Placebo Affect

Does anyone take the University of Phoenix seriously?

I’m not arguing that it is or is not a good academic institution. I just wonder if anyone take the place seriously. It seems like every website I visit there is a banner or text ad for their online degrees.

It seems like their marketing works against their brand, unless their brand is mass academic saturation… but then again if that’s it, does anyone take this place seriously?

I know they even offer Ph.D’s… but I wonder what it would be like if they had a medical school or law school?

With new competition like Apple’s iTunes and Amazon / Tivo allowing users to download movies on the fly is the only hope for Blockbuster to partner with large cable TV providers?

I thought years back that it would be Apple’s iTunes product that would eventually put Blockbuster under… but now I’m starting to wonder if it will be Amazon/Tivo. At present cable TV companies have a disadvantage as they cannot release movies as soon as normal video stores, but from what I’ve heard those rules are changing.

If this is all true what can Blockbuster video do to compete? How long will it be until Blockbuster stores can be replaced by DVD or new media rental vending machines. (There is an increasing number of these machines in many metro areas)

Why does Blockbuster seem to be stuck in their old business model? Can they adapt? Should they?

Recently I’ve been porting a lot of ecommerce websites from Yahoo’s shopping cart, Yahoo Store, to Volusion.

The two core reasons are the transaction fees and the nonflexable shopping cart.

Yahoo Transaction Fees

• Yahoo Charges anywhere from .75% to 1.5% of sales as a transaction fee on top of charge card fees from the credit cart companies.
• Yahoo does not refund these fees when sales are canceled or items are returned.
• Yahoo charges these fees even if the card is declined.

Yahoo Shopping Cart

• Yahoo’s shopping cart is not very flexable to match the look and feel of the website. This turns many shoppers off as they feel they may have been redirected to another site.
• Sites that use Yahoo Store default templates often look horrible and are not search engine friendly
• Many credit card companies will hold Yahoo manual payment transactions as the interface only shows the dollar amount, no detail like you often get with an interface from verisign/paypal.

In Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, Yoda indirectly reveals that he is not a Jedi.

The statement that Yoda makes that reveals this truth is:

“A Jedi never speaks in absolutes.”

- This is an absolute statement.

Therefore Yoda cannot be a Jedi.