Archives for 2006

How I’ll be a Star on MTV

Posted on October 27, 2006 ·

“I want my, I want my MTV
I want my, I want my MTV…”

(Money For Nothing, Dire Straits)

The voicemail on my cellphone says:

This is …. from MTV Casting. Everybody liked you. The Director wants you to come back tomorrow noon and you’ll all be recorded individually. Please call me to confirm at 310-xxx-xxxx.

Wow… I’ll be a star! I’m really excited… but why does she call me Carla?

Oh, well … I won’t be the next star after all … just called the casting agent to let her know she reached the wrong number.

Tags: MTV, MTV Casting

Filed Under: Humor, Misc ·

Will Geeks Become an Endangered Species?

Posted on October 24, 2006 ·

We’ve long known laptops can cause male infertility when used right where the name suggests – i.e. right on your lap. That’s long before they started exploding left and right – simply by heating up the family jewels they can drastically reduce a man’s ability to reproduce. (Hm…is that why manufacturers switched to calling them notebooks?)

Now we find out extensive cellphone usage results in the same:

“Those who made calls on a mobile phone for more than four hours a day had the worst sperm counts and the poorest quality sperm, according to results released yest at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting in New Orleans.”

The mechanism of the damage is not yet known:

“Doctors believe the damage could be caused by the electromagnetic radiation emitted by handsets or the heat they generate.”

Heat? Give me a break! I don’t know about you, but I either hold it to my ears or use a headset, but it’s never … you know .. down there.

Anyway, true geeks have their laptops and cellphones permanently glued to them – if they become infertile, are geeks becoming an endangered species?

Update (10/30): Read the ZDNet story by David Berlind.

Update (1/4/08): Wow, I can’t believe this: Yossi Vardi uses my post in his TED presentation. 🙂 (It’s a 2 minutes 13 seconds)

Tags: endangered species, geeks, laptops, mobile phones, fertility, infertility, male fertility, scrotal temperature, sperm count

Filed Under: Humor, Misc, Technology ·

Wikis as Intranet + Extranet

Posted on October 22, 2006 ·

I’ve written about how wikis can become *the* Intranet, that is not only easy to access but easy to edit by everyone, in the organization. Instead of a one-way communication channel for Management to talk (down) to employees, the wiki becomes a living, breathing, participatory communication platform.

Now there’s a new case study of how a a customer of Atlassian’s Confluence wiki is using it for customer communication, by building their entire Extranet on Confluence.

The wiki has become the Intranet+Extranet.

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Customer Service, Enterprise Software, Software, Technology · Tagged: atlassian, Collaboration, confluence, customer communication, extranet, intranet, wiki, wikis

Customer Service 2.0?

Posted on October 22, 2006 ·

Debbie Landa’s rant of the month:

“Customer Service 2.0 uhm, NOT

Here’s my rant of the month. It seems like everyone is trying to get on the office 2.0 train. Clearly, any developer with some code know-how can make a product but, “servicing” the product is the challenge.

I will openly stand up and say that i’d pay a fee for a product that offers phone support. When a product that you’ve been using breaks, it sucks when you can’t get help. You’re stuck with all your documents or info in random spots and there’s nothing you can do until someone responds.

ok, i’m talking about Google, yes the dearly loved Google that i have praised for acquiring writely, our collaboration tool of choice. Google, meet customer service 2.0….yup, that’s what i’m saying. (You’d make millions if you actually had someone we could call) Why can’t we call you? Why don’t you respond to our silly forms that we spend so much time filling out…why oh why are you making us so crazy. I hate to complain, but it’s been three days and still no reply….. “

I feel the pain … been there, done that. As a user, I completely agree. But let’t look at reality, it’ simply not economically feasible to offer phone support to millions of free users. Support is costly and somebody has to pay for it.

That said, there are companies that excel in supporting their free product, but guess what, their name does not start with G* … not even with Y* … a good example is Z*. As in Zoho. I am using several of their products: they all have a “feedback” feature built right in the menu bar. Typical response time is hours or less; I’ve had 10 minutes, and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced more than 2-3 hours. I seriously doubt you can ask for more with free products.

Tags: Free products, support, customer support, customer service, phone support, online support, google, google support, yahoo, zoho, zoho support

Filed Under: Business, Customer Service ·

Angioplasty and Bad Karma

Posted on October 18, 2006 ·

(Updated)
I’ve used the word angioplasty 5 times in this blog. Not in it’s original meaning, but referring to the term Business Process Angioplasty coined by Vinnie Mirchandani.

Perhaps it was bad Karma, now we have the real thing in the family. After what appeared to be a routine test, my Dad was found in need of immediate angioplasty. It did not help, apparently there is too much blockage, so he will have a Coronary Bypass this Thursday. I’m with him this week (literally every minute, as interpreter, since he does not speak English) – so I’ll likely be off-blog for a while.

Update (10/29): Wow, I’m really moved by all the comments and countless email I’ve received from my friends – a big THANK YOU to all.
My Dad is back home, recovering after a successful surgery, and I’ll be back to blogging soon.
Thanks again
Zoli

Filed Under: Misc ·

Nick Carr Wants to Fung…

Posted on October 16, 2006 ·

Face it: even “fungus” is a nicer word than “blog.” In fact, if I had the opportunity to rename blogs, I think I would call them fungs. Granted, it’s not exactly a model of mellifluousness either, but at least its auditory connotations tend more toward the sexual than the excretory. “I fung.” “I am a funger.” Such phrases would encounter no obstacle in passing through my lips”
(hat tip: Stowe Boyd)

I wonder when “Fung You” t-shirts will show up in the Rough Type Store.

In the meantime, the rest of us “numbskulls” should keep on blogging.

Tags: blogs, blogging, fungs, funging, roughtype, numbskulls, nick carr

Filed Under: Blogging, Humor, Misc ·

Why I’m NOT Linking to The Blogging Times Anymore

Posted on October 16, 2006 ·

It’s really simple. The Blogging Times asked bloggers to display their badge and promised a reciprocal link. Now I’m not a link-hunter, but I kind of liked their writing, and thought why not … so up went the badge, but they never bothered to link back.

This is unfair. I’ve taken the link off, but keep the badge, pointing to this post

Filed Under: Blogging, Business ·

Office 2.0: Additional Awards

Posted on October 16, 2006 ·

OK, unlike the real Awards, these are not “official” and in the lighter category. The “Awards” go to… (drumroll):

Kevin Warnock, CEO of gOffice for the most honest statement of all: “I warmly recommend everybody to use our competitors’ products, they are fare better than mine“. Kevin concluded his presentation by saying he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his company, and invited any advice …
Oh, and how could I forget: for offering the gOffice domain to Google for free.
Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho/Advantnet, for coining the most origical term when the presenters experienced lousy connections: “office.slow“
Ivaylo Lenkov, CEO of SiteKreator, for giving all participants a free Business Account (now, I wonder if it is the 450 who actually were there, or the 4,600 who voted? If the latter, I understand why the site is down for now …)
Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO of Atlassian, for hosting the Enterprise Irregulars + a few analysts + his competitors to a private dinner and not using the opportunity to pitch his business
Michael McDerment, CEO of FreshBooks, for letting the cat out of the bag.
[your nomination here] – really. please recommend more “candidates” and I’ll post them here.

Tags: office20con, office 2.0 conference, Office 2.0 Awards

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Software, Startups, Technology · Tagged: atlassian, freshbooks, Office 2.0 Awards, office 2.0 conference, Office20con, zoho

Office 2.0 Awards: A Quiz

Posted on October 13, 2006 ·

What do the following have in common?

Julia French
A yet-to-be-built bridge in Budapest
EchoSign

OK, to avoid any unnecessary excitement, here’s the answer: they all got far too many votes.

Socialtext’s Julia French and Stirr’s Joey Wan were the two finalists in ValleyWag’s Ms. Web 2.Ooh! contest when a Julia-fan (or not?) created a script and bombed the poll with 8000 or so votes. Julia really didn’t need this “support” – hey, I voted fo her – and certainly did not need the disqualification as a result of spam by someone else.

The Hungarian government announced an Internet poll to come up with the most popular name for a bridge to be built in Budapest, over the river Danube. Little did they know the Internet does not know geographical boundaries: Stephen Colbert publicly called his loyal viewers to vote on him, and he ended up winning with 17 million votes. Not bad, except for the fact that the entire population of Hungary is 10 million, and Budapest has about 2 million residents.

EchoSign is an interesting company that simplifies the process of getting contracts/documents signed, distributed, archived. ( I wrote about them here). They received the “Best Of Show” award at the Office 2.0 Conference yesterday. See a partial snapshot of the poll here.

Overwhelming win. A little too overwhelming. The Office 2.0 Conference was a success, instead of the originally expected 200 participants the organizers managed to squeeze in 350 – but where is the other 4,300 coming from?

Echosign did not need this, just like Julia did not need it. The Office 2.0 Conference did not need it. The real participants who voted for their favorites deserve better.