An Open Letter to United Airlines

Dear Mr. Smisek,

During a recent flight from Milwaukee to LA I happened to read your article regarding rewarding rewarding good customer service. Your article called out that United aimed to reward top performers in customer support with a generous, though surely well deserved, $50,000 bonus.  I applaud this approach as I continually see erosion of customer service by companies through the shaving of costs and overuse of procedure rather than asking, expecting and rewarding people to think.

I would like to ask though, how committed are you to this concept? If you are willing to reward folks for superior service, are you also committed to accountability in your co-workers?  Will you discipline them, dock their pay and terminate them when appropriate as well?

Where have all the cool sites gone?

In the late 90's and into the 2000's it seemed like the almost every day a friend, colleague or family member would mention some new site they found on the Internet. Whether it was something silly like the Hampster Dance, a scary puzzle, or something helpful to debunk all the various urban legends it seemed like the number of sites were exploding every moment.

With the massive expansion and commercialization of the Internet, new ideas appear to have been overrun by corporate sites. Design has, in many cases, become more important than content. Google, for the most part has stuck to its tried and true minimalist designs. But the rest of the high profile sites seem to be replacing their designs like we change clothes. That's not exactly the wonder of the Internet to me. I think the last new site someone tipped me off to was maybe Zillow.com. I know we still get the occasional viral video that goes around, hits the news sites, etc.

Perhaps the web is dead as a source of innovation? It seems that all the innovation has gone into the various Smartphone App stores. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. But, with over half a million apps in the iOS store and over 200,000 in the Android store, it is awfully hard to find good new apps. And, smartphones are not yet nearly as pervasive as a computer. And even with that many Apps it is extremely rare to hear about a new app from a friend, family member or even a store. There certainly are a lot of updates coming out for the operating systems - and those are good because they bring a lot of improvements to every user.

But, it almost feels like we need a Google for Apps. A search engine that helps you find applications and solutions across all the various platforms. Don't get me wrong, I know this isn't a new problem. There never has been a great way to find applications. Sure, there are reviews and magazines, but you have to almost already be in the eco-system to find things. That's not the accessibility that most people are desperate for.

I suspect that the company that solves this evolving meta problem will find the road ahead paved with gold.

The Day the Blackberry Network Died

Much has been made about the most recent Blackberry outage. Some have claimed that this is the end of  the Blackberry. Others said it reduced traffic accidents.

For me, message delivery ceased around 2AM Pacific. Not a single message was delivered the entire working day. Around 8:30 PM, everything essentially delivered at once. After that, I haven't seen any issues. After all the press bruhaha, I thought it was worthwhile to look back at that 18 hour period.

My own personal productivity was certainly affected by this. I held meetings away from my desk that resulted in a focused discussions with fewer interruptions. All of the same, or more, work got done and it was probably of a higher quality.

Our users - even remote workers - were, surprisingly, relatively unconcerned. The important work also got done via phone and traditional email. Stuff was sold, orders were processed, customers were helped.

Don't get me wrong. The Blackberry is a wonderful convenience. It is very secure, has a physical keyboard to type on (most of the time) and is extremely manageable from an IT perspective. It is especially valuable during travel, crises events, etc.

But, I think that it is important to realize that the device in our hand isn't as important as those around us. Work still gets done as long as we effectively communicate with every one else - no matter what the channel.

Bringing Sexy Back

As I posted last week, I had selected the Drobo as my new storage mechanism at home. However, all of my data was still (hopefully) imprisoned on the no longer sentient server. Windows Home Server uses a custom RAID like software setup to duplicate information across multiple drives.

It is simple stupid in usage. But, when I attempted to boot those drives in another machine I had no success.

Drobo to the Rescue

A cost-effective replacement for my late, great HP MediaSmart server was simply not to be found. I just wasn't able to locate an appropriate solution in the Windows Home Server family. So with reluctance I have moved on.

Welcome to the Drobolicious future! My better half has had one of the original Drobo's for quite some time. Other than a terrible mishap with a 3TB drive, it has served her well. It's not surprising then, that it was tops on my list for consideration to be the new brain in the household. This device is not cheap, but it does feature some great simplicity, improved storage capacity options, direct network access and Apps.

Goodbye Steve Jobs

The loss of a famous person rarely affects beyond making a mental note of their passing. Yesterday after I heard that Steve Jobs had died, an image came to me. I saw Steve Jobs passing into the Great Beyond. As he did, he turned around to hand the baton to his successor.

There was no one there.

Steve Jobs has profoundly affected my life. My very first computer was an Apple II that my parents somehow were able to afford even as they raised 6 children. That computer took me through a lot of school, a lot of projects and forever cemented me as a technophile. Apple and I broke up for a long while after that only to be reunited via a device rather than a computer. The iPhone rekindled my relationship with Apple and Mr. Jobs.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

Say it ain't so! The MediaSmart is dead...

After over two years of faithful service my beloved HP MediaSmart server called it quits. As a quick reminder, this is the system that has provided backup, media streaming and some remote access to my data for all this time. It has been a small, silent media powerhouse for that time. The power supply appeared to have died. That rendered it still small, even more silent and not much of a powerhouse at all.

Clearly, I've been quite happy with it so I set about trying to find some replacement hardware. The power supplies for that system were quite expensive. Not surprising since "service" parts for older equipment tend to sell at a premium. What made it even more challenging is that some time ago, HP announced that they were exiting the MediaSmart server business - At least the one powered by Microsoft, anyway.

As a result, hardware was difficult to come by in any shape or form. The few systems I found that were used on eBay were selling for retail prices. The few retailers that still have them were selling them above MSRP! Clearly, I will have some work ahead of me to locate a suitable replacement. wish me luck.