Author: Chris Marquardt

I've been thinking long and hard about what made me so frustrated with the latest Philips decisions. I think I finally got to the root cause. It's a matter of empowerment. Philips Hue is an empowering product. Being able to switch on and off all lights in your house from your smartphone is pretty cool. On an empowerment scale from 1 to 10, I'd rank that at a solid 3. Why not more? Because being able to remote control your lights isn't all that new (remember the Clapper?) and having to pull out your smartphone, unlock it and start an app also adds a level of complication to a task that used to be as simple as flicking a physical switch. But it's empowerment nevertheless. And you can do more than with regular switches. With the October 2015 release of the Hue 2.0 hub, Philips added ...

Update: Philips just announced they would revert their decision and go back to the original state. I have also put together a quick "Philips controversy in a nutshell" recording here: http://soapbox.chrismarquardt.com/post/philips-just-announced-they-would-revert-their-decision Update I've just seen the first mention by someone on the Philips Hue Developer Forum if anyone knew a lawyer who could look into this from a class action lawsuit point of view, as Philips did false advertising and a bait and switch here. Things are heating up. Update: Apparently Philips' decision is very emotional for many people. Seems like they really hurt the trust of a lot of their fans. A sample of some of the wordings I read over the last days: "bait and switch", "slap in the face", "stabbed in the back...

What a great letter to start the week... I own of a small business in Germany. I sell two ebooks (one of which is a fundraiser for the Nepal earthquake victims) and a couple of wallpaper packs (in effect digital photos). Those are officially called "digital goods". Since the beginning of 2015, small businesses in the EU that sell digital goods are required to collect EU VAT on behalf of every EU country. There are two ways to deal with this. 1) pay tax to each EU country separately (=nightmare) or 2) use what’s called the VAT MOSS system (Mini One Stop Shop, also a bit of a nightmare) - It’s a mess (some say it’s a VATMESS), it’s complicated, it’s inefficient, it's expensive, it creates an enormous amount of bureaucracy and it has already forced many small businesses to stop selling to ...