Life's too short to eat bad food - Me

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C. Clarke

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Honorable Folk

Beneath these green mountains where spring rules the year, the irbarbutus and loquat in season appear, And feasting on lychee - 300 a day, I shouldn't mind staying eternally here - Su Shih.
In my experience there are two types of human activity that are worthy of note and comment. The first are honorable acts. The second what Trish and I refer to as "bad form.  This is a case of the former.

I wrote, briefly, in August about my wonderful visit to the Lotte International Supermarket (read mostly Asian) in Chantilly, VA.  I loved the place, but it pointed out the limits of my familiarity with certain Asian ingredients, namely Asian produce.  I have books that discuss them, but we don't have the extraordinary variety at local our local Asian markets that the have at Lotte.

That evening I decided to check the iTunes store in search of app to fill in the blanks.  I found a pretty good one, from Specialty Produce in San Diego, and liked it enough that I paid $1.99 for the full version. It's not perfect.  I hope they keep adding to the database.  The first iten I looked up (durian) isn't there.  My biggest gripe is that the photos are web based.  With an iPod that means wi-fi, something not usual at small ethnic markets.  I'd give up drive space for device resident images.

But, none of that is the reason for this post.  A few weeks ago, via iGor my iPod (it's pronounced  eye-gore), I was notified that SP was unveiling a Pro version and letting the Full version fade away.  Because of the vagaries of the iTunes store they couldn't just swap me out, but if purchased Pro for the same $1.99 and provided them with proof of purchase they'd refund the original.

I went ahead, even though I wasn't sure I'd ever hear back. So it goes.

It put a smile on my face when I saw it in the mailbox.  The sent me the check and took the hit for the postage. This is an honorable act.  Now if they'd only open a branch in Buffalo.


3 comments:

Bob Harrington said...

Hi, thanks for the positive feed back on our Specialty Produce App. We were concerned when we realized that we had to change some our original thoughts on the iphone app development because of our inexperience. The refund was the only solution. We update the app in both the free version and the ad-supported version daily now. We hope to have info in on the Durian soon, and later we hope to have created the best live reference on fruits and vegetables in the world. Android version coming soon.

Anonymous said...

While surfing the web for my trade related stuffs, i found your blog, which is nicely & attractively presented. your blog is a informative one to follow and I am going to bookmark it.
A good work to praise.

Terry said...

Just a little note from the app developer -- I was googling to find mentions of the Specialty Produce app and found your blog. Just wanted to mention that "durians" are in the produce database now :-)





Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke

Life's too short to eat bad food -
Me