I have been trying for MONTHS to get signed up on Slim-Fast.com since having the baby. The website contained errors at almost every mouse click. Every day I would make my shakes for breakfast and lunch - and loved them - but needed the added bonus of support and encouragement to get through it. Yes, I realize that it’s a ‘free service’ from the company, but if it’s offered, dammit, it should *work*. I’ve gone so far as sending emails (no response) and calling the customer support line (helpless). I’m done reaching out to try to get their product to work.
Now that the site is finally (somewhat) functional, I can’t even create a user ID. Trust me when I tell you I’ve completed all the fields marked in red. From the looks of the message board, no one from the company is keeping their customers informed or answering their questions. It seems that the community was very committed to the product, to their friendships online with other weight loss seekers, and to the message board and personal statistics. Several members complained that their weigh loss tracking data that had been online since 2001 had been erased, with no explanation given. With the current state of health the country is in, any effort to lose weight in a reasonable manner should be encouraged. Granted, Slim-Fast is not the healthiest way to go about it - just take a look what is IN some of that stuff! - but it’s a start.
I am sad to say that the Slim-Fast product website is the worst I’ve ever witnessed. They are losing customers, and not by the handful, or dozen, but by the thousands - and they don’t seem to care. Hell, all you people are FAT and need our product, so do you really have a choice? Why, yes we do! I’ve been looking at joining Jenny Craig, but money is tight and gas is expensive. In the meantime, I’ve stopped purchasing any Slim-Fast items. They just don’t get how business is supposed to work, and how it’s supposed to work on the web. The social part of it, the community of it. It’s about more than just your product.
P.S. - Unilever, once you get your act together, fire your back-end staff, hire a team that actually realizes that you should test your site before putting it live, and care about your customers … hire a *paid* community manager to help gain back the decades of trust you pissed away trying to be cheap.
Original post from the Reviews From The Radio blog. This post is an unpaid and unbiased personal review of the products discussed. Subscribe now for more opinionated goodness!
Technorati Tags: Slim Fast, Slim-Fast, Unilever, Jenny Craig
My Flip Video Ultra is orange, realizing that my husband may have issue with using a pink one. With that stated, I love this little video camera! The resolution is 640 x 480 at 30 frames per second, and is more than sufficient if you are recording everyday memories (or even filming a video podcast).
When I first opened up the box, I was a bit startled to feel how light it is (without batteries). Even adding two AA batteries (included) didn’t make it much heavier. Also in the package was a soft black cloth carrying pouch and a silver wrist strap. What I found lacking was a software CD. Being I’m not a big fan of detailed directions, I busted out the Quick Start guide and found the ON switch. Turned on the Flip, pressed the big red record button on the back, and started directing my own movie. Easy-peasy. If you’ve ever worked any sort of MP3 player or iPod, the buttons are pretty familiar. Okay, now I had a movie, I just needed to figure out how to get it on my computer. On the side of the camera there was a slide button that pops out the USB dongle and plugs right into a PC or Mac. A quick double-click on my MacBook Pro of the mounted USB drive reveals that the software for using the Flip Video Ultra is ON the camera - that’s why there was no install CD. Brilliant. Now I don’t need to install software on other machines!
The software is pretty easy to use, and gives options for uploading to You Tube and AOL Video. Also available is sending video cards via email, but I haven’t tried that option yet. I did upload a quick test video to You Tube (below), and it was super easy. It did take a few minutes on my end for the video to resize and compress before uploading to You Tube, but as it turns out it sent it right up in the correct format. If you’ve ever used You Tube before you know if you upload a video in the ‘wrong’ format it takes awhile for it to be converted on their end and the video to show up. Now the processing for that is done locally, and the end result is that the video goes right into publication. If you are a little more handy with video editing and the file system, you can bypass the Flip Video software completely and pull the .AVI files right to your computer.
A benefit I’ve found to the camera is that it has a zoom you can use it during recording. While our digital camera can record MPEG4 videos at 320 x 240, you cannot zoom during recording. It’s meant to be a camera, not a video recorder, so it’s even nice to have the feature. The colors from the Flip Video Ultra come through nice, and filming indoors near a widow provides more than enough light. I plan on filming in different environments (outside, indoors at night, etc.) to see how it holds up.
The only thing I see lacking is a stabilizer for those times my hands are full (with the baby) and the camera is shaking around a bit. You can tell from the video below that moving around quickly causes the auto zoom to freak out a bit, but it recovers extremely fast. I will be feeding my Flip a steady diet of rechargeable batteries because my family has a long history of electronic devices eating through AA batteries.
The size of the Flip Video Ultra is roughly the same size as my cell phone (HTC Mogul) and iPod Video, although I think it weighs less than both. I am finding this is the perfect video camera for moms, or anyone that likes to capture quick memories and not lug around huge cameras. It slips into my purse (with my phone and iPod) and is ready in under 5 seconds to record the next America’s Funnies Video winner.
Okay, I’m off to make more super videos!
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Original post from the Reviews From The Radio blog. This post is an unpaid and unbiased personal review of the products discussed. Subscribe now for more opinionated goodness!
Technorati Tags: flip video ultra, reviews, video camera
