FSP 1.1

Faceted Tire Search

It is very common that a customer already has a set of road
wheels, and wants to know what choice of tires work on these
wheels.

No tire model is available in all sizes.
Various sizes of tire will fit and function well for a particular wheel.

TireRack is the foremost online tire retailer.
However, customers cannot group and sort TireRack's tires
using just any of the above classifications.

For example, a customer may wonder,

I've got a 16 x6.5 inch wheel, what's the best performance
tire that fits my wheel ?

TireRack.com cannot answer this question. Here's an exchange
which sheds some light on this predicament:

Customer Says:
Please make it easy to search for a tire by brand!
I'm not a large customer of yours having only bought
six or eight sets of tires from tirerack in the last few
years. But my impression is that each evolution of
your web site makes it harder for one to search for
a specific tire by brand.

Tonight I'm looking for some Michelin Sport Cup's.
Can't even find a way to drill down from products to
sizes so I can make an appropriate choice. I want to
know exactly what sizes are available for the product
I want. I don't know the sizes that are available in
the tire I'm going to buy, but I am going to buy a
set and it would be really helpful if I didn't have to
start with a bogus entry about tire size.

Certainly those of us that make our tire choices based
on size and type of tire are limited group but I'll bet we
buy more tires than your average consumer. And I bet
we buy tires that are sold at a higher margin.

Another customer writes:

Actually the problem is searching by type. I have yet to
figure out a way to (for example) search for all max performance
tires. The old web site allowed you to do this, but now the
process seems to be to pick a size, then drill down through
the selection guide. If you want to know if other tires
are available in a slightly different size you need to
start over and do a trial and error search, or else search
all brands separately to see if they offer a tire in that
category.

Vendor replies:

Searching for wheels by size and bolt pattern is not
on our site.

Our wheel fitment database is pretty comprehensive,
at least for street applications on stock or mildly modified
vehicles. We've found that the vast majority of customers
wanting to search by size or bolt pattern are wanting
to work far outside the practical boundary (not that racers
would), and are trying to find a fitment that doesn't have
proper load capacity, clearance, hub-centricity, etc.
Inevitably, their next question is always, "do you sell
adapters...?"

We do have the ability to provide this sort of info
over the phone. I would recommend calling Dan (ext. 294)
or Bruce (ext. 289), and tell them what you're looking for
and trying to fit. They can help with this sort of info.

And if you're really working off the menu, we do have
the Kosei K1s in a handful of "blanks", that we can have
CNC machined to your specific bolt pattern and centerbore.
Also, for several of the popular lightweight wheel
lines we carry, we usually publish the list of diameters,
widths and weights in our Grassroots Motorsports ad.
This may give you a good starting point at least.

-John "Woody" Rogers
Product Information Specialist
The Tire Rack

[From the Evo-discussion list.]

Pricing Beauty, Aesthetics

In Pricing Beauty: Reflections on Aesthetics and Value
An Interview with Virginia Postrel in GAIN 2.0

People in creative fields tend to talk about business as if it were one giant
monolith. They fail to distinguish the subtleties of the client's environment. This is
ironic because an appreciation of the environmental subtleties is, in many cases,
exactly what they are trying to get across. The details matter tremendously.

Falken, snowman ?

		On dry snow less than 50 mm deep, less than 40 km/h, the Falken Azenis is a safe tire. Once it gets icy, it's time to replace the Falkens with a true all-season tire.

Christmas Eve

2002 December 24, 5:05pm

Bay Bridge

NewBayBridge.org was designed by the California Alliance for Jobs, a
nonprofit labor-management partnership representing the heavy
construction industry of Northern and Central California.

The Web site is described as providing a "front-row seat" view as the
new $2.6 billion east span of the bridge is being constructed. The
site provides a detailed history of the Bay Bridge, going back to its
opening in 1936. It also has a photo gallery, with shots of bridge
workers in action. The site is obviously a work in progress.

Commuting elasticity

The Golden Gate Bridge toll increased from three to five dollars on
2002 September 01 .

In the three ensuing months, 82,000 fewer cars have paid the toll,
but revenue shot up 45 percent, meaning the district collected seven-
million dollars more compared to the same three-month period in 2001.
--Bob Melrose, KCBS News.

Compare to:
The data on actual sales can be used to estimate how demand
responds to price changes. The authors find that a 1 percent price
increase at Amazon reduces sales there by about 0.5 percent, but
a 1 percent price increase at Barnes & Noble means a 4 percent
sales decline — eight times as large.

The difference in price responsiveness is striking. It appears
that Amazon's investment in building customer loyalty has paid off.
Of course, all that investment in customer loyalty is expensive,
and loyalty doesn't necessarily translate directly into profit.
-- Hal Varian, NYT

Fish Eye View

Good Uses of Macromedia Flash:
Bureau of Reclamation in the Department of the Interior put up a fish eye view
animation of what happens when a fish goes through the proposed fish screen at
Klamath.

I may please help you

Continental often surveys me (I'm Elite) on how they can better
serve me. Their web site is a subject of particularly frequent surveys.
If this site could just plain work more than 60 percent of the time,
that would be great.

And again.

Peevesome Peavey stickers

It's great that Solo2 competition has sponsors.
That sponsors actually make equipment we use
(tires, timing gear, suspension parts, and in the
case of Peavey, audio announcing equipment) is
great and makes our strutting their logos more
authentic.

However I wish the Peavey stickers did not
wilt in the wind and leave an icky goo behind.

Update: 2002 Dec 22
The Evo-list recommends 3M Adhesive Remover.
(Find it at any automotive or commercial paint supply).
Paint thinner, or lighter fluid also work fairly well.

3M makes a liquid called
3M General Purpose Adhesive Cleaner.
Part No. 051135-08984 for the 1 quart size.

It does a great job; also removes bug guts
and road tar.

It WILL damage body moldings that are painted
the color of the car or other plastic. It works great
on painted surfaces. I would test it on an area not
exposed/visible if you aren't sure as to what it
might do.

Turn/refold/replace your rag or paper towel often,
otherwise you just end up smearing the snot around.
When you're done, be sure to wax the area that
you worked on - most of these solvents will remove
the wax.


It's definitely flammable, so no smoking and will
remove all the wax too.


Google baiting

NEW ECONOMY :Sites Become Dependent on Google
[...]

Sergey Brin, one of Google's founders and its president of technology, acknowledged that Google's large market share can leave Web site owners vulnerable to fluctuations in traffic. But he was unapologetic about Google's success and its emphasis on keeping users happy, even at the expense of Webmasters. "The only reason people come to Google is because it works for them," he said.

Sometimes a site's ranking plunges drastically or disappears from Google altogether. Often this means that Google detected some evidence that the site's owner was using deceptive tactics, like building a network of linked sites to create the illusion of popularity and thereby receive a higher ranking.

But site owners say Google can sometimes be overzealous in its fight against manipulation, and some say they live in fear that a small mistake or a technical glitch will get them booted from the search results and wipe out their income. Ms. Le Tendre, the yacht broker, for example, said she was building separate sites for two new branches of her business, just in case.

[...]

The free ride may not last, however. Ms. Johnson of Forrester says larger companies have been discovering the power of search engines and site optimization. As was the case on eBay when big retailers moved in, search listings are becoming less democratic. "It's going to be more and more difficult for small sellers to get noticed," she said. "The free listings lunch may be ending soon."

DAVID F. GALLAGHER

modular page comosition tool

I'd like for MT a higher level page composition tool which would
enumerate the available widgets:

calendar [ ]
archives [ ]
entries [ ]
links [ ]

etc
then let me choose to include or exclude them.

Secondly, it would allow me to sort and columnize the selected-for-inclusion
widgets.

If you've setup an account at my.myway.com, the advantage of this
method over hand editing template files is obvious.

Winter Wonderland

View from office (Clarkson Valley, MO, at the intersection of MO-340 and MO-HH), December 2002.
Compare to the view in November.