Setting the Stage for Quality Customer Support

July 1st, 2010

At some point we’ve all been down the rabbit hole that is Customer Service. Being on hold for (insert humanoid voice here) “an estimated time of 5…minutes” is not much more fun than being transferred from one department to the next, only to end up right where you started. And just when you think you’ve figured it all out, you go ahead and press “0” to surpass all this nonsense and talk to a (gasp) real live person; but low and behold, the “instructions have changed” and there is no magical “0” option to ask your 5 second question to a real person (who often hates his/her job and wants you off the phone ASAP) until your “5…minutes” are up.

Creating Tech Needs

April 29th, 2010

Cure for Cancer. Sliced Bread. Cars that run on water. These are all inventions which are obvious winners. However, to me, “interesting” innovation not only satisfies our practical needs, but unveils needs we never knew we had.

For example, I’m a fan of the service Evernote, which unveiled an organizational problem in my life that I never thought about solving until I stumbled upon the service. When I go on a trip, I take notes of addresses, phone numbers, landmarks, and restaurants I’ll pass along the way. I had been saving these notes within my email or on a piece of paper, which worked great until day two or three of the trip when the ‘list’ turned into an organizational mess.

On Innovation

April 20th, 2010

Steve Perlman is a veteran entrepreneur whose past credits include QuickTime, WebTV, and MOVA, which helped earn The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button a visual effects Oscar. His latest innovation is the OnLive gaming platform, which takes the software-as-a-service concept to an extreme, and may well completely revolutionize the gaming industry in the process. He recently gave a talk on the platform at Columbia, which is, in itself, an interesting subject. What makes the talk worth posting here, however, is that, along the way, he shares a lot of insights on how to innovate successfully.

How OK Go and Ignite LA blew my mind

March 2nd, 2010

Last night I sat in a room with at least one hundred other people for Ignite LA. If you’re not familiar Ignite LA is a series of presentations by people who are passionate about something. Each speaker has 5 minutes, 20 slides and 15 seconds per slide. This event takes place in multiple cities, so definitely take the time to see if it’s near where you live.

At the beginning of the evening, we were told that by the end our minds would be blown. I wasn’t so sure. The first couple speakers were really great, but I wouldn’t say I was blown away. But I spoke too soon.

Where's an app for that

February 16th, 2010

As many of you (presumably) are, I am also paying about $50 too much for a ‘smart phone’ that makes calls and checks e-mail.

‘Don’t forget about the apps,’ you say?

Apps are indeed one of the major selling points for these phones and have enabled that flimsy devise of ours to do much, much more than simply make or receive a phone call—they are essentially what we’re paying for.

However, I’m sure the App Store was once some happy place where folks found useful applications that actually made our lives better; but it has now become that (sometimes, not so) wonderful place where we get to fill up our phone memory and prepare our thumbs for countless right to left, page-turning motions to go through the seven seas of apps that we end up never using.