If you've ever wondered about your hosting company, or are considering beginning a relationship with one, here is some must-have information before you get into a new relationship (or exit out of a bad one).

Just like you ought to know a little something about someone you're going to be kissing for a long time, turning over the web jewels for your site ought to entail similar background knowledge.

These three questions will help you enter into the right kind of relationship, and in the appropriate spirit - just like the dinner parties your parents used to have.

1. Has the hosting company recently been bought out or taken over by another company?

It turns out the road-to-perdition I just experienced with JustHost on behalf of a client who is a well-known travel writer was immeasurably and torturously lengthened by a chain of ownership that - scuttlebutt has it - goes all the way to a company called 'Endurance International' or EIG.

Here's how one commenter at WebHostingTalk.com put it:

"I've had experiences with EIG not once but twice -- each time buying out a host I was using, and essentially ___ing it all up in the process. It wasn't until some many months after the 2nd incident that I came to learn the foul presence that is Endurance. And honestly, as far as I'm concerned, EIG didn't just buy out Readyhosting and Hypermart -- they raped them. That's their track record -- buy and screw, buy and screw. When they start to move your data to their own servers, it's common to have LOTS of downtime, lost data, and lost emails."

Read that a second time.

If your host gets bought out, hit the road before they run you over.

I pity the tech support chat and phone lines at bottom-of-the-food-chain hosting companies. They are poorly trained, have no real autonomy to actually fix things for the customer, and are the frequent targets of misplaced rage. There but for the grace of God...

2. If you cancel your hosting, do you retain control of your domain name?

JustHost.com is a qualified reseller for ENOM.com, one of the bigger domain name registrars out there. Justhost resells domain names as a part of their hosting packages. They do not offer standalone domain name purchasing. When we set up another hosting account at another company in response the problems we were experiencing, JustHost cancelled the entire account and we were unable to access the domain name management tools, and our nameserver redirects were cancelled without notice. The site then loaded a "This Account Has Been Suspended" page. Inaccurate, damning, and entirely lacking in relationship-building attitude.

Many low-price hosting companies offer shared hosting accounts at rock bottom prices. They make their margins on volume, and once they think you're leaving, the gloves are off. A JustHost technical support person on chat actually put in writing, "You want to leave so why should we provide that [domain access] to you?" I've often wondered if this kind of thinking is unstated company policy. Guess the wondering is over.

We had to pay a fee to get the account restored - just to transfer the domain to a new registrar. To add insult to injury, it took days to work it out. Shift changes, different people managing the file, and my client watching the hours roll along while her clients and publication owners continued to see the suspension message.

A host like Webnames.ca offers double protection - they are a registrar AND an affordable hosting company now offering WordPress hosting. If you ever decide to cancel the hosting side of your account, you revert to domain management tools with the ability to use new nameservers or simply forward your domain to your new host. Critical to have.

3. What are the backup policies for your host?

Make sure you understand how your host manages backups and how you access them and have them restored should something go wrong. (Hey, if the Amazon Cloud can go down, anyone can.)

If you are an active blogger or update your site daily you're going to want nightly backups. If your site is all-Wordpress there are a few good plugins (I like Snapshot Backup a lot). If you use your host's cpanel services for email, shopping cart, or other add-ons, you're going to want an entire cpanel account backup done on a regular basis. We didn't find out until too late that JustHost only does a full backup every seven days, so if you lose your site on day six, that's 6 days of missing content, plugin upgrades, template changes etc that you will literally have to recreate.

Does your host have a methodology for doing backups, or is it just call or email in to technical support? Hostgator.com, though similar in some ways to JustHost (shared hosting, rapidly growing company), has standard request forms that must be filled out by the site owner or the web designer listed on their account via email address. This means it happens the same way every time and everyone involved knows where and how to intersect with the restore or transfer. Level one chat support are empowered to 'expedite' your email suppory ticket if volumes are high.

JustHost has a lot of mostly well-meaning but unempowered and highly siloed tech support people who don't really connect with each other. Adding to the negative impact of the client's site being down for a week was a classic who's-on-second layer of delays that were truly maddening. I'm sure the poor techsupport folks didn't like it much either.

Protect your wordpress self-hosted site with tools like BlogVault.net. This service backs up your entire site on a nightly basis for only $9/month and keeps up to 30 backed up copies in Amazon's secure cloud.  It's literally dead easy. The turnaround time on inquiries has been spectacular so far - within an hour.

In summation

Follow these guidelines and you will save yourself from the kind of week my client and I have had. And don't stick with your host just because you've 'always used them'... that's how things ended up the way they did a la JustHost. The client had been with them a long time for her html static site and when she decided to move her blog from WordPress.com due to limitations imposed there and go to self-hosted, JustHost offered it. If we'd only known then what we do now.

This is one of the clearest examples I have ever run across for how to alienate consumers, courtesy of Macy's Department Store.

Here's how to go about torpedoing your own brand:

• give false information when selling the card idea to the consumer in your store (untrained staff)
• don't provide world-standard payment methods online in your 'customer service portal' - no PayPal, no bank transfer, no payment via another card that can handle the exchange portion of the transaction
• have a customer service center that requires having a Social Security Number to get out of the automated system (in Canada we have Social Insurance Number) and do this EVERY time they call
• have a dozen left hands making constant and aggressive contact
• misdirect with bogus solutions and mystery addresses
• don't keep a customer's file up to date, and outsource your collection calling so the people on the other end of the phone are completely disconnected from your brand or the consumer
• be totally okay with your customer having to pay $140 on a $49 purchase

How did it happen?

My daughter and I were traveling in Portland, and she needed some jeans. We headed out for the big mall south of us in Lloyd Centre, and were delighted to discover a Macy's department store. We'd had watched the Macy's parade on occasion and associated the brand with family, fun, and great shopping.

We found a couple of pairs of jeans, including a pair of 'distressed' jeans my daughter loved. We approached the cashier to pay and she suggested there was a way to save money.... I love saving money, so I asked how and this is what she told me: "You can sign up for a Macy's card today and get an immediate 40% discount AND a further discount when your bill arrives and you pay it off immediately."

I replied, "I can't, I'm not an American."

"Sure you can! We have lots of Canadians with Macy's cards."

"But I don't have a US bank account, only a Canadian one."

"You can pay online at Macy's - lots of people do that."

"I don't have an account in US funds, though, I'm sure we would need that to pay on the Macy's site," I continued. I had heard stories about currency issues and wanted to be triple sure.

She was really persuasive. "You don't need US Funds, you can pay with a Canadian card and pay the exchange rate. We have lots of Canadian customers doing that, you don't need to worry. It's a great deal!"

Famous last words. We got the card, and the discount, and the jeans and soon were headed home again to BC.

Fast forward: the first bill arrives in late September. I go online to pay and spend an hour on the Macy's site trying to find a way to pay with my credit card, my bank account or PayPal. Attempt to call Macy's via the number provided on the statements and on Customer Service. Must first register for the site. Automated phone system will not accept my Social Insurance Number and keeps returning me to that step. There are no other options provided for getting an operator, agent, or an alternate verification such as date of birth. Unable to connect.

We have a flood that destroys the flooring throughout the lower half of our house, prompting a chain reaction of events involving mass upheaval of our household and my office; all of the files and phones and computers are in different places, there's 10 workers a day trooping around interrupting and driving us out of the house with the noise of the fans and tools. Total chaos allowing only the most urgent of family and business issues to be dealt with for a 6 week period.

By the time we could actually reconnect on smaller issues in the family and business, the Macy's account was well overdue. I happened to answer a call from the customer service department and a very nice gentleman (the only one I would talk to who was helpful and interested in working WITH me) erased the interest charges and told me, no, you can't pay online as a Canadian, you'll need to send a cheque. We agreed that the account would be closed and that payment would clear the balance and I would be removed from their mailing lists. I sent that out as promised.

First Payment Attempt:

The cheque was returned due to it not being in US Funds. Collection calls began.

Second Payment Attempt:

I called back the collection agency - a different number - and the woman I dealt with spoke with her supervisor and told me to 'put USD next to the amount on a new cheque and send'. I did and sent it out, by mail, to the address she provided in Ohio.

The collection calls began again, several times a day, and continued for the month it took until my bank notified me that the cheque had been returned since it was not written on an account in US Funds.

Third Payment Attempt:

I called the same woman at the collection agency and had the interest reversed again. I negotiated a settlement of $83 USD on the original $49 purchase on the card in Portland. I was instructed to purchase a money order in US funds and send it to the address on the statement/bill. I did, and had the mail registered so someone would have to sign for it and acknowledge receipt and put it in the mail express post December 17.  We were now up to $99 on the bill. I called Macy's to let them know the money order had been sent, the date and time of the package departure, and the registration number for the mail - which I had to beg them to note in the file. I can not confirm if they did.

Late December the harassing collection calls began again. They had not received the money order. I called the number they provided and the customer service rep said, "You've sent it to the wrong address. It wasn't supposed to be sent to Ohio. It was supposed to go to our processing center in Des Moines. (!!!) I asked how I was to have known that given all of the statements came with 'please enclose your payment and send to.... Ohio." Nowhere in any of the correspondence from Macy's was there an Iowa address. She could not give me an answer and referred me to another customer service rep.

The new rep said, "You'll have to send another money order," to which I replied, "Why would I send another money order that if the first one never arrived and we can track the package into the US where it sits somewhere collecting dust, that's $80 of my money plus postage already sent once."

"I'm sorry, you'll have to send us another money order." Finally, after some wrangling, I was able to get a hold put on the file so Canada Post could track the package and work with the US Post Office to either get it forwarded out to Macy's, or returned to me. We set a time of three weeks.

Now I was working with Canada Post, a bureaucracy well-known to Canadians. Surprisingly the gal I talked with was excellent, though the news was not good: the US post office had a full 90 days from the point of inquiry to provide information back to Canada Post. She would do what she could.

In about 10 days the calls started again, sometimes up to a dozen times a day. After the full three weeks was up I called Canada Post again and asked for help. Again, they were excellent. She waived the 90 day waiting period, and issued the maximum refund allowed under CP for an undelivered package, which meant a cheque for $49 CDN was on its way to me.

Fourth Payment Attempt:

I called Macy's and gave them the status, and agreed to buy a second $83 USD money order and send it - again and confirmed - to the Ohio address. We agreed that the $83 uSD would be my final payment and would close out my account and my file with them and remove me from all of their mailing lists. But not before they asked me if I could drive across the border and pay the account out in Bellingham! A full day of travel and gas and ferries!

I went to the Post Office this time and bought a second money order and sent it off as agreed.

Fast forward to March 30. Macy's requested a call. I went through the phone process for about the 18th time, getting jammed every time on the same sticking point: "Please enter the last four digits of your Social Security Number". I put in the last four digits of my Social Insurance Number (provided when I registered for the card) and got back the same answer: that's not a valid number. Please repeat the last four digits..."

Finally I reached a human being - and what did I hear? Please provide the last four digits of your Social Security Number. The last four digits of your Social Insurance Number then. That number is incorrect.   Finally after doing the date of birth thing - again - we get to the discussion of the account. "Your account is in arrears and you have missed your payment for three months."

"I sent a money order - again - 10 days ago and that was to clear up and close my account."

"We have applied the $83 money order against your account but there is a balance remaining for the interest charges. You will have to pay these charges."

The term apoplexy does not begin to communicate the sense of frustration. The man seemed to have no reference of the earlier conversations I had had with other representatives and just repeated that I still owed money and the calls would continue.

In the meantime I weekly receive in my snail mail box more invoices with additional interest applied, and glossy inserts for the Macy's store. Oh, and the jeans didn't last longer than 3 months before literally falling apart.

_________________________________

Always, always get written confirmation that there is a payment mechanism for you as a Canadian consumer. Get a customer contact number that does not require a Social Security Number to reach an operator. Or better yet, pay cash. My $40 off the purchase cost me $160 and untold amounts of stress, and has damaged my credit rating.

These are a few of my favorite things... in case anyone is looking long-range at Christmas gifts for the geek in YOUR life.

SCOTTEVEST/SeV

What an innovative company. SCOTTEVEST dubs itself as "Travel Clothing for the Trip of Your Life" and offers a range of gear from long & short sleeve ts, polo shirts, Q-Zip pullovers, pocket-laden cargo pants and shorts... even boxers made to carry an iPhone or iPod, passport my ass!

I've also never seen so much information available for a pair of shorts: details, key features, reviews, pocket map (that's right, there's so many pockets you have to map them; they should have called them the Christopher Columbus Cargoes), X-Ray pocket view, and a 4+ minute video hosted on youtube. SCOTTEVEST certainly knows how to market online.

My top pick, shown above is the Women's Trench Coat. Not only does it look snazzy with a black turtleneck underneath, get this: it's 'compatible' with the iPad & Macbook Air. The Weight Management System, NoBulge terminology is designed to please your geeky girl on both fronts. $150.

Here's an inexpensive gift for those heading out on summer trips, or maybe even for yourself (ha! I am so getting one): The SeV TEC Hat. If you're tired of money belts or wallet packs hanging around your neck under your clothes, this hat does the trick.  In the brim of the hat is a place for bills and a single key; a pocket on the side of the hat takes coins and credit card/bank card. It's stylish and inexpensive at $18.

The only drawback is for out-of-country orders. The only shipper they use is USPS, which for Canadians means a) at least a week of extra delay and b) a 'brokerage' and customs fee that is usually at least 40% the cost of the items. Can you hear the gnashing of my tooth from where you are?

SELF-LACING SHOES & RAYGUNZ

Tired of bending over to re-tie laces? Feeling middle-age (literally) getting between you and your feet? Try these self-lacing shoes on for size - better yet, make them yourself following the directions at Instructables and you, too, can go Back to the Future.

And if ever there was an art piece for a geek, this is it: a blown glass ray gun, created by Vancouver artist Jeff Burnette at Joe Blow Glassworks. His web site seems to be down, and disappointingly the last show I can find referenced is back in 2009, but look at this, ain't it a stunner? I see via twitter that he is still active (@jeffburnette) so I'll do my best to find out studio location and times for a visit.

ROCK PAPER SCISSORS LIZARD SPOCK

Yes, Spock DOES trump everything on this ultra-cool t-shirt inspired by The Big Bang Theory TV show. Just in case there's a dispute, the shirt also shows arrows of supremacy.

For my full list of top picks, check out my wishlist at ThinkGeek: Stuff for Smart Masses.

There's a couple of companies I follow on a regular basis because they regularly innovate, either in WordPress theming, or in developing unique plugins that enhance the user experience for visitors to WordPress-based sites.

Unique Blog Designs started out as a wordpress theming company, and that's where Bigpacific.com went for the design of our first WordPress foray online. They built us a beautiful, custom design that reflected all the beauty of the Sunshine Coast and allowed for extra promotional spaces for advertisers wanting a greater prominence on the site.

Since then, UBD as they are widely referred to today have broadened their themes to serve the affiliate, email and online marketers niches. These are not niches where I generally spend a lot of time, but I did review and test the themes for customers who do wish to work them, and they are loaded with features and plugins that automate and leverage a lot of the elbow grease that goes into running a great blog or marketing site.

Now UBD has launched a new product, a very handy plugin for WordPress sites called 'Highlighter'. If you've ever used an old-fashioned highlighter (don't laugh, some younger people haven't!) you'll be familiar with the concept, now employed in a unique digital format that makes for a novel way to share content online with colleagues and friends.

With the highlighter plugin, the barriers are removed for user engagement.Visitors to your site can highlight a word, phrase, sentence - even an image - and instantly share it online, with a comment via Facebook, Twitter or Email. The Highlight Box packs all the related comments and sharing in one handy spot - and the webmaster can moderate highlights the same as comments.

You can also collect email addresses with the Highlighter tool integrated with Aweber, MailChimp or GetResponse.

This is a FREE tool that will increase visitor engagement, build your email network and create conversation points in novel ways.

Use Highlighter on this post and share it with friends!

I've used two companies pretty much exclusively in 10 years of business, and am exploring expanding into reselling hosting direct to my customers rather than simply referring them as I currently do. It would eliminate one particularly annoying delay in new account setups and give me global access to help customers instantly, rather than having to retrieve individual login info. Here's what happened.

VERY, VERY VERIO

I was very excited by Verio's announcement of their new Linux Virtual Private Server 2 C Panel systems, with the promise that any end customers I sold Verio hosting to could choose at any time to bypass me for direct-from-host support. It's a critical piece for any boutique design & hosting firm, since we do not have the resources to offer 24/7 support - or even come close.

I've used Verio since 1997 for my own hosting but over the last six or seven years the momentum of once being The Biggest Hosting Company in the World hoisted them on their own petards. Their hosting was increasingly looking cumbersome and programmer/sysadmin oriented and after 13 years of working with Unix I wanted easy. The new WHM (Web Hosting Manager) system looked like a dream come true and I immediately signed up.

Alas, the experience sucked a week out of my life, with two failed attempts requiring much forwarding through the gopher holes of tech support at Verio to get me to a 'trained Cpanel team member'. You'll pardon me for saying so, but hosting ain't the Navy Seals, though it did feel like hand to hand combat at times.

The Reseller process was brutal - what should have been a paint-by-the-numbers sequence of steps resulting in the successful activation of the account with the 30 day free trial my account rep offered ended up dragging out over 4 long business days, with multiple case numbers, and a lot of churn without much to show for it and plenty of messy charges on my credit card for me to pay someone to deal with at year end.

At one point a submitted support ticket only generated a response 22 hours later... with the news that my request had been passed on to the intrepid Cpanel Tech Team. I ended up having to call in to cut this water drop torture short.

Fast forward to late Thursday afternoon and my account is finally up and running.... and I discover the suite of tools I expressly stated why I was getting the new Cpanel account - the extremely easy to use 'Fantastico DeLuxe' script set - was not an available add on.

Instead of 49 commonly used scripts for installs ranging from blogging platforms to content management systems to image galleries and support ticket systems, I had a narrow range of 10. Instead of easy to use install tools for popular suites like WordPress and Joomla, my users would have to navigate much more bureaucratic, overly technical, and much more intimidating steps. It was like the old PC vs MAC commercials, only in hosting.

Read: A Colossal Waste of Time, putting two clients behind by a week. Verio - you've been good to me for nearly 13 years for my own complex hosting needs for Bigpacific.com. But you just aren't there for resellers, yet.

HOSTGATOR TO THE RESCUE... sort of.

I do love Hostgator.com. Mostly. From an end user perspective, they have GREAT support. I've never waited more than about 4 minutes for help in the chat system, and under 2 minutes on the phones. They've got great little plans for small businesses (less than $100 a year) and the excellent easy to use Fantastico panel is bulletproof. I've even got a system built for workarounds when my customers aren't ready to point a domain to a site 'in progress' and now that the steps are in place, it's pretty easy to follow.

The only problem is, Hostgator suffers from a conspiracy theory complex. As a result they have built so many failsafes into the system that there are now delays and extra steps introduced into what should be an easy process.

Want to register two different domains and administer them from one email address and can't remember your billing password from the first account? Bzzzt. Stop, and wait for an email to come with the password in it, login to a totally different area, and follow a new process.

Want to set up a customer with a Hostgator account and manage the entire process for them, including design and install? Bzzt. See previous topic. Hostgator does not provide a global email account for managing users, won't send a copy of the welcome email to the designer, even if it's in the instructions and the designer's address is posted in the 'alternate address' field... and gives the end client just 24 hours to complete a telephone verification process. Don't make the call in time? Bzzt. The entire account is terminated and the payment refunded and the game starts all over.

WHAT THE SMALL BUSINESS WORLD WANTS

• Reliable hosting that can be managed on their behalf by whomever they delegate for the task.
• Affordability.
• Easy to use tools, with plenty of video tutorials, and yes, good, old-fashioned documentation.
• A choice of support options, including the option to bypass Reseller supplied support if it is unavailable or incompetent.
• Real, trained people to help them with intimidating technical issues.
• Direction to paid resources they can utilize to bypass the learning curve and just GET IT DONE.

If you've had a great experience with just such a mystical being, please write and let me know. Otherwise I live in hope that the continuing evolution of cloud-based services (getting services online only, from anywhere in the world) will spit out the ripe seed of a company with just these offerings.

Like, yesterday.

What I like most:

• the dongle-as-mouse
• the full surface window
• the dual pico projectors for overhead display and absolutely sexy virtual keyboard

What I don't like:

It's only a concept!!

Apparently a (fabulous, award-winning) product designer who is also a part of the (large) open source mozilla community, Billy May, came up with a concept of what mobile computing could be using open source and newly developing technologies. So this is basically one user's dream of mobile phone utopia.

Firefox/Mozilla has a disclaimer on the Seabird concept page stating they so far have no intent to come out with a mobile phone.

To which we must roundly respond: WHY NOT?

Someone better snap up Billy's idea.

Check out Billy's site - the Nike Hindsight glasses are scrumptious looking, and Torn Light is sadly not in production yet either but looks to upend lighting concepts for the home and office. Me want!

You can join in the designing the future space by heading over to Mozilla's Concept Series Home and checking out the discussions. I'm off to cradle my militaristic i4 and pine for the days of curves again.

Gloson began blogging at eight years old, since he was already designing web sites (sigh).

His first blog was called 'How to Multiply Your Memory', but in a delightful illustration of irony at work, he only did one meandering post and then promptly forgot about it. Oh, the hubris of being eight.

Now a sage 12, Gloson has just published a series of posts under the banner of "Social Media, Blogging, and Tech Tips from a Kid". I kid you not.

Here's a smattering of examples:

• 22 Reasons for You to Blog
• 17 Important Things to Do After Starting Your WordPress Blog
• A Beginner's Guide to Getting the Most Out of Twitter

Oh, and tucked into the list is a sleeper of a punch: Meeting the Prime Minister and First Lady of Malaysia. You can see a video of him reciting the poem he wrote for them here:

Cripes, I'm getting eclipsed by a pre-teen with royal connections.

My favorite Gloson post, so far, is "My Former Blog Host Accidentally Deleted My Blog (and How I Fixed It). Beyond the absolutely brilliant strategy for recovering lost blog posts should your site go down without a recent backup on file, this post is a titillating blend of righteous consumer outrage and how he sent his minion father in to the hosting office to determine why his father's payment for the account was not registered, causing an 'accidental deletion' of his blog.

Gloson is going to be heck on wheels when he gets his own credit cards and car! All I could think of by that point was, "who goes to actually visit their hosting provider in person???" Host Commando has got to be ruing the day they ever set up the account, since it's attached to a bonafide media celebrity. Oops.

Just hop on over to Gloson's "Media" page and you'll see what Malaysia already knows... this miniman has chops. Though the Kidz Magazine clips are sure to embarrass him greatly when humility begins to sink in, we can hope: one article is entitled "Great blogger, Fantastic Poet, Magnificent entertainer".

You and me, both, kid.

Turns out I was 4 short of completing his excellent 17 step to-do list for blogs... as I return to them to play catch-up, I ponder the jet smoke trail of his passing with this quotation lingering in my head:

“True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genie” (Puzant Kevork Thomajan)

Indeed.

Check out Fiverr.com, where the concept is you can buy services or products (or offer them) for a straight $5. You can also post an offer to pay $5 for the service or product of your choice.

There are some standard offerings - to get twitter followers, create youtube videos, make a video testimonial for your product (which means we can all have a smarmy TV commercial for our product now), be a business assistant for one hour, create a travel itinerary - that are hohum to scroll through. However, it's those of the 'I can't believe someone would do this' variety that has most likely led to the stratospheric traffic of this current Internet fad.

Some of my favorite oddities are:

• Kiks' offer to 'write your name on my nail and send you a picture for $5'. You can select a toe or finger and support a 'starving artist'. Just imagine how much pain Van Gogh would have saved if he'd simply chosen to write the name of his obsession on a body part rather than sending her the ear.
• 'I will marry you and love you for $5' from vitalis, who is apparently a 29 year old male living in Haifa, Israel and looking for his soul mate. Why that person has to fork over cash to get him is beyond me. Is there a return policy? Probably not if you're Palestinian.
• feverrlover says she will 'put realistic, flirtacious Facebook wall comments on your profile to make everyone jealous'. There is no mention of whether her services are only for men, or if she goes both ways, but as I already have a REAL super hot chick in my life I'll have to leave the mystery unsolved.
• the rather plainly named 'kathy' offers to interpret dreams for five: "Any dream you have tell me and i will interpret it for you. Even I will give you suggestions on it'. A word to the wise: if she butchers English this badly in the offer stage, nothing good can come of the actual delivery. I'd hate to see what she could come up with between her command of English and my crazy dreams.
• Tandliv will 'curse out or yell at anyone you want, by call or voicemail'. This could come in handy: bookmarked! Just don't get me so mad I'll get out the wallet.
• This one captured my attention: 'I will write a fictional story about your life as a superhero for $5'. If the kids will give up their Saturday candy money, I might just send this dude a picture of my superpower bowling shoes and see what he comes up with.
• Jesus surely would not approve, having thrown the money-lenders out of the temple: 'I will pray in Vatican Square for you for $5'. I wouldn't take that prayer if you sent me $50, after all the coverage the Catholic priests have gotten lately.
• Ah, here's the one: 'I will show you how to read your GIRLFRIEND mind (sic) for $5', from the aptly named Lovekey. That one I can use! The bonus material for 'some of the best bar bets so you can earn money from some random people' seems a bit dicey though. Better make sure they're drunk first.

I actually did a test before this post, as I was in need of a novel gift for my best friend, Brodie. She and I have shared a love of words from the instant we met, through reading published poets, her suffering my meagre gifts, and exchanging magnetic poetry kits. I wrote to a fellow who promised to 'write a personalized humorous or serious poem commemorating a person or event in your life for $5', and asked if he could do a quick turnaround for me in time for tea the next day with my dear Brodie and included a few details about her. Here's the response I received:

"Thanks for the invitation but I am just bombed with requests, one of which has me totally perplexed about a last verse. Yours also sounds like a more lofty work with longer words which drain my creative processes. I can crank out the humorous, light-hearted stuff in no time at all; the higher order, however, taxes me terribly."

Poor thing. It seems even my letter taxed him. I guess $5 doesn't go that far these days.

What would YOU do for $5? Please comment for free below.

Over the holiday season, I made a wonderful discovery of a very cool knit hat company. They make 'critter' toques of all varieties of animals: donkeys, raccoons, tigers, cats, dogs, floppy dogs... even skunks! Their hats sport a signature, unique look, and come with available matching mittens. Think sock monkey zoo.

These hats are crazy, fun, attention-getting, hilarious, and inexpensive to boot. I was immediately smitten and emerged from one of my favorite Vancouver shops - Bang On, on Robson Street - having metamorphosed into... what else? An ass. A donkey for you folks who get the other word confused with swearing.

My toque (interestingly, according to Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary, it can also be spelled as 'tuque') proved a magnificent purchase right from the start. It prompted conversation with strangers. It triggered smiles from passers by. It entertained many small children. Imagine my delight, strolling the Robsonstrasse, wearing the ass hat.

There was only one small problem. I was heartbroken.

Why, you ask? Why, because I really really really wanted the skunk hat the store fellow was wearing, having snagged the one and only out of the mixed box sent by the hat company.

I begged him to sell it to me. I offered to pay more, even though it was pre-worn, in fact, more skunky. All to no avail. It's the first time I've ever considered mugging someone for an article of clothing, Ed Hardy be damned.

There I was, standing amid masses of people, feeling exactly like I looked: an ass.

And then it occurred to me! The hat had a label, identifying it as a Knit Wit creation. AHA! I could google the company, and maybe order my favorite hat online! The first available opportunity I checked it out. And got my first disappointment.

Man, were they hard to find. I could find some of their distributors - barely... it seems there's a lot of knitwits around these days - but not the corporate site. I'm normally a 2 minutes or less searching kind of gal so they had me flummoxed for a bit. Through much ferreting around I discovered there was a secret handshake required for Google: Delux Knitwit. Finally.

There they were, if you really looked and didn't skip right past it:
knitwit2009
d e L u x. knitwits.
www.knitwits.com

Useless title, strange capitalization, no description, no keywords, nothing. Wow, even their SEO person is a nitwit, I thought to myself.

I clicked on the link. You should too.

Cute little faces in squares, sort of like Hollywood Squares, without the famous people and funny lines. Or the KnitWit Brady Bunch. NOTHING that said or showed what the company does on the front page. Not even an email address.

I thought, Oh! Maybe that's what those other links are. I clicked on 'About'.

Nope, nothing that says what they ARE or what their company DOES. It says what these mysterious somethings are made from, and the wonderful qualities of the whatever-they-ares, but not one word about toques, hats, chapeaus, or any other manner of calling an ass an ass HAT.

Oh well. I still LOVED my toque, and still desperately wanted a skunk toque, and still wanted to tell these KnitWits about how cool I thought their company was, how I wanted to blog about them, how I had a dozen Bang On cards in my pocket to hand out to anyone who asked about why I was (wearing) an ass for a hat, and maybe could I give out their cards too?

I found their email address and wrote them a short but passionate letter including the above. I asked if they had ever considered making some West Coast animals, like seals, or otters or even octopi. I raved about KnitWits. I WAS a nitwit about their product. I begged them to sell me a skunk knitwit directly, since Bang On told me they just got a mixed box and it would be hard to tell if any store had one in stock as the types weren't 'ordered' per se.

And here was the second, and much bigger disappointment. Someone named Sabrina wrote me back and perfunctorily pointed out that no, they don't drop-ship, and hey, here's a pdf list of the stores that carry the hats. No hi, nice to meet you, thanks for writing, we're so glad you love our crazy hats. No response to the other parts of my message.

No job title or contact information. Was this an assistant knitwit, or was I dealing with the Grand Poohbah Delux Knitwit? No way of telling, and I usually have my wits about me.

It was deflating to say the least. My ass hat felt more like an Eeyore than a jaunty heel-kicking happy-go-lucky kind of ass.

I still love it. Deep in my heart of hearts, I still yearn for the skunk hat (which in retrospect seems a strangely symbiotic illustration of KnitWit's customer service and marketing model). I confess I still want to love this company... to be a raving fan, to be a joyful knitwit as it were, but that sentiment is languishing somewhere along with Sabrina's email.

And that is the story of how a company with a great product missed out on being a great company.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO AVOID THESE MISTAKES:

• Make sure your web site has a good title, description and keywords and that you can be easily found.
• Describe what you do for us ordinary folk. Don't make us guess. It's also good for your search engine rankings.
• Have a clear policy on your site for how people can buy your products. Don't make them ask for the list of stores via email... have the list there and downloadable NOW.
• RESPOND fast to any passionate communication. That customer is just dying to buy your product and tell everyone they know that they did or is a raging inferno only you can transform into a cheery little hearth fire.
• Include your job title and contact information in your signature. Make it easy for people to talk with you.
• Thank the writer for their interest in your product. How about "We're so glad you love our hats!" It starts the conversation off on the right foot.

I got a note from John Chow today asking me to check out the new online radio offering: OnlineRadioStations.com. What the heck, I thought, I've got a few minutes and could use some new music to listen to.

20 minutes later I've got several favorites happening, my speakers are pumping, and I feel energized for the day of work ahead. I'm also happy to be learning about a service that can benefit my customers and readers... discovering a great new offering is always a high point in the day.

As an added incentive to check out ORS, John Chow dot Com, a blog that helps you make money is giving away more cash through another wild radio contest. They are giving away up to $4,000 cash! The contest is sponsored by OnlineRadioStations.com.

So what are my favorite stations after noodling around in the site as a member?

• Global Beats FM Ambient Music - high energy, great tempos
• DI FM Ambient Music out of NYC - mellower, very electronic and spacey
• 1 FM Chill Out Lounge Music out of the Southeast USA - great mix of electronic and classic instrumentation
• This is wild... my little hometown has a radio station listed in the International listings:  CVUE 105.9 Variety Radio
• I can listen to stations from all over Canada, in small cities and towns, like:  CKRW 96.1 Adult Contemporary (listening to a guy doing a radio ad for his honda generator for sale on 'Trader Time' in Whitehorse Yukon!
• Classic 102.7 Afrikaans.., from Johannesburg, South Africa

I have to stop myself from looking around now - work to be done. I thoroughly recommend OnlineRadioStations.com, not only for the incredible diversity of stations but also for the gorgeous design and useability of the site. It's attractive, contemporary, and compelling.

My only criticism at this early point is that if I select a station to listen to and navigate away from the page, the music stops if I'm on the OR player. I keep looking for a button that says 'play this on top' or something similar. There's also some icons at the top and if you pass your mouse over them they light up, but there's no alt tags that I can see and I don't know what half of them are.

Oh, and don't forget this page - it's like Gadget Smack.

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