<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/b348aa0b-49f7-49a1-9599-e54329d259ba/9AD949B9-D88A-451F-87B9-E467FFA82C93/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tantek/132468961/" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tantek/132468961/" style="font-size: 11px;">www.flickr.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tantek/132468961/"><div align="center"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/www.flickr.com/img/8003A9B5-FE15-419E-862B-D3FF23F857D2" alt="" /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tantek/132468961/"><DIV> Note the fact that there are not one, not two, but FOUR soap dispensing "mechanisms" here.</DIV></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tantek/132468961/"><DIV> Why? This makes no sense at all from the user's point of view. Note: they are all empty except the bottle dispenser on the counter, so this isn't a matter of offering a choice of soap to the hand washer.</DIV></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tantek/132468961/"><DIV> What's the lesson here? Products that require proprietary refills will inevitably become useless, probably much sooner than you think. </DIV></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tantek/132468961/"><DIV> The soap dispenser market is highly proprietary, with no standards for dispenser/refill interfaces, and thus if you install a particular vendor's soap dispenser, you have to then buy soap from them. Except when they go out of business (or otherwise fail to provide you with soap, perhaps they stop supporting a particular model of dispenser), then you are out of luck and need to buy another dispenser, probably from a different vendor. This "soap dispenser obsolescence" happened not once, but THREE times apparently for the Borders on 3rd st. between King and Townsend.</DIV></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/9AD949B9-D88A-451F-87B9-E467FFA82C93/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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