Slither Returns?

Let's continue to flog a dead horse and bring back Slither... our imaginary rival company. It's not like PrizeLogic isn't a real company that's out there eating ePrize's lunch, is it? Despite what Linkner says in this Fast Company article, there are real threats to ePrize's viability. To deny this is folly.

Here's a link to the PrizeLogic sweepstakes for NWA. Note that to enter you need to enter your WorldPerks number to begin. Doing so eliminates the need for putting in a user's information in for registration. I seem to remember suggesting this same thing about, oh, four years ago. It's always nice to see one's ideas come to fruition, especially when they were deemed "impossible" by one company and made possible by their rival company.

The Unemployment Mambo

It's no big news these days that a Detroit-based company is cutting its workforce. It is surprising when it's a company that claims to be doing as well as ePrize. Despite cuts made in July, they've undergone another round of pruning this week.

The real surprise comes when, out of the settling dust, comes the name of some of those folks summarily dismissed. Amongst the score of people let go are at least three people that have been there three or more years, including one employee who helped extensively retool and build upon the infrastructure created by the last guy who did the same thing (before he was fired). Also amongst the bodies was an employee who came in with huge ideas that were warmly embraced by the company, displacing rogue elements... like me. Between him and another useless ass-kissing joker, this was almost a karmic sacking.

That these guys were longer-term employees may lead some to posit that this was more of a cost-saving measure to dismiss those who have higher salaries in favor of keeping lower priced hires. Yet another sign, too, of the lack of loyalty from the top all the way down the line. It seems that even if you're part of the family or a long-term hire, you can't count on ePrize sticking with you.

To all the folks fired - You may be devastated by the disloyalty and disservice from ePrize but, believe me, this is the best thing that could ever happen to you.

Are You Passion?

Check out the video over at the ePrize Facebook Fanpage

And, no, Robb Lippitt, I will not be your Facebook Friend.

Sorry, This Has Been Bothering me

I know that there are a lot bigger fish to fry but I have been monitoring the use of RSS on the ePrize site for over two years now. While I was happy to see certain sections get RSS-enabled, I'm not too happy with how shoddy this implementation has been.

The idea of signing up for updates to promotions has been tossed around for years (I believe Keith Simmons brought it up). Once the "Portfolio" page got an RSS feed, I threw it onto my iGoogle and have been looking at it ever since. Unfortunately, whoever (or whatever) is spitting out that feed doesn't seem to realize what RSS is all about. The list should be in order of last to first chronologically, not alphabetically. That is, when new promotions go up, the list should be updated with those new things. Also, a description would be nice as well rather than just a link. And, best of all, the RSS should be VALID.

Valid code and ePrize haven't been friendly for years. Looking a the table-bound ePrize site should clue you into that. But, gosh, how hard is it to make a simple XML file? Pretty tough apparently. Look at how nasty the code comes out when running a simple validation against the feed. This is even a Feedburner feed and they probably cleaned up some of the mess. So, you get an A for effort but an E for execution. That averages to a solid C for contemptible.

Speaking of C....

Today is Your Lucky Day! Massive Layoffs!

Time for the ePrize bus to let off a few more passengers. How humiliating for the people fired to be described publicly as "underperformers." But, then again, tact was never an ePrize strong suit.

Is it a bad sign that a good number of cuts came from the business development sector? And howasbout losing the COO? In all, over thirty people have been terminated in the last month, one of the biggest purges in a while, though I'm not sure how that compares with the attrition rate. The churn rate used to be something that ePrize could boast about in their sales deck but now I doubt it gets mentioned.

PS... Looks like it's time to update the website.

The ePrize Fund

Per a comment yesterday, it almost sounds like Dwoskin was in charge of this year's Holiday cards... This year recipients received notice that a donation has been made in their name to the ePrize Fund.

Afraid that this was akin to George Costanza's "Human Fund," I did some googling and found these links:

• ePrize: a true SE Michigan success story
  "The company also recently launched its ePrize Fund, a nonprofit charity intended to promote and help grow creativity and entrepreneurship in the area and around their other offices, located in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and London."
• E2newsletter · Issue No. 11
  "This year, we started the ePrize Fund, a 501(c)3 charity that provides fund and volunteer time from our team members to local organizations that support the ePrize philosophy by fostering creativity and entrepreneurship."

That's quite a bit different from the usual ePrize year-end gift of piñatas and bats or other garish tchotchkes of years past. I'm curious if ePrize employees got any kind of holiday bonus for 2007. Also, I'm wondering if there are any holiday pink slips being put into the stockings hung with care... that's been a long standing ePrize tradition. "Get off the bus!"

Video Time

As promised, below is the video for the MEDC commercial spot. Indeed, it is rather embarrassing.

And here's a recruitment video for ePrize disguised as a clip about the Schoolcraft college Flash event that they co-sponsored a few weeks ago.

Odds & Sods

Good news, the "toothpick in the cake" line has been removed from the ePrize "Careers Page." Glad that cooler heads have provided some fairly well-written job descriptions.

In other news, I hear that there's a harrowing TV commercial on the air featuring Michigan native Jeff Daniels touting the benefits of Michigan businesses. The commercial also stars ePrizer Alesya Opelt. I have yet to see the spot but have been told that "once you see it, you'll be scarred for life." I'm hoping that this makes an appearance on the ePrize Blog soon!

And, a fond adieu to the big group of Quality Assurance staff that were let go recently. Maybe this explains the existence of some broken links and items that otherwise should have been caught... (Psst, lots of broken links on the "In The News" page of the site -- 9/10/2007 CNNMoney.com, 8/4/2007 Detroit News, 7/31/2007 Detroit Free Press, etc). I'm sure everyone that was canned so gracefully will land on their feet. They're always a need for quality assurance.

The Wonderful World of Javascript

It's with great fun and a small amount of irony that developers utilize javascript like it's going out of style at my current place of employment.

While javascript was used for some rudimentary form manipulation here and there at ePrize during my tenure there, any and all "heavy lifting" was done via the back end "toybox" framework. Whenever anything more was being asked of a front-end script the immediate hue and cry from the crowd was, "What about users who have Javascript turned off?!?" This may be a valid argument... or not. There was little-to-no metrics support of our sites at the time, especially in regard to javascript/ECMAscript acceptance. This eliminated all options for AJAX, et cetera.

Ironically, this would also have eliminated the "brilliant" "vision" of some who proposed much more "robust" javascript usage (basically, using MooTools) which was to "revolutionize" the interfaces of ePrize promotions. These were to be the "sizzle on the steak," as our PR person would say ad nauseum. So, which is it? Javascript or not?

Going through the promotions that are currently live, I see little-to-no sizzle and a lot of gristle. For example; pulling up the first promotion I caught on ePrize.com (your favicon has gone missing), Scott® Common Sense Community Spook-tacular Halloween Sweepstakes, I would certainly think that the jack o' lantern so prominently displayed on screen would have a little candle glow associated with it. Animated gif, simple swf animation, something to make it shine (pun intended) just a little. If the argument comes back, "There's not enough time to do that," then welcome to my world circa every day during my tenure at ePrize. Those kind of things are "nice to haves" and not the kind of snazzy stuff that the sweatshop mentality/workload allows.

Competition Coming?

Good news, folks. Looks like there's some healthy competition coming to Detroit for ePrize. Looks like Slither can be retired as a new player enters the arena.

Get those resumes ready.

Three out of Eight Ain't Bad

Back in March I suggested a list of eight items that ePrize could/should do. I just can't help but still provide feedback to the company that once nursed at my breast. Call me a nurturer.

Lo and behold, several items on the list have come to fruition. There is now an ePrize blog as well as the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds on both the Portfolio page as well as the News page. Both of those pages should have calls to the RSS feed in the <head> of the page but it's a start!

Three down and five more to go, folks. Still no closer to being standards compliant (528 lines for that home page? Please! Could be something to do with this... <meta name="generator" content="Adobe GoLive" />). Keep it up!

Adios Caffeine

Caffeine™ has gone the way of SweepsXpress, it seems. The team was dissolved this week. Curious to know what the real reason for this was (not enough support/marketing?) versus the official spin.

Personally, I don't think that it was given enough of a chance. It's only been alive for a few months. Again, had they spun it out as a separate business arm and not associated it with ePrize at all but treated it like a different business (rather than cheapening the ePrize brand), it probably would have had legs. Here's hoping that everyone on the team (that deserved it) lands on their feet.

Couple Updates

Seems like since <ding dong> the wicked witch has passed that things may have actually gotten better over at "The Prize." At least, the grapevine has quieted down quite a bit over the last few months (heightened restrictions on outside communication?).

Half the people I talk to say that things have gotten better (the established employees) while the rest say that things suck (people hired in during the last month). And, the glow seems to have gone out of the MePrize blog.

So, like all good "internet journalists" (an oxymoron), I rely on rumor and conjecture. One thing that looks somewhat suspect is the latest promotion from NWA.com. Built with .NET and not bearing the "nwa.eprize.net" URL, it looks like ePrize isn't the AOR with Northwest any longer. Even sadder, the flow and presentation of this NWA Dream Trip promotion is terrible. They fall into the same traps that I used to rail against; a horrible losing experience and having to fill in my user information when NWA should already have that info on file.

Meanwhile, looks like Jackie Trepanier is looking good in this blog (with an overly large header image -- the blog, not Jackie).

Pay Only For Performace

QA, where are you?

ePrize Jeopardy

I swept the board. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Play ePrize Jeopardy. Note that the host is annoying as heck, but what do you expect with that name?