It’s not because he’s photogenic. And, while tragic, it’s not because Billy Mays died so young. It’s because he’s the best representation of what we love about America. It’s what we feel is slipping away from America.

We’re in a downturn, but it’s more than that… people left and right feel depressed about the loss of our capitalistic spirit. We feel like we’re loosing our ability to be the best innovators and decision makers out there. Even if it was crud, Billy Mays could innovate it into something fantastic. He didn’t just have the gadgets, he had the enthusiasm, the passion down better than anyone else.

One can only imagine if GM and Chrysler had such great pitchmen back in the ’90s… because they sure need them right now. American car makers are outpacing their foreign counterparts left and right… good luck getting anyone to take even a free test drive and find out.

Even Dell is about to lose in raw sales to Acer.

This is not a post mourning the loss of a superhero. It’s a post saying that America will fight to keep its freedom, its freedom to innovate, to chose… whatever it wants, whenever it wants. Sure, Billy Mays’ death seems like an odd time for a rally cry, but it’s exactly the reason that people are so fired up about his loss.

We’ll miss you Mr. Mays, but don’t think for a minute we’re going to let America go quietly into the night.

I’ll make this very brief… mostly because I’m tired and ticked at two usual suspects.

Last week, I updated my PayPal profile, removing an old default address.
Tonight, I bought something on eBay. Used PayPal to checkout. Also used an eBay coupon.
To my chagrin, I noticed the transaction went through, with my old erroneous address as the shipping address. It was still an address in eBay, and wound up as the default (not my new default address).

Now I’m looking at having to waste $40 worth of time, to first fix the shipping address SNAFU, and then to get back a $19.20 coupon from eBay… all because eBay revived a dead address. This should not have happened.

PayPal should have removed the Confirmed status as soon as I disavowed the address in PayPal. That would have prevented eBay from completing the transaction.

Instead, PayPal re-certified my old (erroneous) address as active and confirmed. Theoretically, you could use this in nefarious ways to certify an incorrect address as Confirmed, by cross-site scripting PayPal and eBay. There may be some precautions preventing that… but if I was able to trip it up without trying… it doesn’t look good for the eBay-PayPal bridge API.

Note, I’m not faulting eBay for me missing this… I should have gone into the eBay-side of things and made sure that the old address was gone there too (though, eBay and PayPal now boast tight payment integration… not so tight here). And I should have noticed when PayPal didn’t relay this to eBay. But, I’m sure eBay won’t fix it… and I’ll have to email PayPal begging for the transaction credit to be re-applied to the new PayPal transaction.

I would advise PayPal to look into this, because I now have a transaction for a Confirmed address that should not be Confirmed.

And, I just realized this will also probably void my Bing cashback too… now I’m looking at $50 worth of time to recover $40…

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and just flat out say it: DEMO is overpriced.

It’s no secret that MechaWorks will be announcing a new product later this year. And, in this economy, paying $18,500 for a staffed stage, and a kiosk in a conference… is just something we don’t think is worth it at MechaWorks.

So, over the next few months, you’ll see how we launch a product, without paying DEMO-sized fees. Our product is something that really was born out of the recession, so we feel that introducing it should take that into account… without losing its impact.

Now, DEMO does offer something new to combat the recession, called Alpha Pitch. It’s more aimed at bootstrapped startups like MechaWorks. But, even at $5,000, I think it’s not a good deal. Factoring in travel, setup, compensation, etc… you’re still looking at $7,500 (or more) to announce there.

Our launch budget is much more in that range, so it is certainly attractive from the get-it-done-over-with-and-talking-to-investors perspective. But, does it provide the impact? I don’t think so. DEMO is an event where tons of companies are announcing new stuff all at once. The tech news wires are flooded (this I know and experience when DEMOs happen).

A startup may have a great technology, but you’re having to compete for a more crowded newswire. You’re having to compete with Series A and even Series B-funded startups. They have money to burn… they have PR people… a bootstrapped startup probably have very few of both of those, if any. Scratch that, they should have very little of both of those things.

My initial round of advice is to find an industry event. Not the largest, but not the smallest. Usually, these mid-range events have far fewer announcements, but the press still regularly attends. In the wireless industry this will be something like CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment Expo. Note, we aren’t going to announce what we’re working on at that show, it’s just a good event.

Okay, you’ve found an event… great. Now, don’t buy a booth. Booth space is expensive. You’ve got the (typically expensive) minimum square footage. Then, you’ve got staff to pay… and transport to the event, and lodge at the event. After that, you’re left with all the taxes… utilities (yes, you have to pay highway robbery rates for electricity and wiring setup), plus you have to get booth furniture (if you’re a startup, you’re burning money renting that, since you can’t buy it and store it).

Instead, pick some advertising option that is actually reasonably priced. Early on, there are lots of advertising options. From banner ads, to official t-shirts and tote bags, to badge inserts. There are tons of ways at a show to turn attendees into walking billboards. This generates buzz in a cost-effective manner… attendees can whip out their iPhones, or check out your web site during/after the show.

Oh, and pretty up your web site. If you’re going to promote a new big thing, your web site should be worked over seriously. It is your most cost-effective advertising, and probably always will be. If you can’t do it yourself, find someone who will on a consulting basis.

Finally, set up appointments long before the show. Start a good two months before. Press love to get exclusives with exciting technology… especially when they’re burning money to go to the show. The earlier the better. If you want to network at the event, email and call companies before the show. Be persistent… in this economy, lots of companies just don’t care if they don’t get back to people. Especially new people they haven’t heard of (like your bootstrapped startup).

Make a list, check it twice, and keep calling until you get your appointments, or they tell you to jump off a cliff. If they don’t care about getting back to you, don’t take it as an insult… just make it in their interest to deal with you (by hammering them until they do touch base with you).

Finally, have everything ready long before the show. Much of our launch work is done months in advance. This gives us time to perfect the pitch, prepare press materials (kits, photos, releases, etc… all should be pre-packaged a month before your event). And, of course, expect to stumble. You’re not Apple, and Apple doesn’t reply to about 75% of press inquiries (that’s our in-house return rate). You’re going to not have the perfect pitch… it doesn’t exist. The best pitch however will rise above those stumbles, and stay persistent towards getting what you’re looking for: industry support, and initial funding.

This weekend, PhoneCashback.net
Later this week, MobileEdition (for real’s this time, unless Apple decides to be a sadist once again).
End of the week, something completely different.

All three are relatively in the can, so we expect this to go without a hitch.

All for now… back to sitting on a beach, earning twenty percent.

You might have seen a blog maintenance notice. If you don’t, great! That means you’re on our new server, powered by HostGator.

We’ve signed up with HostGator because, while we’ve been growing, so have they. HostGator now delivers hosting that is both speedy and resilient… with a support team to match. We’ve been testing them internally for awhile now, and we’re happy to be spreading our hosting over to HostGator.

By switching some of our sites to HostGator, MechaWorks will save thousands of dollars per year on hosting. Yes, that’s right, thousands. In a bad economy, moves like these feel that much better.

Oh, and WordPress 2.8 is spreading across all MechaWorks sites right now. You’ll hear more about MechaWorks and WordPress in the coming days, so sit tight… especially if you live in Silicon Valley.

Just to be clear, we’re not ending our long-term relationship with RapidVPS. We still rely on RapidVPS’s excellent support and massive speed to power birds like PhoneNews.com.

As I noted earlier in the morning on Twitter, we’re doing an in-town office move Monday. So, I’m up late preparing for a smooth transition tomorrow. Anyways, on to the post…

Sunday’s are becoming more of a day of rest for me. As a recovering workaholic, I don’t really have that balance down quite yet. So, I’m going to work… to take more of a break on Sundays.

And, I figured I’d kick this trend off right by hacking my Xbox 360 hard drives. Buying in to one of the deals that I covered over on CheapenGadget.com, I picked up one of the last good deals from Circuit City. Basically, the deal was a refurb combo, leftover from one of their (failed) Xbox 360 bundles. Essentially, it was an Xbox 360 wireless controller and 20 GB hard drive for only $36. As commenters noted at the time, it was an okay deal, made less hot because Microsoft reserves 7 GB per drive.

And, as I’ve blogged quite a bit in the past, I think it’s pure antitrust that Microsoft will ban you from Xbox Live, if you put your own SATA hard drive into the Xbox 360. Sony, on the other hand, welcomes you upgrading your own hard drive.

Thankfully, a well-known trick works around this. Buy buying just the right Western Digital 120 GB 2.5-inch hard drive (WDC WD1200BEVS), you can flash the drive with Xbox firmware. Then, Microsoft sees the blasted drive as an Xbox drive, and you don’t get banned from Xbox Live.

Sure, this is an old hack at this point, but what can I say? I haven’t actually taken the time to play an Xbox 360 game in weeks. Okay, months. When you see what I’ve been up to, I’m sure you’ll understand.

As the staff has warned me, it’s easy to wreck the latches in the process. But, even PC Word whipped up a photo gallery (even though they made a typo on the drive model)… so I doubt it will take very long to do.

Update: Upgrade was a breeze. About the hardest part (and I’m not joking) was putting the hard drive back onto the Xbox 360. When you have an HD DVD drive on top, clearing everything off to pop it back in is a pain.

Seriously though, there were no real hassles, aside from having to unplug everything SATA from my PC. The hddhackr tool didn’t play well with my PC until I had unhooked all other devices (many DOS tools don’t like simply turning the ports off in the BIOS).

I’ve already installed all of my games to the hard drive, and queued up all the downloads. Even with all of that, I only managed to fill about half the drive. Like many, I found a T6 and T10 torx screwdrivers to be the right tools.

Oh, and I do encourage every Xbox 360 owner to undertake this hack, even if you have the 60 GB hard drive. Even if you have to hunt down a tech-savvy friend to do it for you.

Okay, taking a page from the deals at CheapenGadget.com, I’ve written a how-to for getting the Volt for only $28,000. That’s less than the cost of Saturn’s VUE hybrid… which doesn’t happen to be electric. And, it’s only $6,000 more than the Toyota Prius 3G (seriously, they need to stop with the 3G references, it isn’t a cell phone).

Now, I will point out that this guide takes into account some assumptions. It assumes Bob Lutz’s most recent Volt pricing projections are correct. Second, it assumes legislation that has not yet passed Congress, will indeed pass.

Essentially, we’re going to combine multiple government welfare (oh snap, I said welfare) programs, to bring the Volt down from its $39,999.99 price tag (they’d tack on a 9/10th of a cent if they could).

First, we’re going to take the government’s $7,500 tax credit for the Volt into account. GM doesn’t yet know how this is going to work with financing. It’s possible that they’ll write up two loans, one of which being a $7,500 loan at 0% interest… which would be due upon receiving your tax refund check. That would keep the loan for the car, separate from the loan for the tax credit.

The price is now $32,750. How do we get to $28,000? Cash for clunkers.

Cash for Clunkers (you may have heard of it in the past) is a government welfare program, aimed at getting clunkers off the road, to cut pollution. It uses about $4 billion of that $787 billion TARP bailout (which again, was for banks… to save the economy… from evil, dirty, inequitable capitalism…). Basically, it requires that you have a car which gets an EPA city/highway combined estimate of under 18 miles per gallon.

Plus, the new car has to be under $45,000. That’s fine for the entry-level Volt buyer, but options can easily push the price tag up a few thousand. Be careful, I doubt dealers will negotiate on a car that, if there was a sales line for early-adopters, would resemble an iPhone launch.

Oh, and the clunker has to be registered for over a year. That means if you have a car collecting dust, now is the time to pay a few hundred bucks and get it registered. I can’t promise the law won’t change in Congress before it’s passed, but as it stands now, all the car has to be is registered for 365 days.

So, when it comes time to buy the Volt… well, there’s a problem there too. See, Cash for Clunkers only lasts for a year, from when it is signed into law. Let’s say it gets signed into law in two months (it could get passed sooner, or later). That’s mid-August. How many Volts are going to be in-stores in mid-August 2010? Zero. No, GM doesn’t expect to have them shipped to customers until late Q4. And those will sell out almost instantly. Most people who want Volts, will have to wait until 2011 for their orders to be filled.

That’s the one unknown about Cash for Clunkers. If we “buy” a car, which hasn’t been built yet, does the program apply? Or, do we have to actually take ownership of the car within the program’s period… in order to get the discount? I think this will depend on how much GM pushes for it. Remember, the car makers support this program because they claim it will help sell new cars. But if the world’s first mass-production electric car can’t benefit from the program, then this is just going to push people into cars on the lots right now.

In fact, GM had better be careful with Cash for Clunkers. Let’s say the bill gets tweaked, and the Volt is somehow exempted. If I can get $4,500 now for my clunker, I might as well go get a Kia (from the car company for hamsters), and get the Volt after that car dies. Why waste a $4,500 bailout credit welfare check, especially when the Volt will only go down in cost later on?

Sprint has crowned me the first Palm Pre owner on their Relay Data-only plan. Unfortunately, being on the bleeding edge of things isn’t so easy. Sprint didn’t relay (no pun) the activation protocol to the Relay team… so they’re trying to figure out how we’re going to get activated.

Obviously, Sprint wants to keep Relay under the radar of most customers, so you won’t see it as an online activation option. You apparently need to know the plan code, and have your plan already on Relay (just like how non-SERO customers couldn’t switch to SERO). And, once you’re on that tier, only then can the (hidden) plan code be applied.

Bottom line, Relay Data-Only may or may not be an under-the-table offering, or Sprint could be intending it only to be for the hard of hearing. I don’t know, either way, they’re quite happy it’s me being the crash test dummy… than someone else (like, a normal customer).

I’m sure you’re wondering, on the Pre Data-only configuration, if Sprint traded Sprint TV and Sprint Navigation for the Phone As Modem offering (5 GB PAM is normally included on the Relay Data-only plan). I don’t know yet, but I suspect the answer is yes from the preliminary info I’ve been given. As soon as I do, I’ll pass the info along.

Update: Sprint just informed me that the Relay Data-only plan codes for the Pre are not in their system yet. They’re coming though, they told me “(not to expect) any extended delays.” But, since it’s 4 PM on Friday (Overland Park Standard Time), I don’t think it’s going to be up and running until next week.

Update 2: The Sprint Relay Store web site has moved the Palm Pre to a pre-order page. Hopefully I’ll know more next week, as to if people who already got the device will have to wait even longer for the plan to be available.

As the title says, MechaWorks is building an Apple site.

Because of my proximity to Apple however, I will have no editorial relations with the site. The news will not be driven, or touched by me… beyond any general advice and council (which, I would give to anyone, anyways).

More details on it will be announced soon.

Not as bad as Trend Micro, but just about. I specifically told Panda to not auto-quarantine items, but instead to ask about each instance.

Like other antivirus software, it now treats tracking cookies as an infection (which I hate, since it falsely tries to convince uninformed users about the importance of their antivirus software). This annoyed me, since there is no way to tell it to handle tracking cookies automatically, but ask about other issues.

The final straw was when it began declaring AutoPatcher a virus, and quarantining false positives… again, even though I specifically told it to not auto-quarantine anything.