Archives / April 2007

Sarah McLachlan's "World On fire" video cost fifteen bucks to make back in 2004. She donated the balance of the normal editing cost to global charities (including one of my favs, CARE). Despite the problems of info overload, one benefit of global communications is the humanization of people one wouldn't otherwise meet. I think (and hope) we'll see more projects like this.

Here's the video.

Also see worldonfire.ca for the full list of donation recipients. (via)

A possible theme song for Bit Literacy - reggae artist Linton Kwesi Johnson singing "More Time":

(Thanks, BJ)

I talk about "life bits" in The Future of Bit Literacy, the final chapter of my new book, Bit Literacy. And here they come.

From the Times, Social Networking Leaves Confines of the Computer (emphasis mine):

Powerful new mobile devices are allowing people to send round-the-clock updates about their vacations, their moods or their latest haircut.

New online services, with names like Twitter, Radar and Jaiku, hope people will use their ever-present gadget to share (or, inevitably, to overshare) the details of their lives in the same way they have become accustomed to doing on Web sites like MySpace.

Unlike the older networking sites, which are still largely used on PCs, these new phone-oriented services are bringing the burgeoning culture of exhibitionism to more exotic and more personal locations. They are also contributing to the general barrage of white noise and information overload - something that even some participants say they feel ambivalent about.

The Customer Service Hall of Shame: Sprint and Bank of America get the lowest marks.

Given competition and time, the best customer experience will win. Conversely, as the article puts it, "The less choice you have, the less pressure companies will feel to offer quality service."

(Thanks, Ramona)

Paul Shaw, host of a Gel 2007 Day 1 tour, is featured in the Times today:
A Man Who Minds His P's and Q's.

(See also this 2005 NYT piece: In Search of the Characters of New York.)

The NYT on BlackBerry addiction:

BlackBerry users do half-joke that they have become junkies, insatiable data tokers. But because the tool is tied to productivity, defined by some as essential to modern employment, overusers don't really regard their habit as the digital equivalent of firing up a Marlboro outside work.

Perhaps they should re-examine the tie to productivity, however. The technology creates the allusion [sic] that every moment can be a productive one, said Tara Hunt, 33, a marketing director for a technology consulting company in San Francisco. When you're not participating, it's like you're suggesting that you're not keeping up, she said.

Those addicted users should read Bit Literacy and learn how to be truly productive without that addiction.

Got a very kind note today from a reader of my new book, Bit Literacy.

From J. in Denmark...

It is only fitting that this mail is the first to be sent from a completely empty mailbox. The feeling is amazing. As I have been working to let my bits go, I have literately felt a heavy weight being lifted of my shoulders as well.

I have always been skeptical of people who have seen some sort of light and tried to convince others that this or that philosophy, religion or method was the only true way. That is until I read Bit Literacy because now I have become a believer myself and am pushing the book and the methods onto anyone willing to listen.

I can say that it is working wonders for me and I can only recommend that you invest the time to try it out for yourself.

You can order directly from this page.

Congratulations to Whole Foods Market, Shutterfly, and Pandora!

Here's the press release: 2007 Copernican Awards recognize customer-centric organizations.

A couple of weeks ago I promised a list of companies that are "doing it right" - organizations that understand the value and unassailable competitive advantage of a good customer experience. Now is the time to list them.

Every year, the members of the Customer Experience Councils (a cross-industry, peer-learning network run by my consulting firm, Creative Good) nominate companies they think best exemplify the main idea of customer-centered business: the organization revolves around the customer, not the other way around.

The Council members then vote on nominated companies to determine the winners of the (appropriately named) Copernican Awards, for "companies that put the customer at the center of their business universe."

This isn't meant to be an exhaustive list (especially since many outstanding companies have been spotlighted in previous years), but rather a set of just a few exemplary companies that Council members have noticed this year.

We'll announce the winners tonight in New York City, but for the moment, here are the finalists of the 2007 Copernican Awards:

Large category finalists (a billion or more in revenue):

• Newegg, an online e-commerce company
• USAA, a global financial services company
• Whole Foods Market, seller of natural and organic food

Medium category (a hundred million or more in revenue):

• Endeca, a software services company
• NYTimes.com, the online arm of the New York Times
• Shutterfly, an online photo service
• Thomas Pink, a retailer of shirts and other products

Small category (less than a hundred million in revenue):

• Angie's List, an online ratings service
• Constant Contact, an e-mail marketing service
• The Motley Fool, a provider of investment and financial content
• Pandora, an online radio service

These are all companies that are succeeding by focusing on the customer experience. Next time you need an example or two to show about "who's doing it right," check out these (and past years') Copernican finalists.

Starbucks and Pepsi are both lagging, so they're each considering how to improve their experience. (Pepsi is an experience? They think so.)

From the Economist, Brand management - Trouble brewing (note - registration required for full story):

During its 109-year history Pepsi has undergone many rebrandings, of course, but none on this scale. By next year the current red, white and blue Pepsi can will have disappeared from the shelves. The company instead promises a “sustained discovery” for people of all ages and—not surprisingly—a new “experience”.

Gel 2007 speaker Danny Meyer sent out his spring 2007 newsletter today with news of his first restaurant outside New York City: Union Square Tokyo, which will be in Roppongi Hills. I hope to visit someday!

More at unionsquarecafe.com/ustokyodiary

P.S. The newsletter ends with a recipe... and then the "spellchecked version," or what Word thinks of Italian words. It follows:

Tagliarini with Peas and Prosciutto: Replacing the Stringhetti with Clamsis this delicious dish, which hints of spring things to come. Housemade tagliarini(egg noodles cut more narrowly than fettuccine) are cooked to order and tossed with a luscious sauce made with prosciutto, onions, white wine, a small amount of garlic, cream and Parmigiano Reggiano. The dish is garnished with fresh English peas (as the early spring variety is called), thin strips of prosciutto and more Parmigiano Reggiano.

Spell Checked Version:

Tailgating with Peas and Prostitutes: Replacing the Serengeti with Clamsis this delicious dish, which hints of spring things to come. Housemaids tailgating (egg noodles cut more narrowly than fettuccine) are cooked to order and tossed with a luscious sauce made with prostituted onions, white wine, a small amount of garlic, cream and Ptarmigans Regina. The dish is garnished with fresh English peas (as the early spring variety is called), thin strips of prostitutes and more Parisian Regions.

Can you tell I'm a fan of Danny Meyer's restaurants?

Finally I'm announcing the launch of my new book!...

Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload

...is now available at bitliteracy.com.

Why I wrote the book

For the last few years I've noticed people under a tremendous amount of information overload. E-mails pile up, todo lists get scattered around the office, and people live in a state of fear that they'll be "found out" or punished for being so overloaded. It's a vicious cycle that shows no sign of letting up.

My new book shows how to solve all those problems - permanently.

I've used the methods of bit literacy as I've created them over the past ten years, and they work wonders:

• managing e-mails, a todo list, media diet, and photos

• knowing how to WRITE an e-mail effectively

• choosing good file names, and knowing where to store files

• knowing the different file formats and when to choose them

These are skills that most people don't know simply because they've never been taught, and only because there's never been a source of that knowledge. Bit Literacy fixes that. This is the book for everyone with an e-mail address: executives, freelancers, parents, students, teachers, doctors, and everyone else with a computer.

Get the book here: http://bitliteracy.com

Your next steps

If anything I have ever written has ever helped, or meant anything at all to you, then I'd ask you to trust me that this book will help you work better, and live a fuller life outside of work. But I need your help.

You have simple next steps. Please...

1. Get the book. (Either buy it at bitliteracy.com, or come to my NYC seminar in May, and you'll get the book there.)

2. READ the book. The whole thing, front to back.

3. Try PRACTICING the methods in the book, starting with "managing incoming e-mail."

4. If it helps you be more productive, and less stressed, then TELL OTHERS about it. There is no major PR firm or publishing house backing this message...

Like everything else I've brought you - the Gel conference, the Uncle Mark guides, This Is Broken, even the newsletter itself - I'm depending on you to spread the word. It's in your hands now to permanently solve information overload, for yourself and others.

Please give Bit Literacy a try. It could change your life.

Get started now: http://bitliteracy.com

Gel 2007 registration is now closed, but you can still watch past Gel presentations.

The Gel videos page contains the entire day from Gel 2005, and quick clips from Gel '06 and euroGel '06.

Just keep in mind that Gel isn't a collection of speakers; it's designed as an experience, and you have to be there in person to really get that experience.

Still, hope you enjoy some of the videos to get a flavor of the event.

Link: Gel videos

From Kansas State University, a very well made online movie explaining HTML, moving on to XML, and finishing with a healthy dollop of Web 2.0 utopianism: Link

A little bright-shiny tech-futuristic for my taste, but well-made nonetheless.

(thanks, christine)

Over at This Is Broken, a completely broken Citibank log-off screen got this comment, one of the most interesting I've seen in awhile on TIB:

I actually worked on this site. I work for a "division" of Citi -- CitiMortgage. We have a full staff of Usability folks and Interaction designers.

We tested this screen. Citi calls them "bumps" but doesn't even get how ironic that is... Our testing showed time and time again that this was VERY confusing for users. And we fought and fought and fought and fought and fought... to remove it or change the buttons like most people suggested.

But see, Citi has a "legal" department. And apparently what they say goes. We lost... I guess I just wanted everyone to know that we are there and we try and we know what sucks... but sometimes it is beyond our control. But it frustrates me as much (maybe more) than users.

It's probably worth a newsletter column soon (sign up here), but for now thought I'd post it here.

The latest Technology Quarterly from The Economist, as always, exposes some of the trends and buzzwords being discussed in the technology industry. Notably in this TQ, customer experience has some direct bearing on about half of the articles, so I thought I'd give a quick tour. (Some links may require registration.)

• The article Watching the web grow up describes the skepticism that Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, has about the incessant hype about "Web 2.0." (On the other hand, The Economist is happy to add that the Web 2.0 trend "is making many traditional media companies tremble.")

Berners-Lee states that user-generated content "was the whole idea and was there from the start." Then why the recent interest in the Web 2.0 trend? The article puts it well: "as the web took off in the late 1990s, publishing tools failed to keep up with web browsers in ease of use, and it is only with the rise of blogs and wikis that the balance has been redressed." Web 2.0 was fueled by an improved customer experience.

• The article Working the crowd covers Silicon Valley's attempts to bring "crowdsourcing" and "long tail" ideas to the market. The company I found most compelling was Threadless (a past Copernican Award finalist), which solicits, and then sells, T-shirt designs from its raving-fan customer base. I think "crowdsourcing" can fill some genuine niche opportunities (like young hipsters who enjoy voting online for T-shirt designs), but otherwise it's susceptible to hype.

• The article Call and response talks about "chat bots" on IVRs, or automated telephone customer-service systems. So when you call a 1-800 number, instead of pressing touch tones to navigate a phone tree, the "chat bot" will ask you to speak your request. If you hate phone-based menus, you're really going to find this irritating. Why not just hire well-trained humans to answer the phone? As one IBM researcher (selling the software) says, "There's a balance between cost and customer experience." Hmm.

One other thought: If technology is the problem, then more technology isn't necessarily the answer. I like the insurance-and-investment company USAA, a Copernican Award finalist this year, which staffs its (US-based) call center with well-trained employees.

Two other articles of note:

• The article Go with the flow offers a data point on my prediction of more information visualization software in Chapter 13 of my new book, Bit Literacy.

• The article How touching talks about new haptic interfaces (which give tactical feedback), and Let's get physical reports on the new "exergaming" trend, recently made popular by Nintendo's Wii Sports (covered in several past posts here).

From savethestreams.org:

Internet radio may be driven out of business within weeks by a Copyright Royalty Board decision that gives record companies a royalty rate that exceeds 100% of most webcasters' total revenues.

If you like Web radio, sign their petition.

See more info in David Byrne's post.

Walt Mossberg's latest column is on the "out-of-box experience" of setting up a new Windows PC:

The problem is a lack of respect for the consumer. The manufacturers don't act as if the computer belongs to you. They act as if it is a billboard for restricted trial versions of software and ads for Web sites and services that they can sell to third-party companies who want you to buy these products. ...

The worst was a desktop icon called "Watch Hit Movies Now!" This turned out to be four full-length films from Sony's movie studios, which the company had preloaded onto my computer at the cost of more than four gigabytes of precious hard-disk space. But they aren't a gift. If you want to play them, you have to pay Sony.

I often wonder: for those people who have a choice, why would they choose to buy a Windows PC? (See my thoughts on the Mac vs. PC debate in my new book, Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload.)

(thanks, scott)

A comment on This Is Broken today revealed a new way to get off of (postal) junk mail lists: ask the post office to stop delivering mail from that address.

From the USPS's "Domestic Mail Manual," 508 Recipient Services:

1.1.4 Mail Withheld From Delivery
An addressee may request the postmaster, in writing, to withhold from delivery for a period not to exceed 2 years any foreign letter or printed matter with a specified name or address on the outside.

euroGel '06 speaker Han Bennink will be performing at Tonic tonight and tomorrow (Thursday and Friday) in New York.

It's also one of the last performances at Tonic, the venerable NYC performance space. From Tonic's home page:

The neighborhood around us has been increasingly consumed by "luxury condominiums", boutique hotels and glass towers, all making the value of our salvaged space worth more then our business could ever realistically support. ...

If profit had been our chief motivation we could have changed our programming to something more mainstream and financially lucrative. Instead we were more committed to a certain type of music and loyal to the community that supported us. As a result, we've always just survived but never really prospered. It is, however, unfortunate that it is so difficult for small businesses to operate in this city and that a chain store that can afford a high rent is more desirable than a place like Tonic that has a different kind of value.

More on Han Bennink in this SFGate article.

Nice mention of Bit Literacy from my friend Lars. From Bit Literacy is here:

Using a computer is something most of us, our parents, our spouses, have figured out how to do: The mouse, the windows, the menus, dragging and dropping.

But how to handle the constant barrage of emails, SMS messages, files, and photos that keep coming our way, is a different matter.

You can get started right now... read the first chapter.

Here at Creative Good we just announced finalists for the 2007 Copernican Awards.

The 11 finalist companies - Newegg, USAA, Whole Foods, Endeca, NYTimes.com, Shutterfly, Thomas Pink, Angie's List, Constant Contact, The Motley Fool, and Pandora - were nominated by members of The Councils, who themselves work for any of 200+ member companies.

The Copernican Awards, now in their third year, celebrate the most customer-centric companies in the world. Previous winners include Google and TiVo.

From Boing Boing: iTunes Store will sell ENTIRE EMI catalog DRM-free:

Hallelujah! Apple and EMI just announced that they will be selling DRM-free Apple songs through the iTunes Music Store. The songs will cost 130 percent of the price of the existing crippled songs, and you'll get to choose.

Readers of Bit Literacy will find this to be an important addition to the part on audio file formats described in Chapter 9.

Nice piece on Ira Glass and "This American Life" in the Chicago Tribune a couple of weeks back. From 'Life' Goes On:

A sense of empathy runs through the little human dramas that "This American Life" has specialized in on the radio and that carry over to the television version. Whether it's a story of a Mormon painter who has trouble finding bearded men to pose for his re-creations of Biblical scenes, or the lazy, beer-swilling ex-rock musician who is the stepfather of a young video documentary maker, "This American Life" conveys a feeling for what makes people individuals and not characters in a sitcom.

And this piece, which I can relate to as I prepare Gel 2007 (where Ira is scheduled to speak):

Fear is a driving force in Glass' work life, and he embraces it. "I think fear is a really important part of the creative process," he says. "A healthy sense of fear of failure; I think that's incredibly important if you want things to be good. I think that having a lot of fear that you're going to lose your audience and being willing to sweat it for them is an act of courtesy."