Thalasar Ventures Business Blog

Graco high chair recall

Graco Children's Products Inc., have been working closely with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to issue a safety recall of the Harmony High Chair. 1.2 million Graco high chairs from 2003 to 2009 are affected by this recall - we can tell you that the Harmony models are no longer in production.
The screws holding the front legs of the high chair can loosen and fall out and/or the plastic bracket on the rear legs can crack causing the high chair to become unstable and tip over unexpectedly. This poses a fall hazard to children.

Graco has received 464 reports of screws loosening/falling out and/or plastic brackets cracking causing the high chair to tip over unexpectedly. These tip-overs resulted in 24 reports of injuries including bumps and bruises to the head, a hairline fracture to the arm, and cuts, bumps, bruises and scratches to the body.

]]> This recall involves all Harmony High Chairs. The Harmony high chair was manufactured from November 2003 through December 2009 and is no longer in production. The model number can be found on the label that is located on the underside of the foot rest. Below is the complete list of model numbers affected by the Graco Highchair recall.

Model numbers include:

3920BAN 3920BAN2 3920BEB 3920BEBB 3920COV 3920DOH 3920GEI 3920GEIDSP 3920GRN 3920HMP 3920IVY 3920LAU 3920PKR 3930DDH 3930DHO3935CAL 3935OXB 3935PKR 3935PKRDSP 3935SPM 3935SPMDSP 3935THR 3935THR2 3935THR3 3940BIA 3940BIADSP 3940CAP 3940CLE 3940COT 3940DRM 3940HML 3940MCH 3940NGS 3940SAV 3940SLT 3940SPT 3940STA 3940UNN 3951CLO 3951CLT 3951COT 3951ORC 3951WLO 3955WSR 3960BGN 3960CJG 3960CNP 3960GGG 3980CNR 3E00ABB 3E00BAT 3E00DCF 3E00DCFDSP 3E00DGP 3E00DGPDSP 3E00GPK 3E01BDS 3E01BDSCA 3E01DNY 3E01DNY1 3E01ELP 3E01ELPDSP

Image: Highchair recall: Graco Harmony
Graco

Approximately 1.2 million Graco Harmony High Chairs have been voluntarily recalled due to a tip-over hazard.

The model numbers may begin with the letter A, B, C or D. Additional models affected are 1752404, 1755859, 1755860, 1757259, 1757412, and 1760429.

Manufactured in the United States, the affected high chairs were sold at AAFES, Burlington Coat Factory, Babies "R" Us, Toys "R" Us, Sears, Target, Target.com, Walmart, WalMart.com, Shopko, USA Baby, and other retailers nationwide from December 2003 through March 2010 for between $70 and $120.

Consumers who have the affected high chairs should immediately stop using them and contact Graco to receive a free repair kit. To order a free repair kit, contact Graco toll-free at (877) 842-3206 or visit the firm's Web site at gracobaby.com. For additional information, contact Graco at (800) 345-4109 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday.

Ncaa bracket printable

With March Madness starting you need to download and print your NCAA tournament bracket.

]]> Thankfully the NCAA has provided a printable and downloadable PDF bracket with game times and dates. Here is the complete downloadable and printable NCAA tournament bracket from NCAA.com

Printable NCAA tournament bracket

Fill out your pickets and set up your pool. Not that I am recommending any betting on the NCAA (not unless you are in Vegas or an appropriate area for gambling). Please note this is a link to the official NCAA printable bracket.

Jesse James & Michelle bombshell Mcgee

It just goes to show you that every man can be lead astray by the little head. Jesse James was caught cheating with tattoo bombshell Michelle McGee.

]]> When you are dating an A list celebrity like Saundra Bullock, you would think that you might want to keep your pants zipped up. It's pretty apparent that Jesse James couldn't while some people might find Michelle McGee attractive, I don't particularly. For those interested in her photographs, try thesehot sex photos of Jesse James & Michelle McGee

Review of La Stazione Santa Fe - Restaurant Fail

Restaurants are a tough business. Here's an example of what not to do when running a restaurant.

]]> The Railyard started it's life as a steakhouse. Recently they have adjusted the menu to Italian and renamed the restaurant La Stazione and quite frankly it's very poor. I have ordered dinner several times as the restaurant is on my way home and I like to grab dinner before I go home. I can only assume that the new executive chef isn't actually tasting the food. My latest dinner consisted of potato/crab ravioli with artichoke. When the dish arrived I noticed that every ravioli was simply flat. Eating two, it was apparently that stuffed ravioli meant anything but, as there was simply a hint of crab in the ravioli and as far as I could tell no potato. Additionally the dish was already cold. The Chef Michael Easton agreed with my assessment and I sent it back.

This is where things get a bit annoying. The chef took the dish and then less than 10 feet away from me made the point that he thought it was stuffed (after agreeing with me initially!) and then asked the opinion of the entire wait staff. I don't really mind if you disagree with my assessment of your food. However, don't loudly disagree with me loudly where I can hear you. I will never go back this restaurant which is really too bad as it once was one of my favorite haunts.

This is also the second dinner I had after the menu change. I tried the lasagna and incredibly it was burned to carbon at the bottom. I did chalk this up to a brand new menu and thought I would give them a second chance. Clearly Chef Michael Easton needs to focus on preparing quality dishes and less time preening in the front of the house. Clearly quality of food has been a consistent problem with this team as the review summary of Railyard indicates. Consistent quality food is clearly a problem which La Stazione needs to address immediately if they hope to have a chance in the competitive Santa Fe restaurant market. I have experienced occasional issues when the restaurant was the Railyard but on the whole I had a solid dining experience. Clearly the new chef Michael Easton isn't up to the task of running a kitchen if the quality of the food is this poor.

This is made especially worse by the fact I just got back from vacation from New Orleans where I enjoyed restaurants like Commander's Palace, Bourbon House, Court of the Two Sisters and Bacco Ristorante. I highly recommend Bacco's Maine Lobster and Shrimp ravioli. It's incredible and it's a stark contrast with the poor ravioli at La Stazione in Santa Fe.

UPDATE
Steven Jarrett slated to take over chef Michael Easton's position as chef at La Stazione. I applaud the change and once the dust settles I will revisit this review and the restaurant.

Soft Goods VS. Hard Goods Comparison Shopping

I have launched a service of vertical shopping portals. The first of these is Designer Shoes for Sale. The fundamental problem I am trying to solve is that people shop for different goods in different ways.
For example shoes are purchased in a fundamentally different way than high end electronics. For example shoe sizing and shoe fit are very different from designer to designer. Most people when they are shopping for shoes online are looking for a replacement pair of shoes to the ones they already own. No shopper is going to buy a pair of shoes from a new designer without trying it on first. This makes for a fundamentally different buying experience. With Designer Shoes for Sale, I have made sure to display stocking and sizing availability for each designer and each shoe. This means consumers can quickly find if I have the correct size in stock and then check other shopping venues such as Ebay and Shopping.com on the same page to make sure my price is rock solid. So I try to make the buying experience re-affirm the fact that they are buying the exact same product they currently have.

5 Dollar Auction Deals Launches

5DollarAuctionDeal.com is a site that that has everything that $5 dollars and below at Ebay. Now you can quickly find some of the best deals at Ebay with a simple to use interface. The site updates in real time from Ebay's web services platfom so that the latest results are available for $5 dollars or less are available.

]]> Ebay is the world's largest marketplace with over 60 million products sold daily! Yet with that many products and that many good sold, it can be very daunting for the average shopper to find the very best deals on Ebay. That's where a new site 5 Dollar Auction Deals comes in. It's a site that that has everything that $5 dollars and below at Ebay. Now you can quickly find some of the best deals at Ebay with a simple to use interface. The site updates in real time from Ebay's web services platfom so that the latest results are available for $5 dollars or less are available. More importantly its a great place for people new to Ebay to learn to begin buying on the world's largest marketplace.

"Finding great deals can be somewhat intimidating, especially for a site with so many products like Ebay," noted Thalasar Ventures founder Brian DeSpain. "Especially for people new to Ebay, the process of buying can seem intimidating and confusing. Five dollar auction deals has guides to help people new to Ebay, to get them started with buying on Ebay. Our gudes on Ebay are free and available 24/7."

5DollarAuctionDeals.com makes it easier for consumers to find those hidden deals on Ebay. By segmenting on price, we can quickly allow consumers to find those deals on Ebay they might spend more time and energy searching to find these deals. "Let's face it, everyone is looking for a deal these days, and Ebay is a great place to find them. But with 60 million products changing on a daily basis, it's difficult to find the very best deals." stated Despain. 5DollarAuctionDeals.com covers the full range of products on Ebay from jewelry such earrings and watches to baseball cards and video games.

"When looking for a deal on Ebay, I encourage you to try 5DollarAuctionDeals.com" concluded DeSapin,"You can find some great deals with everything 5 dollars or less."

About 5DollarAuctionDeals.com
5DollarAuctionDeals.com is a web site that gathers in real time evrything $5 and below at Ebay. It pulls from the product inventory in real time, pulling all bids and Buy It Now options below $5. As easy to use web site and service, it allows consumers to quickly find the best deals that are $5 Dollars and below.
5 Dollar Auction Deals

About Thalasar Ventures
Thalasar Ventures is an early stage internet Incubator which builds helpful services for every day consumers. Our services and web sites save consumers time and money and inform people before making their purchase. By saving consumers money everyday, we make money.
Thalasar Ventures

Going Global

Global expansion is something large corporations do all the time. It's also good idea for any affiliate marketer to consider. I recently launched a Canadian shopping portal, a Faire du shopping which is a French shopping portal. That's not all either.

]]> I also re-launched my UK shopping portal and my UK Auction Portal. There are some very good reasons for this, not the least of which is that the dollar has steeply declined in value. Ron Paul nuts not withstanding I look at the dollar's decline as potentially quite a good thing since everything in the United States is cheaper including PPC. Buying clicks in dollars and getting paid in Euros is one more opportunity to leverage an arbitrage to take advantage of global markets.

Additionally going global means that you can spread your risk as an affiliate. Of course going global also means that you might not have as much knowledge of the regional market as a native affiliate. But it also means the competition might not be as tough. Certainly I have found the small markets in the Europe not as competitive. I won't stop there. I plan launching a shopping comparison engine similar to Shop Sort in the UK, France, Germany and Australia. Going global means that you are less likely to be dependent on the performance of one particular economy and can take advantage of the global markets to extend your affiliate reach.

Start Up Profile: Packet Analytics, NetFlow Security Company

With so many web 2.0 startups running around with too many consonants in their name, it's hard for a traditional software startup to get some of the buzz that yet another youtube clone might. Today I am profiling Packet Analytics which provides a NetFlow search engine.

]]> Packet Analytics is a startup based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The company has an exclusive technology license from Los Almos National Labs for their proprietary NetFlow search engine. Given the high security demands of the nuclear weapons lab, this product has seen far more testing and usage than a typical software startup. Most software startups don't have their software running for 5 years at a customer's facility, much less a high profile one like Los Alamos. This means for an enterprise looking for a NetFlow analysis tool can know that the software can perform up to standards that far exceed their own. (If you don't know what NetFlow is, please read my link to the Wikipedia article.)

I had the opportunity to sit down with Andy Alsop (CEO &Chairman) and Ben Uphoff, Ph. D.(VP of Research) and talked with them about their startup, which is one the first applications to use NetFlow for security. In addition to running a software startup, they also contribute to Breach Bytes, a network security blog.

Why is using NetFlow data for security so important?

Andy Alsop:"Security breaches can happen to any company. It’s not a matter of if, but when they will occur," said Alsop. "Net/FSE was built by security analysts for security analysts so that enterprises have access to advanced search capabilities over terabytes of NetFlow router data. Our product will save analysts a significant amount of time in their routine alert investigations, making them more efficient and dramatically decreasing response time."

Indeed this highlights the iterative approach to security that is seeing uptake in many enterprises. Instead of hoping for a silver bullet solution to security, enterprises are beginning to recognize that breaches are inevitable and that a rapid response to a breach is necessary. NetFlow data is a great tool for rapidly responding.to an incident but given the amount of Netflow data an enterprise will generate, it was impossible to search in real time. Searching a terabyte of NetFlow data in real time simply wasn't possible before. The Net/FSE product is the first commercial search engine for enterprise network data, allowing searches in real time.

Apparently Packet Analytics' customers agree. One such customer is Los Alamos National Bank, one of the largest banks in New Mexico.

"We purchased and deployed Net/FSE at Los Alamos National Bank to give us visibility into our NetFlow router data in addition to our other network data," said David McCullough, Chief Technical Officer for Los Alamos National Bank. "Before Net/FSE when we needed to perform a network security investigation it was taking us as much as day to answer one investigative question. Now, we're able to answer that same question in a matter of minutes."

The Department of Energy Los Alamos Lab logs over one billion network events a week, with about 15 terabytes of this data online. "They were bombarded with alerts from IDSes, IPSes, firewalls, or users, so the security analysts needed [something to help them] determine what we like to call 'context' around" an event" stated Alsop.

Providing context around an alert which is what the Net/FSE search engine does. This reduces response times from a day to minutes, which is critical in minimizing the effects of a network breach.

Having the right tool for the right job is vital in network security. Having a tool that does everything poorly is much like having a Swiss Army knife. You wouldn't want to carve a 25 lbs turkey with it. The Packet Analytics netflow search engine can handle the multi-terabytes amount of data that NetFlow generates, making it quickly searchable. Ben Uphoff noted, "Vendors claims that they "do it all" are misleading at best. You really want the right tool for the job."

Packet Analytics is offering a free netflow search engine download, which supports up to one million events per day. Anything higher incurs a licensing fee -- anywhere from $1,495 for up to 3 million events per day to $18,950 for 50 million events per day.

Holiday Sites. No, I didn't crawl into a hole and die.

I have been incredibly busy this holiday season. Comparison shopping is my niche and I really try to launch new properties. Last year it was Early Miser. This year I launched quite a few new properties and relaunched some old ones.

]]> The biggest new launch I did is with Shop Sort. Shopsort is very similar to Early Miser with a couple of new features and a whole bunch of features stripped out. One thing I found about Early Miser is that the comprehensive coverage of product shopping on the planet has a price - namely in page size. It's not uncommon at all for a single product page at Early Miser to be 100k-150K in size. This meant that uptake in Google is far slower than I would have liked. After thinking about this for a while, I completely stripped Early Miser down to the metal. Features like price triggers and feeds while incredibly cool, need to be re-factored to be easier to use. Shop Sort just price comparison with calculations for zip code built into the code. I also stripped out the feeds, user accounts and price triggers, and limited results to a single provider, (Like I said, stripped to the metal). When I was done, the resulting page had a much smaller footprint and as a result has had a great uptake in Google. (Over 800,000 pages on the particular index I am looking at). I acquired Shop Sort when the previous site owner was looking for a small liquidity event. I bought the site and re-launched my project on it. It's currently average between 200-300 users per day (without advertising). In my quest for the most complete shopping experience, I had forgotten that sometimes speed trumps completeness. In fact speed and completeness of results are trade offs that you need to balance for the optimal user experience.

It has given me a yet another data point for understanding how people use the web for shopping and buying goods on the internet. Of course I didn't stop there. I also launched Figurine Market, Great Watch Steals and then re-launched a number of sites like Brave New Vinyl and White Outdoor Grills. I am currently working on a killer mobile shopping comparison service called Zestly which will launch in February. So as you can see - I have been so busy I haven't really had time to post much of anything here. I will keep my readers informed about the latest things I am doing in the space.

Spock.com - Web 2.0 people search

I missed the initial beta launch of http://www.spock.com two months ago. I have been swamped at DWT and quite frankly the people search space isn't one I am particularly interested in.

]]> I recently started looking at the space again since DWT got a request for a meta search product in the people area. I found http://www.spock.com and began using the tool. It found all the relevant Brian Despains although my attempt to claim my own profile failed miserably (ID10T error) but my own profile now resides under Brian Scott Despain.

The site offers a viral set of Javascript widgets. Below is my identity widget in Javascript

You can easily use a Javascript or a flash widget for any of their search results. For example here is the flash widget for startups at Spock.com

The interface is pretty straightforward and ease of tagging is quite nice. I didn't like certain elements on setting up an account. During the account set up process it asked for access to both my Linkedin profile and Gmail contacts. I skipped this step after a HUGE fiasco with Quechup. (See the posts here, here and here. While I am fairly certain that venture funded Spock won't have the same problem but after Quechup spammed everyone in my Gmail account I simply won't take a chance that someone else might do it again.

I really like the UI at spock.com. It makes it fairly easy to build a profile pretty quickly and tagging your profile is easy. The site also asks you questions as you are in the site which makes I actually found quite nice. By asking a simple question ("What color are your eyes?") it engages the user to interact with the site. This also can lead to stoppers ("What sport do you play?") if the user doesn't engage in that activity.

Users can tag other users which can create a more complete picture of a person. You can set trust relationships which can capture relationships that you already have. (Of course if opt to use the mechanism to bring your contacts into your account, that speeds the process).

I think that Spock.com is on to something.The information creation part of your account is easy and it's apparent that the Spock team has thought about the problem of spam and reputation management (users can disallow types of tags which cannot be used when tagging their profiles). Given the ease with which I was able to update my profile and add contextually relevant information to the site, I can very quickly see them getting fairly quick uptake in the market.

AGLOCO encourages click fraud. Watch out ASK.com Advertisers

My dislike for the marketing scam Agloco is well documented. In the most recent email I got from them flogging the scheme, they have actively encouraged their members to commit click fraud.

]]> Here's the email I received from Danny Jensen (The Community Manager)

Our first data points are in with our AGLOCO/Ask search system. Average net revenue for AGLOCO per click is already over US$0.20 - the average Member click through rate on ads on the Ask search page - 20% to 25% of the time the ad is clicked on (one ad click for every 4 to 5 searches).

If every AGLOCO Member did 4 to 5 Ask searches a day and they clicked on average just one ad, the revenue generated for the AGLOCO community would be US$6.00 per month per Member. This would be a great start to building revenue for Member distributions.

AGLOCO's challenge is to get every Member to have the Viewbar open all the time and to use the Ask search box to make their searches.

If you haven't used the Viewbar to do an Ask search. We implore you to do it now. Member feedback on the Ask search results has been extremely favorable (most Members reporting they rate Ask results as good as Google's or better.).

In other words if you want to get paid, do ASK.com searches and then click on the ads. This is completely and utterly insane. This clearly violates the terms of service with ASK and furthermore it's completely and utterly dishonest. They lay out a clear plan for how to be stealthy (Do 4-5 searches per day, click on 1 ad) and then encourage people to do it. I cannot see how ASK.com can condone this behaviour. As an advertiser I would be livid. Click fraud is bad enough in today's market but to have a company like Agloco actively encourage click fraud by it's members in order to generate revenue - unfracking believable.

Update: I reported this to Ask.com (I sent them a full copy of the email.)I got this from Andrew Moers over there.

"Thank you very much. We are investigating immediately."

I asked Andrew this morning for an update and I am waiting to hear back but it's apparent that a significant portion of Agloco's toolbar users are overseas. This isn't a particularly valued market for Ask.com since they are largely focused on the consumer search market in the United States. I wonder what ASK.com is going to do to maintain click quality in light of this revelation. The email reads like a pretty clear directive to commit click fraud. I am pretty certain Agloco member who are getting upset about not getting paid are going to take it as such.
Take a look at this post.
http://blog.agloco.com/index.php/post75/
Almost all the complaints on that blog post are from people complaining about not getting paid by Agloco. Clearly they are going to seize the opportunity to actually get paid by clicking on " one ad click for every 4 to 5 searches." If I were an ASK.com advertiser I would be asking some pretty hard questions about Agloco.

Designing for changing aspect ratios.

Once thing that has changed over the last 5 years is the growth and replacement of the CRT monitor. LCD monitors have completely replaced CRTs with new computer shipments. This means a design change for website owners since LCD have a different aspect ratio.

]]> The traditional CRT monitor has 4:3 (ratio of horizontal to vertical measurement). Most LCDs have an aspect ratio of 16:9. This means that they are wider than they are tall to a greater extent than CRTs. It's painfully apparent that most commercial web sites are designed around a 4:3 aspect ratio and furthermore don't take advantage of the basic design principles to utilize as much screen real estate as possible. The current Thalasar.com design isn't as flexible as it should be in this case. Site designs when possible should be flexible to accomodate. Amazon uses 100% of the screen real estate while Cnn.com does not. As LCDs continue to replace CRTs, designers should make sure their designs look good in the "wide screen" format.

Website Hosting - Get your own site!

Basic website hosting is one of those things that I take for granted. I have multiple options open to me since I manage and maintain my own cluster, in addition to having a significant number of shared hosting accounts for IP range diversity. I usually bring on a new host when I have a project that has specific needs in a hosting environment.

]]> I evaluate hosting providers by opening one of their mid level hosting accounts and see how they perform. I have evaluated Hostway, Powweb, CrystalTech and Hostgator this way. Most of these hosting plans have performed up to my expectations. As a result of this testing I cannot recommend Powweb. Their servers are constantly over-loaded. I am currently reviewing the offerings on MySite.com.

MySite.com offers a number of entry level hosting options for new web sites. They offers a number of entry level packages. They have a free hosting option which is isn't a bad way to start. My initial feedback about the hosting plans is that they are a bit lighter than I would like to see in terms of disk space. Disk space is cheap and MySite could easily increase the storage on their $7.95/month plan.

One thing that I do like about MySite's story is that they have been in the hosting business 12 years now which gives them a significant amount of experience and history. So I will give them a try on one of their mid-sized hosting plans and hopefully report back in 60 days on it's performance. Remember I make the mistakes so you won't have to!

Wow Auction Ads SRSLY SUCKS

After Shoemoney sold Auction Ads, it didn't take long for the service to go completely to shit. I was running Auction Ads on my Bobby Orr memorabilia site.

]]> It was running largely on auto pilot and making the occasionally sale. I was doing my usual Saturday site walkabout (where I wonder around various sites and check them out, see what is happening) when I noticed that every single Auction Ad was broken. No placeholder ad - just a broken image link in the ad. Wow. Way to fall to pieces. For an ad serving network to degrade like that on a simple term that I KNOW HAS PRODUCTS at EBAY is horrible. The Bobby Orr site pulls it's inventory in real time from Ebay so it should simply work. Currently they are running a $25 free giveaway - which of course really isn't a give away since you need to sell $50 worth of stuff on Ebay in order to receive the funds. Given that most small publisher will never do that in sales in a year, it's nothing more than a poor marketing gimmick. I would spend less time signing up publishers than I would making sure you ad network actually works.

After a little digging into the issue, it appears they broke their previous ad code when updating to their new "Web 2.0" code. It's an utterly boneheaded move. It apparently cannot do an and on simple keyword terms like "Bobby Orr". Instead it can only support a single keyword! Ugh.

Vegas Baby, Vegas!

Like John Favaro said in Swingers, Vegas is the place to be. 3 free nights in Las Vegas is even better. Perfect Escapes is holding a luxury hotel sweepstakes. To enter all you need to do is

]]> register for their Perfect 10 newsletter. The Perfect 10 newsletter is actually a good thing to sign up for even if they weren't giving away a Vegas vacation. The Perfect 10 newsletter brings you the latest deals on luxury hotels and resorts. As they note,

We personally select the best combinations of luxurious 4- and 5-star hotel rooms paired with unique local activities, special-occasion amenities, and pampering upgrades to make your trip unforgettable.

In other words they put together great deals and giveaways and then let the select members of their Perfect 10 newsletter. I registered for their giveaway and all it required was my zip code and email address! No intrusive marketing survey, no huge form requiring every last detail of your life and your mother maiden name. They have made contest entry easy as pie. The winner will be staying at the Wynn Las Vegas. What else will the winner of the contest receive?

Three consecutive nights lodging for two in a Salon Suite at the Wynn Las Vegas. Approximate Retail Value (ARV $1,950);
A Four Hundred Dollar ($400) dinner credit redeemable toward a dinner for two at the SW Steakhouse at the Wynn;
A Four Hundred Dollar ($400) credit redeemable toward Wynn spa services or shopping;
Two (2) tickets for the Le Reve show at the Wynn Las Vegas during the stay (ARV $198)
Limousine transportation to and from McCarran Airport in Las Vegas (ARV $200);

Airfare to Las Vegas isn't provided but given the great value of this package, it's worth it for the winner to spring for the tickets themselves. Additionally joining the newsletter does more than bring you really good deals on travel, you also get a guide to high end destination clubs. I have already entered the contest for a 3 day Las Vegas Holiday, you should too.