January 20th, 2008

When is it a good idea to stay small?

There are a lot of interesting businesses in the Amherst area. Being a college town that survives off the spending of students, there are many creative ways that business owners have managed to expand their services to cater to the 25+ demographic. The reasoning behind this is simple – students aren’t always in town spending money (winter and summer break account for more than 4 months of the year). Here are a few business that are trying this:

Amherst Coffee (great expansion idea)
I was very interested to try out this new cafe in Amherst. They gave a very good first impression. The idea of a simple $1 cup of coffee was great and the interior was very well done. You could tell the owners spent a lot of time on the decor. It made you want to stay, and relax. Instead of couches they have large cushioned platforms right up against the windows. You can sit/lay/etc.. on them. This is an interesting experiment that looks to be working great.

Expansion – Although coffee is a great product with a great markup, Amherst Coffee came up with a great idea to turn into a wine bar at night. Driving by at night I often see many people in the windows, enjoying a glass of wine. The profit margin of wine is lower than coffee, but the cost of a glass of wine is at least 2x more. I’d assume their earnings from nightly wine sales are similar to that of their daily coffee sales.

The Pub (very very good expansion)
I’ve heard from many people that The Pub has the best Pub food in Amherst. After eating there a few times I’d have to agree. Portions are generous and as an added bonus the manager seems to only hire the most attractive waitresses he can find. Subsequently our company meetings are regularly held here.

Expansion – After 8pm the Pub completely changes. Dance lights come out of the ceiling, the cooks window turns into a satellite bar, and the tables are moved to the corners to form a dance floor. The first time I went here after 8pm for drinks it was comical to see just how different it was here at night. I wondered if the families that came in to eat during the day had any idea that it becomes a nightclub within an hour after they leave. It doesn’t appear to matter because The Pub is packed day and night because of it. Without a doubt, a great idea.

Souperbowl (poor expansion)
There aren’t many places in Amherst that serve really good soup. Fortunately Souperbowl is close to our office and I really love eating there. I’d much rather patronize a local, small business than one of the corporate chains. Homemade is better, right? The Buffalo Chicken Chowder here is my favorite – nice and spicy.

When i first visited SouperBowl they had a small corner store (pictured left). It was just the right size for a place serving soup and sandwiches. There were 6-10 tables. This gave it a small, warm feel. Perfect in my opinion.

Expansion – I was very, very surprised when i came into SouperBowl’s new location a few days ago. They had more than quadrupled their size, now with more than 25 tables, seating for an estimated 100+. Even more surprising was a 25′ wine/beer bar. The bar is very sleek and modern – probably one of the nicest bars in Amherst. There are a few problems with this expansion. First, what is a bar doing in a restaurant serving soup? I drink moderately, and I can say I’ve never had the urge for a beer or glass of wine while standing in line for soup. Another problem is that there are already 10 or more very popular places to drink in town, maybe 20+. I can’t imagine students on a Friday night heading to a soup shop to drink with friends. The two just don’t mix.

I’m very curious as to why the owners decided to spend the tens of thousands of dollars on remodeling, obtaining a liquor license and more – all for the occasional odd character who finds it enjoyable to drink at a soup shop. It will be interesting to see if the students next semester agree with me. For SouperBowl’s sake, i hope they don’t.

In Summary
It very interesting to see these businesses expanding in creative ways. It’s often surprising what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes the most whacky and creative ideas can succeed (bar in a soup shop anyone?). With my most recent startup CampusLIVE i’ve relied on the friend test to decide whether my most creative ideas are worth persuing. I ask 20 or more of my friends whether they think it will work. If most of them do, I go for it. Worst case the idea fails, but I’ve learned something in the process.

January 13th, 2008

Comcast’s installation makes no sense, neither do their staff

Once again i’m left wondering where exactly Comcast comes up with their nonsensical policies. I brought up the idea to my roomates of canceling our currently overpriced TV/Internet package, and having them signup for a new “Special Deal”. The plan we had was for TV (with HBO) & “High-Speed” Internet for about $180/month. The special available now is for TV (With HBO and Starz), High Speed Internet, and Phone service – all for $129/month. I figured this would be a VERY easy switch: I cancel, roomate signs up, we get Starz and a new phone for less money. Of course I was wrong.

We drive to Comcast and turn in our 5 cable boxes, remotes, cables and modem. They promptly cancel my account, easy as pie. I thank him and my roomate then says he’d like to signup for their new 1-year special package deal. The guy was nice enough, took all his information and then started talking about the installation.

Comcast Rep: “The Installation is quite long, it takes about 4 hours. Also, we won’t be able to get someone to your house to install for about 2 weeks”.

Roomate: “Ummmm, how could it take 4 hours. I could take the cable boxes we just unplugged and plug them back in. There is no installation”.

Comcast Rep (shaking head): “You have it all wrong, it’s a big job, gotta test all the lines and stuff, plug in your boxes and stuff”.

I can’t for the life of me understand where they came up with this 4 hour installation. It’s completely crazy. On top of the inconvenience of having to wait for someone else to plug in a cable box, we also now have to wait 2 weeks for them to come install it. Amherst is a college town and there is almost nobody here right now since school is out of session. That means (almost) nobody is signing up for new accounts, or cancelling them.

Day 2 of 14 without TV or Internet. The roommates are ticked off that they have to do all their homework and TV watching from my office. Thank you Comcast!

January 5th, 2008

YouTorrent launched – I’m impressed

I found a great new Torrent search engine that launched today. In my opinion it’s the best so far. The site is going to save me a lot of time because I often find that I need to search 5 or more popular torrent sites to find what i’m looking for. YouTorrent does an excellent job of combining searches of the 10+ major engines so that I don’t have to. I love anything that will save me time.

Essentially their servers scrape all the results and use this meta data to provide a really clean way of browsing torrents. There have been many attempts at this in the past, but I think YouTorrent has done it right.

I can see a lot of possibilities for more features to come out in the near future as well. Having a tooltip that displays comments on each result would be great. And how about linking directly to the .torrent? Not sure about the legality on that one.
Head over to YouTorrent.com and give it a try.

[story via TorrentFreak]

January 3rd, 2008

Why I’ve grown to hate my Treo 700w

My current Treo 700w seemed perfect when I bought it, but my opinion has changed. There are a few very fundamental things that have pushed me to switch to a Blackberry for my next phone.

The Alarm / Snooze Functionality

Setting an alarm for the morning is quite easy. They even have a visual clock that you can drag the hands around on. Very nice for a visual person like me. Unfortunately when my alarm goes off in the morning and I want to hit snooze, I only have two options. 5 minutes or 1 hour. This is can’t understand. I can’t fall back asleep in 5 minutes and snoozing for an hour just ends up killing the day. Please Micro$oft – an update with 20 or 30 minute snooze would be great

Add New Contact

A very basic feature of any phone (or so you would think) is to be able to click on a call you received and add that number as a contact. The Treo gives no such option. This means for the past year i’m stuck writing down a number in my received calls and entering it into the contacts. Lame.

ActiveSync Connection

Since I used to love Outlook, I bought the Treo thinking it would be an awesome way to sync daily tasks, calendars and email. They advertise it as a simple plug in. It worked occasionally but the connection on the plug is such a crazy design that it started to fail consistently. A regular USB mini plug anyone?

Ok so there are a couple Pro’s: 

Battery life is excellent. I’m still using the original battery after a year and typically don’t have to recharge for 4 days.

Solitaire also works well anytime i have a few minutes to kill.

January 3rd, 2008

Yes, the 42″ Plasma is gone, i seens it

I have to credit Delivrine Registre and WALB news of South Georgia for their great news coverage of a recent story. Somebody managed to steal a 42″ Plasma TV from an electronic store in Albany, GA -while the store was full of customers in broad daylight. Some might say that this was the highlight of the story, but I would have to say their expert witness, Ms. Whitney Braxton took the star role:

“I realized that it was gone when my boss came in and said the monitor was gone. And I said the monitor was gone. So I just jumped up and saw that the monitor was gone. That was pretty much it. I was in the back putting plain t-shirts in a box,” said employee Whitney Braxton.

What a priceless interview. I would highly recommend that her boss promote her to Security Director – effective immediately. You know, just like the guys at Best Buy who pretend to be friendly at the door just before watching your every move from their 8 security screens?