Technology – Page 4 – Ready, set, Joe.

The best customer is a DIYer

If you work in customer service in a web-based company, the best type of customer you can ask for is a “do it yourself-er”, that shares their discoveries. Why? For a few reasons:

The best characteristic of a DIYer is that they’re usually tech savvy. They’re using your site not because they’ve been forced to or because it’s the first thing they found. They use it because they’ve surveyed other offerings and decided that your’s is either the best, has the potential to be the best, or has some other advantage over a competing service. (They also tend to know the “lingo”. So supporting them from page to page over the phone or asking for a URL to the issue tends to be a simple task; not a formidable request.)
another great advantage of a DIYer is that they’ll trouble shoot your site for you. Whether your using an open source application or building a proprietary platform/application, the DIYer familiarizes themselves with the environment. They read your FAQs and they engage the tutorials/training materials you’ve created and at that point (and only at that point) if they don’t know how to do something or are finding an insurmountable error they contact you.
by contacting you they point out holes in your support/help foundation (because they know and are familiar with what you have provided and exhaust those resources before contacting you. If you can identify these individuals early (and keep them) then they’ll be a great resource in deciding your customer support, help documentation, and even the software roadmap to improve usability.

It’s possible that you refer to these types of customers as something else (allies, models, etc.), but I’m sure you’ll agree that these customers are the best to have (even better than customers that are silent even in the face of buggy software of outages).

I bring this up because non-DIYers often take up the most time and are the most costly to appease. In some cases getting them squared away is near impossible (or perhaps actually impossible, though I reject the notion that there’s a customer issue that cannot be resolved. I’ll die trying.).

In closing, if you’re trying to build a product for a market that is devoid of non-DIYers (seniors, or 1st time internet users) then be prepared.

A little Internet background history

The LA Times had a great piece about the formation of the Internet (the one Al Gore built, that is, the DARPA funded initiative). Tomorrow, October 29th, 2009 the Internet turns 40 (my how it’s matured in the last few years). The article is a quick and easy read about how a few (much younger then) professors and researchers at Stanford and UCLA first sent packets of info from LA to Palo Alto through an “Interface Message Processor”. One of the protagonists was Leonard Kleinrock (who taught CS at UCLA and still does).

Their goal was to login remotely from one computer to the other. Even in failure was their first success:

What happened in that big moment? All we wanted to do was log in to the second host computer at SRI, 400 miles to the north, to see if one machine could talk to another. You have to type “L-O-G” and then the remote machine types “I-N.” We typed the L and [called SRI and] said, did you get the L? Yep, got the L. Get the O? Yep, got the O. Typed the G and craaaaash. But the message couldn’t have been shorter or more prophetic: LO, lo and behold. You can’t beat that. (LA Times, “Net worker”)

He also recounts the first time he and his crew ever came across spam. Their response to the culprit? “You can’t do that. Bad. Stop. Horrible”. Then they sent so much email back to the spammer that it marked the first denial of service and crashed their networks.

So much changes just to stay the same.

Here’s to you, Internet. May you grow and grow but never become self-aware.

Too small to fail

It irks me that our government copped out of ditching a bunch of crap business by claiming they “were too big to fail.” Bull crap.

Honestly I think the administration should have forced Ford (the only solvent US car maker) to buy GM and Chrysler. Ford would have gotten a great deal and would be poised to totally drive American car manufacturing for the next decade at least (until the likes of Tesla or GEM caught up). I’ve been a GM supported all my life, but that doesn’t mean I believe they “can’t” be allowed to fail. In real life (at least what I thought was real life), if you make bad decisions continuously, you can/will fail. Then you own up the the mistakes and regroup. This is as opposed to unreal life, where we currently reside, where you can drive your company down the tubes, get a huge government bailout and then claim a profit.

That’s why I love the idea and process of launching web-based applications. As a full-time employee and a work at home dad (I have a 8 year old wiener dog) I have the freedom to invest my spare time (what little there may be) into… well, whatever.

I have a business registered in Vermont. We’re just getting started, there are two of us as partners. But we have revenue. In a sense we made something ($) out of nothing. Our skills applied created a monthly cash flow that covers, among other things, the cost of this blog and enough for some good business related books and perhaps a breakfast/lunch at our favorite spot in Burlington when I’m in town.

Luckily it’s addicting. I’m not satisfied with a few bucks a month and I believe I have the skills and connections to get that boosted (and hopefully high enough one day to be my full-time). My partner has the same expectations. Of course, it’s great that we have the luxury of spare time and other income to float us (don’t get me wrong).

The best part though, is that we’re too small to fail. We’ve developed and deployed 1 web app already and are working on an additional while we cultivate the first project. The total cost to do this? About 100 bucks a month hosting, 50 bucks a year in domain registration fees and 125 dollars in business registration fees. Are the apps high risk? Of course, our time and effort is worth a lot (especially when we’re not paying ourselves), but the cost of keeping going is so low that we can chase whatever projects we want to. When one fails completely, it just frees up room on the server and time in the schedule. It’s nice to know that a part of our business could fail and we can keep on trucking. We just need 1 stock in our portfolio to do well. In the meantime I’ll keep advancing each. Stay tuned.

Relatively Disconnected

There’s this little company out there, making big changes. You might have heard of it. It’s called “Facebook”. In fact, you might even be reading this post within Facebook (I just blew my mind).

They’ve burned 700 million dollars in venture cap and dominate the social networking scene (the only other company with growth potential in terms of social networking, in my opinion, is Ning.com). They’re simultaneously waging wars against Google (hoping to reshape search) and Twitter (adding live feeds and real time data aggregation); and on each front it seems that they’re winning. That being said they also have something like 500 billion users (according to Wolfram Alpha). Ok, so they are almost the size of the USA (250,000,000 users). So less than 4% of the world is on Facebook. They don’t seem that big anymore do they?

It must be Mark’s goal to sign up every single person (over the age of 13 of course) in the world. And apparently they’re working at it very hard. When they do it (I don’t think it’s an “if”) it’ll be a momentous occasion: for the 1st time in the history of mankind everyone will be linked by a common technology/platform.

Then what?

Quote – Jay Keasling

“We have got to the point in human history where we simply do not have to accept what nature has given us” – Jay Keasling C.E.O. of the Department of Energy’s new Joint BioEnergy Institute (from The New Yorker Magazine article “A Life of It’s Own” by Michael Specter)

In regards to the manufacturing of biological entities in order to advance human industrial, commercial and biological ends.

Put a helmet on before he blows your mind. Read the full article (mind you it’s a tad long, but that’s why the New Yorker is great) here.

All you can learn for $99 a month

Buffet-style education? Heck yeah. The company is probably one you’ve never heard of (I hadn’t) but I already see it’s value and foundation: efficiency + quality + freedom = a better way for motivated learners to get degrees. The company is StraigtherLine (based in DC) and it provides a carte blanche approach to education for a low monthly fee. Partnering with colleges around the US for accreditation, it can eschew the rigors of meeting an accreditation but also provide credits as part of the monthly fee (I’m guessing that they assume students will average a certain number of days per course, ensuring their ability to cover course credit costs per student per course passed).

This model has its detractors and rightly so. This is a major shakeup of the status-quo in American style (which in a sense is the global standard) higher education. It’s a bet that 100s of millions–perhaps billions–of dollars are caught up in the system, an inefficiency brought forth by the “college amenity package” which currently consists of A/C dorms, game rooms, student centers, weekend trips, free internet, student clubs and activities, research grants, etc. The whole shebang which constitutes the contemporary college experience.

That being said, I have to agree with the Washington Monthly‘s take on the so-called ‘education bubble’ (see a few earlier posts about this as well);

It’s tempting in such circumstances to take comfort in the seeming permanency of our colleges and universities, in the notion that our world-beating higher education system will reliably produce research and knowledge workers for decades to come. But this is an illusion. Colleges are caught in the same kind of debt-fueled price spiral that just blew up the real estate market. They’re also in the information business in a time when technology is driving down the cost of selling information to record, destabilizing lows. (Washington Monthly – “College for $99 a Month” pg 1)

It makes perfect sense that the arrival of ubiquitous, free information paired with easier to access internet connectivity means that costs will be driven down (what doesn’t make sense is that, until now, colleges have largely bucked the trend, charging what they want and increasing those charges at higher than justifiable rates):

Colleges charge students exorbitant sums partly because they can, but partly because they have to. Traditional universities are complex and expensive, providing a range of services from scientific research and graduate training to mass entertainment via loosely affiliated professional sports franchises. To fund these things, universities tap numerous streams of revenue: tuition, government funding, research grants, alumni and charitable donations. But the biggest cash cow is lower-division undergraduate education. (pg 3)

So what happens when that bottom falls out? If Straighterline.com is marginally successful then there’ll be rivals partnering with as many accredited colleges offering the same programs. Those colleges might even court several low cost providers to hedge their bets. The unaccredited low-cost providers will cut out an entire swath of inefficiency (freshman lectures) leaving a gaping whole in university and college enrollments (cause those students will just pay the couple of hundred bucks and transfer in the max credits). Where a university or college might have garnered $9000 from a student before (for 3 classes let’s say) the student now pays a few 100 and gets a jump start for him/herself and a bonus in his/her checkbook. Colleges and universities will become leaner. They’ll be forced to realize their competitive advantage and adopt a laser like focus to milk as much dough as they can from it (this is a positive in my humble opinion).

Honestly, this already exists for a lot of states that are smart about tiering their education: California is perhaps my favorite example. As a “freshman” I can go to Community College (Santa Barbara has a particularly beautiful and esteemed on), I can finish 2 years of college (60 credits+!) and use them at any UC school in the state. The total cost? 1200 bucks plus student fees (which includes a bus pass). That being said, SBCC is hugely subsidized by the state. So really, if a private company can do it profitably is that so wrong when a state can only do it by losing money? Remember that CA just struggled to figure out a 44 billion dollar deficit. Maybe outsourcing these courses to Straighterline (instead of subsidizing them) could have saved some time, effort and money.

The Great College Hoax – 2/10/09
John Robb on the “Education bubble” – 1/30/09
A double Whammy for Schools – 1/11/09

Fred Rogers on Copyright

From Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture, Mr. Rogers talking about how he believed VCRs would have positive technological impacts on his audience and show:

Fred Rogers, aka “Mr. Rogers,” for example, had testified in that case that he wanted people to feel free to tape Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

“Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the “Neighborhood” at hours when some children cannot use it. I think that it’s a real service to families to be able to record such programs and show them at appropriate times. I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the “Neighborhood” off-the-air, and I’m speaking for the “Neighborhood” because that’s what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family’s television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been “You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions.” Maybe I’m going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.” [23]

23. Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 455 fn. 27 (1984). Rogers never changed his view about the VCR.

Browser In/Efficiency

I love Google Chrome. It’s probably the biggest boost to my at home/at work productivity since I added more RAM to my laptop (before I did, my IBM could only handle 1 window of Firefox open at a time: this isn’t a good thing for someone who is currently blogging with no less than 10 tabs, two separate windows for gmail and gdocs and a music player open).

Now you might be wondering how it increased my efficiency. There are a couple of ways, mostly more noticeable to me when I’m not using my regular computer and Chrome. They are: 1 click access to the most important sites to me (which I have listed across the bookmark bar, just as icons…when you create a bookmark in Chrome, just delete the title if the site has a nice favicon and voila: instant mini shortcuts. I bet you could fit 50 or more along the bookmark toolbar) and 2 click access to my most frequently visited sites (whenever you open Chrome or a new tab all of your most recently and frequently visited sites are listed). It’s telling that my top three sites are all work related, followed by blogger (1/2 work, 1/2 play), Flickr, whatever Fantasy sports league I’m in at the time, Apple Movie trailers (I love movie trailers) and a couple other that change like the seasonal aisle at your local pharmacy or grocery store.

Chrome is also great cause I can have 10+ tabs open in multiple windows and they all show as much of the webpage as possible. I am really sold on Google’s design and am a huge Chrome-fanboy.

That being said, never before have I ever not used a website because of browser incompatibility–until now. I often switch back and forth between FF and IE to test sites and visuals when designing a new site, blogging or building courses, but if I think something is going to be a highly frequented site then I want it compatible with Chrome (because that is more and more my desktop). To manage my side-business finances I really want to use Quickbooks Simple Start as opposed to just a spreadsheet. But they don’t support Chrome. They also don’t support FF on linux/Ubuntu. That has been a big enough obstacle to prevent me from using their product so far, even though it’s free and I could easily open FF instead. I might make the leap but only after a lot of searching for an alternative.

It’s not that I’m super picky, it’s that I hate inefficiency (even if it decreases over time) no matter how minuscule. I think it’s telling too that as a consumer of online information and applications that I would be so turned off from adopting a product that doesn’t work at all/as well when paired with another technology (this is a derivation of incompatibility of OS and programs as well, however the barriers are smaller when we’re talking about browsers–but no less significant to the end user).

So, I guess the conclusion is that even if your product is the bee’s knees, it better work on whatever I’m using. And if it doesn’t (cough, Quickbooks, cough) then you might not get me as a customer as easily. And as a provider of such products in work and personal, the sites better work the first time someone comes to them or there’s probably a good chance that you’ll lose that person forever.

Now, if only I can find a better online program than Google Docs to manage our small business finances that would be sweet (suggestions welcome).

Education costs trending towards zero

There’s a lot of talk about how the cost of education is decreasing year over year because of the advances in technology. Free courses, free text

books, free content available from the most prestigious universities in the world, all online, accessible all the time to anyone anywhere.

Josh Catone of Mashable wrote a quick article about how those three forces (free text books, free courses, free course ware) are trending the cost of “education” in the traditional sense towards zero. It makes some sense. But I don’t fully buy it.

There are major advantages to the University structure that contribute to many areas of society other than the preparation of individuals for jobs or civic involvement: economic development, organization of dissenting views/opinions, creation of new technology, centers for investment in research, maintaining thriving university-centered communities, etc. etc.

But mostly I don’t buy it because education has been “free” (as in free speech, not free beer) forever. Honestly, probably the best invention to make learning free was the book (because you didn’t need a storyteller to educate you anymore); then the library made the books freely available to those who wanted them (not that the industrious didn’t find ways to borrow them prior to that). The Mashable article was basically saying that the internet was bring the cost to zero. Um, no. The internet is changing education, but only in efficiency and reach (not necessarily in accessibility).

The fact of the matter is that for advanced nations, the content is reaching new people, while not-as-advanced countries are struggling to get internet (accessibility is still hampered). Not only that but near 100% of the content is in English (another barrier for the least “educated”). It’d be nice to have totally free education and even free college degrees for those that want to pursue them. In some sense that’s already happening and has been happening for 100s of years. Before there were standards and accreditation, men were self-made and educated for free.

Ben Franklin did it as an indentured servant to his brother, reading in his spare moments and writing and practicing using borrowed books. He didn’t go to college but turned out pretty highly regarded. And if you’re thinking, “but that’s just Benjamin Franklin…” then I say this, other less well known men have done the same for generations and made their mark in history with FREE educations (and many more because we so often enforce a price on traditional educational systems, barring them from entry to their own benefit).

Now, I do believe education is much too expensive and increasing unjustly in price year after year. But if you truly want to learn, the options and content are, and always have been, available to you.

Related: if you’re interested in Benjamin Franklin and his life, check out the free ebook from Dailylit.com.

OMGROBOTS

NYTimes published a recent article that all but predicts the end of days, as brought by the metal/plastic hands of robots. Nice.

The researchers…generally discounted the possibility of highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon. [NYTimes.com]

The article isn’t all that scary, though the fact that this type of conversation is now necessary is telling about the types of technology already available worldwide. The conversation (which actually happened about 6 months ago in Feb ’09) was focused on setting research limits (no doubt to stop researchers from truly making a man-eating self powered robot that Fox News is so scared of. I’ll be scared of it too when it’s coming after me for it’s next pit stop.

It continues though and ends ironically that Artificial Intelligence could actually make up for human short comings,

Dr. Horvitz said he was hopeful that artificial intelligence research would benefit humans, and perhaps even compensate for human failings. He recently demonstrated a voice-based system that he designed to ask patients about their symptoms and to respond with empathy. When a mother said her child was having diarrhea, the face on the screen said, “Oh no, sorry to hear that.”

A physician told him afterward that it was wonderful that the system responded to human emotion. “That’s a great idea,” Dr. Horvitz said he was told. “I have no time for that.” [same article]

And by “failings” he apparently meant ability to interact and emphasize with other people. Er…maybe that Dr. was a robot already.