The Coffee Wars

by Rio Flores on February 20th, 2007

In a neat article from the March issue of Consumer Reports, the magazine conducted a little coffee taste testing[$]. Visiting two locations per company, Consumer report’s three testers tried coffees in basic black – no flavors, milk, or sugar. “You know what? McDonald’s beat the rest.”

The Results

McDonald’s	Starbucks	Dunkin’ Donuts	Burger King
$1.35	$1.55;	$1.65	$1.40
Decent and moderately strong. Although it lacked the subtle top notes needed to make it rise and shine, it had no flaws.	Strong, but burnt and bitter enough to make your eyes water instead of open.	Weak, watery, and pricier than Starbucks. It was inoffensive, but it had no oomph.	Looked like coffee but tasted more like hot water. It was a little sour, with an unusual hint of chocolate.
CR’s take: Try McDonald’s, which was cheapest and best, or make your own coffee–just call it something special. The other three were all only OK, but for different reasons.

I feel vindicated. While I’m not a huge fan of McDonald’s coffee, I’ve always hated Starbucks in spite of my roommate insistence of it’s awesomeness.

The Digg Mafia Turning Users Away? Digg Failing? Let’s digg a Little Deeper…

by Rio Flores on February 18th, 2007

A recently Dugg (and then buried) post by Ajay over at Techtities.com draws attention to a recent fall in traffic to Digg.com. He essentially, declares the sky falling on Digg. Apparently, Kevin Rose must do something “before the Digg Mafia drive away all the normal users.” Eek.

While I have my own concerns about Digg, let’s take a closer look at the data. As Ajay points out, there does appear to be a bit of a drop off.

Now, let’s dig a little deeper…

Oh Look, del.icio.us is experiencing the same trend! Oh look, craigslist.org is experiencing almost exactly the same trend line!

Digg is hardly driving away users. Whatever is going on, it’s broader than Digg.

Plausible Explanations:

• While Digg’s demographics are generally broad and continuing to diversify, I’d argue that Digg’s most active contributors are students (not just undergrads) and others in academia. November, December and January are months particularly packed with exams and vacation days.
• These are holiday months. Every year the web experiences traffic lows during these months, when people are visiting with family, doing their X-mas shopping, tending to end of year closings and attempting to honor their New Years resolutions.
• Alternatively, perhaps Alexa is re-weighting their user base to reflect changing web demographics.

One final consideration: If you look at the very tail end of the graph, at least for now, it looks like Digg and these other sites are prepping to bounce back.

Republican Senators Flip-flop on Escalation

by Rio Flores on February 6th, 2007

Last night, Senate conservatives successfully blocked debate on a bipartisan anti-escalation resolution. At least eight senators who claim to oppose sending more U.S. troops to Iraq voted the wrong way, supporting the conservative filibuster. They include Sens. John Warner (R-VA) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE). John Warner (R-VA) actually introduced the anti-escalation resolution in question, voting against his own bill.

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