tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38937518586775975982024-02-20T04:16:45.633-08:00some new ideasSome ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-22231035984156083012022-11-21T12:15:00.001-08:002022-11-21T12:16:23.863-08:00Push button not responsive<p>
Push buttons are widely used on all kinds of electronics. After many years of use, they may become less and less responsive when you push them. Here's an example of how to fix the button on a wall-mounted AC/heater thermostat. If most buttons are not very responsive, it's better to replace the whole thermostat. Otherwise, read on. The most used buttons may be the ones for temperature UP and DOWN. So it's possible only these two are not very responsive, i.e. when you press and hold the UP or DOWN button, it takes quite some time or even never to respond to your press. To fix this, remove the batteries. Pull on the face board straight out to remove the thermostat from the wall. Unscrew all the small screws. Lift off the circuit board. Use high concentration alcohol and a cotton swab to clean the circuit on the circuit board where the UP and DOWN push buttons touch. (You may clean the other parts of the circuit as well.) Now the critical part. The rubber buttons for UP and DOWN at the bottom side of the face board may have lost the carbon coating on the bottom side that touches the circuit. Unless you can find such buttons with good coating somewhere else, you can fix this by gluing a tiny piece of aluminum foil to the bottoms of the buttons. Make sure the foil is smaller than the button and does not stretch out of the edge. Press the circuit board onto the face board, and put the batteries back. Try pressing the UP or DOWN button. They should respond to your press immediately. Put back everything and you're done.
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<p>
I wish there was an easy way to re-coat the carbon coating. I tried a regular HB pencil. It made no difference. Maybe a B-type pencil would be better. But even if it is, pencil carbon may not stick to the surface for long.
</p>Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-82702927896515075992022-07-27T22:02:00.003-07:002022-07-27T22:03:24.489-07:00How to find the single mosquito indoors<p>
New tools such as <a href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser'>mosquito laser</a> or <a href='https://www.amazon.com/Livin-Well-New-Electric-Zapper/dp/B07M9WJT8P/'>bug zapper</a> are impressive and efficient in killing mosquitos. But often times the big problem is not killing mosquitos per se, but finding them instead. It's likely you have one or a few mosquitos inside your house. Without finding them, a laser beam is useless and while a bug zapper may be attractive to a fly, it's not so to a mosquito. One way to find the mosquito or mosquitos that secretly sting you is to this. Turn off lights or keep the room somewhat dark. Put a mattress or anything you can comfortably lie on on the floor. Set up a mosquito tent on the mattress. Open the doors of the tent. Lie down on the mattress. Cover yourself with a light sheet and only expose your head. If you want to read on your cell phone or tablet, don't expose too much of your arm. Wait. Eventually the mosquito will come near your head. Once you hear the humming sound, immediately close the tent doors. Turn on the lights. Find the mosquito inside the tent and kill it. Note that to make sure the humming sound comes from the mosquito <i>inside</i> the tent, leave some space between your head and the edge of the tent.
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<p>
While we're on the topic of mosquitos, here's a trick to kill a mosquito that perches on an edge or a crack of something where clapping your hands may not be able to kill it. When you buy fruits or vegetables at a grocery store, you use a small, usually no-color plastic bag. Use this bag to catch the mosquito (or even a fly, which is very hard to catch cleanly alive otherwise). Hold the opening of the bag wide open. Slowly move the opening toward the mosquito. When very close, suddenly cover the mosquito and its surrounding (edge of furniture, for instance) together, and close the opening. The mosquito (or fly) will be frantically fly around inside the bag.
</p>Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-25913815094486560582022-04-09T07:50:00.001-07:002022-04-09T07:50:17.001-07:00Easy way to relieve workload on IRS<a href='https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/01/28/irs-backlog-taxpayer-notices/'>IRS is constantly under stress</a>. “Our employees have worked hard, long hours during the pandemic to assist taxpayers and successfully modify our systems, despite lacking the funding that we need to adequately serve the American people,” said the IRS Commissioner. But there is a very easy to relieve this heavy workload: significantly raise the limit of tax filing. For example, currently if you are single, under 65, and make $12550 or more a year, you need to file tax returns. Why not raise that to, say, $20000 or $30000? To make up for the decrease in tax revenue of the nation, all or most tax rates can be raised just a little. The total tax revenue will stay the same but the number of tax returns that IRS receives will be much lower. Hasn't IRS been trying to simplify tax returns in the past few years (in spite of the alledge opposite on Turbo Tax's instigation)? Raising the minimum tax filing income works in the same spirit and will meet no or little opposition.Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-10350576132615858612022-02-01T09:48:00.000-08:002022-02-01T09:48:02.123-08:00Better way to achieve slower traffic keep rightWhen I visited Italy, I was amazed at Italian drivers' courteous and considerate driving habit: before you pass a slower car, you're almost always guaranteed to have the left lane available for you to do so, even though before you come close to the point of passing, the slower car is in the left lane, or sometimes even running across both lanes. In the US, we have the Slower Traffic Keep Right sign everywhere on state or inter-state highways and yet far fewer drivers obey this rule than in Italy.
One way to achieve the goal of slower traffic staying in the right lane is simple. Just make the pavement of the left lane rougher than the right lane. That way, driving in the left lane for an extended period of time is far noisier and less comfortable.
In fact, when the road needs repairs, the government could even care less about the left lane, leaving small potholes alone for a longer time than those in the right lane. But that probably would not be a feasible strategy.Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-55029608559127151432019-06-09T07:12:00.004-07:002020-11-18T18:08:50.745-08:00Cell phone pinned to car dashboardIf you don't want to buy or temporarily don't have a cell phone mount or cradle to fasten to the dashboard of your car, you can use a rubber band to pin the cell phone to the dashboard. Spread it so that it catches on the tabs of the two center A/C vents (the tabs that allow you to direct the air flow). Then slide your cell phone under the rubber band. If the distance between the two vent tabs is too big for the rubber band, link multiple rubber bands together. Or if there are two radio knobs (e.g. one for volume the other for tuning), see if the rubber band can be spread to catch on these knobs.Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-7963983195252275892017-05-21T16:57:00.001-07:002017-05-21T16:57:34.055-07:00Single-person response speed training for martial artsMartial arts require quick action, both in attack and defense. While one can train his speed of attack alone, it is almost impossible to train for speed of defense by himself. Two (or more) people have to work together. In sports, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agility_drill">agility drill</a> improves the athlete's change of body position and direction of running. But its emphasis is on the change of the body, not on the speed of response, which precedes the body movement and is more critical in any type of martial arts (boxing, Kung-fu, Taekwondo, etc.).
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<p>
Although two-people training is needed for this training, it is not always convenient to arrange for two people and it inevitably causes injury. Just for the purpose of improving response speed, one-person training has its advantage, except that there is lack of such equipment. A possible design is a machine with a flat front plate. Multiple holes are open on the front. From each hole, a rod made of rubber can quickly pop out. The trainee stands close to the machine and has to quickly respond to the protruding rod by either turning his body to avoid it, or catching it with his hand.Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-10251193372476172922017-05-21T15:54:00.000-07:002017-05-21T16:16:55.533-07:00Shopper's guide at store entranceUnless you go to a store where sales people wait to assist you, a shopper's guide, either a paper map or a computer, may be helpful to guide you to the exact isle and shelf. This is particularly useful for a big store and the products are inherently complicated for selection, such as Home Depot, where there is always a shortage of salesmen and you often hear "Customer assistance is needed at ..." on the speakers. A simple computer that only informs of the isle and shelf for a type of products is helpful, but can be further improved. A sophiscated software program should be able to take voice in addition to keyboard input and answer questions as much as it can, not just "Where do I find air conditioner filters?", but also "Do you carry Pfister faucet side sprayer model 951‑026U?", or even "Does SKU LK1CS fit American Standard model ...?" No software is a replacement for a human. But such programs, which software programmers can develop with relative ease, can solve the problem of not enough in-store employees and, in limited cases, help customers with better accuracy and higher efficiency than humans.Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-68989640329686969082016-10-02T06:59:00.000-07:002016-10-02T07:06:01.042-07:00Optimal age for profession<p>
James Gosling, the creator of the Java programming language, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/james.gosling.96/posts/10154368289611328?pnref=story">wrote</a> on Facebook that "In the time between Sun and LRI I’d get lines like 'We normally don’t hire people your age, but in your case we might make an exception'". Even a world-class computer programmer is not immune from implicit age discrimination during a job interview. (Or should we call it natural selection in a modern society?) For a long time, I've been thinking of the optimal ages for various professions. They are not necessarily the same as the actual mean ages of the workers in their respective occupations, even though for lack of data, the latter can be substituted as an approximation. For example, the 2015 Labor Department <a href="http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11b.htm">statistics</a> shows that "computer and mathematical occupations" have a mean age of 40.8, and "architecture and engineering occupations" 43.6. But as we all know, IT professionals are much less popular after age 40, or even earlier, while most engineers continue to enjoy their seniority well into 50, simply because the engineering technology is not evolving as fast as computer technology and accumulated personal experience matters.
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"Optimal" is in the eyes of the beholder. As a result, no objective measurement may be constructed. Instead, a survey among a large number of employers is needed. As of today, I know of no such data available. But I can imagine that athletes take the youngest extreme, doctors probably take the other, and IT professionals are not too far away from athletes. Each category can be further divided. Shooting athletes don't have to be as young as runners. Database administration is a job well sought after by ageing programmers, for job security as well as a better pay. In China, traditional Chinese doctors (TCM practitioners) will undoubtedly be sitting at the oldest extreme of this age-popularity axis, surpassing non-TCM doctors (called xīyī in Chinese). In all countries, old glass blowers are dearly loved grandpas, who would kindly reject the job offer for a happy retirement life, at least before the time 3-D printing catches up with human glass blowing.
</p>Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-30899919977957425532016-10-02T06:11:00.003-07:002019-06-09T06:53:55.676-07:00Software or Web site for ancient character recognition<p>
As of today, there is no software that can recognize ancient characters, such as ancient Chinese characters in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script">seal script</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script">oracle bone script</a>, ancient <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs">Egyptian hieroglyphs</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_script">Maya script</a>, etc. These characters or scripts will not be encoded by <a href="http://www.unicode.org">Unicode</a>, and so will remain as images. A human has to read and interpret them. This takes years of practice and is error-prone. Since OCR (optical character recognition) or even facial recognition has become commonplace, ancient character recognition can be made available without too much modification of existing technology. Once that's done, a Web site can be set up for the convenience of scholars and hobbyists alike.
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<p>
Associated with this technology, the software that can recognize ancient characters can be extended to generate "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance">Levenshtein distance</a>"-like metric or index. There is at least one use case with this metric. The scholars studying ancient Chinese characters know that before Qin Shi Huang (literally, first emperor of Qin) united China, the writing styles of the same character differed in different states. The researchers judge the similarity of the styles and group the states accordingly. But this human judgement is inevitably arbitrary and varies from person to person. Software-assisted similarity judgement will be a great step toward standardization. Levenshtein distance works on words composed of letters. But the concept can be extended to glyphs if a computer scientist can cooperate in this research.
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<!--https://www.facebook.com/yong.huang.5/posts/2779451595405206:11-->Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-82296456044470840382016-09-19T21:20:00.001-07:002017-04-14T15:42:56.273-07:00Web site to collect dominant opinions of a specific language group on a specific incidentSuppose you want to know how most of Germans, Russians, Japanese, Spanish-speaking people, English-speaking people respond to a specific major world incident, such as <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493776953/russian-hackers-breached-athletes-data-world-anti-doping-agency-says">Russian hackers' break-in of WADA</a> (World Anti-Doping Agency) database. You can guess that many Americans condemn the hacking while Russians cry for hypocrisy. To confirm that, the traditional method is to conduct a poll or survey. But that is time-consuming, somewhat intrusive, and not very efficient. Alternatively, you can go to major Web sites such as cnn.com, abc.com to check (mostly) American readers' comments below this particular news, and do the same on major Russian news media Web sites, and then on the Web sites mostly visited by Germans, Japanese, for opinions of other nationals. If the news on those Web sites has gathered enough readers' comments and the comments can be like'd by other readers, you can simply read the top comment or comments to know the popular opinion of the specific nationals. No method is perfect. But this approach is fast and easy. One single person can do this job within a matter of ten minutes, if he has a good reading capabilty of different languages.
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As stated, this process is manual and probably tedious. Fortunately, it is not technically difficult to have it automated. Someone can build one single Web site where the reader can search for the news reports of the same incident on Web sites of different languages. Then the reader can check the most like'ed comments posted by people speaking those languages. This Web site should automatically translate, by way of Google Translate or any online translation engine, the entered keywords and submit them to representative Web sites, such as cnn.com, spiegel.de, elmundo.es, etc. In addition, the Web site should also gather such information from Facebook, where major news medias frequently provide news feeds and readers post comments that by default are already sorted by number of like's.
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There are shortcomings in this opinion gathering method and the automation Web site. Although sampling bias is not unique to any specific polling method, it may be particularly evident in this passive sampling. But more importantly, while machine translation as of 2017 can do a good job with well written articles, it struggles with casual writing with spelling or grammatical errors, which a human can easily tolerate. Readers' comments on social networks have so many such errors that a human translator may have to step in to decipher what the passages exactly mean. If necessary, a group of volunteers from different countries have to work on such a Web site. Lastly, the people speaking a specific language are not necessarily of a specific nationality. But that's a minor point.
</p>Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-19522335672830170042016-09-19T20:56:00.001-07:002016-09-19T20:56:28.554-07:00Remotely controlled gun to protect premiseAmong many ways to prevent burglary, one has not been implemented: remotely controlled gun. The remote control is equipped with a surveillance camera and the gun trigger is pulled through necessary solenoid mechanical-electrical mechanisms. Although no company makes this product at this time, all technology involved in this combination of surveillance with a remotely controlled gun is available.Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-41717890795731494462016-09-19T20:46:00.001-07:002016-09-19T20:46:25.329-07:00Soccer goalkeeper should move randomlySoccer goalkeeper or goalie should move in an unpredictable way left and right during the penalty, instead of staying in a fixed position as generally practiced. The random movement of the goalkeeper not only interferes with the focus of the penalty shooter, but more importantly, disrupts any of his plans to shoot at a predetermined position of the goal. As to the goalkeeper, most of the time his catch of the ball is by accident anyway. So there's nothing for him to lose.Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-70014321723559827282015-07-29T12:57:00.002-07:002015-07-29T13:04:41.201-07:00National Days Concentrate in Summer and Early FallThis is not about a new idea in the sense of potential invention or patent. But a new and interesting finding.<br />
<p>
There's an uneven seasonal distribution of the national days of the countries in the world. More national days fall in summer and early fall. Using data from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_independence_days">Wikepedia</a>,
I summarize the months in which the countries observe their national days as follows (excluding special ones such as Israel, whose national day can vary between April 15 and May 15). The first column is month, and the second column is the count of countries whose national days fall in that month:
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<pre>
April 7
January 8
March 8
June 11
February 13
December 13
May 14
November 16
October 17
September 25
July 25
August 26
</pre>
<p>
The Wikipedia data is not complete; it doesn't even have the day for Australia, among others. Using a more complete data set, from <a href="http://www.officeholidays.com/national_holidays.php">OfficeHolidays.com</a>, I get a slightly different result:
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<table cellpadding=20><tr valign="top" align="center">
<td>
<pre>
Jan 5
Apr 12
Mar 13
Feb 15
May 16
Dec 16
Jun 18
Oct 19
Nov 20
Aug 24
Sep 26
Jul 33
</pre>
</td>
<td>
<img src="http://yong321.freeshell.org/image/Month-Nationalday-Plot.jpg" width=552 height=242><br>
Fig.1 National days distribution on months of year
</td>
</tr></table>
<p>
Let's assume that the national day is when the country initially announced independence. As you can see, most countries announced their independence in July, August and September. With more than 200 data points, this cannot be completely accidental. There should be a good reason for it.
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<p>
One hypothesis is that an independence war is more active in warm weather. In winter, the harsh cold weather slows down the progress, or rather, slows down the offence more than the defence, as the relatively inactive defending side is not impacted as much by external factors as the active attacking side is. There's a small surge in February. It may be due to the fact that at the end and beginning of a year, people are more or less in a holiday mood. After that, the independence activity resumes, with a burst of pent-up energy.
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<p>
To test the hypothesis that low temperature in winter reduces the chance of independence, or rather, reduces the success rate of offense more than reduces the rate of defense, I come up with one idea to test it: Plot the national days according to the geographic latitude of the countries. If a country is in the southern hemisphere, their winter is actually summer in the north. If the hypothesis is correct, we should see a reverse trend for those countries: their independence days will largely concentrate in (northern) winter months. In addition, the countries near the equator will have less correlation than those in higher latitude, because the seasonale change at lower latitudes is not as obvious.
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<p>
There's no "general" or "average" latitude of a country available. So I use the latitude of the capital of the country as an approximation, a method justified by the fact that a capital is usually one of the most contended cities in an independence war. The data thus combined is in Appendix. A plot of the data is Fig.2, where the y-aixs is the latitude for the capitals of the countries.
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<p align="center">
<img src="http://yong321.freeshell.org/image/Latitude-Nationalday-Plot.jpg" width=705 height=557><br>
Fig.2 National days distribution on months and geographic latitude
</p>
<p>
As we can see, there's no clear correlation between latitude and independence days. Both northern and southern hemisphere countries have more independence days in summer and early fall. There must be some factors that contribute to the seasonal distribution of national or independence days of the world countries. This research will continue and preliminary data and results will be given on this web page.
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<p>
<b>Appendix</b>
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<p>
<a href="http://yong321.freeshell.org/misc/NationalDayLatitudeData.txt">NationalDayLatitudeData.txt</a><br>
National Days are from <a href="http://www.officeholidays.com/national_holidays.php">OfficeHolidays</a>, and Capital latitude data are from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_capitals_by_latitude">Wikipedia</a>. The data in the datafile is tab-delimited and can be copied into Excel for analysis and plotting.
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<p>
Originally posted to <a href="http://yong321.freeshell.org/misc/NationalDaysConcentrateInSummerFall.html">my web site</a>.
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<p>
<b>Forum discussion</b>
</p>
<p><a href="http://historum.com/general-history/92854-national-days-concentrate-summer-early-fall.html">historum.com, general-history</a></p>
Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-35263716708859723052015-06-22T05:14:00.000-07:002015-06-22T05:14:01.484-07:00Catch a fly the clean wayFlies are hard to catch. Unlike mosquitoes, way before an object of some flat surface (such as your palm) reach a fly, it senses the incoming air flow and takes off. I'll tell you the easiest and yet simplest way to catch a fly. Find a deep and small plastic bag. The ones you use at a grocery store to buy fruits and vegetables are perfect. (Not the big ones you get at the checkout counter.) Wait till the fly lands somewhere, on a surface (horizontal or vertical) or on or in a corner. It doesn't matter. Open the opening end of the bag and hold the opening in one hand. Hold the bottom end of the bag in the other. Slowly move the opening of the bag toward the fly until it jumps up or the rim of the opening touches the surface of its landing. Either way, the fly is in the bag and you've caught it live and clean, leaving no mess on the surface.Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-17574089813205772562015-04-06T18:30:00.002-07:002015-04-06T18:30:40.185-07:00Speed bump without a humpMany neighborhoods have speed bumps or humps to slow down traffic. While it works as expected, vehicles going through these bumps will suffer more wear and tear on the suspension system, not to mention the reduced comfort to the people in the vehicles. More seriously, the up-and-down movement may cause additional injury to the patient in an ambulance going across.<br /><br />I think we should build these speed reducing facility so that the vehicle must slow down but does not need to go up and down. One way to solve the problem is to create narrow slots along the street so the driver must slow down and align the wheels with the slots, to avoid bumping onto the raised slots. (Bumping onto them won't cause damage, just reduced comfort.) The slots can also be made slightly slanting toward one side of the street, forcing the vehicle to turn a little to avoid the raised humps of the slots. In either case, the wheels of the vehicle are always on the same level as before. In the long run, the suspension system will have a longer lifetime and passenger comfort is always preserved. Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3893751858677597598.post-33458860347890385212015-04-06T18:25:00.001-07:002015-04-06T18:25:39.196-07:00Best pricing strategy for ISP's and utility companies<br />
Nowadays, the Internet service providers, AT&T or Comcase or any other, and utility companies entice new customers by offering a significantly lower price for the first few months or the first year. After that, it goes up to the regular price. Obviously this pricing model makes newcomers happy and old customers disgruntle. Because every company in the same competitive field does the same, no company wants to drop the new customer incentive plan and maintain a constant price plan. But this strategy goes against the common business sense that loyal customers should be treasured more than the new ones.<br />
<br />
I think a better pricing model is a combinatory one that both attracts new customers and accomodates old loyal customers. The way to implement this ideal is to keep the initial price low, for 6 months or a little longer, bring up the price to the regular one, and very importantly, from this point on, continue to lower the price incrementally, at a rate of, say, 5% lower than in the previous month, until it eventually comes down to a level comfortable with both the company and the customer. Wickedly cunning customers can still choose to switch away to another company at the end of the 6-month initial discount period. But many customers probably don't bother to make any change, and will enjoy the loyalty appreciation offered by the company. <br />
<br />Some ideashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09073532183826006276noreply@blogger.com0