January 2011 – RETRO Innovations

Underage Workers

Staff Member Belle Affixing Product Documentation

ZoomFloppy response has been overwhelming, and we became swamped with orders. We needed help to push through the last shipments, but I don’t want to pay a lot for staff. After considering various options, I found these two underage workers who seemed interested in product fulfillment opportunities. I think I can pay them less than minimum wage and skip FICA and withholding. I’ll take care of their medical benefits and investments, though.

Seriously, those who are getting the final batch of boards might notice the stickers on the packages are a bit mis-aligned, those were lovingly packed by Belle2. All units were programmed and tested for functionality by Brent1.

Staff member Brent programming and testing ZF units

Also shown is the temporary worldwide headquarters for RETRO Innovations. Advanced Technology in Action!

IEEE 488 Connectors In Stock

Though not immediately useful, to help with the development of IEEE drive support for ZoomFloppy, I acquired a small batch of IEEE connectors for the store.

I’m continuing to looks for a cheaper source of connectors, but they aren’t in huge demand, so the options might be limited.

If interested, they are available in the store.

We’re on Facebook

Thought not everyone spends time on the prevalent social network, it’s clearly a valuable way to stay in touch with consumers. As well, it gives satisfied customers another way to promote our products with a minimum of effort.

However, I’ll admit that’s not why I signed up for a business account. I did so for two reasons:

There are times when I want to share a minor update with others about the company, but it’s not worthy of a blog post.
Many satisfied customers are interesting in “friending” my personal Facebook account. I’m flattered, but I feel like my life is the intersection of two social graphs. I sincerely doubt my college roommates care about business updates, and I can’t imaging customers want to know about family issues and triumphs.

Thus, RETRO Innovations has joined Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/go4retro. I will continue to post worthwhile items to the web site, and will post incremental updates or interesting project information to Facebook.

As soon as the Facebook Developer site is fixed (I’m getting errors today, and I’m not alone), I will finish the integration between this site and FB. That should allow the FB items to display on the site as well.

Initial ZoomFloppy Shipments

The first 25 ZF units arrived on January 12, and the remaining units arrived January 20th. At present, 66 orders have been sent out, and 20 more will go out this weekend. Shown at left is a record 41 orders shipped out this morning.

We appreciate the interest and orders. It’s become obvious a new order is in order.

To help with questions about driver installation and/or usage,we’ve listed some resources on the product information page at http://www.go4retro.com/projects/zoomfloppy/. In addition to a FAQ, there is a Google Group for questions and discussion. Please consider joining and learning more about this product.