Blackberry Service Outage

CBSNews.com published an article called “RIM offers customers free apps after BlackBerry service outage” by Chenda Ngak that discussed BlackBerry’s apology and plan to make it up their customers after a power outage last week that left users with no access to emails, BlackBerry Messenger or data services.

Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis was quoted, “We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience. We have apologized to our customers and we will work tirelessly to restore their confidence. We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again.” The company intends to offer customers $100 worth of premium apps for free which consumers will be able to acquire sometime in the “coming weeks” until December 31, 2011. Also, Enterprise customers will get a free month of technical support.

This situation reminds me of an outage that AT&T customers experienced in August or September this year which left cell phone users unable to make calls let alone text or anything else. The company apologized for the service outage, but to my knowledge, never did anything to compensate for the failure of service.

It boils down to:

Blackberry had to do something to compensate for their screw-up because they have a much smaller market share and let’s be honest, to a degree, Blackberry is dying. Research In Motion has to try and make it up to their customers because they could easily switch to another company.

And AT&T was able to get away with not doing anything to compensate their customers because they are so huge and they could afford to lose a few customers without really hurting their bottom line (which some sort of compensation could).

Steve Jobs… and Stanford’s Commencement Speech

As a business student there are certain people and companies that you frequently hear about and discuss in classes; Steve Jobs and his career at Apple is certainly one of those.

Steve Jobs.

A man who made a company so successful that it has more cash than the United States of America. A man renowned for ingenuity and innovation as well as his “intense” management philosophy. He believed in giving consumers what they wanted before they even knew that they wanted it.

And now he is gone.

February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011

With his passing, there have been many articles and videos and all sorts of things commemorating him. Recently, I was advised of this article by BusinessWorld Online that recognized Jobs passing and included the majority of a commencement speech that Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005. I proceeded to find the video of the speech which was much better as a whole than the snippets from the article.

During his speech, Jobs told three stories. The first of which was about how he dropped out of college.  He made the point that you can’t know how the decisions that you make today can affect your future. The second story was of his being fired from Apple and what he did after. He made that point that “sometimes life will hit you with a brick”, but you must keep faith and you must keep going. And that you should find what you love and that you should never settle. The final story was about death and his being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He recalled a quote, “If you live each day is if its your last, someday you will be right.” and asked that you follow your heart and intuition and don’t let others’ voices drown out your own inner voice.

He offered some pretty good advice, now the hard thing is trying to follow it.

Facebook’s New Timeline

There is this article from Associated Press that is talking about Facebook and its upcoming changes to its interface. Some of the changes have already been made, just take a look at your page and you’ll see. And in typical Facebook fashion, they made those changes without giving any warning to their customers. However, what the article really focused on was the way that Facebook was trying to revamp their site as “a new way to express who you are.” The timeline, which is the new interface, is designed to incorporate everything from one’s life, even times before Facebook was launched, and merge one’s offline and online life.

What the top of your Facebook page will look like with timeline...

The fact that Facebook is coming up with new things and being innovative is great. A lot of people really love Facebook and are surely excited to play with the new capabilities. However, I am not one of them.

I see some of the benefits of the new interface; it would allow you to basically have a digital scrapbook of your life, and Facebook says that you should have control over who sees your timeline. And, it is a marketer’s dream! As someone who wants to get into the marketing field, I can tell you that to gain access to so much personal information; it could possibly re-invent the concept of direct marketing.

Yet, as I said before, I am not someone who is excited about the new potential of Facebook; at least not personally. I am a very private person. I have no desire to publicly display my life’s history. I do have a Facebook page, but I post a new picture about once a year. I rarely write anything but Happy Birthday on anyone’s wall, choosing instead to send any real communications via private messages. I really only use Facebook to check in on how friends and family are doing and the occasional Words With Friends game. So, to me, the new timeline is just a way for very private information to be made very public.

The Road Ahead for Bing

The talk of Microsoft continues…

just now it’s about their search engine, Bing, rather than Windows 8.

 

CNN recently released an article about how Microsoft is planning on making Bing profitable. Bing has been around for 2 years now and it is still losing a LOT of money. Since it was launched in June of 2009, Bing has cost Microsoft $5.5 billion, and if you include the expenses of Bing prior to launch, the total cost is $9 billion.

On top of that, Microsoft proudly proclaims that Bing has gained market share against Google. And it sure has; a grand total of .2%. Bravo Bing. In terms of real market share, Bing’s comes from Ask.com (who knew that was still around), AOL.com, and cannibalizing Yahoo’s market share.

However, Microsoft has a plan to fundamentally change the search engine game and put Bing on top. How are they going to do this?

“Through its search partnership with Facebook, its mobile partnership with Nokia (NOK) and its marriage with various Microsoft products, Bing will gradually gain a semantic understanding of the Web, Lu said. That will transform search from today’s noun-based keyword entry — a system Lu dismissed as “caveman speak” — to eventually give Bing the ability to field questions phrased in natural human language.” (article by Goldman)

That’s great for users but that doesn’t necessarily mean that once they achieve this they will automatically become profitable. Bing will still need to achieve 25-30% market share before it can really draw in advertisers, and several analysts believe it will be another 3-4 years before that can happen so Microsoft is going to have a giant red number on its books for years to come.

But if they do it right, Microsoft can win big from this. I remember I was in middle school when Google was launched and I refused to use it because I didn’t really like it and thought it was weird. I would only use dogpile.com and AskJeeves. Now, I use Google on a daily basis and the sites that I used to use are pretty much obsolete. So, if Bing can do half of what Google did to attract users, Microsoft will be locked into the search engine market.

Tablet Friendly Windows 8

Alright, I’m back and working towards another class now.

All of my past blogs have been in connection to my awesome
Journalism 2.0 class that I took while abroad in Barcelona, and now I’m
covering my Internet Marketing class back in the good old US of A in this
little town that you might have heard of … it’s called Miami.

Right now we’re talking about Windows 8. There was this
article kind of recently in the New York Times that talked about how Microsoft
is rolling out its newest version of Windows and what they hope for it to mean
in the tech world.

What the new Windows interface is supposed to look like...

It all kind of boils down to Microsoft slightly playing
catch up with their technology (but they’re really good at catch up so it works
for them in a way it wouldn’t for most companies) and creating their new
Windows 8 to be some special software that not only runs super smoothly on
laptops and desk tops but also on phones and the increasingly popular tablets.

Their new software looks a lot like the Windows Phone
software, with giant tiles and a focus on touchscreen technology. Personally, I
think it’s a really wise move for them to make software that is so compatible
with tablets because they seem to be the future of the personal computing
industry. But on the other hand, I think that they may have gotten a little
ahead of themselves with such a focus on touchscreen technology. Yes, it is
really great for those who will be using Windows 8 on a tablet, however, the
majority of Microsoft business still stems from laptop and desktop users which
most of the technology in that realm is not touchscreen capable.

Wicked New Tool… Snipping Tool

I have used Windows Vista since it first came out and I never noticed the “Snipping Tool” until recently. I don’t know if it has been a part of Vista from the get go, or if it was a part of some update, but regardless, I am so glad that I found it.

I had been looking for a way to put pictures together easily, kind of like a collage, without having to deal with new and foreign photo editing stuff so I started going through all of my program files and opening up any that I was not familiar with. Low and behold, under the Accessories Folder was Snipping Tool which was just perfect for what I needed.

This was the first time that I used the Snipping Tool, and through its use I was able to create a single before and after image.

 

I put the pictures together as I desired on a Word Document and then using the Snipping Tool, I highlighted and captured the images that I wanted. I have used it for a few other things in addition to mini collages, and I am very happy with my use of it.

So, while many, many people have complained about Windows Vista, I would like to say thank you to Microsoft for giving me a cool new little trick.

My Time with CEA

CEA or Cultural Experiences Abroad, is the study abroad program I went through to spend a semester of university in Barcelona, Spain. I took part in their Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Program which meant that I went to school at their GlobalCampus.

The GlobalCampus was divided between two buildings in which they took a few floors of office buildings and turned them into classrooms. They were alright rooms and they had a computer lab in each building although I think the computers could stand for a good memory wash (they’re a bit slow). I took four classes and had good teachers for each one. They all had real world experience with their subjects which allowed for a more personal take on the topics and the work load assigned for each class was fair.

Plaza Catalunya

The main campus is located right near Plaza Catalunya which is like the city center while the COACB campus is a handful of blocks away. The two campuses are close enough that you walk between them (as you do for most places in Barcelona), but when you only have 15 minutes between your classes at the different campuses, you have to pick up your normal pace.

Housing is also a part of CEA and unless you want to do it independently, you can choose between a Residencia or an apartment. I requested a Residencia because there was no promise of the quality of the apartment. I lived at Residencia Onix which was great because:

1. within walking distance of both campuses, the beach, and Parc de la Ciutadella

2. the internet worked most of the time

3. could see the Arc de Triomf from window

4. came fully furnished so no need to buy blankets, pillows, sheets, towels, dishes…

5. they clean your room once a week (sweeping, dusting, changing towels and sheets…)

All in all, my experience with CEA has been good, actually great when you consider the little trips that are a part of the program. I spent a weekend in Madrid and another in San Sebastian with them plus I had great little day trips to Figueres, Girona, Sitges, and Montserrat all of which were pre-planned and covered in my tuition which was good because otherwise I probably wouldn’t  have seen those particular places.

View from Montserrat