Tom Mollerus' Weblog

Today while shopping in Minneapolis' IDS Center, I stopped at an ATM machine to get cash. Since there were no machines available from my own bank, I used another's. Of course, I had no choice but to accept the $2.00 fee that the other bank charged me, and I'm sure that I'll face another fee from my own bank. Now, banks have said that they'll keep charging these fees as long as people tolerate them, and so far the market seems willing to bear the cost. You can try to use a machine from the same network that your bank uses, but I don't think too many people are savvy enough to look at their card's network provider, not to mention to that of the ATM machine. I'm willing to pay the fee for the sake of convenience access to money, but I sure wish the fees were lower.

So I found myself thinking just how the banks would know whether or not "the market" was tolerating their costs. How would they ever know whether potential customers were avoiding their cash machines? Sure, they could tell if their month-by-month percentage of out-of-network transactions decreased, but it occurred to me that an even stronger indication that the cost was too much would be if the customer cancelled their transaction at the point when they were told that they would be charged the extra $2.00 fee, in addition to fees from their own bank. That would be a clear sign to the banks that their fees were no longer so tolerable.

So here's my idea: whenever you're forced to use an out-of-network bank machine because you're not close to one of your own bank's machines, cancel the transaction where you see the screen about the extra fee. Then either start the transaction over to get your money, or, better yet, move to another nearby machine. You will still be paying the extra fee, true, but for the cost of a few seconds you'll be sending the banks anonymous feedback that could save us all some money in the future.

I came across a link to this very interesting infographic while reading a friend's blog: which countries have what percent of the world's oil reserves? It begs the next question of just how long the world's oil reserves will last at current levels of consumption and just when the day of peak oil will occur. After peak oil, producers will be delivering diminishing quantities of oil as time goes on, and we'll start paying dear prices if we haven't found alternative sources of energy by then.

I noticed a survey on FreePress.org last week with very interesting results. They asked what people would choose as the priorities for the next FCC chair. I was curious, so I filled out the survey so as to see what the accumulated results were. I was suprised with what I found. Take the survey yourself and then read on for my reaction.

Last night we had a fun Boston CFUG meeting where Ike Dealey spoke about his onTap framework. As the co-manager with Brian Rinaldi, I am in charge of promoting meeting attendance, so I raffled off a digital photo frame as the door prize.

Getting to pick out the door prizes is something that I enjoy, since I get to indulge my own preferences for what makes a desirable prize. But I'm well aware that not everyone else might share my taste, so I wanted to ask the opinion of the community at large: what products or services would make attractive, desirable door prizes, enough to make you more interested in attending a user group meeting? Would it be something silly like the Airzooka air gun? A cool piece of electronics such as a digital camcorder? The now-ubiquitous iPod? The only guidelines are that it would need to be widely popular, and priced less than $100.

Please leave an idea via the comments below. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts. If enough products are brought up, then I might put together a survey where everyone can rank the best ones.

I can't believe this video... I kept checking to see if someone had altered the video to stretch this guy's arms to let him keep loading bricks on his head like he does...