Provide Support - A Customer Service Tool

Today I was doing research for a client’s project. One of the tasks is integrating a 3rd party data component into a website. The developers of that component, while not having the most informative site, had a link to ‘live support’.

Intrigued and unfullfilled, I decided to click the link. Within seconds I was in a chat room talking live to one of the developers of the component. I asked my specific questions, got answers, thanked him, and signed out. Even if they had had that information on their website I found it faster by connecting to a live person.

If you are looking for a customer support solution for your company I’d definitely recommend ProvideSupport - especially if you don’t have the resources for a call center or full-time support persons.

Oh, and it’s cheap (inexpensive cheap not crappy cheap).

Tags: Customer Service, Support, ProvideSupport

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Adobe’s New Feed Reader - myFeedz

Adobe decided to jump into the Feed Reader space with its new ‘Labs’ project called myFeedz. The differentiation factor here is that you can view other people’s feeds that are tagged similar. They coin it as a ’social newspaper’.

So for instance I imported my OPML file from Google Reader and I have several posts tagged ‘Marketing’. In myFeedz I can view posts from blogs that other users have tagged ‘Marketing’. You can also filter by just the blogs of which you are a subscriber.

To be short and sweet - it’s confusing and not near as useful as Google Reader. It’s a great idear but creates too much noise - not only with the abundance of disorganized data but the UI is inherently confusing because of that.

Tags: Adobe Labs, myFeedz, RSS, Feed Reader

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To Vista or not to Vista

Everybody from bloggers to major publications like PC World are writing about Vista - what it does, why it’s great, why it sucks, how it copies Apple’s OSX, etc, etc, etc. I shared my first impressions on Vista - “Loving it!” - shortly after my first week of using Vista Ultimate. Zane says he will be waiting a few months to roll out Vista for CCU.

I couldn’t agree more. At this point it simply is not a feasible upgrade. So why do I love it but not recommend it for businesses? It’s simple - XP will be just fine for the forseeable future. Of the major benefits of Vista - Security, Usability, Efficiency - none provide benefits to warrant such an expensive upgrade. The opportunity cost of Vista adoption does not stack up to the ROI at the bottom line, at least it won’t for some time. By the time your business needs Vista the TCO for the adoption of the new platform will be much less as hardware prices and licensing costs fall.

So why am I ‘Lovin it’? Well it’s the most complete operating system I have had my hands on. And then there are the little things. It’s significantly faster with the same hardware I used on XP Pro. The filesystem changes create a far more organized environment. The ease of media use and Media Center integration is amazing. Oh, and it connects to my XBOX 360 allowing me to stream all my digital media to my living room. Vista will be the backbone of my fully connected and digital home.

Around every corner there are niceties that create a great overall experience. That’s why I’m loving it.

I also wanted to note the IDC research study that pointed out the Vista release would produce more than 100,000 new jobs and $70 billion in revenue for businesses in 2007 (not-Microsoft).

 

Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista

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Why Firefox is better than IE 7: Reason #1

I plan on writing a series of posts of why Firefox 2.0 is better than Internet Explorer 7.0 (no link, sorry).

Reason #1: Extensibility

Granted, both camps offer add-ons but the value created by Mozilla and its vast community of users far surpasses that of Microsoft’s with Internet Explorer.

The Firefox community provides thousands of add-ons from those targeted at developers and average web surfers. And if you are a developer, like me, you will find the add-ons provided to Firefox are extremely valuable when designing and debugging web sites. The other advantage Firefox has in this department is the one-click and restart installation that’s soo easy to do.

Installation of add-ons in IE 7 is too complex for it to be adopted by 90% of its user base. Not to mention there aren’t near as many available for consumers or developers. And what’s this? Some of them cost money!!! I don’t know about you but I’m not about to drop $50 for an IE7 add-on.

If you absolutely have to use IE7, than you should invest in these extensions:

Inline Find - Adds Find functionality similar to Firefox

Delicious - Adds delicious bookmarking functionality much like Firefox’s

Internet Explorer Add-Ons

Firefox Add-Ons

 

Tags: IE7, Software, Firefox, Review, Technology, Add-Ons

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CNET TV

If you are reading this there’s a really good chance you know who and what CNET is. They have been providing technology and internet news and reviews for years. They have been into podcasting for awhile, including one of my favorite podcasts. Recently they launched CNET TV which is essentially a very well produced video blog. It is your favorite tech news and reviews in video form.

But they fail on a few aspects that should not go unnoticed by other networks entering this type of media and video syndication. After watching a video including Steve Ballmer discussing the Zune I wanted to share it with a friend. Unfortunately - this is nearly impossible. The URL is masked so I couldn’t send the URL via IM like I do when I want to quickly share a YouTube video. There is no ‘Blog This’ option. There is no ‘Email This’ option. In order for my friend to view the video I have to say, “Go to CnetTV.com. Click on the tech news channel. Then scroll to page 5 of the shows and click Ballmer talks about the Zune.” That’s ridiculous. It’s anti-viral.

Every other feature requires registration. At least they syndicate via RSS.

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