I was sitting on the plane coming back from Adelaide yesterday and this lovely elderly lady and her son sat down next to me. They were having a big chat about what was in the paper and she lamented how the font was too small to read anymore and how much she missed the news. He then opened the paper and read the news to her, all the way to Sydney.
It was one of those moments when you are reminded that the great people aren't just those out winning medals, but also those overcoming everyday obstacles together and moving forward.
The team at RD2 have cooked-up a great new App for Gary Hamel's Management information Exchange. If you don't follow the Exchange, it is a must read for any leader. Here's the link to the Android version. IOS is in the approval process.
Love this idea... what better way to find investors and get them to engage.
I'm guessing it will take Microsoft time to integrate Yammer with Sharepoint, and during this time, hopefully, the will come to their senses. Yammer is wonderful for its simplicity, ease of use and convienience. So, why would anyone integrate it with the most complex, unwieldy, impenetrebable piece of software a user could ever encounter?
Any worries about what will happen to Yammer inside of Microsoft? You never know what will happen inside of a large company, but Steve Ballmer met with David and they both are incredibly excited. They both know that Outlook has to change and I think, over time, that there will be a combination of Yammer and Outlook. Before that, Yammer will be integrated into SharePoint.
I'm not sure about the logic that says a company that provides a free service - Facebook, Twitter, Quora -- should also provide free telephone support. Users shouldn't confuse them not doing this with not listening - I suspect it is pure business economics.
What drives me mad is when companies like eBay and PayPal, who charge for a service can't be bothered providing easy to access support. I'm experiencing this first hand at the moment with Billmelater. Some criminal managed to use my wifes name to set up an account - wrong social security number, wrong birthdate but her name.
Now, PayPal and Billmelater clearly operate a pretty weak fraud and risk process because the crook was able to run up a good chunck of purchases. We managed to track someone down who agreed that is was blatant fraud and they would deal with it. As an aside, we can't access the account to communicate with them, becuase, guess what, the password, birthdate and SSN are all fake.
And what did they do then, referred it on to a collections agency who insists on harrassing people rather than solving the problem with Billmelater and eBay. And who are you going to call in this instance? Nobody. They'd rather just rol the dice on you submitting to the harrassment and paying towards their negligence and incompetence. We won't - but I fear many will.
I'm all for anyone with a business that takes your money in exchange for products or services on the web being required to offer phone support. But for those that don't, I'm not sure how they would survive.
What is needed is a clear standard so that the PayPal and Billmelaters are forced to be accountable to the customers they pretend to serve.