Fri, 2008/10/24 - 7:58pm
Any ideas for a site name? The current location - "gingerbooth.com/drupal" - is just a staging area to play with the idea. There are lots of possibilities... Some ideas:
- AG Mastery
- AerogardenMaster
- AerogardenGnomes
- AerogardenHobby
- AerogardenHobbyist (thanks, Peat!)
- AerogardenFan
- AerogardenLog
- AerogardenBeyond
- AerogardenChronicles
- AerogardenLore
Please leave a comment if you like any of these, or to suggest another. Or to say you really don't like one of these, of course. 
Mon, 2008/10/27 - 12:16pm
#2
He's logged in now.
Mon, 2008/10/27 - 12:29pm
#3
Yay!!! Welcome. 
Need better smileys, huh.
Mon, 2008/10/27 - 4:41pm
#4
This is weird, I'm now posting in two places at once. The usual site and this one. 
We need a little tag to say if someone is on line or not, I'm not sure if you are here now or not?
Mon, 2008/10/27 - 5:02pm
#5
I'm here, though about to go make supper.
The top "Forums" page (on the top black bar, and to the left) says who's online.
I just added subscriptions - so that you can get email notifications (default digest form) of responses to anything you've added. We shall see if it works. ;) You can go to "My account" to finesse the settings. Note that regardless of what you set it to, it won't send mail more than once an hour. (The mail-sending demon only executes once an hour.)
Mon, 2008/10/27 - 5:05pm
#6
Oh - actually the odd little icon (sort of a sleepy-looking gray square happy face...) under the user name inside the forums also indicates someone is online. An email icon also appears there sometimes. Probably when one isn't online. Sorry, all these forum features have existed for... a few hours... so dunno how/how well they all work yet.
Mon, 2008/10/27 - 5:30pm
#7
Ah yes, the odd icon works - I can now see that you are offline, could some colour be added to it to make it more clear?
Do you want to create another topic where we can suggest/talk about the site - throw ideas around? This one is for the site name really.
Mon, 2008/10/27 - 7:15pm
#8
Sure - create any forum topic you want.
I could work on the icons, at some point. Not sure that's hit my top 10 list yet, though you could talk me into it. Next, I was thinking... rate post, perhaps.
I really should make a firm decision soon whether to back down to Drupal 5.7, too. Different (many more) options open if I do.
Fri, 2008/10/31 - 7:07pm
#9
Hey, since we're all here.
AerogardenGnome.com - anyone truly hate it?
I need to register a domain name and move this onto it, or we won't become findable.
Sorry, I wasn't really ready to do this all this week...
Sat, 2008/11/01 - 12:45am
#10
Sounds fine to me, better than the others and beats anything I can come up with.
Devil's advocate mode, take it for what it's worth - do you want to limit yourself to Aerogarden talk? Granted I googled aerogarden to find the other forum and I love my AGs but I wonder if they will be around in a year or two. We've experienced their horrible shipping/inventory problems and I've seen very little in the way of retail displays here. 'Course NM isn't a hotbed of innovative activity so what do I know? Then there's their capital value that's dropped below NYSE requirements and possible delisting to the pink sheets, almost always a kiss of death.
If it were me I'd get a domain with Aerogarden in it but would have another, wider reaching one waiting in the wings, forwarded to the AG one. Then if AG goes under you would still have a viable name and could do a switcheroo. I just checked indoorgardening.com and .org and see it's taken but just parked, full of links as is gardengnome.com and .org. IndoorgardenGnome.com is available but a little long. I'm leery of checking the availability of a real name unless I buy it right then so I'm just skirting what's available.
Sat, 2008/11/01 - 1:32am
#11
Bruce - great points re indoor gardening rather than just Aerogardens. What banded us three together - and the little feedback I've gotten outside our core three - was more the talk of taking things beyond the Aerogarden. And even in the Aerogarden - what drew me to the idea of community for this hobby.
I want to learn from what other people try.
Peat's going to laugh at me, but I still really want to see an Aerogarden cucumber! I love cucumbers. But, I do grow cucumbers. Cucumber leaf, meet Aerogarden. Single cucumber leaf, hide little Aerogarden. And I say, "that's just not going to work". Yet I really want someone else to succeed at it. 
But there's lots of things like that. I adore DrAnn's experiments in pushing the envelope of growing greens, for the AG is an ideal greens-growing device. I'm not eager to grow pea-sized tomatoes, yet Shane's micro toms are really cool. Etc. And on the hardware side - could you replace the pumps with aerators? Sure - and Peat and I did so. Nutrients and substrate? We've all done that too. By doing all these experiments in parallel and talking to each other, we can go really far... Whereas one short woman with one pro100 couldn't get very far alone at all. But she wished she could...
That's part of why I want to leave "it's a forum" behind. What I wanted/loved was "it's a vast parallel experiment, with everyone swapping notes". And the growlogs / stories capture that better - project-centered. The forum thing turned personality centered in a way I really disliked. Well, and also I just don't see any future in being an AGG knockoff.
We need to go a new way, as you say. A bigger picture - indoor gardening, but even cool outdoor gardening tech too.
How to get that into a name, though...
gardentech21c.com ?
No.... You're right. We should put "aerogarden" in the name, because it makes us findable.
I'm rather babbling, aren't I. 
Sat, 2008/11/01 - 1:45am
#12
Heh. I gave up on salvaging that post. Stuff I clearly wanted to say, but was babbling with respect to your post...
That's very interesting re Aerogrow's problems... The quality control and distribution problems lately have been horrendous, stock sinking too? And one of their great, great strengths, was their seed kit guarantees. But from what I've been experiencing lately, with salad greens and romaine pods that won't sprout and nutrients gone to goo - they're gonna have a problem on the kit front, too. Inadequate packaging. Cracking open a freshly sealed mesclun seed kit - those still grew well. But salad greens and romaine kits I'd opened a month or so back - not. The seeds weren't germinating. And even the sealed kits, the tablets are already gone to goo. Pretty serious quality control problems...
Yet we do love the products, as you say. Of course, we're better equipped than most to make them work despite these little hurdles. And take them beyond...Think we're going to end up like Edsel or Harley enthusiasts?
Sat, 2008/11/01 - 6:16pm
#13
The future of AeroGarden? Well, I'm not sure they are as stable as they used to be, I would not like to bet on the future of this company. What I see is late delivery, excuses and mix-ups with the warehouse department - not what they used to be about.
The push into Europe/UK has been a disaster. The redesigned grow bulbs only lasted for 2-4 weeks before blowing, the pumps have failed and there are no modified replacements, we are sent the same type again. There are no spares (sponges, tablets etc), and little seed kits. The support, well there is none, the preferred distributor only sells the units (Classic only) and has no technical expertise.
Our support is via e-mail only, to AG headquarters. The whole thing was badly planned and poorly executed.
Only dedicated people, that wanted the product to succeed, stuck by it. How many returned theirs due to the saga of blowing bulbs? How many criticized the company for this (me for one), and how much bad press did they receive?
I agree gisette, I really do like the AG. The problems are not unsurmountable, between us we have come up with improved methods of growing with these devices - aeration and liquid nutrients. At some time in the future, my Classic is going to be made redundant, unsupported? Can we get more bulbs, doesn't matter; many companies make the same bulbs (cheaper), it's not beyond us to put these in the AG with a new lamp holder. The AG is fully customisable, that's one of the reasons I stuck with it. Plus, it makes one heck of an advanced propagator for seeds - grow them here and transplant to a proper hydro unit. You won't get a better propagation device than this.
Am I waffling on now? Better quit...
Sat, 2008/11/01 - 6:45pm
#14
Site name again...
I do like the gnome idea, but I can't get that little porcelain garden chap out of my head.
I think my two would be: AeroGarden Hobbyist(s) and Aerogarden Pursuits.
Sat, 2008/11/01 - 7:49pm
#15
Heh, we have a high school class that will Gnome somebody's yard for $50. They put about a hundred of them all over the front yard for a day. Pink flamingos, too. It's hilarious.
How about AerogardenAdvocate? I'm still trying to come up with a short generic name to go with it, IndoorGardenAdvocate? That's pretty long though and the shorter the better. AerogardenArtist? I have a definite lack of imagination...
Sat, 2008/11/01 - 8:31pm
#16
Aerogarden Mastery (or AG Mastery, or AerogardenMaster) was my first idea. (Well, IndoorGardener and KitchenGardener and a bunch of other ideas already taken, actually.) I just thought "Gnome" was less serious, in a good way.
There are cuter garden gnomes. 
Pink flamingo lawn ornaments used to be popular with Italians around here when I was a kid. My sister and her friends went out on a flamingo-theft expedition one night, and piled all their stolen flamingos in her friend's basement, as ride-on toys or something.
Sat, 2008/11/01 - 8:43pm
#17
The push into Europe/UK has been a disaster. The redesigned grow bulbs only lasted for 2-4 weeks before blowing, the pumps have failed and there are no modified replacements, we are sent the same type again. There are no spares (sponges, tablets etc), and little seed kits. The support, well there is none, the preferred distributor only sells the units (Classic only) and has no technical expertise.
Whoa, the new bulbs are still giving you the same hassles? 
Cliff said someplace else that they'd just had a meeting in the UK (September?) But sounds like things aren't getting fixed too quickly.
Is it easy to redo the bulbs? I hope you'll tell me how!!! Though for the moment, I don't have any trouble getting them. So long as I order from Amazon instead of Aerogrow...
Plus, it makes one heck of an advanced propagator for seeds - grow them here and transplant to a proper hydro unit. You won't get a better propagation device than this.
That's for sure. I was amazed how well the mini did as a cutting propagator!
Sat, 2008/11/01 - 8:53pm
#18
A cute garden gnome. 
Of course, I say this as someone who doesn't like statuary in my garden, or (yuck...) fake flowers. My mother used to get little statues for my daughter when she was little, though, and those had to go in the garden...
Would everyone be OK with AerogardenMastery.com ?
Or just give it a rest for a week and then decide? If we're going to move, the sooner we do it, the less content I have to check over and doctor to make sure it's still working after the move...
Sat, 2008/11/01 - 9:31pm
#19
I'll be happy with whatever you decide, it's your baby and I'll enjoy the company no matter what it's called. Is there a similar generic domain available, just in case AG goes under? It's not quite the same concept but when I started NMGeocaching.com, I got NMGeocachers.com and NewMexicoGeocaching.com, just in case somebody tried to muscle in on my domain name.
As far as moving content, I think a lot could be deleted as it has nothing to do with gardening. When I set up a new forum I'll have some friends stress everything before I go public with very little content carried over.
Sat, 2008/11/01 - 9:42pm
#20
Thanks. I think I'll just abide the challenge if and when AG goes under - groupthink another name then. By then there'll probably be diff technologies for diff names or whatnot, and something that sounds cool now, won't then. And the search engines'll penalize you for publishing same stuff as two domains in the meantime. So not worth $anything to me now.
Good point that a lot can be deleted...
Sun, 2008/11/02 - 12:08pm
#21
The new bulbs are now lasting ,as they should. If they had been tested, properly, before then this could all have been avoided. I don't see any change in the product range available to us, it's exactly the same as when I first came into this in April. The senior AG staff did meet in the UK, but not much has happened...
The bulbs would be easy to do (on the Classic), if you don't mind doing a little re-wiring. Remove the original holder, buy a generic normal lamp holder and get this mounted in the AG. Connect the original wires to this, probably only two. Replace the bulbs with standard daylight spectrum ones which you can buy easily. You have now converted your AG non-standard bulb mounts to standard 'off the shelf' ones - yeh, I know, it sounds easier than it is...
The Classics are far simpler to work on, they only have bulbs in the hood. The deluxes/pro200's are different, they have electronics in the hood so things may be different. I can't comment on these as I don't have any, they don't sell them over here! One thing for sure, I won't be buying another AG again, not with the spares situation as it stands.
Perhaps I will dismantle my hood one day...
Sun, 2008/11/02 - 5:21pm
#22
Huh. This light bulb biz sounds out of my league electronics-wise... Maybe I'd bring it to my father if I felt the need. (Father engineer, BSEE/MSME.)
Ah, glad the new bulbs are lasting, I was afraid you were saying that they hadn't even solved that. It'll be interesting to see if that UK meeting has any result. Surely it should, but... they seemed to quote curiously long timeframes for anything to happen in Europe. I wonder why that's so slow. Though, I'm sure their biggest market is US, and they're not meeting demand here, so, slowing down on Europe may just be honest observation that they need to get their #1 market right first. (#1 as in first and largest and already further along.)
Sun, 2008/11/02 - 5:39pm
#23
Slowing down in Europe? They need to actually gain some speed before slowing down.
Why release over here with the bare minimum of products? Surely, you hit your intended market at full pace, give the customers choice, support and leave them 'delighted'.
The number one market used to be right, I thought. Seems to have gone awry with them at the moment?
Sun, 2008/11/02 - 7:52pm
#24
Yeah, the US/Canada isn't in good consumer shape right now. Still a vast market that they're not quite handling yet, though.
Agreed, they needed a better plan for launching in Europe.
Other Peat suggestions, since he hasn't logged in to add his own.