Tell the truth

Wednesday, September 16, 2009 ~ 6 comments so far

In direct contrast to my recent experience with Royal Mail, I’ve also had some issues with my iPhone and had to deal with the Geniuses at the Apple store in Glasgow.

Genius might be over-egging it a bit but suffice to say the experience was far far more positive and is an excellent example in how to get customer service right.

So, my old iPhone (just over a year old) had, over time, developed a crack on the back of the case, running a 1cm up the phone from where the cable dock is located. Not something I noticed as I have a case which covers that area.

A quick Google suggested that I should take it back to the store as they would likely just replace it. I was sceptical as it was past the year warranty but thought that if they wouldn’t replace it they might be able to suggest a way to fix it, or at least stop the crack getting any worse.

So I made an appointment at the Genius Bar and after managing to get there without purchasing any new shiny Apple products (I deliberately left my credit card at home, yes I am THAT weak willed), I handed over my iPhone. A quick inspection confirmed that it was something that wasn’t fixable, they’d have to replace the handset.

A quick check of my details confirmed that, yes, I’d had the handset for 13 months, one month past the warranty but hey, they’d still replace it (granted this is the older model of iPhone, so they are probably happy to get the stock moving out of storage!). A quick signature and the new handset was mine. In and out in 10 minutes, and a nice smile on my face.

Alas that is not the end of this story. Yes, there is more. Sorry about that, but thanks for reading this far, seriously, I do appreciate it, I know I can waffle on a bit at times so I do appreciate you wasti spending your precious time reading this. I do. Thank you.

Where was I?

The next day, out and about with my new handset in my pocket it started to vibrate like I had an incoming call. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and… nothing. No call, no message, nothing. Odd. Put the phone back in my pocket and.. *buzzzz* and yet, still nothing.

And so it continued to the point where I could leave the handset on the table, and watch it randomly mute and unmute itself, triggering the vibration each time.

Back to the Genius Bar this morning where, after showing what the handset was doing it was, once again, replaced. In and out in 10 minutes, with an apology for the “Genius” and with a big smile on my face.

Lesson to learn? I know that not everything works all the time, things break, or aren’t properly made, such is life. It’s how you, as an organisation, deal with me at that point that makes or breaks my relationship with you.

So yes, having to get a replacement handset replaced isn’t ideal, but a quick acknowledgement, an apology, and some sort of corrective action is all it took to keep me happy. Case in point, if they’d said my original phone, with the crack in the case, couldn’t have been replaced but had suggested a way to fix it, that would’ve been ok as well.

So, well done to the Genius Bar in the Apple store in Glasgow, you’ve restored some of my faith that some organisations do know how to treat customers properly. Thanks (and ta for the shiny new handset!).

When not to laugh

Friday, August 28, 2009 ~ 2 comments so far

You know those things you already know, that you don’t really need a lesson about?

Yeah, those things. The things life sometimes likes to throw at you, like that annoying teacher who would randomly ask you a question just to make sure you’ve been awake for the past hour. That.

Hmmm I should maybe be a little more polite about teachers, they do an amazing job, are hugely underpaid and undervalued and all round wonderful people (hey Mum, hey Dad!).

Anyway, this is a brief tale about one of those types of lessons.

I’ve been managing to keep a fairly regular schedule at the gym, visiting 3 times a week, and concentrating on cardiovascular exercise as I’m still focussing on losing weight. In other words I’ve been mostly sitting on a bike pedalling up and down ‘hills’ for 30-40 minutes at a time.

Of course to keep things balanced I have also been using the variety of big mechanical machines, with all those fancy levers and pulleys, and the ability to attempt to try and lift what feels like a small cow. It’s a bit of a strange setup that one, and I think I’m not the only person who is sick and fedup of the cows hogging the treadmills.

I digress.

As most of my time is spent sitting on the bike I’ve taken to watching movies, propping up my iPhone on that clever digital display that tells me how fast I’m going, how many kcalories I’ve burned, the distance I’ve travelled and so on. I get warmed up, hop on the bike, set the time and program I want to complete and then decide what I’m going to watch.

Having run out of movies I started watching episodes of Flight of the Conchords. I’ve seen some of them before but I like the mix of gentle humour, xenophobia and music (always a winning combo!). It can be quite subtle at times, with only the odd real laugh out loud moment.

So, obviously, just as the six foot tall Mr.”I Have No Neck And My Shoulders Are Three Times The Width Of My Waist” decides to hop off the machine directly in front of me, just as he almost catches his foot and has to hop a little to catch his balance, a hop that takes him a half turn in my direction, right at that very millisecond is, as I’m sure you’ve all guessed by now, one of those moments where I’ve blurted out a big “HAAAA!!”.

It must have been funny to have been an onlooker at that point. You would have observed me staring at the screen of my iPhone then bursting into a quick clap of laughter, just as a very large, muscley and quite scary looking man almost trips off the machine directly infront of me.

You’d then have witnessed me suddenly realising that the aforementioned Big Scary Man was glaring at me, my nervous look at him and my odd attempt at an apologetic smile, and then my frantic attempts to cycle away as fast as possible.

On a stationary bike.

My iPhone Apps – update

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 ~ 3 comments so far

It’s been a while since I mentioned my lovely iPhone and the applications I have installed on it, and as I’m sure there will be a fresh splurge of iPhone mania come June (there is a new version of the phone software coming out which addresses a lot of the shortcomings of the current version), I thought I’d post this update now.

I’m not going to cover all of the screens though, just the new applications.

(more…)

Informationally Overloaded

Monday, April 6, 2009 ~ 6 comments so far

Those of you who have been reading for a while will recognise the title of this post, as it used to be the name of this blog. Then I realised how naff it was and dropped it when the ‘one man’ stuff was borne.

The phrase itself remains particularly apt, probably more so than when I first used it and, with reference to the exponential growth of Twitter, it is coming back into prominence. Social media applications, and the use thereof, shows no sign of slowing. This is a good thing because I firmly believe that social media applications (think Facebook, Twitter and the like) can be useful to many and the basic model of all of these things is based on the premise that “the more people that use them, the more valuable they become”. Which, of course, is (sort of) in direct conflict with those of us fighting information overload.

Of course, we only have ourselves to blame, as the bulk* of the online information we digest is driven by either opt-in or by deliberately choosing to monitor or follow a particular thread of information. This point is crucial. If you feel you are being overloaded by the amount of information you are choosing to receive to parse, be it by RSS feed, email, or directly from a website, then you can choose to reduce that load.

Twitter remains a bit of a mystery mind you, every morning I gain another follower or two, sometimes based on a product name (hello Dyson Airblades) and sometimes on a completely random basis. Or at least I assume they are random because I don’t recognise the person following me, nor do I recognise their website (yes, I do check profiles in case it’s just a username I’m not familiar with) and, as of yet, there is still no easy way to find this out. I’m presuming that this is the same for everyone, and it is just the usual clamouring for ‘Friends’ that so many people seem to think a good thing to do.

Each new social media application brings with it yet another raft of gurus trying to exploit and harness the “wisdom of the crowd” for themselves in a hope of forcing a “Tipping Point” even if their idea isn’t “Made to Stick”. What they don’t get is that this is not just another marketing bandwagon to jump on, not this time. The phenomenon of social media and the way it allows people to connect can be very powerful, but the important piece thing to understand isn’t the fact that people all over the globe are connecting, but because it’s PEOPLE that are making the connections.

The opt-in model is still the most powerful part of all of this, ensuring that those people who are passionate about a product or service can seek each other out and share their thoughts and ideas. Over to Matt Haughey who suggests that companies should:

make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends

Twitter continues to be the buzzword of the moment, the numbers rise and more connections are made. I glad to say that I am benefitting from being on Twitter, something I wasn’t sure of even a few months ago. Particularly as some of my peers are now on there, posting ideas and links to articles of interest to my profession. The iPhone is a boon for such things, particularly as Twitterific and InstaPaper to keep a track of “to read” articles and blog posts (Twitterific has built-in Instapaper bookmarking capabilities).

So whilst I’m not blogging here, or on either of my other two blogs, you can find me on Twitter, or read the links I post to my Instapaper account, browse the random things I find and post to my Tumblr account, or keep an eye on the websites I bookmark using del.icio.us. You can see my photos on Flickr, and see what music I’m listening to on Last.fm.

It’s a bit scary seeing all of my online data listed out like that. What’s even worse is that I do have an RSS feed that monitors them all… talk about information overload!

* I’m aware that many social applications (or whatever we are calling them today) generate a lot of email notifications, but again, you can usually either turn them off or, you know, opt out of that application.

Groups app for iPhone

Saturday, February 28, 2009 ~ 1 comment so far

I’ve had issues managing my contacts for many years now and, finally, I have a solution. The Address Book software provided as part of OSX is somewhat basic and, oddly, a little clunky to use and my recent debacle with Google Sync only heightened my frustration. Surely things should be better than this?

Enter Groups for the iPhone, by Guided Ways.

From their website, with Groups you can:

1. Create, rename, delete and navigate contact groups – all in a single view!
2. Drag & Drop contacts into groups. Tap and hold on a Contact to start dragging.
3. Send Mass Email to any Group. Tap and hold on a Group name to see available options.
4. Dial, SMS, Email and visit URL/Map Locations of individual contacts by tapping on their name for quick dialing (i.e. use it as a mini-dialer)
5. Use 5 built-in ready to use and helpful ‘Smart Groups’ to help categorize and manage your contacts the way you wish. These automatically filter on contacts that 1) aren’t part of any group, 2) have No Name set, 3) have No Email, 4) have No Phone or 5) have No Image.
6. Trash (and preserve) contacts by dragging them to the ‘Trash’ Group. This would delete the contact permanently from the iPhone/iPod touch and then from your Computer when Synced or Pushed but will allow you to drag these back to normal groups, and thus restore them at a later point, unless you empty the Trash.

Your address book, too, deserves respect.

Similarly to the App Store application that runs on the iPhone, which I prefer using to iTunes when browsing the App Store, Groups makes managing contacts much easier and adds a rich layer of functionality as well, all hidden behind a very smart and slick interface.

Of all the applications I’ve downloaded it’s probably the one that makes the best use of the touch interface, dragging and dropping contacts into group tabs, press and hold on a contact for options, press and hold on a group for options, drag up and down to scroll, it’s got it all but none of it seems superfluous.

Not bad for £1.19!

Groups is the application that Apple could’ve developed, that’s for sure, and for me it indicates another good reason why the App Store (despite the number of dross applications in there) is such a good idea. The Apple iPhone platform is now being extended by 3rd party developers in exciting ways and, hopefully

iPhone Contacts

Friday, February 27, 2009 ~ No comments yet

These days, with so many different ways to keep track of people, managing your list of contacts can be a bit of a chore. Doubly so if, like me, you’ve tried various ways of synchronising your contact list between your phone and a PIM (Personal Information Manager), or even just between any mobile device and any of the myriad of online ‘contact manager’ web-based applications.

When I first switched from a standard mobile phone to a ‘smartphone‘ (about 7 years ago), one of the advantages for someone with as poor a memory as mine, was the fact that I no longer had to remember all the details for someone. I could store them in one single contact and include useful notes to make sure I didn’t get their kids names wrong, not that I’ve EVER done that. Seriously, I haven’t. I may have gotten the sex of their kids wrong but that’s completely different…

A couple of years back I switched back to a standard mobile phone, ditching internet access and other frivolous items, presuming that, by then, management of contact details would be much easier. Ohh how wrong I was. Trying to synchronise Outlook Contacts with my Samsung mobile phone was a world of painful duplicate and triplicate entries, lost information and generally left my contacts FUBAR‘d.

As I neared the end of my contract I looked, again, towards smartphones and as luck would have it, the 2nd generation iPhone was due out mere weeks after my contract finished. I’d already bought a MacBook, was loving it and thought it would solve my problems.

And it did! After a lot of tidying up I managed to get my Address Book (on my MacBook) nicely organised and synchronised with my iPhone. Finally. All sorted.

Then (to cut a long story short) along came Google’s latest ‘Sync’ offering which would let me synchronise my calendars between work and my personal Google calendar (useful when planning physio and dentist appointments!). I was thrilled as this was the last of my PIM issues finally being sorted.

So my calendar is now synchronised and my contacts… yeah they are back to being FUBAR’d as, for some reaason, you can’t get around the first time SYNC ALL option. Google presume that you use their contact management functionality, offered as part of Google Mail. Except I don’t, cos it sucks.

So for the past couple of nights I’ve been deleting duplicate entries, renaming email only entries as Google Mail creates a ‘contact’ everytime you send to a new email address, meaning I have (after a purge) 38 ‘email only’ contacts in my Address Book.

This has pissed me off no end. I like order, I like things to be neat and ‘just so’ and the one area of my personal information, information that *I* should be able to control and manage how *I* want for fecksake, has been nothing but a source of irritation.

Until last night that is, when I downloaded a new app for my iPhone which has helped soothe and calm me and get my contacts sorted out, for once and for all.

And, tomorrow, I’ll tell you all about it.

Previously on 24… er.. this blog…

Tuesday, January 27, 2009 ~ 6 comments so far

One thing I don’t do very often is revisit previous, recent, posts and offer any closure or update. However I think the following are worthwhile revisiting:

1. My iPhone Apps
In the process of writing that post, I realised that the some applications I did have on my iPhone weren’t quite right. So I spent a little time hunting for better alternatives and on the way picked up a couple of new applications.

Replaced applications include:

• Tweetie in for Twitterific – Twitterific was great when it first came out but seems to have been left dormant, Tweetie is far more complete.
• Remember the Milk in for Zenbe lists – Zenbe is a good, web aware, list app but it’s not as good as RTM for task management. I’ve had a badly used RTM account for ages so this was a good push to get me focussed on using it, especially as I’ve now put money behind it (you need a Pro subscription to use the app on your iPhone). Working well so far.

New applications, some of which I’m still evaluating, include:

• CameraBag – a simple photo manipulation app with presets that mimick various effects. Very much a one trick pony but kinda fun nevertheless.
• Tumblrette – I have a Tumblr account, and this app might help me make better use of it rather than just recycling blog posts and Twitter statuses.
• RunKeeper Pro – I had the lite version of this but the Pro version was offered free for one day, so I’ve nabbed it and put it back on the iPhone in the hope I get back to jogging sometime this year.
• MMS – which provides MMS capabilities on my iPhone, not done much with this yet
• SaiSuke – which gives me direct access to all my Google Calendars. Not quite sure why I have this, think I thought it did more than it does!

I also re-jigged my home pages some, and they now look like this (click for bigger):

2. MacBook screen issues.
I reported a weird glow, right in the centre of my MacBook screen, that would appear and disappear, seemingly, intermittently.

The circumstances of when I first noticed this was when I was sitting on the sofa with the laptop, I was facing the window and it was a nice sunny day outside. I was dropping the brightness to eke out a little more battery life (too lazy to go upstairs and get the power cord) and when I dropped the brightness to 0 (a black screen) there was the weird glow right in the middle of the screen. I tried to replicate this effect later in the evening but couldn’t.

Got all that?

Now take a look at this photo of the case of a MacBook. Notice where the Apple logo is, that translucent section of the casing? Right in the middle of the screen.

Yup. That’s right. Sunlight streaming through the Apple logo onto the back of the ‘darkened’ LCD screen.

Thanks to Matt for figuring this out.

So, apparently, it’s not just my Mother that is an idiot.

Speaking of which…

3. My Mother is an idiot.
At Christmas we got my parents a Wii Fit board to go with their new Wii. My Mum has been using it and enjoying the various mini-games, one of which includes using the position of your body on the board to help balance a tight rope walker as he walks between two buildings (on the tight rope).

You lean left on the board to make him lean left, right to go right. It’s pretty basic but quite tricky.

So I could understand when my Mum said that she couldn’t complete the task, that she kept ‘falling off’. It is quite a tricky game.

However it was only when she mentioned it to Dad that she realised why.

She had the Wii Fit board round the wrong way. Lean left to go right…

Sorry Mum, but I need to do SOMETHING to distract from my moment of idiocy!