We took a trip up to Springfield, MO Saturday to get Silver serviced, saw the aftermath of the ice storm, and focused on what we are doing with Design Ninjas. You may recall our Creation Story where we said, “Why do We Kick Ass? Because we can!” This remains true, but we are considering changing our Tagline to Kick Ass Branding! Our focus is tightening, as you can see from the reduced number of categories on the right, and this is just the beginning.
I have Spector 360 installed at one of our customer’s locations and it has been running successfully for a month. But, today Symantec attacked. Apparently they released an update that detects Spector 360 as spyware and quarantines it. Symantec detects Spector as Spyware.Spector, so the first step is to go into Symantec and in every scan you have setup you have to configure it to exclude Spyware.Spector. Then you have to get two new files from Spector: spuninst.exe and spsetup.exe. Those two files have to be copied over to the Spector 360 and overwrite the old files with the same name. You then have to go into the Control Panel and create a new configuration file with the Deployment utility. Then you must redeploy all Spector installations. It’s frustrating when Symantec attacks.
The old cliche is that 90% of success is just showing up. So what’s the other 10%? You listen and look. You ask questions and see. You play around, understand, and take action. That’s what we do!
We’re on the Beach when the call comes in. We go to Waffle House to check out the situation. We find a WiFi Hotspot to troubleshoot. We return to base for Research & Development on the Dual Screens. Everybody gets what they want!
I went to order the Microsoft Action Pack today, since we are Microsoft Registered Partners, but I was out of luck. Apparently if you don’t login to their site within 90 days they cancel your passport and you have to re-associate and jump through a million hoops. I decided I would just call them to get it straightened out The first person attempted to be helpful and set me up with yet another Microsoft Passport, using a different email address of course because the one I was using was expired and for some reason they wanted a completely new email address. I decided on my Yahoo address for this time around. The Microsoft lady got most of it setup where I could login to part of the Partner Program screens and I told her that was good enough for me….I had been on the phone 1/2 hour and had other people calling so I was ready to hang up. I finished the work day and then this evening tried to login to order the Action Pack, but no luck, it only recognized me as a “Guest” so I couldn’t get to the screen I needed. I called Microsoft again and they did some other stuff that didn’t work, told me that I couldn’t order the Action Pack over the phone, and that I needed to take screen shots of every screen I see and email it to them for troubleshooting. This seemed very odd, but I did as they said. So, here are the screen shots and the hoops I jumped through while attempting to order an Action Pack, not to mention I was forced to use Internet Exploder because they don’t support Firefox:
1. Sign in:
2. Get Greeted as a Guest (lacks the personal touch, they could have at least called me by my number)
3. Go to “Manage My Membership” although there wasn’t any managing I could do
4. Start to Get Hopeful because it looks like I’m almost there
5. Get to the screen that tells me I have to be who I am to order the action pack (a registered partner) and won’t let me go any further
6. Get visual confirmation from Microsoft that their website is totally fucked
I’m still waiting to hear back from Microsoft’s diagnosis of my screen shots (ha), they say it could be 48 hours. Maybe I should just not order it and instead hang on to my money!
I don’t know if you can trust any CEO, but I will say this. I watch Steve Jobs and it doesn’t matter whether I like or believe what he’s saying, I’m always entertained. I watch Steve Balmer and it doesn’t matter whether I like or believe what he’s saying, I just keep thinking that this guy is going to steal my wallet and then lie about it.
Exactly. To serve our current customers, we feel obliged to upgrade to Vista so that we can better serve them, but then we feel that we are contributing to Dinosaurs who are going to die anyway. It’s not a question of going to Mac or Linux, it’s going to Mobile. You know, skating to where the puck’s going to be.
…ability to bring into focus the feature or functionality that you want to use, and fading the rest in the background. The simplicity triggers usage almost intuitively….The emergence of the active and fluid user interface stems from the trend that the devices are becoming multifunctional, and complex….The fluid UI is the natural evolution. In an era where hyper commoditization is part of doing business, UI and by extension the user experience is the crucial barrier to entry.
So your Design — Web, Brand, Process — must work on a desktop, laptop, handheld, or web phone, if you want to succeed.
Some of you may know that Bill & I also currently run Twin Lakes Computer Magic, where we provide computer support and networking services. Recently we setup UltraVNC Single Click. It was quite a pain to setup, but now all we it takes for us to offer someone remote support is direct them to:
1. Go to TLCmagic.com
2. Click the link at the bottom of the page
3. Click Run twice
4. Then Double click where it says: “Double Click Here to Get Remote Support”
That’s it, four steps and we are connected. There is no typing in numbers or messing with routers on the customers end. You can even shorten the process to skip the last step, but I haven’t done that yet. This software allows us to continue in the direction of being more mobile! I love it!
Today I bought some Agent Cool Blue mouthwash for our kids. I liked the idea of the mouthwash highlighting the plaque, so that the kids would brush better, but what I loved most was the design of the bottle. They’ve designed the bottle to make it easy for kids to measure the right amount. I love good process design. Way to go Agent Cool Blue!
Today I’ve been working on a website redesign for TLCmagic. Bill and I wanted something simple, fluid, and functional. We decided to try out WordPress for this transition after we read this article . In that article they mention these as reasons to base a website off of WordPress:
* editing without needing to know HTML
* reader participation through comments
* organization of the content using tags
* seamless handling of pre-existing URLs
* easy addition of new functionality (because it is “open source”)
* free support by the very responsive developer and user communities
