This article from Catalog Success reads like it could have been written in 1999, but it repeats a point that perhaps rings truer today than ever before:

“Branding begins before the first page of your site loads. Does a visitor have to wait too long for your flash animations to load?”

Yes, broadband is in wide use. Yes, computers are getting faster. Yes, companies want to look snazzy. But none of that excuses Flash abuse. Jakob Nielsen’s October 2000 article on Flash still has a lot of truth in it.

Takeaway for marketers: Your Web site is there to service customers, who want their information now. If Flash means they get their information later, it’s not good. As with so many things in life, so it is with Flash: Very often, less is more.

Identity theft is up a whopping 50 percent since 2003, according to eMarketer, with the average individual loss more than doubling in that time.

“Waste your money and you’re only out of money, but waste your time and you’ve lost part of your life.”
—Michael Leboeuf

I’ve been meaning to link over to this for quite some time and am finally getting around to it. As usual, Seth Godin gets it right — this time about Powerpoint presentations.

Shopping for electronics online and thinking about taking a printout of the Best Buy Web page into Best Buy so they’ll match the price and you can get the item on the spot at the online price?

Not so fast. Looks like there’s a Best Buy site for the public and a site for the in-store crowd, and the prices don’t always match.

Employee error? Machiavellian manipulation? Whatever’s going on, there’s an awful lot of customer confusion and dissatisfaction happening as the result of Best Buy squeezing an extra $20 on a $300 digital camera. Is it really worth the bad blood, though?