Some offerings are just a complete fail. I’ll give you an example from my real world. Supermarket chains around here give out a voucher for a petrol discount when you spend more than $30 in one go. That’s kinda smart, since petrol pricing is something people care about so it can drive changes in customer behaviour (to a point).
Then one of the big chains has introduced a kind of loyalty card last year, whereby the discount gets linked to the card rather than getting printed on the receipt. Saves hassle with paper, but the real objective (like any loyalty card) is to better track customer behaviour by allowing the supermarket to link your purchases over time.

The key fail is that you still only get the discount if you spend $30 in one go. Of course this is aimed to entice people to do fewer big shops rather than more smaller ones. But apart from the paper hassle, we’ve merely identified two benefits to the vendor, and nothing much for the customer. And it doesn’t even work for the supermarket, because now people won’t bother showing their card if they’re spending less than $30, and thus their behaviour doesn’t get tracked for those purchases. That’s the thing you’d want to specifically track, if you’d like to get people to change their purchasing behaviour. And the discounts aren’t sufficient to drive a change in behaviour, they still do ad-hoc shops. So it just doesn’t work.

What could help? Keeping the loyalty card concept, the supermarket could record points for every purchase, with a bonus number (or percentage) for bigger purchases. At a certain level of points, the customer gets their fuel discount. It’s all automated through the cash registers anyway, so all that is easy enough to implement.

But I haven’t told you about the other fail, on the customer side. With the cards, people now can’t easily tell whether there’s a discount on their card, unless they login to some website to check (and remember yet another login and password). They used to at least have their discount voucher, which you handed over when you pay for the petrol.

If you don’t show your card now you still get your voucher (although no special offers that only apply if you show the card but again are only valid if the purchase is greater than $30), and if that were scrapped I’m sure that people would still use the card when doing bigger purchases just to not lose out on the discounts. That doesn’t mean it’s a good system though. It sucks on all sides as it pretty much fails all its objectives.

Did you know that by banging your head against the wall you burn about 150 calories per hour? However, there are more effective and less painful ways to exercise (no surprise there). Personally, I like an early morning walk and playing some Wii games around lunch time.

Most companies aim towards high(er) value offerings, sold at a higher price, so that their margin increases. Right?
But what they’re actually doing is desperately trying to outrun their own high (and escalating) cost structure. I ask you this: why should a client have to pay for inefficiencies in a provider’s organisation? Also, why says that a higher value offering needs to a) be priced higher and b) have a higher profit margin?

This is not the unavoidable way of things, but the reason it’s the usual is that you can’t just decide to change one aspect (such as a higher value offering), yet keep the way the company is run the same, and then still make enough profit to feed the hungry monster. It won’t jive, and that’s simple economics.

Are more expensive products and services always better quality? Of course not. The question is, does the pricing work through into the quality of the product or service, the profit margin of the provider, or does it just feed the hungry monster…. it could be a combination, and quite often you can actually work this out by looking the company in question: how they present themselves on the net, at events, their sales behaviour, advertising, and last but not least what others say about them.