Thursday, August 16, 2007
The IT Seduction
I've been gone from blogging for a couple of days. Tuesday evening saw a reception at my workplace that I planned and two of my kids were involved with, so I very well couldn't have skipped out on that. Last night my husband and I attended a birthday party for a new friend. Regardless of how chatty I appear to be here, I'm quite shy upon first meeting people and this party had lots of people I didn't know. As it turns out, I spoke in depth with four people I met at the party - a personal first for me and ever so cool.
In any case, due to the two evening events, I was simply too tired to blog. What's poopy about this is that I miss blogging, and ache to get back to it. Mind you, I've only been blogging for about a year. My evening computer routine goes something like this: When I can find a free computer (which is quite difficult in this household - two computers + a gamer + a college student + an IMing daughter + a Young Son who checks out YouTube = when does Mom get to blog?), I jump on and first check my emails and respond to those needing responses. I have several accounts to check. Then, if I have a blog post idea, I'll do that. It can take anywhere from ten minutes to an hour, depending on the topic and the post length. Next I'll check the blogs I'm following in Bloglines. Sometimes I leave comments, so that eats up some time. Then I'll check email again. By the time I've done these few online tasks, two-to-three hours have flashed by. Then I'm sick of looking at a computer screen.
Whatever did I do with my time before we had high-speed internet and I had a blog? I had to think about this because I don't really do less housework and I seem to be getting plenty of creative time. I think that I'm not watching as much television in the evening. I'm not much of a couch potato anyway. Even when the TV is on, I'm always flitting around the house. I catch a bunch of my news online now, whereas I used to watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and the local evening news. I've also noticed that I'm going to bed later, but that could just be summer in Minnesota.
I had to secretly cheer for Neil Gaiman's productivity when he lost power due to a storm this past weekend. Without the seduction of the computer, he was able to write. Pen, paper and candlelight, anyone?
In any case, due to the two evening events, I was simply too tired to blog. What's poopy about this is that I miss blogging, and ache to get back to it. Mind you, I've only been blogging for about a year. My evening computer routine goes something like this: When I can find a free computer (which is quite difficult in this household - two computers + a gamer + a college student + an IMing daughter + a Young Son who checks out YouTube = when does Mom get to blog?), I jump on and first check my emails and respond to those needing responses. I have several accounts to check. Then, if I have a blog post idea, I'll do that. It can take anywhere from ten minutes to an hour, depending on the topic and the post length. Next I'll check the blogs I'm following in Bloglines. Sometimes I leave comments, so that eats up some time. Then I'll check email again. By the time I've done these few online tasks, two-to-three hours have flashed by. Then I'm sick of looking at a computer screen.
Whatever did I do with my time before we had high-speed internet and I had a blog? I had to think about this because I don't really do less housework and I seem to be getting plenty of creative time. I think that I'm not watching as much television in the evening. I'm not much of a couch potato anyway. Even when the TV is on, I'm always flitting around the house. I catch a bunch of my news online now, whereas I used to watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and the local evening news. I've also noticed that I'm going to bed later, but that could just be summer in Minnesota.
I had to secretly cheer for Neil Gaiman's productivity when he lost power due to a storm this past weekend. Without the seduction of the computer, he was able to write. Pen, paper and candlelight, anyone?
Labels: blogging, children, computer, creative, email, husband, neil gaiman, technology, television, time, work, writing
Friday, April 06, 2007
Leaving Passwords to Heirs
If you inhabit the online world, you've probably accumulated a few user names and passwords to your various accounts - email, blogs, news aggregators, online stores, etc. We've all been told not to leave these things laying around, make sure they're secure. So, what happens to these things when you die? I have a gmail account in which I keep quite a bit of past personal correspondence. That's a personal archive, akin to written letters of the past. If I were to keep my user name and password to myself, this personal correspondence would be lost when I die. My suggestion? Keep your user names and passwords secure, of course, but come up with a way to give this information to your heirs upon your death. Be sure to choose someone you trust. After all, Google's not going to be providing anyone with paper copies of their emails any time soon.
Labels: april fool's, archive, blog, email, google, heirs, internet, letters, passwords
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Status Upgrade from Interesting to Truly Interesting
I was reading Moby's blog the other day and wanted to comment on his posts. He seems like a pretty liberal and interesting guy, but there's no way to comment directly to him because he's famous and probably doesn't want to deal with a bunch of cuckoo-loos. (You can post to the message boards, which Moby says he reads, but they tend to degenerate into troll fights and wander off topic.) Then, I got to thinking about some of the other blogs I read, notably Seth Godin's and Neil Gaiman's, and how they don't have their comments enabled. It seems that when one reaches the status of Truly Interesting Human Being (as opposed to Interesting Human Being), one gets flooded with comments and no longer has time to read or respond to them. There goes the commenting feature. Neil and Seth both accept email, though. Neil is forthright in saying that he gets so much email that he can't answer it all and has a backlog of over 1,000. Seth, so far, has responded to every email I've sent (I don't send many - no need to inundate him), albeit his responses are very short. He's a busy guy, so this makes sense, and, frankly, I find it incredible that he has time to respond even this much. It just shows that he is as remarkable as his purple cow.
So, now I'm wondering: At what point does one upgrade from Interesting Human Being to Truly Interesting Human Being such that they have to turn off their commenting feature and can no longer respond personally to people?
So, now I'm wondering: At what point does one upgrade from Interesting Human Being to Truly Interesting Human Being such that they have to turn off their commenting feature and can no longer respond personally to people?
Labels: blog, comments, cuckoo-loos, email, human being, moby, neil gaiman, purple cow, seth godin, status, trolls
Friday, November 17, 2006
Open to Misinterpretation
This is old news, I know, but it bears repeating because apparently I've been misinterpreted. A study done by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, as reported in Wired News, shows that about half of the time we misinterpret the meaning of email because we have no social cues to show us the emotional tone of the content. In other words, if you're joking about something, people will assume you are serious half the time. The study also showed that we assume ninety percent of the time that we are correct in our interpretation.
I found a great blog post on this at The Mad Dog Weekly.
Recently, I sent an email to another blogger - someone I don't know, but who blogs about writing and has some interesting posts. I wished her a happy NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and she responded by asking more about me. I gave her a brief description and ended by telling her not to let me distract her from novel writing. I said that if she wanted to respond, she could set a word count and when she reached it, she could respond - using the response as a carrot, if you will. She has not responded. All I can think is that she misinterpreted my ending as pomposity or arrogance, which was not my intent. I've tried NaNoWriMo and I'll use any excuse not to write. If someone new emailed me, I'd be all over myself wanting to respond and ignoring the novel. Unless, of course, I set myself a word count to reach and then used the promised time to respond as the carrot. My tone was meant to be light-hearted, a jest more about myself than about the recipient.
What I don't understand about emails that bother us in some way is why we don't write back and ask the intent of the email, rather than stew about it. I am as guilty of stewing as anyone, so I'm going to have to figure out how to circumvent this natural reaction.
I found a great blog post on this at The Mad Dog Weekly.
Recently, I sent an email to another blogger - someone I don't know, but who blogs about writing and has some interesting posts. I wished her a happy NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and she responded by asking more about me. I gave her a brief description and ended by telling her not to let me distract her from novel writing. I said that if she wanted to respond, she could set a word count and when she reached it, she could respond - using the response as a carrot, if you will. She has not responded. All I can think is that she misinterpreted my ending as pomposity or arrogance, which was not my intent. I've tried NaNoWriMo and I'll use any excuse not to write. If someone new emailed me, I'd be all over myself wanting to respond and ignoring the novel. Unless, of course, I set myself a word count to reach and then used the promised time to respond as the carrot. My tone was meant to be light-hearted, a jest more about myself than about the recipient.
What I don't understand about emails that bother us in some way is why we don't write back and ask the intent of the email, rather than stew about it. I am as guilty of stewing as anyone, so I'm going to have to figure out how to circumvent this natural reaction.
Labels: blogger, email, journal of personality and social psychology, mad dog weekly, misinterpretation, nanowrimo, wired
Monday, October 16, 2006
Heaving Peevishness
Ever use an online service, have trouble with that service, write an email asking for help, and get no response?
I don't know about you, but this throws me into a state of heaving peevishness. I froth at the mouth, spit, swear, cry in frustration, and about go bald pulling tufts of hair out of my head. An aneurysm threatens to form and burst in my brain.
Why does this situation cause such a visceral reaction? Because it is a massive slap in the face - an outright refusal of assistance - the ultimate in disrespect.
I had an attack of heaving peevishness this past weekend. The culprit? Haloscan, my commenting and trackback service for the blog. For some odd reason, the comment and trackback links were not appearing with my blog entries. I went to Haloscan for answers. Before asking for help, Haloscan requires users to look through its Forum. I obliged and found that other users had the same problem, but no real solution was given. I wanted to post to the Forum so that Haloscan could see how wide-spread the problem was. I was already logged in to my Haloscan account, which should automatically give me access to comment on the Forum. The Forum, however, insisted that I was a guest and asked me to sign in. I tried signing in and got the following message:
Sorry, the password was wrong. All passwords are case sensitive
Understand that I entered the very same user name and password that had already logged me into Haloscan. Entering and re-entering this data got me the same response. Now I had two problems, so I decided to contact Haloscan via their email address, which is practically impossible to find on their website. Somehow I stumbled upon it, but it comes with a warning. No one is allowed to use it for commenting issues, which was exactly the trouble I was having. WHAT!?! You have a contact email address, but people aren't allowed to use it to get help? What kind of customer service is this? Instead, we are redirected to the Forum, where we are supposed to sift through about 473 posts and comments in order to find a solution.
Being persnickety, I used the email address anyway. I haven't gotten a response. More heaving peevishness.
Haloscan isn't the only culprit in the no response game. I've had the same trouble with Technorati and PubSub. (I wrote about PubSub in my Newbies post.)
Seth Godin is forever pushing companies to become remarkable. Well, not a single one of these online companies will be remarkable until they take customer service (including responding to individual emails) seriously. I don't care if they have a staff of two. I don't care how hard it is for them to get their work done. I don't care if the service is free to users and they think that non-paying users are less important than paying customers. Without making customer service an essential piece of their business model, they will never be great businesses. (Frankly, I'm not asking them to do anything I wouldn't do myself at my job.)
An online business that gets it right is Blogger. Every question I've ever had about the interface is built so intuitively into their Help pages that I have never had a need to contact Blogger. Then, to be sure each Help page is truly helpful, Blogger asks at the end of each topic if it was helpful to you. Bliss!
If you're trying to become a remarkable online business, here's my advice to you:
1. As you're designing your website, think about how you're going to handle customer service. Make it a priority.
2. Make it easy to contact you. Make your contact link or button obvious and put it on every page in the same location.
3. Respond to email queries. If you can't cope with bad feedback constructively, learn how to do it. It's inevitable. Deal with it gracefully, and your ticked off customer will start praising you.
4. If you have Help pages on your website, make them easy to use. Don't shunt us off to Forums, hunting and pecking for answers. Put your FAQs on a FAQs page and make the page easy to find.
5. Don't expect everyone to be web savvy. People don't always think to look at Help pages or FAQs, so don't get bent out of shape if they contact you via email when the answer is already on your website. When heaving peevishness hits, people are even less willing to hunt for answers. They want something done NOW and email is the quickest way they can think of to ask their question.
'nuf said.
I don't know about you, but this throws me into a state of heaving peevishness. I froth at the mouth, spit, swear, cry in frustration, and about go bald pulling tufts of hair out of my head. An aneurysm threatens to form and burst in my brain.
Why does this situation cause such a visceral reaction? Because it is a massive slap in the face - an outright refusal of assistance - the ultimate in disrespect.
I had an attack of heaving peevishness this past weekend. The culprit? Haloscan, my commenting and trackback service for the blog. For some odd reason, the comment and trackback links were not appearing with my blog entries. I went to Haloscan for answers. Before asking for help, Haloscan requires users to look through its Forum. I obliged and found that other users had the same problem, but no real solution was given. I wanted to post to the Forum so that Haloscan could see how wide-spread the problem was. I was already logged in to my Haloscan account, which should automatically give me access to comment on the Forum. The Forum, however, insisted that I was a guest and asked me to sign in. I tried signing in and got the following message:
Sorry, the password was wrong. All passwords are case sensitive
Understand that I entered the very same user name and password that had already logged me into Haloscan. Entering and re-entering this data got me the same response. Now I had two problems, so I decided to contact Haloscan via their email address, which is practically impossible to find on their website. Somehow I stumbled upon it, but it comes with a warning. No one is allowed to use it for commenting issues, which was exactly the trouble I was having. WHAT!?! You have a contact email address, but people aren't allowed to use it to get help? What kind of customer service is this? Instead, we are redirected to the Forum, where we are supposed to sift through about 473 posts and comments in order to find a solution.
Being persnickety, I used the email address anyway. I haven't gotten a response. More heaving peevishness.
Haloscan isn't the only culprit in the no response game. I've had the same trouble with Technorati and PubSub. (I wrote about PubSub in my Newbies post.)
Seth Godin is forever pushing companies to become remarkable. Well, not a single one of these online companies will be remarkable until they take customer service (including responding to individual emails) seriously. I don't care if they have a staff of two. I don't care how hard it is for them to get their work done. I don't care if the service is free to users and they think that non-paying users are less important than paying customers. Without making customer service an essential piece of their business model, they will never be great businesses. (Frankly, I'm not asking them to do anything I wouldn't do myself at my job.)
An online business that gets it right is Blogger. Every question I've ever had about the interface is built so intuitively into their Help pages that I have never had a need to contact Blogger. Then, to be sure each Help page is truly helpful, Blogger asks at the end of each topic if it was helpful to you. Bliss!
If you're trying to become a remarkable online business, here's my advice to you:
1. As you're designing your website, think about how you're going to handle customer service. Make it a priority.
2. Make it easy to contact you. Make your contact link or button obvious and put it on every page in the same location.
3. Respond to email queries. If you can't cope with bad feedback constructively, learn how to do it. It's inevitable. Deal with it gracefully, and your ticked off customer will start praising you.
4. If you have Help pages on your website, make them easy to use. Don't shunt us off to Forums, hunting and pecking for answers. Put your FAQs on a FAQs page and make the page easy to find.
5. Don't expect everyone to be web savvy. People don't always think to look at Help pages or FAQs, so don't get bent out of shape if they contact you via email when the answer is already on your website. When heaving peevishness hits, people are even less willing to hunt for answers. They want something done NOW and email is the quickest way they can think of to ask their question.
'nuf said.
Labels: advice, blog, blogger, customer service, email, peevish, problem, seth godin
