Archives for July 2008

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Sync Update: Syncplicity, Dropbox, Windows Live (?) Mesh

Quick update to my recent Syncplicity review:

In the meantime Microsoft’s Windows Live Mesh opened to the public, combining synhcronization and backup – also competing with their own Foldershare.  Now a word on what will happen to Foldershare, but I guess the writing is on the wall.  That said,  Live Mesh just failed for me the second time, so I can’t really recommend it.

Another service, Dropbox is getting a lot of buzz nowadays, largely to a smart theme of giving out limited numbers of beta invitations.  Apparently artificially created shortage is good marketing, bloggers LOVE being able to give away 10 or so invites…

Dropbox has one advantage over Syncplicity: it’s multi-platform, including Apple’s OS X and Linux, whereas Syncplicity is Windows only for now.  But that’s where it ends: it has less features (forget Web Apps integration, e.g. Google, Zoho, Scribd, Picnik), and has what I consider a huge flaw:  you have to drop your files into a dedicated folder to be synchronized.   That may be reasonable if you want to collaborate on a limited set of files, but it simply does not resolve the “access to all my data anywhere, anytime” problem.  It’s certainly a show-stopper for me.

So if you’re waiting for a Dropbox invitation, you might as well try Syncplicity – you’ll love it.  And if you sign up here, you get 1G more, i.e. 3G of free storage instead of the standard 2G.

Update: I received a very good, constructive comment from Assaf, who pointed out this was a largely negative post.   In my mind this post is an extension of my original Syncplicity review, but now that I re-read it on it’s own, I agree with Assaf.  Please read my response here, that makes this post complete.

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Live Mesh: Open, But Still Barely Live. Who Has Time For This?

A few months ago I detailed the obstacle course Microsoft put me on, trying to get to Windows Live Mesh, and somewhat sarcastically labeled it Windows Barely Live Mesh.  Fast forward 3 months, and today Mesh is open – but still Barely Live.

But first things first: I wanted to read on the specs before installing.  You can click on the maze of mostly useless help text, but can’t find out such basics as:

  • is sync strictly via the server or peer-to-peer, a’la FolderShare ( a product Microsoft absorbed)
  • are the files stored up @ the 5G free storage encrypted?
  • etc…

The last one (encryption) is pretty important and for many users / businesses a potential dealbreaker.  Since it’s no-where mentioned, I assume MS does not offer encryption.  In comparison, Syncplicity, a sync-backup-and-more  service launched by former Microsofties offers encryption, and just as importantly the explain what happens to your data before you take the plunge – see my review here.

Oh, well, so the only way to find out is jump in… so I decided to install and test.   No more hoops, simply sign in with my Live Id (formerly Passport) account, and voila! – here’s the download.

2 minutes later:

The “Get more help” takes me back to the already seen generic FAQ.

Normally this would be the time to search the MS knowledge base, or better yet, Google, but this thingie is so new, it’s probably not yet documented.   Who has time for this?  I’m out of here, be back to check on Live (?) Mesh in another few months.

And Dear Microsoft, this one was just a quickie, but you still owe me for last time, se here’s my virtual invoice:

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Swisscom Selects Zoho for Business SaaS Offering

If the second largest Swiss telco partnered with Google for email, then who would the #1 select for business applications?   You guessed right (I hope):  it’s Zoho. smile_wink

Swisscom, Switzerland’s leading telco has for a while need piloting Teamnet, a business collaboration portal, which includes a customized version of Zoho Business, with Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show, Notebook, Meeting and other tools.

 

This comes on the heels of another, larger scale Zoho partnership with Baihui in China. 

Zoho Business, also offered of course directly by Zoho is currently in private beta, which typically means by invitation – but here’s a secret (don’t tell anyone!smile_wink) : it’s actually open for use.  

Zoho has a few similar deals in the works, and they also have white-label partnerships with fairly large corporate customers.  The latter is probably the less-known side of the Zoho Story, but the one that allows them to offer their services free to individual users.

As a side-note, Swisscom certainly does not operate only in Switzerland: they were the team that outfitted last years Office 2.0 conference with excellent wi-fi – quite a story in itself.

Related posts at: Between the Lines, CenterNetworks,

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What Do Americans Stand In Line For?

The privilege to give their money to Apple and AT$T:

And the hope to get their money out of collapsed Indymac: (no. it’s not *that* Mac)

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iPhone Battery Power: Worthless Comparisons.

PC World, Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac, Mobility Site , jkOnTheRun and probably a bunch of others happily report that while the iPhone 3g battery life can’t be compared to the first-gen one, it’s still better than any other 3G phones on the market today.

This is a worthless comparison without adding the important fact that other phones have replaceable batteries.  C’mon, spare batteries are so slim, you can easily carry one, and use your phone without any interruption  – except on the iPhone: when it’s gone, in about 5 hours, you’re dead.

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Belgian Chocolate Online: Chocolaty Sweet Tale of How Poor Service Really Hurts Business

Perhaps it all started with Jeff Jarvis’s Dell Hell.  Simple story: famous blogger gets poor service > blogs about it > company faces media backlash > company wakes up to social media, turns around > eventually Jarvis praises them as a Cluetrain business.

Then there’s Comcast: everyone’s love-to-hate cable company that now actively monitors Twitter for customer complaints in an effort to improve both their image and customer service.  These companies know something that many others still ignore:

Times have changed. Using blogs, Twitter, social networks one single unhappy customer can make a business look really bad.  Poor service is bad PR, which is very costly to undo. Good Customer Service is great  marketing.

Now here’s my story of an online retailer that’s about to learn these rules.

My Dad has diabetes, and he likes chocolate – not a good combo.smile_sad There’s hardly any choice in sugar-free chocolate, what’s available locally tastes like **** and is overpriced.   Eventually I found two (only !) online sources that sell Milka, his favorite brand.  I ended up ordering from Belgian Chocolate Online,  (www.chocolat.comwww.chocolatesimports.com) owned buy CandyWorld, USA.   The site claims they ship the day after the order is placed, yet mine was only sent 9 days later, after I inquired.  The delay was actually reasonable, due to a heat-wave, but shouldn’t they notify customers?

But the real surprise came a week later, when I received a large box  of almost-expired chocolate.  True, it had a few weeks left, but given the economics of shipping, I bought 40 bars, i.e. 4 kilos, or close to 9 lbs.  I don’t know about you, but my Dad certainly does not eat that much in 4 weeks…

Two of my email complaints were left unanswered, so a week later, by the third email I was a bit antsy:

Dear Customer Service,
I don’t get it. Is your solution to Customer Service issues to not respond at all?   I’d like to know if you intend to replace the old product with fresh one, or send  refund.  This is my last request, if you continue to ignore me, I will pursue this on my own.

Finally they answered (emphasis mine):

Dear Customer:

We are not ignoring any emails. We are helping customers placing their orders or who really need customer’s service. We can’t help you in an expiration date problem that you do not like and which isn’t a problem.

The chocolates you bought are still not expired and we do not see why to replace or to refund. The expiration date is not the date for consumption, but a date to sell. We do NOT sell any chocolates with an expired date.

Ouch!  Who really need customer service… I’ve just spent $130 on old product and I don’t qualify for attention.  Expiration date is not a problem… although this obviously sounded baloney, I wanted confirmation, so I contacted Kraft Foods, Milka’s parent company, who responded within a day:

The product should be consumed by this date. We cannot assure freshness after that date because the taste and texture may have deteriorated.

(Side comment: talk about the power of brands … yes, Milka is a popular brand in Europe, and Milka is owned by Kraft, by can you imagine asking for Kraft Chocolate?smile_wink)

Anyway, I am confirmed to be right about the expiry date, and  Belgian Chocolate Online’s attempt to explain the problem was a lie .  They were right in one point though: technically, they did not sell expired chocolate.  Not until one day before expiry … then good luck trying to eat it all quickly.  It is common practice by groceries to deep-discount perishable goods a few weeks/months before expiry, and one can even find Milka chocolate on eBay at a  fraction of the original price – but eBay sellers disclose the shortened shelf-life, for fear of eBay ruling against them in a dispute.   I guess there is no such policing on the Wild, Wild Web.

Except… now every consumer has the means to get “noisy” about their problems.  I am no Jeff Jarvis, but CandyWorld USA is no Dell, either: I wouldn’t be surprised to see this post on the first page of several relevant Google searches (see update), and believe me, that will cost them a lot more than it would have cost to keep me happy.   Of course not everyone has a moderately well-read blog, but just about anyone can make noise on Twitter, and Get Satisfaction is another great resource to vent and get service.

In fact a combination of Twitter and Get Satisfaction was what brought me Comcast help a few months ago.  The attention I received from Comcast Executives from Philadelphia and here in California was quite amazing.  Comcast is becoming a hero for listening to customers on Twitter, and others follow. Southwest Airlines now even has a Chief Twitter Officer.

Are these examples PR acts or real customers service?  The individual complaints are resolved, for the customers involved, it’s real service.  But Twitter or not, the “loud” unhappy customers are still just a fraction for now – which is why companies can afford to go out of their way to satisfy them.

I trust that simple market mechanisms will force companies -large and small- to improve service in the long run.  The economics are simple:

  1. The PR damage (and potential loss of sales) caused by “noisy” individuals far exceeds the cost of helping them, so companies pull resources to put out these fires.
  2. Yet firefighting is costly, may work with dozens, hundreds of customers, but not all.
  3. Companies will reach a tipping point, where all the after-the-fact firefighting will become so costly, that it will actually be cheaper to train their support personnel and provide better service in the first place, thus the Twitter-heroism will decline.

We’ll all be better off after #3. smile_regular

Update: Just as exptected: a few hours later this post is on the first page if you search for Belgian Chocolate Online,  and comes up first, before the vendor if you search for sugar-free Milka, which is how I found them in the first place.

Update (9/16):  Following the trail from my blog referrer log I’ve just discovered this post is now #1 on Google for the “milka chocolate marketing” search.  Oops… that can’t be good – for Milka.

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Did Twitter Kill Summize?

Summize has always been fast and reliable. In fact in the days of the worst Twitter outage, with Reply and other functions disabled, Summize was the savior of the Twitterverse.  But now that Twitter acquired Summize, I’m seeing it dead quire frequently.

The Twitterization of Summize has begun smile_sad

Update (7/24):  In the meantine Twitter closed the deal with Summize, it’s now rebranded as Twitter Search.  While Summize used to be rock-solid and fast, I can confirm that Twitter Search is spotty (simply missed entries) and is often delayed.  A sad transition, indeed. 🙁

Update: (5/22/09):  Finally, a year later others agree that Twitter’s Search Engine Is Very, Very, Broken (Louis Gray)

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Math Problem Solved

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What a Friday

But no worries, here comes the iPhone 3G. smile_omg

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OMG the First Good Windows Product Soon Dead

WindowsNow reports that Windows 3.11 has officially reached its end-of-life. Wow!  Obviously obsolete as a standalone product, it is still being sold in embedded systems – until November 1st, 2008. Who would have thought?

I actually liked that OS… in fact I also liked DOS 3.1 – even though I had the PC-DOS version on my system, cause where I worked back then, people believed they would soon squash this nasty little company putting out the MS-DOS version. smile_yawn