links for 2007-07-06
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Offering bad customer service? No problem, just boot the complainers. After all, I’m sure your other customers are thrilled with the service when they DO call in. Good bye and good riddance.
July 5th, 2007
Archive for July, 2007
Young Adults? Entitled? Hogwash.
I’m not the kind of person who writes letters to newspapers (then again who is). This Wall Sreet Journal article on Young Adults and Entitlement really set me off though. Just a terrible article…I felt like I had to respond.
Mr. Zaslow,
I take exception to your article in today’s Journal: “Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled.”
As a young adult living in Austin, Texas, I stay busy. I work a full-time job and attend an Evening MBA program, with time left over to raise a family. Obviously I don’t fit your profile of an entitled person, but who else does not? Your article left that unclear.
In one feel swoop, you manage to offend the entire population of people 30 and under. Nowhere in your article do you indicate what segment of the Mr. Rogers generation falls victim to these catchphrases. It’s as if you simply decided to label the entire young adult community as narcissists, relying on practitioners’ anecdotal evidence to back up your assertion.
Frankly, I find your label of “entitlement” ironic. After all, we are the generation that’s going to be paying for your Social Security when you retire. We’ll continue to fund the program for decades without any expectation of seeing a penny of Social Security money for ourselves.
Who’s entitled to what again?
July 5th, 2007
links for 2007-07-04
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The serial entrepreneurs dream: getting bought out by Yahoo and Google.
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Warren Buffett made the new. Here’s the perspective from a VC point of view.
July 3rd, 2007
My First iPhone Weekend
I bought an iPhone on Friday, the first day they were on sale. Let’s just say it’s been an interesting experience — bad, good, and ugly. Here’s the recap.
Around 11 am on Friday I showed up at the local AT&T store in Georgetown, Texas. Why there? My gut feeling was that I’d have a better shot getting one in a rural location in some out-of the-way AT&T store, as opposed to the shiny beacons that were Apple Retail Stores in Austin. Turned out to be a good call: I was 6th in line when I arrived.
Of the five in front of me, four guys were “investors” as I referred to them; they were looking to flip the phone as fast as possible. That made conversation awkward for sure…I was hoping to talk geekery for a few hours, but they could give a rip about whatever it was they were buying. I didn’t judge though. If they could pull it off, more power to them. (Unfortunately for them, it turned out iPhones were aplenty around the nation. Yikes. I hope they at least got their money back.)
Very quickly 6 pm arrived, and the purchasing process was painless. I had a very cute sales consultant help me out, and she seemed just as excited selling it to me. She rung me up, then processed to barcode and hermetically seal the shopping bag. (Um, okay.) By 6:10 pm I was on my way home, excited about the chance to show off my sweet iPhone during the evening’s festivities.
The Bad
Of course, every single geek across America who waited in line that day wanted the same thing: ACTIVATE NOW!!!!11 True enough, that night we did our part and crashed the AT&T servers. Repeatedly. Normally a 15-minute process, my first attempt to activate took 2 hours…and it was unsuccessful. Number portability issues. Sadly, there would be no party bling that night, since the phones could not be used for anything (not even as an iPod) without activation.
Saturday was much of the same, getting bounced around different customer service numbers, hearing different suggestions and excuses. I never lost my temper, but it got to be a bit much after the 30-minute hold times stacked up. Finally, 2 1/2 hours later, I got the news I didn’t want to hear: the mobile number I had been using for 8 years was incompatible with AT&T’s local market. NOOOOOOOOOOO!!
What to do? Well, it took some deliberation before I realized I didn’t have a choice. Reluctantly I gave up the fight and chose a new phone number. And to be honest it’s not as bad as I first thought. I am holding out hope that I can get my old number ported to the iPhone, but that’s no guarantee. What really makes the medicine go down are my options: I can always port my old number to a service that forwards calls (like Vonage or RingCentral). Not the end of the world.
The Good
The hyperbole fits. The phone itself is pretty incredible. From the moment I started touching screens, it was obvious that Apple spent a lot of time thinking about integration. A lot of time. Folks like Jason Kottke have covered the early neat things, like an external speaker for your iPod. I happen to like the camera.
From the commercials you probably know the iPhone does Cover Flow just by holding the phone horizontally. The technology behind that is actually used in places you wouldn’t expect, like the camera. When you take a picture, the camera knows whether you’re in portrait or landscape mode. Think about that for a second. I personally can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a email from someone sending me photos where everything is sideways. You end up having to crane your neck to see it. With the iPhone, it rotates the picture and saves it in the mode that you took it. Thirty seconds with it and you instantly hate every other digital camera for not having it.
Oh yea, and the camera quality ain’t bad.
The Ugly
The thing’s already frozen up once. Was playing the iPod on external speakers while connected to a Belkin Car kit. Of course I blame Belkin. Seriously, this thing has bugs…there is a reason they built several reset layers into the phone. I eagerly await their 1.01 release.
Wifey is extremely jealous. I might have to buy her a Wii to make it up to her.
Finally, in iPhone-related news this weekend, I enjoyed reading about the iPhone dissections. Go Samsung.
July 1st, 2007
