.Dust » Personal http://www.dotdust.com An Innovation Weblog Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:27:16 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc Let Me Introduce You To Beatrice http://www.dotdust.com/let-me-introduce-you-to-beatrice-363.htm http://www.dotdust.com/let-me-introduce-you-to-beatrice-363.htm#comments Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:25:39 +0000 AG http://www.dotdust.com/?p=363



Beatrice was born today at 16.45 and she’s weighting 3500 grams.

Both Beatrice and her mother are fine and already smiling at each other.

Oh, and she was born on the 4th of July? What could I expect from an american wife?

Beatrice

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]]> http://www.dotdust.com/let-me-introduce-you-to-beatrice-363.htm/feed 4 Too Difficult To Talk With You http://www.dotdust.com/too-difficult-to-talk-with-you-329.htm http://www.dotdust.com/too-difficult-to-talk-with-you-329.htm#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:23:48 +0000 AG http://www.dotdust.com/too-difficult-to-talk-with-you-329.htm



This had to be a funny day. I just left my home this morning with my old car heading to the car dealer where I had to pick up my brand new car.

The brand of the car is not really relevant but it is important to say that is is one of the three biggest German manufacturer.

When I finished signing an infinite amount of paper we headed to the park where I could pick up the car…

Surprise!

The engine did not start at all. It was quite embarassing for the sales guy to see me sitting in the car trying to turn it on with no effect. He called the mechanical department to try figure out what was happening. After almost an hour I left the dealer with another car while they will try to fix the issue.

Actually I am a very calm guy and I understand that this can happen. I was actually very polite and I just said I was quite sad about what happened.

I came back to the office and I decided to write an email just to state how sad the experience was. I was thinking that it would have been quite simple to do that but I was wrong.

The first email I tried bounced back from the manufacturer corporate site, and the very same happened to the second email address I tried. I ended up making a phone call and wrote an email to the dealer customer care.

That was quite surprising to me.

If I had to give a couple of suggestions to the car manufacturer I would say:

  • Check that the e-mail addresses on your web site are correct.
  • Check that those email addresses are fully set up and working. Check again on a regular base (a very simple script would suffice).
  • If your customers spent thousands of Euro on your products, please give them real people contact names and not something like carmanufacturer@carmanufacturer.com.
  • Last but not least, try to turn the engine before the customer is in front of you.

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]]> http://www.dotdust.com/too-difficult-to-talk-with-you-329.htm/feed 0 My MacBook In A Microsoft Forest (Reprise) http://www.dotdust.com/my-macbook-in-a-microsoft-forest-reprise-325.htm http://www.dotdust.com/my-macbook-in-a-microsoft-forest-reprise-325.htm#comments Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:39:03 +0000 AG http://www.dotdust.com/my-macbook-in-a-microsoft-forest-reprise-325.htm



As I wrote in my previous post on the subject I was trying to get MSN Messenger working from my MacBook Pro with our company ISA proxy server.

The main issue here is that our company requires NTLM V2 authentication on the ISA proxy.

After another round of investigations I was finally able to get it working.

I found cntlm, and it works as a charm.

I compiled it and set it up in a few minutes and since then I had no problem at all with all of my services that need to go through our ISA proxy server.

My machine is actually running Tiger Version 10.4.11 and the application compiled with no problems except a couple of warnings I will investigate when I will have some spare time.

I slightly changed the configure script changing this line:

CCS=”xlc_r gcc”

in

CCS=”gcc”

The proxy is running fine from a couple of days and its performance is very good.

Definitely something you should try if you have the very same issue.

P.S. I know this is a little bit off track but I still receive a lot of requests on the subjects. I hope this helps.

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]]> http://www.dotdust.com/my-macbook-in-a-microsoft-forest-reprise-325.htm/feed 1 Energy Speaker Systems Or The Customer Care In The Web 2.0 Era http://www.dotdust.com/energy-speaker-systems-or-the-customer-care-in-the-web-20-era-299.htm http://www.dotdust.com/energy-speaker-systems-or-the-customer-care-in-the-web-20-era-299.htm#comments Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:33:52 +0000 AG http://www.dotdust.com/energy-speaker-systems-or-the-customer-care-in-the-web-20-era-299.htm



20071127Energy.gifI have been a customer of Energy Speaker Systems for the last ten years and I have always been very happy about their products. I find that they really offer superior quality for the price tag.

Three months ago the wall mount of my Energy Encore Sys C-1 broke letting the speaker fall on the sofa. The same thing happened to the other wall mount two week later letting the speaker fall on my wood floor. Too bad.

The interesting thing is that these wall mounts broke without any significant external event. They are out of reach and nobody could hit or move them. I gave a look at the broken pieces of the wall mount and it really seems that they broke by stress of material.

I decided to visit the Energy web site in order to find replacements for wall mounts. I did not want to get free replacement, I just wanted to find replacement for them and I was willing to pay for them.

I finally found the contact page and was quite disappointed to find that it was only a web form. Usually this means that nobody will take ownership of your problem and will never respond. Actually this is what happened. Nobody ever answered my support request.

Two weeks I tried another time. We all know that systems may fail. Let’s give them another chance. Again, no answer.

I decided to reroute my support request to the US branch instead of the European one and last week I tried to contact them again. Same result. No answer.

This somehow remembers me the long bloody story I had with Pixmania. Same issue, same problems. I could only find a web form to contact their customer care. No answer from them after ten tentatives. I went through their domain registration details, found the main company of the groups, had a look at their investor relation site and found the name of the CEO to whom I wrote receiving an anwer the day after. (By the way I still feel very sad for that poor lady of the customer care that has to work for such an arrogant boss as the director of customer care proved to be. You have my support.)

I am wondering if I have to go through the same process again with Energy.

Is this the way companies have to deal with their customers? I do not think so. I would like to find a real e-mail address to which I can write. I would like to find a human being on the other side and not an automatic responder.

I perfectly know this cost you time and money but at least you will not ever had a customer non recommending your company for future purchase. This is what I will do with Energy Speaker Systems.

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]]> http://www.dotdust.com/energy-speaker-systems-or-the-customer-care-in-the-web-20-era-299.htm/feed 1 My MacBook In A Microsoft Forest http://www.dotdust.com/my-macbook-in-a-microsoft-forest-286.htm http://www.dotdust.com/my-macbook-in-a-microsoft-forest-286.htm#comments Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:53:16 +0000 AG http://www.dotdust.com/my-macbook-in-a-microsoft-forest-286.htm



Innovation should make your life easier, but, as we will see this sometimes does not happen.

A few days ago my office WindowsXP laptop started to show some fancy white line oc the lcd display clearly indicating that it was going to break in days. I made a quick call to our IT guys and managed to get the promise that the pc would be replaced as soon as new PCs were arrived.

In the meantime I decided to give my MacBook a try in our office environment.

We live in an Active Directory domain with an ISA server managing internet connection with the rest of the world.

Followin the tale of the integration:

  • Using standard Active Domain support on Mac OS X I was able to join the domain.
  • For some reason I have not been able to determine our printers do not sit on the Active Domain but on another couple of servers that are on a Windows Workgroup. Fine, I joined the Windows Workgroup domain too. Unfortunately I was not able to print anything.
  • After a few investigations I discovered the AdmitMac software and after five minutes of testing I fired the 119,00 USD order to these smart guys. In ten minutes I joined both domains and was able to happily print from my mac. I strongly suggest this piece of software. It works and it’s really reliable. Highly reccomended.
  • Next Step. Microsoft Office for Mac. Installed in fifteen minutes and configured Entourage in less than a minute. Loved it. Unfortunately our IT guys do not disclose the IP address of our LDAP server. Fire up ethereal and chase the ip address of the LDAP server. Another five minutes. Once I found the correct address the Address Book lookup worked as a charm.
  • I had no problem using Firefox with our ISA proxy server since it do support NTLM authentication. The only annoying thing is that you need to type your credentials after you have fired it.
  • The last thing was MSN Messenger for Mac. That was tough… we have that bloody ISA server that requires NTLM authentication. I tested pretty much everything and I ended up using ntlmaps. It worked for a day or so and then stopped working. I do not really know what’s wrong but at the end of the day I decided to fire up Parallels and run MSN Live Messenger from there. If some of you have found some smarter solution please drop me a line.

I can say it was not painful but the only thing I have to notice is that if you are not a computer literate you will not go through all of the hurdles.

Why do I blog this? Does technology has to be user friendly?

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]]> http://www.dotdust.com/my-macbook-in-a-microsoft-forest-286.htm/feed 1 Time For A Change http://www.dotdust.com/time-for-a-change-285.htm http://www.dotdust.com/time-for-a-change-285.htm#comments Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:28:34 +0000 AG http://www.dotdust.com/time-for-a-change-285.htm



Unfortunately in the last few weeks I have not been able to write a lot on this blog.

After a little bit less than three years I have left the Innovation team in H3G and joined the Handsets Team as Product Development Manager. My team will be responsible for User Interface, Graphical User Interface, Industrial Design and Product Development. I have spent most of the last two weeks trying to understand where we are and where we want to go.

The good news is that I have a team of brilliant and motivated people the will help me in this new adventure.

After three years it was definitely time for a change. You know what I mean.

Personally Piccoletto (my 10 months old son) has taken a flu and the mother and myself spent every single night with him. It was his first flu and our first experience with an ill bay in the house. Interesting experience that basically left us with no forces at all. We will recover, hopefully.

That’s it.. there was no time left for everything else except some microblogging on the fly on Jaiku (btw, congrats to Jyri and Petteri for the deal with Google).

I hope to start writing here on a regular basis in the very next few days. I will still talk about innovation with the usual close look at mobiles.

See you soon.

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]]> http://www.dotdust.com/time-for-a-change-285.htm/feed 0 Lend to Kiva http://www.dotdust.com/lend-to-kiva-199.htm http://www.dotdust.com/lend-to-kiva-199.htm#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2007 13:40:12 +0000 AG http://www.dotdust.com/lend-to-kiva-199.htm



20070313Kiva.pngThis post is kind of personal.

When I get home and check the snail mail mailbox I usually find request for donations coming from different organizations. Sometimes I decided to donate some money to some of these organizations, sometimes I simply forgot about them.

When I donate I always ask to myself where this money will really go. Most of the times you have no chance to know how your money was used and I sometimes feel suspicious about that.

November last year I joined Kiva and that was a revolution. Sort of.

Let’s have a look at what Kiva does:

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

  • They do this implementing a very simple process called “The Loan Cycle”:
  • Lenders pick a business and make a loan using their credit card.
  • Kiva transfers funds to local partners. Partners disburses loans to each business.
  • Over time, partners collects repayments and provides business updates to Kiva.org.
  • Funds are returned to lender. Kiva lender may withdraw or re-lend.

I found this really great for a number of reasons:

  • You have the real touch. You can look at your funded business and how they progress in time.
  • You can reuse the money you have given. This is one of the most important things to me. With same money you end up helping several different business in the world.
  • The idea that many lenders help a single business is great.
  • I know where my money is going and I may choose which projects to finance.

The minimum amount of money you can lend is 25 USD that is a small omount in rich countries. Pretty much everybody can afford that.

Why do I blog this? I have always loved the concept of Micro Financing. Kiva is one good approach to the subject when you find yourself sitting in the office.

P.S. I hope that some of you will join Kiva and will lend some money to some business in need.

P.P.S. If you want to look at my lender page, just click here.

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