What I Expect From Customer Support
1. I expect you hear what I’m saying (or typing), and not ignore the essence of it. Example: If I say “I want to cancel my account”, you cannot respond: “I understand you are having trouble with your account.” That’s...
5 Why’s: A Different Take on the Current Economic Malaise
I found myself asking Five Whys about the current economic difficulties in the Euro zone and the world in general. The 4th question is the really hard one and one that I had not seen answered well anywhere. I suggest that even if you disagree with my a...
Fed Up With Awful Health Software — Let’s Build Something Better Open-Source
At the end of July, for various reasons, my wife and I had to change health insurers from Kaiser Permanente to United Health. Given that Kaiser has its own doctors, that also meant changing provider organizations, in our case to Palo Alto Medical Found...
Hypercritical: A Story of Triumph
Very worthwhile to listen to. http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/37-a-story-of-triumph “People made this!” Hat tip to Scott Loftesness on Facebook.
A Wonderful Life — Steve Jobs
In the epic, powerful 1946 movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, we follow a small-town credit union manager as he learns what the world would have turned into if he had never been born. What if Steve Jobs had never been born? It’s a scary thought....
It’s Time To Abolish SSL Certificate Authorities
Yet another case this week where unsuspecting users were compromised because a certificate authority that they had never heard of screwed up. In case you hadn’t heard, they issued a certificate for google.com (Google!) to somebody other than Goog...
I Want … iPhoneTV
Take the iPhone, but replace the screen with a 40 inch HDTV screen and put it in your living room. What do you get? a TV a high-quality speakerphone bypassing the telcos a live window to grandma (“HDTV videoconferencing in your living room”...
User-Centricity and Steve Jobs
Without Steve Jobs, this industry already feels like it has lost something. Something important. A key vibe, philosophy, point of view, … I was struggling with figuring out what until I discussed school work with my kid tween today. He has to wri...
The Fundamental Remaking of Several Industries
@parislemon neatly summarized today’s news about H-P getting out of the PC business: HP To Apple: You Win. I hope he meant more than tablets, because the victory of the Apple model is much broader. Just a few days ago, Google caused a major earth...
The “Nymwars”: The First Real Cyber Souvereignty Cause
Who gets to decide what your name is? Your parents, upon birth. They then tell others, such as the government of the place where you born to have your birth recorded. Then, things depend dramatically on where you live. In Germany, where I come from, it...
Will Apple Buy a Carrier?