Facebook's Iron Curtain of "customer service"

One irritant about Facebook's management and minions is that they do a really thorough job of remaining behind an electronic Wall Of Invisibility, much like AOL always did.

Need an answer to a question about how Facebook works, or, as in my present case, whether a "change-your-login" email that I'm getting is spam or really from them? Get ready to spend lots and lots of all your free time being steered through pages and pages of other users' answers to anything that resembles your question.

Would it be too much to ask for more authentic Help Center texts written by employees who know the answers to these questions, as opposed to everybody guessing — and their guesses given approval ratings by other guessing users?

Okay, I realize it's free, and I'm sure that's their explanation. But the question here is one that would seem to potentially affect the security of the community at large, since enough "phishers" could cause us to start questioning who's behind any given face on FB, and whether they're trying to turn our computers into nodes on the hacker botnet — no small matter there.

I've been getting this message in my own email, looking every bit the routinely formatted FB type, every day for the last several:

>> SUBJ: New login system
>>
>> Dear Facebook user,
>> In an effort to make your online experience safer and more enjoyable, Facebook will be implementing a new login system that will affect all Facebook users. These changes will offer new features and increased account security.
>> Before you are able to use the new login system, you will be required to update your account.
>> Click here to update your account online now.
>> If you have any questions, reference our New User Guide.
>> Thanks,
>> The Facebook Team

The message looks just like and is FROM the same "@" address as legit 'friending' notices and replies to threads I'm, uh, stitching with. But the link at "Click here" goes to a specific spot at a fishy address, "www.facebook.com.mibbbah.co.uk/", and the genuine-looking "Update" button they helpfully include goes to yet another site across the Pond, "www.facebook.com.fasazae.eu/", etc. And I received no mail or message from within FB about it.

So I just spent way too much time fishing around in FB — at least I think I'm signed in to the real one, he remarked drolly — trying to find some place to read about or report this pretty sophisticated con. But it's a lot like knocking on the door and hearing a voice from inside say, "Nobody's home! Go away."

Related, here:
Posts tagged "Great Customer Service"

Advice: Beware the First Version of Any E-Thing

A quick bit of technical advice, here, on the occasion Apple's release of the next-gen Mac OS tomorrow. I'm an unabashed Mac lover (though one who duly respects XP, alright?), but here's what a couple of decades in the computer world have taught me: Never Buy The First Version Of Anything.

The software business has long treated the first public release as the last beta version. True, you could test today's complex software forever and still never be sure you'd pressed every button in every possible combination. So they count on the "bleeding edge" types, the ones who pride themselves on having the latest/greatest of every product, to find out what still needs work.

It's therefore unsurprising that The New York Times' estimable David Pogue, in today's column praising the new Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" (10.5 was Plain Old Leopard, I guess), nonetheless refers in to "the number of non-Apple programs that 'break' after the installation. I experienced frustrating glitches in various programs, including Microsoft Word, Flip4Mac, Photoshop CS3," and a couple minor apps.

"The compatibility list at snowleopard.wikidot.com lists other programs that may have trouble. Most of these hiccups will go away when software companies update their wares... Let’s hope that Apple hurries up with its inevitable 10.6.0.1 update, too, to address the occasional Safari crash and cosmetic glitch I experienced, too."

Let me hasten to highlight the gist of the column, though, which he summarized as,

"Otherwise, if you’re already running Leopard, paying the $30 for Snow Leopard is a no-brainer. You’ll feel the leap forward in speed (and) polish, and you’ll keep experiencing those 'oh, that’s nice' moments for weeks to come."

State of the Art column, NYT:
Apple’s Sleek Upgrade (8/26/09)

So, like the man says, better to wait for the 10.6.0.1 (or -.2) version. Let the real hardcore geeks unearth the larger bugs and thus get it in shape "for the rest of us."

(Full Disclosure: Mr. Pogue, in an earlier incarnation as a writer/reviewer for MacWorld, had nice things to say about two different manuals I wrote, as he was reviewing the programs they described. So, yeah, I am kinda partial to the guy's opinions, and think he's wicked smart.)

Related, here:
"Endless Vistas... of confusion" (2/4/07)
Posts tagged "tech advice"

Is Your Head (Lost) In The Cloud?

Google's recent unscheduled downtime came at a good point, perhaps, with so many technology promoters urging us all to hurry up into the Cloud for all our computing needs.

PC World reported that the May 14th outage "left 14 percent of its user base without Google's wide variety of online services for a few hours." PC World's story was accompanied by this graph of North American Web traffic that day, from an Internet security company, Arbor Networks, which tells the story in concise and dramatic fashion.
Google said, in one of their blogs, it was the result of a simple traffic jam at a data center. Oh, that's really reassuring. What if it had been the dirty work of some of those cyber-crooks, who decided to put their botnets to work on taking down or compromising the All-Seeing Eye? How long might it have taken them to get all their services back in operation then?

"Ultimately, the outage was a fixable error and the Internet didn't come crashing down because of it," PC World said, but asked, "Just how smart is it to depend on a company to store all your data online?"

Cloud computing is a natural development of the technological path we're on, and of course it has many benefits, like being able to get at your information from anywhere there's an Internet connection. My point is just this: don't over-depend on it.

Do not assume that what you upload to any brand of cloud formation will necessarily be there when you next look for it — like the young lady I knew whose emails, years' worth, disappeared one day from Hotmail, never to be seen again.

When it's crunch time, especially with free services, host companies have oft responded by saying, Gee, sorry, there's nothing we can do about that now — but you know, it is a free service. (Implying about their own no-cost, no-guarantee offerings that YGWYPF: You Get What You Pay For.)

So, okay, these services can be highly useful. Just don't forget, in a tenet from the earliest days of computing: Back It Up!

"Google Outage Lesson: Don't Get Stuck in a Cloud"
by Ian Paul, PC World

Related, here:
Crackberry Down!

"Baaack it up!" * (Before the Botnets get it)

Web-based apps vs. Verizon customer service

(P.S.: Appropriately, I got this message several times while trying to post this: "Could not contact Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail. Retrying...")

"Tech’s Fingerprints on Stimulus Package"

Let's hope so... about the proposed "stimulus package," as it stands today:

"While much of the sprawling $800 billion legislation consists of tax cuts and broad spending increases for existing programs..., the biggest outlay on initiatives is essentially a technology industry wish list: in the Senate version, about,
- $7 billion for expanding high-speed Internet access,
- $20 billion for building a so-called smart grid power network,
- $20 billion for digitizing health records.

"To many on K Street, the stimulus bill was the clearest guide to the new administration’s closest friends in the business world. What oil was to President Bush, some say, clean energy and technology are to the Obama White House.

"At the transition’s request, I.B.M. (which is in both the smart grid and healthcare data businesses,) prepared a research report concluding that $30 billion in spending this year on the smart grid, broadband access and digitized health records would create approximately 949,000 jobs."

"Technology’s Fingerprints on the Stimulus Package"
NY Times, By Charlie Savage and David D. Kirkpatrick, Feb. 10, 2009

The 20th WebInno Packs The House

I drove the length of the Mass Pike to Cambridge yesterday to attend the latest Web Innovators Group, "an informal gathering of people interested in internet and mobile innovation in the Boston area." (Legally speaking, The People's Republic of Cambridge is part of Boston, but don't try to tell the people there that. This was not an event for the comrades, though; the host hotel just so happens to be down the street from MIT.)

David Beisel of Venrock, a venture capital firm, started the WebInno meetings in late 2005, I believe. I'm estimating that by the little post about WebInno #7 that I put in here in July '06; they're held every two or three months. The next one is scheduled for March 2009.

David was rightfully proud to greet the crowd of 600 by briefly reflecting on the event's modest start in contrast to what he saw, when, "tonight we've filled the entire grand ballroom." WebInno's long been an acknowledged hotspot for the area's technorati.

The focus is on early-stage startups, and the format's always been three "main dish" presentations to the assembled group, followed by open networking time when another number of "side dish" presentations by other hopefuls are set up in simple tabletop convention style.

With three main dishes and a half dozen sides, there's really far too much to say to do justice to any of them. So, with that caveat in mind, a quick pass through some highlights.

Trip Chill is putting into practice a widely desired service: a full-service digital travel agent and concierge. Plan and book your trip through their site, then get updates and automatic Plan B's directed to your iPhone or any mobile device. If your flight is delayed, for instance, it'll book you on another one, according to any preferences you originally entered on the website.

I was very keen on the prompts they'll send to remind you where you parked your car when you land back at your home airport. (Sign me up!)

Presentation-wise, too, these guys really had the right idea: presenters always have two people at the podium, one doing the talking and the other running the slide show. So Trip Chill's two speakers acted out their story, and with low key comedy. "How was your flight?"
"Oh, brutal. My flight was cancelled, I was stuck at O'Hare," etc.
"That's too bad -- I used Trip Chill(!), and it notified me, booked me on another flight," etc., etc. Host Beisel then conferred on them the spur-of-the-moment award for "best acting in a WebInno presentation." They had the crowd's full attention, laughing and engaged.

Don't just tell your story; whenever possible, Show it.

Next we had the exotically named Crimson Hexagon, promised a service to "make sense of the massive amount of information on the Internet." That turned out to be basically a digital clipping service for anyone who's written about more often than they can keep track of in Google Alerts; which they estimated at more than 25 a day. It's sold as an annual subscription, or, for now, by the month.

Crimson Hexagon (the name is a construct from Argentinian magical realism author, Jorge Luis Borges,) tracks, "reads" and summarizes everything that's being said about your company on the Web. They demonstrated the kind of intelligence gathering this makes possible by revealing that, in aggregate, the biggest attraction to the iPhone is the App Store, and that 14% of people who drink Gatorade do so for a hangover cure. (Note: this statements have not been evaluated by the FDA, and are solely the opinions of 14% of the sport-drink buying Internet population.)

Local Motors was the last and somewhat curious main dish, since the definition of "mobile innovation" was stretched perhaps beyond recognition to include a custom car company. But no, they belonged there because the design of their cars is crowdsourced. People post car designs, who the Local Motors man emphasized are paid if their design is selected (good for them! There's a practice conspicuously missing from most Web ventures).

Then the community comments, adds and critiques, and the company gets to hear "what people think of it real-time." At the point that, I suppose, that input plateaus, the company says, "this is the car we'll build here," since they'll create versions most appropriate for various locales; Boston and Hawaii were mentioned as examples. They'll build a hydrogen powered car for states that have that kind of "gas" station; they economize overall by using off-the-shelf power plants and components (although no sticker price was mentioned in the main pitch).

A very intriguing idea, especially on the umpteenth day that Washington-in-transition told us they just about had a bailout in place for the old Big Three carmakers. And they had some very sexy, European racing car designs that, together with their man's strong presentation, earned them the designation of Tastiest Dish of the.. . no, excuse me, that was "Audience Choice Award."

Web Innovators Group

Photo on Flickr by BostonDave (as of this writing, pix from WebInno 18)

=0=

When I got off the road and into the hotel where the event's usually been held, having already decided that I wanted to do a little report, I was confronted with one of pressing questions of our time. Should I "live" blog the affair, or go by the traditional, Old Media approach of taking notes and putting it up tomorrow?

(I remember at one of the earlier WebInno's, around three years back, when blogging was still the breathlessly hot new thing, there was some pride in the room that it was being reported live by at least a couple different speed typists.)

I decided to go for the latter, because I knew that today I'd cringe at what I threw up here without review; but mostly because if I get as focused as one needs to be to write and post a entry, I wouldn't have really been there. You know, the way it is with cameras: either you're documenting it, OR you're really there.

Twittering on about Facebook, etc.

Continuing on my (ir)regular, implied theme of What's Not Hot among topics currently considered high-temperature in the media, two items:

There's lots of twaddle about Twitter in the tech press and online communities. Most of it is just the old demonstration that the writers are Fully Buzzword Compliant, well versed in the latest thing, whatever the heck that thing is and may or may not be useful for.

This Web service appears to be providing the much-needed function of adding yet another layer of distraction to our ADD World. ("Thanks a lot! - what was your name again? Oh, gotta run, see you --") I loved the quote from the last post here, down below, noting that a "friend" had just left a note to everyone that they were brushing their teeth. I'm hoping the writer was kidding, but either way, this is a layer of "content" so thin as to defy measurement.

So I was glad to see this statement in one of the blogs on CNet, the venerable (in Web terms,) tech news site:

"Twitter's not going to change the world"

CNet's Charles Cooper, quoting a video blogger named Loren Feldman:

"Loren's main point (is), anyone who has followed the incessant bleating about Twitter's supposedly existential meaning to our lives--let alone the silly debate over Twitter versus FriendFeed--has to wonder whether tech's chattering class has lost its sense of perspective.

"Are we guilty of navel gazing to the point of silliness?"

Breaking taboos in the tech fishbowlJuly 20, 2008
=== === ===

This tied in nicely with a piece I saw in the Old Grey Lady Online, a few caveats about Facebook -

.. .from a business perspective, it creates some complications.
...I neither want to be strategic in my postings nor selective in my friending, but I should probably be doing one or the other. I am also not religious in maintaining my profile, in part because I have no personal assistant to update my page, as one executive I know told me he does.

Once you jack in, Facebook creates its own imperatives. Why am I uploading pictures of my last family trip to the lake in the Adirondacks at 11:45 p.m.? Because I want someone, anyone, to see them.

When a new media winner like Facebook comes over the horizon, who loses? In my case, it’s probably my real actual friends. As a reporter, I learn to hate the telephone during the day, but at night I feel somewhat social again and step out onto the porch to call buddies for a little nocturnal quality time. Now I am too busy checking their status updates to actually speak to them.

The Media Equation: Hey, Friend, Do I Know You?
By David Carr, July 21, 2008
=== === ===

Exactly as e-mail now reflects the pounds of junk mail in our "street" mailboxes, all new media will eventually return to earth, mirroring the net level of quality-of-life that most people are functioning at. (Not that there aren't people who reach for something more, a higher level of practice in whatever they do, of course -- imagine what it would be like if there weren't enough of them quietly anchoring things).

Postscript:
As you'll see from the date of the following post, I dropped out of blogging for awhile there, to take a break after two+ years at it -- even if admittedly doing it at a fairly relaxed pace for the medium, as it's currently understood. Once I saw that a few big bloggers had heart attacks over the last year, then that my favorite blogger, Maura Welch (who I began reading in the Boston Globe), just renounced regular blogging, and some other bigtime blogger just said goodbye, too... well, now I feel like I'm on the leading edge of the next hot trend, the post-blog Web!

But it's just another wave in the natural progression of new modes...

"Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances"

Thank you Scott Spanbauer of PC World for putting words on my own aversion to a lot of aspects of the social networking craze. From the "friends" game to visually godawful Myspace pages to just how much time it takes to be a player in this arena, his article yesterday nailed it, and in a fairly witty way.

His #1 reason? What he's termed "Multiple Social Network Syndrome (MSNS)" --

"With the advent of social networking, my e-mail traffic has gotten worse, not better. Here's an e-mail telling me that my brother has sent an e-mail within Facebook. Another message informs me that Susie has updated her profile at Friendster. Another announces that Bob over at FriendNet has just brushed his teeth... And on and on and on. To reply or act on any of these events, I'll have to bring up one of the 12 social networks I've been sucked into joining, log in, and then view the ads there.

"All of that, of course, necessitates a lot of extra clicks and keystrokes, and after a while, I find that I don't really like my friends anymore."

"The Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances"
- Scott Spanbauer, PC World - May 14, 2008

Since we're on the subject of MySpace, (do I really need to link to them? It's "-.com", okay?) I think the more accurate name would be "HisSpace," in honor of owner Rupert Murdoch, who just coincidentally also owns and micro-manages the absurdly unfair and unreasonable Fox News. (Again, "-.com").

Why should I entrust this guy in particular with all the personal information that inevitably accumulates on such a site? I'm pretty damn sure he considers himself the owner of whatever resides on his various company's servers, should there ever be any disagreement over its use.

Related, here:
Half of all media will be created by consumers?
(Maybe, but will anyone else want to consume it?)
Quoted again on Boston Globe's site, on 'Web 2.0' & American Idol
Posts tagged Web 2.0

"Google: Huge Idea, Simple Insight"

(Extract of a recent post written for Idea Champions' "Heart of Innovation")

"Discovery's Science Channel Has Good New Series On (the) Internet." (Search Engine Watch)

Download: The True Story of the Internet, by former editor and writer for Wired, John Heileman, "is no softball show.. . the series gives it to you 'warts and all' and does not hold back the punches on how things have developed so far. The last show I watched discussed the development of search..."

"We hear amazing stories," The Discovery Channel tells us, "of how, in ten short years, the Internet took over our lives. The style of the story-telling is up close and personal... with first-hand testimony from the people that matter."

I also was watching that episode on search, one of four. To me, the most arresting observation was that while the original, breakthrough idea at the root of Google's effectiveness and success came from a programmer, cofounder Larry Page, it was a very simple thought. Page was not crouched over a keyboard or remembering any computer code in order to come up with this construct.

The billion-dollar insight was just this: that a link to a site from another is like a vote for that destination. The more sites link to yours (and the more linked-to their sites are), the better yours must be... (one of) the ones which the most visitors have "voted for with their feet," or in this case, their eyeballs.

[ more ] on The Heart of Innovation

That's most of the Google logo as of the Spring equinox,
which is coming up within the hour.

Paying the price of iMpatience

On all these stories of the outrage of the first buyers of the iPhone over the recent price cuts -- oh, puh-lease!


In case you spent the last week in a wireless cold-spot, it was reported all over the Web that Apple cut the price of the $600 iPhone by $200 (with the Holidayshopping Season coming up), and early adopters went ballistic. So Apple offered existing users a $100 credit -- in any Apple Store.

This along with the news that they'd beat their sales forecasts for this next evolutionary step in Gadgetdom, with that phenomenal ultra-touch-sensitive interface. “One million iPhones in 74 days—it took almost two years to achieve this milestone with iPod,” said Steve Jobs, their CEO (Chief Embodiment & Oracle).

Oddly enough, I couldn't find any word on Apple's site about that coupon offer -- so I found Job's Sept. 6 letter "To all iPhone customers" through a Web-wide search. There he explains, "Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple's website next week."

But my point is this:

"Early adopters" should be observant enough to understand that they're paying for the privilege of being the first one on their block with the new toy. They don't call it "the bleeding edge" for nothing.

Gehry, Bricklin, Prototyping; & "Repurposing Content"

The idea of recycling material, if you think about it, is as old as the human habit of telling stories. So I'm hoping that's a good enough explanation for why I'm basically republishing this post I wrote recently for the Heart of Innovation. : - )

That's the new blog I've been managing and writing in for Idea Champions, and frankly my attention has been primarily there lately, which is how it should be. So I'll be cross-posting bits that seem appropriate here, after giving them a week or some decent interlude from their original publication.

Frank Gehry's Designing By Prototype

Columnist Dale Dauten wrote recently about some of the insights on creative thinking gained from observing the revolutionary architect in "The Sketches of Frank Gehry," Director Sydney Pollack's first documentary, new on DVD. "We get to learn how a genius works," he writes.

"Frank Gehry is the architect who did the curving, soaring metal walls of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, as well as Disney Hall in Los Angeles. He is the one who lets us walk into 'out of the box.'

"During his early Gehry spent his time hanging out with artists rather than fellow architects.

"He works by taking sheets of heavy paper and making models out of them. Not blocks, not wood or Styrofoam, but paper. When one of the models becomes an idea worth pursuing, it goes through an evolution, a series of models of increasing sophistication."

Dauten, taking the dare, as it were, starts creatively cross-referencing:

"If we wanted to apply his style to, say, working on a new sales presentation, we wouldn't use other sales presentations for ideas, we'd use novels or plays, movies, paintings . . . maybe even, I don't know, zoos, or airports. And not just one, but dozens. Some would become rough models, several going at once."

"Inside the brain of a genius lies lessons on generating & implementing ideas" by Dale Dauten, 5/6/07. (Gehry's "Dancing Building" in Prague. Uploaded on Flickr by astilly.)

Rapid Prototyping, Dan Bricklin, & "Serious Play"

This reminded me of another recent read on the power of creating with the method of "rapid prototyping," from Dan Bricklin's blog. Bricklin is of course the co-inventor of the electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc (the original Excel, and the first "killer app" on what were then "personal computers"), among other programming breakthroughs in simplification.

(Continued...)

Delivering A Bouncing Baby Blog

I've recently had the ideal, exciting opportunity to manage a blog into existence for a company that I've been working with for a number of years. Talk about learning experiences, and on the more engaging end of the spectrum…

Idea Champions trains and consults on innovation, teamwork, etc., for companies like, GE, AT&T, and numerous other impressively-acronymed firms, and they'd wanted to start blogging for some time. But when your plate is too full some good food's bound to fall off, and then you usually wait until that dish is served again at a future meal.

Knowing they needed a little extra energy focused on a blog to get it over the top, I suggested I could author some pieces, but more importantly, spend regular time travelling the related roads of the blogosphere and Web to leave that all-important trail of linked breadcrumbs. Instead, they hired me to drive its creation and launch, too, and last week "The Heart of Innovation" had its debut.

Man, have I ever learned a lot -- both adding to what I'd already learned about blogging, and naturally, scads more. Software, especially in the interconnected world of online software, is practically infinite in its possibilities. So, especially with a new submedium like this, you wind up feeling like you're starting from scratch every single day.

Then there's the Team Startup factor: when five authors, including the company President, and a Web design-and-hosting firm are involved, you know it's going to take some time to get everyone on the same, frequently updated page.

Meanwhile, in my own little post factory here, it's inevitable that I'll talk more on a couple topics, and much to my delight because they're old favorites. The only difference is that now I have a further Legitimate Business Reason to write about the harnessing the practical power of innovation/ creativity/ ideation, and to write about writing, and publishing, via the always new "pushdown stack" of web-logging.

Related, here:
Planting Seeds of Synergy

The Limitations of "Free" Content

So much of what you read about businesses and sites in the brave new world of Web 2.0/social media, etc., is about how great it is to get the faceless (or even the Facebooked) millions to create all your content for free. Here in this corner, though, it is still considered to be true that "you get what you pay for."

I was blog-surfing this morning and came across a small example -- a very small one -- of the drawbacks of purely user-generated content: in this case, the lack of simple proofreading, which brings down the perceived level of quality of the writing. That may not sound like any kind of big deal, but the point is it's one of those elements that gives your readers wings -- inducing them to fly away from your site.

The overall point here is that user-generated content requires an editorial layer, to make sure your featured material has a reasonably consistent level of quality.

I wrote the author in question, in this case in the blog of the Social Media Club, which otherwise seems to be a pretty smart commentator on the scene. The post was a live-blogged report from last Friday at the Supernova conference in San Francisco, where it is claimed a set of movers and shakers joined "a provocative new program to debate the future of the connected world."

I'm going to save* (see the comments) myself some time by pasting in here the related comment I made to them. To wit:

As a perfect illustration of this quote of Andrew Keen's in the piece:
>> “it is the job of mainstream media to find raw talent and polish it up”

...you might want to go back and do a copy edit of your live-blogged post. As of this writing, strange, misshapen artifacts lurk within, such as, "ologarchy," "acknolwedges," and "deomcratization."

Obviously just slips of the finger and still recognizable words, but just a couple of those have the power to distract a reader enough to lure them into taking off. It causes the reader to subconsciously question the intelligence of the author, blowing the equivalent of the theatrical "willing suspension of disbelief." (Not that I'm entertaining such judgmental thoughts, mind you -- since why else would I take the time to write you about it?)

Here's the main point: user-generated content is not free, because you've got to have editorial oversight, and that still means humans who are hopefully(!) being paid a living wage to make the user's stuff Ready For Primetime.

This is a significant but underreported issue with building social media based sites.

(That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

Crackberry Down!

Regarding last week’s post questioning the readiness of the Internet and it’s related ecosystems for Web-only applications:

I thought the 12-hour Blackberry outage Tuesday night illustrated my point in a perfect and timely fashion, although I’ll concede that its users/fans/chattels may find it difficult to find any redeeming qualities in the blackout. Blackberry users had comments (in the Reuters article in eWeek) like, “"I felt like my left arm had been amputated," and the story says that “one Wall Street analyst said she kept hitting her BlackBerry's version of a ‘refresh’ button in disbelief that the system could fail.”

It's looking like I won’t be able to resist quoting a criminal defense lawyer in New York named Charles Ross (though no relation), who said the outage left him feeling "vulnerable and uncomfortable," and that is caused him to miss breakfast! (Okay, “a breakfast appointment.” It only sounded like these people were being denied basic sustenance.)

Now it turns out that all it took was an insufficiently tested routine system upgrade (“to provide better optimization of the system's cache," according to RIM. Appropriate, perhaps, since that upgrade's sure to cost them some extra cash). That’s great – I’m sure if it was an all out criminal-hacker assault, they would have handled it much better.

So, now how do we feel about depending on the Web for even more of our most basic applications? Let me hasten to note that Web apps are a great idea in theory, and probably an inevitable evolution, but that we are (i.e., the Internet is) just not ready for it yet.

“RIM explains its BlackBerry outage
Cascading software and system problems caused interruption”
April 20, 2007

“A Night Without 'CrackBerry': Curse or Blessing?”
Reuters, by Franklin Paul, via eWeek - April 18

Related, here:
"Baaack it up!" * (Before the Botnets get it) 1/15/07

(...which featured this quote from a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist:
‘The war to make the Internet safe was lost long ago, and we need to figure out what to do now.”)

"A Working Simple System" - John Gall

Web-based apps vs. Verizon customer service

Lots of updated buzz recently on the newly dubbed “Webtop,” claimed to be the natural evolutionary successor to the electronic “desktop.” (In quotes because, remember, the original "desktop" is the one that your computer now covers.)

Google, Microsoft and many others imagine that you’d rather use a word processor running on their server farms than one installed on your own, once-“personal” computer. But as of this point in history, the highly touted promise of web-based applications just sounds like a Really Bad Idea (RBI).

(Excuse the interruption, but I’m informed that, especially since it’s the first week of the baseball season, we need to find another HTA -- High Tech Acronym -- for that.)

Think you’re dependent on an Internet connection now? What if you’ve got a thought that you want to get down right away, or a string of numbers you want to add up? Better lay in a supply of pens and yellow pads. If your thinking is as connected to words on paper/screens as mine is, you’re surely going to need them. We're just not there yet, or even very close.

Why, just take the recent case of injured blogger (and NBA hoop artist) Gilbert Arenas, who recently wrote about the hardships of being on the bench during his team’s stretch run to the playoffs. "I think the worst part was that my Internet connection wasn't acting right, so my video game session wasn't working. It kept kicking me offline. So, when you're injured, and video games [are] your life and you can't play, it just makes the injury that much worse."

This guy is a jillionaire, but he was as helpless as you or I when his Internet connection was down. What if he needed to do something important?

But let’s move on to more serious examples. Exhibit B: As it happens, this provides me with the perfect opportunity to rant about… I mean, comment, with oodles of cool, rational objectivity, on the truly dreadful state of Verizon’s DSL customer service.

In my recurring sideline as an indie tech support troubleshooter, I’ve had the delightful chance to spend hours on the phone with Verizon’s woefully under-trained and otherwise unprepared customer service people. And I mean sometimes hours per customer.

It is simply a nightmare. And I want to make it plain that I don’t blame the individual support reps; I’m sure they’re very bright people. Nor do I consider it a reflection on the country these folks are obviously sitting in, in the middle of the night on the other side of the world.

But it really does appear that Verizon, like other solely cost-conscious companies, is trying to do way too much too fast, following the custom of the software industry of working out all the bugs on the general population. One customer was given the most astonishing array of conflicting answers in a series of phone calls that you couldn’t believe they could possibly be from the same company. But sadly, they were.

Then there’s the language problem. I had one conversation where I explained the problem over and over, as clearly and slowly as I could (a no-connection error message dialog that would not go away, interpreting the Cancel button as meaning, “Try again!”), whereupon the support lady’s repeated response was, “Okay, can you explain what problem you are having?”

It was over a half an hour, what with on-hold time and all, before she decided the error message was coming from another department’s turf, and transferred me to someone else. That next rep was a very competent, clever person – her name was Rita, who I believe was sitting in Mexico – who I spent another hour on the line with, as she talked me through a series of command-line exercises.

When we were done, an hour and a half later, all was good – until the next time I rebooted, whereupon the exact same problem reappeared.

The New York Times’ David Pogue recently reprinted a surrealistic transcribed conversation from a Dell customer support call to that same country that I don’t want to blame, but where the people speak a version of English that most Americans find pretty much inscrutable. (That single post attracted 153 "yeah, me too, dammit!" comments.)

I really do feel sorry for those people, because for them this surely must qualify as the High-Paying Job From Hell. Because even when they probably only receive the same dollars per hour as someone starting at Borders Books in the U.S., (where, last I heard, they generously offer the minimum wage,) apparently that’s a lot of money over there. But imagine what they say about us when they’re released from their cube-farm stalls in the morning.

These travesties all come from companies that make their decisions based solely on the short term cost. But they are seriously failing to consider the Total Cost of (customer) Ownership. If the cable companies came up with a competitively priced offering, Verizon would be out of broadband contention in very short order, and deservedly so.

Web apps: Are manageable expectations possible?

The people over at Virtual Ubiquity, an early-stage startup hard at work on a Web word processor, are demonstrating their baby at the Web Innovators Group event tonight, and I found their new blog while browsing the various presenters’ sites.

They say they’re “building the first real word processor for the web,” and as a longtime, fulltime user, trainer and envelope-pusher with such software, I had to leave them a comment on it. Never one to pass up a chance to “repurpose” some “content,” I thought I’d just quickly copy my comment here.

What got me going was this, from their blog (the product’s named Buzzword) --

“The development of a real word-processor - whether on the web or on a desktop - is obviously a much bigger task than just deploying a simple rich text editor. Buzzword goes beyond the basic rich formatting available in HTML or AJAX word-processors - we’re doing real-time pagination and layout, so that you will always know what your document will look like when printed. The result is what we think this is the first WYSIWYG word-processor on the web.

So I offered --
Good luck, and remember to deal sternly with Creeping Featureitis. Given that word processing has been widely used for 20 years means there are multimillions of what the clothing store Syms never fails to call “educated consumers.”

And each one of them (I’ll be as guilty as anybody, I’m sure,) will expect all their particular favorite functions to be there, and with the same keyboard shortcuts, too! When you consider how many hundreds of commands have been out there in WP, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Obviously, the biggest job will be deciding what Not to put in.

~~~
Although this is wicked-late notice, considering that it starts in four hours, the Web Innovators Group get-together is always quite the hot ticket; hosted by David Beisel of Masthead Venture Partners, it's even free. It's at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge at 6:30 (dir's).

I wouldn't even bring it up now if it wasn't for the fact that David generally puts one on every other month, so look for the next around May.

Endless Vistas... of confusion

Having been at this tech thing for a goodly amount of time, I've had this policy (and learned survival skill) for almost as long: Never Buy The 1.0 Version Of Anything.

So it's been with a complete lack of surprise that I've been watching the news of Microsoft's introduction of Windows 05 (which drifted to 06... no, make that '07). IDG's Computerworld, which has been around since only the giant Mainframus Rex roamed the earth, put it succinctly (Jan. 25):
"Wait! Don't buy Windows Vista! Microsoft's new OS is the best Windows ever. But don't buy it!"

They've updated that story since (Feb. 2, by Mike Elgan,) with the amusing headline, "Windows Vista: The 'Huh?' starts now; Microsoft is confusing everyone with its new OS..." The story explains that no one knows for sure what you'll have to do to upgrade from XP: "Microsoft created this confusion by failing to tell anyone what the proof requirement would be for using an Upgrade version of Vista. Meanwhile, the Upgrade versions are poison."

Then there's the fact that MS has introduced Vista in "10 -- count 'em, 10 -- versions. Instead of giving us a simple new upgrade path to the future, they instead gave us a homework assignment."

But wait, there's more! The first "service pack" from Microsoft -- aka, bug fixes -- won't be available until late in the year. Major peripheral vendors aren't ready yet for the new operating system. (Also, attention iPod Nation, Apple is warning everyone not to upgrade to Vista yet if you want your iTunes to work, at least until the next version of iTunes "in the next few weeks.")

The Why's and How's
It's like this: software companies only make real money when they ship a major new version. It's sad but true, but most often software that's shipped (by just about everybody, and I'd love to know who this isn't true of,) is still in the beta stage, and the companies depend on the unpaid labor of all the eager-beaver early adopters, and innocent newbies, to debug their software for them.

Generally, by the time the second update is available, that application is ready for primetime. But not before.

Vista has been delayed over a year (and retailers were dismayed, to put it mildly, when it wasn't ready as promised for their biggest season, the holidays), so just as with the famous release of Windows 95 so many years ago, with 3000 known bugs, MS pushed this release out the door before they had to start to consider closing theirs.

Related, on Rosswriting.com:Scouting the Techno-Frontier
(An editorial for the AltaVista MarketSpace webzine, 1997-98)

Getting Closer to Microsoft (for purely defensive purposes)

“Deluge of flaws” being found in Office

You are not going to see much in here that’s all warm and fuzzy on the subject of Microsoft, or even particularly friendly. But let’s be practical, everybody uses their stuff. And it’s because of that fact that this is bulletin is important, nay, crucial.

Ziff-Davis’s E-Week reports that:

"What started as an amusing eBay listing of an Excel vulnerability for sale has developed into an all-out hacker assault on Microsoft Office applications.

"Security researchers and malicious hackers have zeroed in on the desktop productivity suite, using specialized 'fuzzing' tools to find a wide range of critical vulnerabilities in Word, Excel and PowerPoint file formats."

("Fuzzing tools”? You mean, marketing? No, eWeek explains,)

"Fuzzing, or fuzz testing, is an automated technique used by researchers to find software bugs."

The article points out that as Microsoft (belatedly) got serious about security vulnerabilities in Windows, hackers and hence security researchers have moved up the software ecosystem to go after “the low-hanging fruit” in applications. Well, there ain’t any bigger trees in the orchard than Word, Excel and Powerpoint, which were originally put together with the same oblivious attitude to security as the OS.

In short, what this means is that in order to keep our lives simple, we’d all better keep in touch with all the bug fixes, "service packs," etc., for Office from the E-Empire. (That “E-“ is for “electronic” – no, honest! ; - )


(…half an hour later:) Oooh, boy, is my head spinning. Well, try this, bravely found by starting at microsoft.com, Gawd help us:
Security and Office: Find out how to help protect your data

This page was obtained by clicking Office under Product Families in the navigation column at left, then typing “security” into the search box. (I’m specifying all this as a disclaimer, since there’s an awful lot of stuff there, and who knows what’s the most recent and comprehensive.) There are, naturally, thousands of rabbit holes there you could disappear down, so if you’re a masochist with a week or two to spare, have at it!

Here's a case where you really might be better off hiring a professional to at least get you set up with this. (No, we don't do that; this is not a subtle sales pitch.) It'll cost you, true, but it beats the hell out of having your computer taken over by zombies, spending long hours trying to get it exorcised, and losing all your data (because few are those who back theirs up).

Just a sec -- here we need to say, BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER! This weekend! At least just copy all your own files onto CDs, preferably rewritable CD-RWs. (There, now you can't say nobody warned you, okay? And we've done our duty as digital citizens.)

How much do I hear for a hole in Excel?

That Excel vulnerability for sale on eBay was indeed pretty funny. eWeek's story on that explains,

The seller openly taunts the software giant, poking fun at the company's delays in providing fixes for known security bugs. "It can be assumed that no patch addressing this vulnerability will be available within the next few months. So, since I was unable to find any use for this by-product of Microsoft developers, it is now available for you at the low starting price of $0.01 (a fair value estimation for any Microsoft product)," the listing read.

"Microsoft representatives get 10 percent off the final price. To qualify, you MUST provide @microsoft.com e-mail address and MUST mention discount code LINUXRULZ during checkout," it added.

Even More on 'More about Great Customer Service'

In the reader comments on Pogue's Post on Crutchfield we discussed yesterday/below, a number of people got in the spirit of it all to recommend other companies they found notable for their service and attention to customers -- which would be us.

Canon, for their cameras, IBM/Lenovo for the Thinkpad, Audible.com (downloadable audio books), and Apple Computer -- especially for the free, detailed advice at the Genius Bars at Apple Stores -- were applauded. And seemingly everyone who wrote chimed in affirmatively about Crutchfield.

I can echo the experience of Apple and their Genius Bar -- although, to be "fair and balanced" about the company overall, they were inexcusably slow to offer a replacement option for iPod batteries, and it's still an expensive pain, apparently. You can’t just go down to the drugstore or wherever and buy some batteries from the Bunny, like with pretty much everything else.

Then there's the whole question of DRM, or CRAP, or even DAM; but that's a subject for later -- or maybe earlier. (Since if it's later enough, in the odd, upside-down world of 'blogs, you've already been there. Just can't get used to that, at least so far. I'll stop now with that, since I can just hear someone saying, "Oh, get over it!" But as of this date, it's later, alright?)

But more to the point, I wanted to toss in a vote for MacConnection/PC Connection. In many years of dealing with them, they too deserve the gold star for responsiveness, patient help, sending you a replacement without waiting for the defective or wrong product to be returned, etc.

More on the crazy new concept called "Customer Service"

The witty and perceptive David Pogue, the New York Times’ personal technology columnist, has given us another excuse (Ding!) to write about the idea of really, truly focusing on taking care of your customers.

He had posed a question in his blog asking if any readers knew of a trusty website that catalogued third-party auto parts, and wrote last week that, “No fewer than 25 people… all responded the same way: ‘What you want is Crutchfield.’” He then goes on to detail the incredible attention to detail and eager helpfulness he encountered from Crutchfield, both on the Web and on the phone, since,

“When the package arrived, there was Crutchfield’s installation manual, with the company’s “we’re here to help you” toll-free number printed in 60-point type on the first page.

What are they, nuts!? They are actually *inviting* people to call them for free technical support? Don’t they have any idea how that idea will kill their revenue stream? Haven’t they learned anything from the computer industry?

I can't help wondering why nobody else has questioned the wisdom of the current "go away, customer" attitude that prevails in the penny-pinching computer and software industries. That attitude will never generate repeat customers, will never build a cult of fans and will never turn a company into the Crutchfield of its industry."
David Pogue:
A New Business Model
Business 101: Quality Customer Service Breeds Customer Loyalty

(“Pogue’s Posts” is only one corner of the far-flung Pogue publishing empire, which also includes being the creator of the Missing Manual series of computer books; this is one of those hyper-productive people who you figure there must actually be at least three or four of. )