eCommerce and

The big new thing in technology right now is the Motorola Droid with Verizon Wireless. With Google's Android 2.0, Verizon's coverage, and some nice hardware, it's set up to rival Apple's eight-hundred-pound gorilla, the iPhone. Ushering in a new set of smartphones based on smart user interfaces and open development, it's definitely a great phone for technophiles and power users. But how does it handle in a business environment? We got our hands on one, so let's see how it works.

The first impression of the Droid is that it's solid. Weighing in at 6oz (169g) and sporting a minimalistic metal case, it looks and feels like a brick. That may be a turn-off if you prefer your phones to be light, but it's reassuring if you prize durability. It takes up surprisingly little space given its screen and keyboard. Its edges look sharp, but feel comfortable in the hand. You may have heard reserverations about the keyboard, but it's actually quite responsive and easy to use. The plain layout helps when looking for symbols.

The user interface, of course, is extremely responsive. All the little touches that we've come to expect from a top-end modern smartphone are there. The high-resolution screen really shows its stuff, with beautifully sharp and clear displays on maps, websites, and other image-intensive applications. The display is bright and visible, indoors and out.

So, how does the Droid do in a business environment? The most important aspect is probably connectivity. The Droid natively supports Gmail, standard IMAP & POP3 email, Web browsing, SMS messaging, Google Talk, and of course phone conversations. The interfaces for each are well-designed and easy to use. Verizon's coverage is a definite plus here, giving fast, consistent connection to all of these services in most metropolitan areas. Android provides smart switching to wireless hotspots to help keep costs down. Visual Voice mail is a free upgrade, but incurs a small monthly fee from Verizon. Other syncing features include Exchange and Google calendars. Contacts do not automatically sync with Outlook (they do with Gmail and Exchange), but you can import them into your Gmail account relatively easily. This is a general principle with the Droid: Google apps are definitely given preferential treatment in terms of native capabilities. However, it's likely there will be an app available in the Android Market for any major third-party software. Internet browsing is quick and straightforward; it's probably the closest experience to browsing on a computer that's available in a smartphone. It doesn't come with Flash support, but Google promises an update to provide that capability in 2010.

The Droid appears to be best suited for a small business environment. If your business already embraces the Google Apps platform, the Droid should fit in neatly. If you are using other proprietary software, it might be a bit more of a hassle; you'll have to weigh its capabilities against that discrepancy. The Droid prizes user empowerment above other considerations, so it may not be the best choice for large organizations where security is an issue. However, it shines at speed and flexibility, two important attributes for small businesses. Another consideration is that many of its capabilites are overpowered for the typical user's needs; this phone would be best suited for your IT department and mobile professionals, while many employees would be better served with a more basic phone that supplements their desktop solutions. In some cases it might serve as a low-end laptop replacement, but consider your users needs carefully before taking that step. Compared to the iPhone, the Droid probably provides superior business capability, primarily because of Verizon's availability over AT&T, so if you're trying to decide which to upgrade to, the Droid is a good bet. However, if iPhones are already integrated into your business, it's probably a good idea to hold off on switching until the Droid shows a clear advantage.

The Droid's professional style and stunning display ensure it fits in any business setting.

The Droid's 5MP camera has good resolution, but is fairly fuzzy in low light. Expect picture quality similar to that of a digital camera half its size.

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.

• Optimalogica blog recommends a reconciliation system for making financial decisions and experimental sales decisions.


• Gross National Happiness has been measured, and Facebook’s Prototype confirms that we are in fact less happy on Monday’s.


• Can’t keep up with all of the social media, internet and search options available at any given moment?  Mike Moran can help you figure out what to ignore in Internet Marketing.


• Google Reader adds Magic to your settings.

My personal favorite this week, courtesy of SEOmoz:

Sam Niccolls, SEOmoz blogger, writes "This e-mail from a hopelessly confused webmaster to a competitor is worth its weight in gold."

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

At Gordian Project we use Google tools extensively.  Adwords, Analytics, Apps, Chrome, Website Optimizer, Webmaster tools, Checkout, YouTube, we use them all.  We’ve even got some nice press about our development of Google Checkout pixel tracking for affiliates and our utilization of Google Checkout combined with other Google products to improve overall marketing efforts.  We’ve had a good relationship with Google, have enjoyed several dinners with our Googlers, and have enjoyed the annual Christmas gift we receive from the Adwords team.  Unfortunately, that positive momentum has taken a severe blow.

A couple weeks ago Google Checkout’s finance team performed a review of our account and decided that a reserve would be required to “offset any refunds, chargebacks, or other claims against [our] balance.”  The notion in general was quite surprising since no other payment processor has ever set a reserve requirement on any of our accounts.  More surprising, though, are the amount of the reserve relative to our account activity, the lack of details as to how it was determined and what could be done to reduce/remove it.  This led to a fairly passionate phone conversation with a Google Checkout team member followed by a discussion with my management team as to how to proceed with Google Checkout on PlumberSurplus.com and OutdoorPros.com.

First, let’s tackle the sheer amount of the reserve.  Before sharing some numbers, for those unfamiliar, “Other Activity” is the bucket Google Checkout uses for refunds, chargebacks, claims, etc.  Each day a merchant has a starting balance, purchases, other activity, a payout, and an ending balance.  Starting Balance + Purchases – Other Activity – Payout = Ending Balance

For the Google Checkout account in question…

• When looking at “Other Activity” the reserve requirement represents:
  • 786% of our highest “Other Activity” on a given day in 2009
  • 4,561% of our average daily “Other Activity” over the last 12 months
• The reserve represents 670% of our average daily “Purchases” in 2009
• At our Q3 2009 average weekday payout, and the fill rate from Google, it would take over 5 months to fill the reserve.  This would be even longer if we reduce our promotion of Google Checkout as a payment option.
• When combined with our average “Ending Balance” Google will be holding over nine times our average daily “Purchases”.

All of you merchants out there know nine days of cash is unprecedented and ridiculous.  Particularly for an account that has been with Google Checkout since inception, without a single issue with respect to meeting our refund, chargeback, and claim obligations.  We currently offer Visa, MasterCard, Discover, AMEX, PayPal, and PayPal Pay Later along side Google Checkout.  None of these other payment methods, through which we transact significantly higher gross dollars, have required a reserve, most make funds available in a day or two, and at competitive rates.  Google Checkout stands alone in this reserve requirement.

When we challenged Google Checkout on these points they responded with:

Once the reserve is filled, no more funds will be withheld from your future disbursements. Furthermore, your ending balance is not included in the reserve. It is highlighted on the Merchant Help Center that Google initiates payouts within two business days of charging an order; therefore, Google is not effectively holding money back from you and these funds are not included in the reserve.

They’re obviously missing the point, the fact that after the reserve is filled the money that is earned is paid out in two business days is irrelevant to a merchant.  You are still holding the pool of cash.  By their logic we wouldn't care if the reserve was $1.00 or $5M as long as after it was full we received new money in two days.  Heck, make it $10M.  Yes, every dollar that goes in is paid out in two days on a last-in-first-out basis but we in essence must give tens of thousands of dollars to do business with Google Checkout.  The only way we can compare this with their competitors is to compare how many days of cash each holds at any given time, for whatever reason.  Many hold less than one, a couple hold one to two, and Google Checkout now wants to hold nine.  Additionally, our merchant accounts allow us to keep transaction fees through the month for debit at the end, which is another cash flow plus over Google Checkout.

So Google is in left field in terms of understanding the language of the merchant, and the amount of our reserve is extremely high compared to our volume of business.  So, to the second point, how did they come up with it?  Maybe that will also shed some light on how we can work to have it reduced or eliminated.  After some prodding, our Google Checkout contact responded, “For clarification purposes, the way we determine whether an account should be placed on a reserve is based on a proprietary set of rules…  However, the way we calculate the reserve placed on your account is an industry standard formula that other processors use.”  So the obvious… how, for a given account, can an industry standard formula result in a reserve requirement for Google Checkout but not for any other major payment processor in the industry?

Our subsequent request for the “industry standard formula” returned the high level variables included, without their values or the formula.  The variables included are, “your chargeback exposure, your refund exposure, and your delivery exposure.”  Given the numbers above I’m pretty confident chargebacks and refunds aren’t the culprit, which leaves delivery.  Google wants to cover the dollars that have been ordered but not shipped.  In essence, by setting a reserve that covers dollars in open orders Google is deciding we can’t have our money until the point of shipment, rather than at the point of order.  On average, Google keeps the cash for our work in process.  The point at which to charge a customer should be a decision made by the merchant, not the payment processor.  Some merchants offer only fast moving products that are always in stock and opt to charge at the point of shipment while other merchants may offer special order or hard to find products with lead times and opt to charge at the point of order, possibly to procure the special order items.  For the latter group, Google holding a reserve to cover the open dollars is a de facto trump of the business decision to collect up front.  Whether the former or latter group, it’s a business decision and shouldn’t be under the purview of the payment processor.  Most payment processors don’t even have shipment data.  They don’t need it; they simply process transactions, which yields no exposure.  Even still, lumping our total open dollars on top of our average “Other Activity” I couldn’t get anywhere near the reserve requirement Google calculated.

Ultimately, in fact, no specific changes or improvements have been recommended and the rep in our call finally agreed that our best bet is to hold our breath, cross our fingers and hope that the magic Google machine makes a better decision next time.

At the least this issue highlights Google Checkout’s lack of maturity relative to the payment processing space they have entered.  At its worst, this issue represents a seemingly arbitrary, punitive move to support Google’s interest income goals.

This has led us to strongly reconsider our approach to promoting Google Checkout as a payment option.  This year, across our sites, Google Checkout was presented as the first option in our checkout flow.  In light of these events, we have moved Google Checkout to be the last option in our checkout flow and in the first couple days noticed a drastic drop in Google’s share of our payment processor pie, to about 1/3 the previous level.  Interestingly, overall daily sales have increased noticeably.

Just prior to completion of this post, Google Checkout reduced our reserve by about 29%, without sharing the new calculation.  At our new, lower sales volume through Google Checkout, this reserve, without including our average Ending Balance, is over 20 days of “Purchases” and will take over a year to fill.  Although I appreciate the reduced reserve, I’m not sure we’re making progress, or making sense.

If as the shimmer of “Google” begins to fade, and it inevitably will, this is how they begin treating customers, I’m betting on PayPal.

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.

With all of the talk regarding the drop in Google Product Search traffic we have been looking for ways to improve and differentiate our products in what has also been known as Google Base, Froogle and Google Shopping.  According to Channel Advisor retailers have been reporting that traffic from Google Product Search has been down as much as 60-80% since June of this year.

In reviewing our listings and researching the ever frequent updates we found several (to put it lightly) searches that were completely dominated by big box retailers.  Not only were these searches dominating us but they were completely eliminating any competition, as in only one retailer was shown as offering that product line (at least on the first page). 

I could understand if the retailer's that were shown in these searches  all had the most relevant data, the most robust attributes, the best pricing, the largest number or reviews, the highest ratings, and this engine was based on bids, but none of these are true.  In one of the first searches for the Kohler Forte bathroom faucet the Home Depot shows as a retailer over and over again, yet their robust and relevant data refers to this popular Kohler collection as "Fort".  You will also notice that the only other retailers referenced are Walmart and Amazon.

Google Product Search Result Screenshot Favors Bad Data from Big Box Retailer

Porcher, a luxury brand by American Standard, is then shown as primarily sold by Walmart.  Walmart has fewer ratings than other retailers listed and of those ratings also has the lowest seller rating.

Google Product Search Result Screenshot Favors Poorly Rated Big Box Retailer

I am a Google fan, always have been, but have they forgotten about the user experience?  When shopping are we not looking to compare?  Not in this case (unless you want to click through a few more pages), because the Home Depot is the only option you're going to find for this Jado search. 

Google Product Search Result Screenshot Selects Only Big Box Retailer

The Home Depot hasn't completely cornered the market on Google Base, Walmart has capitalized as well as you can see by this search for American Standard's Town Square line.

 Google Product Search Result Screenshot Selects Only Big Box Retailer

Blog Update

We have confirmation from another source, which works with online retailers in optimizing their marketing strategies, that this is an ongoing problem.  According to our sources this has been happening in other categories, most predominantly in Home & Garden and Electronics.  We tested our sources information using a search from the Home & Garden category for a Skyline Chair.  The results were similar to what we experienced within our own category, one listing for Eco-Furniture and every other listing for Walmart.

Google Product Search Result Screenshot Favors Big Box Retailers in Multiple Categories

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

You may already know that Gordian Project users are in the cloud.  Well, on Tuesday, we hit our second bump in the road with Google Apps. An outage. You may say to yourself, "An outage? With Google Apps? Really?" Well. Yes. Really. Totally freakin' down. Apparently, Google had an issue Tuesday morning that brought down the email interface for apps users.  Déjà vu?

Here is the error I got in Chrome:

At first I thought to myself, "Hmmm. That's weird." So I literally waited 30 seconds and tried again. Same thing. So I asked the person next to me to try. Same thing. So, I tried my iPhone and got:

OK. Seems likely to be a global problem. So, I alerted users on our network that I was aware of an issue with Google Apps and was looking into it. Because the error says, "Please try again in 30 seconds.” I figured it would be a temporary outage and waited only a few minutes. The problem persisted. So I checked Google News and, sure enough, there's a widely recognized outage. From the news, I noticed two things that were particularly interesting:

1. I wonder if the "tip-toeing" of wave into apps created yesterday's havoc.
2. Google has an Apps Status Dashboard

So, after I found out that there was an Apps Status Dashboard, I checked it out and here's what I got:

Google, why didn't you show this to me on the 502 error page? Instead, you told me to try every 30 seconds. I can't imagine how many people wasted hours of their day refreshing every 30 seconds to try to get to critical email. You may remember this article highlighting good custom error pages.

After the incident was stabilized, Google posted an incident report here. According to the report, Google "underestimated the increased load that some of the new updates placed on request routing." Not sure what the "new updates" were, but it doesn't seem like Google should underestimate the anticipated load.

Noting the red "X" by Google Mail, I clicked on it at 1:48 PM to find:

It says there will be an update at 1:53 PM, so I waited until 1:58 PM and clicked again:

Hey! Wait just a second! Ten minutes ago there was not an update at 1:02 PM. What gives Google? Don't you know that 45 minutes after I announced it to everyone, people are still coming to my desk to say "Hey Josh. My email's down."? Please, just tell me what I need to know when you know it! Also, I love that there is a link to the "How to use IMAP or POP", where the first step outlined is to "Enable POP or IMAP in your Google Apps email account". I can't get to my apps account! Then I realized, I already had IMAP enabled on my account and had it set up in Outlook. So, I started up Outlook... only to be woefully reminded of why I wanted desperately to switch to Google Apps to begin with. I quit Outlook before I even used it, as it was either Outlook or every other application, and a choice had to be made. Instead, I waited for the Google update. At 2:40 PM I refreshed the Status Dashboard to find:

Hooray! We're back up! Not without a few lessons.

1. Google, or any other cloud service provider, when a critical service goes down, don't show me an error that tells me to retry every 30 seconds; especially if that's not really what you want me to do. Send me to the place with the relevant information. I know, based on your incident reports, that you "published ongoing reports to the Google Apps dashboard, Gmail Help Center, the Enterprise and Gmail blogs, and the GoogleAtWork and Google Twitter feeds, to help provide customers with the latest status and available workarounds.", but the error was unhelpful. Please don't make me Google it.


2. IT managers, if you're going to start using SAAS and cloud enabled services, find out, in advance, what the notification mechanism is for outages. In this case, it would have been a simple thing to have added the Apps Status Dashboard to one of my feeds.


3. Don't count on Google Apps, or any other cloud service being available 100% of the time. If you have a critical meeting or a conference call that requires you to have a cloud stored document or email or presentation up and ready to go, make sure it's ready and pulled up long before your event, or make sure to store it locally, as well. Also, based on Google's comments, it may be good to enable IMAP on your account just in case you can't web-surf your email; at least then you can get to critical emails with Outlook or Thunderbird.
   

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

• Craig Tomlin offers five usability tips and teases readers with an additional five to follow in an upcoming article.  I may not agree with every tip provided in this article but each website designer can evaluate usability for themselves.  I particularly enjoyed the example given in number five which was “Reduce shopping cart distractions”.  The example given by the author is a great one as I too would have been completely overwhelmed by the shopping cart page.  I look forward to seeing the next article.


• Almost 30% of British online shoppers forget their login information when shopping online and state that it is their biggest annoyance.  Europe as a whole said that their biggest annoyance was poor customer service.  Both statistics led those surveyed to reveal that these annoyances led them to spend less money than when their satisfaction level was high.


• Trust and security remain important factors to consumers when deciding who to shop with online retailers.


• Sears leaves categories vulnerable to creative comics.







• Analysts are early to point to signs of stabilization in the economic environment, stating highlights from eCommerce as the beginnings of recovery.
  
  

Little Giant has been hard at work engineering pumps that their most loyal customers have been waiting for. PlumberSurplus.com is your destination for the new Little Giant TSW Sump Pump System and their NXTGen Condensate Pumps.

“They're (Microsoft) not racists at heart - they're just being racist as it makes good business sense. They're business racists.” – Joe McCann 2009

We’ve all submitted projects that weren’t exactly our best effort.  Yes, even you.  Once your initial response of  “not me, that's not something I would ever do", wears off, go ahead and raise your hand.  Join the rest of us that have, at times, continued the time honored tradition of cramming the night before a deadline.  This tradition I’m referencing inevitably leads to mistakes, errors or at least the quality one could have delivered.   Seems someone(s) at Microsoft may have been practicing this tradition prior to releasing a recent ad campaign.  I’m not saying this is what happened here, but at least it would be some sort of excuse. The specifics are detailed by Bobbie Johnson in his article, Microsoft apologises over race-swap gaffe.

I've noted what I believe to be the painfully obvious, but somewhere along the lines Microsoft didn't seem to pick up on the following:

• The evident; don’t swap one head for another regardless of race. That’s akin to the adult entertainment industry.


• If you’re going to “touch up” skin color, make sure you address the face to hand skin tones.


• When you work for a company as recognizable as Microsoft, try not to use an image that includes your top competitors’ more recognizable laptop.

In an effort to tie this to some kind of applicable business observation, I find myself circling back to much of Gordian Project’s current internal dialogue. Long story short, no matter where you find yourself in the company, what you do every day impacts not only the opportunity you have with the company, but the company’s ability to provide you opportunity. 

I’m interested in what you find most baffling about this Photoshop disaster… 

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

Amazon has been in the news quite a bit lately, whether it’s the Kindle, the Zappos acquisition or the creation of their outdoors specialty section. Some topics get more press than others but I find the tactics Amazon is using to bolster their eCommerce presence very interesting (as if they needed too) and doing so at the category level. It's yet to be seen how Amazon will leverage or integrate Zappos even though they state it will remain a separate business but they now own Zappos, Endless and the shoes category on Amazon.com (that’s a lot of shoes). In the outdoors space they recently announced their new specialty outdoors section which is offering gear from a selection of top tier merchants. We have seen this before with toys and other categories of products as well. While Amazon is the largest eCommerce website, they now seem to be conquering through category and acquisition, creating destinations where they now attempt to rule with the best selection, price and customer service.

What I also believe is important to note is that many large eCommerce websites also have an Amazon store.  This gives Amazon two inherent advantages, the first being that they know what you are selling, at least on Amazon, and second of those SKU’s they have access to which ones are top sellers.  This data also applies to other etailers within the same verticals.  Along with SKU data collected from marketplace merchants Amazon also gains insight on what those businesses do in sales, growth, and customer service which they monitor rigorously.

Now whether Amazon uses this data or not, or to what extent they are using this data may yet to be seen but it means that they could start stocking the best SKU's, therefore circumventing merchants through exclusive manufacturer deals. They also have an idea of which businesses might be better partners or possible targets for acquisition.  Targets based on their account performance. I sure can't think of a better place I would rather be than in Amazon's shoes right now (excuse the pun).

Since it seems that eCommerce websites may be good targets for acquisition right now, I think the bigger questions might be “What is Amazon's master plan? How do they plan to dominate eCommerce and what are they or others looking for in an eCommerce acquisition? What businesses might fit that mold?”

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

On July 2, 2009, at approximately 11:15PM PST, as I was lying snugly in bed, I had nary a clue that Authorize.net was going down. Apparently, there was a fire at the data center. Many of you have probably already read this story; or, perhaps you are/were a customer of Authorize.net's and were made aware by errors. I wanted to share our experience with the major outage and why the lesson is valuable for others in eCommerce. I could be writing a blog post about how much it sucks that Authorize.net even went down, given that it was only one data center scorched. I could be asking, "Where in the world was the backup data center? "Rackspace, how does a sprinkler system kill backup generators? Where is the backup for your backup's backup?!" I could also be writing about how quickly the status was updated on the situation thanks to some smart person at Authorize.net building a Twitter account that day. But this is a post about a shift in our philosophy.

So, as I slept I had no idea that our payment gateway, Authorize.net, was getting wrecked by a fire. When I woke up at about 7:30AM I had already received a text from one of the managing partners alerting me that we had received a pile of errors related to Authorize.net failures. Let me explain what that means for us. An error from our order system that there was an Authorize.net failure means that an order was placed, but no payment was collected. You might be saying to yourself, "Why in the heck would you guys place an order without first confirming that payment could be collected?!" Well, the reason is simple and goes back to our roots. Early on in our eCommerce venture, we prayed for orders every day. Our strategy on many fronts, including payment processing, was to protect orders; in this case, let the customer place the order on the customer site without failure or error (or some other barrier to transaction) and clean up the mess manually. As a consequence of this strategy, when we made a call to Authorize.net for payment processing and it failed, we would have a placed order in our system with no payment from Authorize.net. So, an email with the customer info would be forwarded over to the tech team to review and contact the customer to process a manual payment. This was a good solution for us, early on, as we didn't want to miss a single transaction. We needed the business!

This process worked for us for a good long while, since downtimes on the Authorize.net front were very rare, but when they did happen it was usually only one or two and could be resolved easily. Well, we hadn't had this issue in quite a while and it had not occurred to us that we would need to update our strategy as we grew. Then we grew. By a lot. The consequences of having more than ten times the volume of four years ago becomes readily apparent when your payment processor goes down for more than eight hours. The morning that Authorize.net went down meant that we had a few dozen orders that were placed without payment but had already begun processing for shipment at warehouses across the country. So, we had quite a cleanup effort on our hands. First, ensure that the orders don't get processed out the door, since they haven't been paid for. Second, disable the Authorize.net payment method until we can figure out what happened or is happening and identify when they're back up. Third, contact all of the customers to see if they would like to complete a manual transaction over the phone or retry their checkout using Google Checkout or PayPal (two services that we did not offer at launch). Four, document and share the happenings with the management team. Finally, fix our outdated checkout so that orders do not get placed when the authorization transaction fails.

Our checkout process and a redesign have been on our radar for an update for some time now. This, however, is one issue that escaped us until it became a pain. Hopefully, this will help us to think critically about updates to our site as we examine where we were, where we are, and where we're going.

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.

Friendfeed was acquired by Facebook earlier today for an undisclosed amount.  Details are still trickling in but the relationship seems to be an obvious match for industry insiders.  Facebook and Friendfeed share commonalities in features both highlighting news updates, the way in which comments are utilized and the user interface on both websites is considered by many to be clean.  The most exciting aspect of this acquisition is the team that Facebook will be bringing on from Friendfeed, which will include, as TechCrunch likes to put it “an all-star cast of ex-Googlers”.  The all-star cast is exactly that though, the article continues with their introductions “Perhaps best known of these is Paul Buchheit, who is responsible for creating Gmail, pioneering some of Google’s early (and incredibly lucrative) advertising products, and coining Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto. Other ex-Googler co-founders include Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev Singh.”

The important thing for us to focus on now is what this is going to do for eCommerce.  There is undoubtedly a lot more in store than I can think of right now, but with Twitter’s latest popularity I can speculate that Facebook will be fighting to decrease some of that growth and public curiosity.  Combining the current Facebook staff with the Friendfeed group will result in multiple social applications, and all that good stuff, but what I am really getting at is the fact that this could open up a whole new marketing opportunity…  My hopes may be high but time will tell.

Little Giant has been hard at work engineering pumps that their most loyal customers have been waiting for. PlumberSurplus.com is your destination for the new Little Giant TSW Sump Pump System and their NXTGen Condensate Pumps.