Now, now, Dave....chill out a little <GRIN>

I read the credits at the end of the "fitting" session, and noticed that it
was developed by a company called i-Soft (www.i-soft.com).  Went to their
web site and they list customgolf.com and golfessentials.com as customers.
Read the case study, and it seems that Golf Essentials.com hired i-Soft to
retool their web site, and they morphed it into customgolf.com.  I suspect
that once that happened, the golfessentials folks paid a whole lot less
attention to the golfessentials web site.  i-Soft did a complete back end
for the web site from scratch, and claim to have increased the traffic and
dwell time significantly.  They also have several gimmicks to capture names
and email addresses (fitting program is one...) and claim to have a mailing
list of 50,000 names.  Also claim to get 20% response rate to their mass
mailings, which is impressive, if accurate.

As for the fitting program....it asks pretty much the same questions I ask
for an internet order,  and was probably lifted from the PCS or GCA fitting
form (just like I did with my on-line fitting pages).  Gets you to a point
where you can make a reasonable decision on fitting, and is probably
accurate enough for 80% of the population.

Despite the glitches Dave mentions, I think it's not a bad setup.  And I'm
sure the customgolf.com folks are crying all the way  to the bank.

Royce



-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dave Tutelman
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 9:37 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: ShopTalk: Golf Fitting Software (For Giggles)


Thanks for the pointer, Cub.

I downloaded it, and had a pretty similar experience to yours. I think they
do a remarkable job of simplifying to come up with a starting point. I bet
it's a good starting point for most golfers (and, frankly, probably not a
good finishing point).

As an retired professional software developer, I was more impressed by
their clubfitting knowledge than their programming professionalism. They
got some spiffy graphics and sounds into it, but the basics of good
software packaging were completely missing. Examples:
  * The installation is an executable (.exe) program, but you download it
as a zip. The only good reason for that would be additional compression.
But the exe was only a fraction of a percent bigger than the zip, so all
this accomplished was:
         - Add a step for the user to worry about.
         - Make it impossible to use if you don't have an unzipper.
Stupid!
  * They used a standard installer-generator to build their setup program,
but they disabled the installation-directory selection logic. Moreover,
they didn't remove the selection control; they left it in, but it doesn't
do anything when you try to "adjust" it. That is not only bad design, it's
really unfriendly. I had two reasons for wanting to install it in a
directory other than their default, and couldn't.
  * Apparently the originator of this program is GolfEssentials.com. These
guys apparently aren't paying close attention, because their URL seems to
have been hijacked by somebody selling domain names. Yechh!

Cheers!
DaveT

At 04:05 PM 11/27/02 -1000, you wrote:
>Jents,
>
>Try this software out.  Of course it doesn't replace a dynamic fitting but
>it got pretty much the same results as I did the last time I fit myself.
The
>only difference is that I made my irons 1deg upright and they suggested
>standard, but otherwise I could have played the clubs well as recommended.
>
>Just for giggles.  ;-)
>
>http://www.customgolf.com/equipment/accessories/headcovers/headcovers.asp?b
h
>js=1&bhsw=1280&bhsh=1024&bhswi=1251&bhshi=842&bhflver=4&bhdir=1&bhje=1
>
>Happy Thanksgiving!
>
>Cub


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