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Faves in Estados Unidos - Part Two

• Right-on Customer Service.  One day, the wireless receiver of my mouse got overheated (surreal, i know) and would no longer work.  I called Microsoft (were you surprised it is MS?) to report the incident  and no questions asked, they told me they will ship a new version with nary the burning hazard feature and it will arrive brand new in the color of my liking.  Call wrapped up in 5 minutes. Amazing, yes? Wait - here's more!  My work laptop hinted to crash lately and just yesterday it intermittently booted up, barely breathing.  I reported this to our customer service and they verified that it was 3.5 computer years old already which basically means  90 years old in human years.  I was about to cry because my laptop is the cornerstone of my staying productive (or the look of  being productive) and I badly need to salvage my data.  Guess what our customer service did? Here is a picture of my new laptop 15 feet from my doorstep, less than 24 hours after I called them up.  They sent me a new one - overnight shipping! Hallelujah! Isn't it amazing?

 I have observed that this whole concept of quality in customer service seems to be bounded by a good infrastructure - excellent and reliable postal services, sufficient supply of products and good trust with the customer - a naive kind of trust that customers would not abuse the suppliers, because the moment significant number of people do, the whole thing crumbles.  Companies invest on customer service because their business, in this information age, rely heavily on word of mouth, and as what Eric Schmidt (ex-CEO of Google) said (and I paraphrase), the moment we breach the trust of our users, we cease to be reliable, and people would  no longer trust our brand. 

And this kind of simple, all-in, fast and responsive customer service is what I like about the culture here in US.  Would it work in my home country? Yes, of course, we could even be better because we generally are built for service.  But it requires a culture change and more. 

Maybe trust is a good foundation for anything.

Welcome to the Comment Section of My Life.

At the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto Canada. The glass structure is a favorite. If you can see me in this picture trying to check my hair..

I realized that a history of one's person tweets is a history of his/her life condensed into moments. Okay, maybe not moments, a better description might be is it is one's own commentary of his/her life, in its day to day glory.  I was scrolling through my old tweets, even as far back as 2007 and I laughed, cringed, snickered, rolled my eyes, shook my head yet surprisingly amused how I was then. My favorite so far:

"Naiyak ako sa sinulat ni Ryan Agoncillo kay Juday on this month's Preview magazine, wahhh! It's so sweet!" - April 16, 2008.

Yep, you choose: shallow or corny. That's me. I think that if I condense my twitter messages I will get an autobiography of my mundane life, like a behind-the-scenes of my most spectacular (of course!) life story, currently happening.

It's just crazy, this online presence.

---oOo---

Listening to: James Morrison's cover of Michael's Man in the Mirror. It rocks and I guess that's the best thing we can ever get now from Michael's legacy, covers of him.

Apple Gushing

Pramis, gustong gusto ko article na to from Joel On Software: Hitting the High Notes.  He was discussing how you can never replace a very good programmer with multiple average programmers but I'll quote the part where he gushed about Apple's products and how much design and usability was put into it.  I love Apple, aesthetics and all. Theirs is the brand that made the bland white look cool and hip.

Or look at the iPod. You can't change the battery. So when the battery dies, too bad. Get a new iPod. Actually, Apple will replace it if you send it back to the factory, but that costs $65.95. Wowza.

Why can't you change the battery?

My theory is that it's because Apple didn't want to mar the otherwise perfectly smooth, seamless surface of their beautiful, sexy iPod with one of those ghastly battery covers you see on other cheapo consumer crap, with the little latches that are always breaking and the seams that fill up with pocket lint and all that general yuckiness. The iPod is the most seamless piece of consumer electronics I have ever seen. It's beautiful. It feels , like a smooth river stone. One battery latch can blow the whole river stone effect.

Apple made a decision based on style, in fact, iPod is full of decisions that are based on style. And style is not something that 100 programmers at Microsoft or 200 industrial designers at the inaptly-named Creative are going to be able to achieve, because they don't have  Jonathan Ive, and there aren't a heck of a lot of Jonathan Ives floating around.

I'm sorry, I can't stop talking about the iPod. That beautiful thumbwheel with its little clicky sounds ...  Apple spent extra money putting a speaker in the iPod itself so that the thumbwheel clicky sounds would come from the thumbwheel. They could have saved pennies ... pennies! by playing the clicky sounds through the headphones. But the thumbwheel makes you feel like you're in control. People like to feel in control. It makes people happy to feel in control. The fact that the thumbwheel responds smoothly, fluently, and audibly to your commands makes you happy. Not like the other 6,000 pocket-sized consumer electronics bit of junk which take so long booting up that when you hit the on/off switch you have to wait a minute to find out if anything happened. Are you in control? Who knows? When was the last time you had a cell phone that went on the instant you pressed the on button?

Style.

Happiness.

Emotional appeal.

Read the whole article because it's not really about Apple, he he he. I used to stalk his site because he always has good articles and they were always informative. I never understood anything about unicode (during those high-caffeine years when I was doing  programming) until I found his article. I'm too lazy to link it but you can google for it, if you're interested and as confused as I was.

The Love of My Life is a Dominatrix

Google Talk. It's undeniable my friends, Google shall rule the world.  Let me know if you've installed one already and I'll google talk with you.

Why install when you have YM, you may ask. Here's why: Conference call using google talk , broacasting music, podcasts via google talk and much more .

Unique Names, Great Apps

Orkut Profile

I'm posting this from flickr. This picture is a snapshot of my orkut profile. I am enjoying both applications right now, too much actually that I highly recommend them to you. Flickr is a "fancy photo-sharing thing" which I find very, very useful, as I have lots of pictures that I find hard to organize. This is its best feature: You can post your pictures directly to your blog! I'm enjoying a Pro account for 3 months (a gigabyte of storage I think) because 5 of my friends accepted my invitation to join Flickr, yahoooo! A shout out to you!
Now with Orkut. It is friendster only much better, and much faster! It is a community of trusted users, you can only join if someone invites you, kind of snobbish no? That's why gani it's a trusted community, hehe! UI's great, much engaging than friendster. And they have communities! You can select which community you want to join, or you can create your own. For the IT geeks, they have Struts community, Java, etc. but for Google freaks like me, I like Universal Church of Google. ;) I like the little features like member stats, demographics (orkutters are majority (25.94%) black-haired, last time I checked). And there's so much more to explore! Did I mention Orkut is affiliated with Google? And don't you think the creator of Orkut is likeable?

Anyway, Flickr and Orkut both rule my world right now.

Why I deserve a gmail account.

Because I am an independent woman who does not like Destiny's child! Because I protect the environment as much as I can and I'm doing my part to make this world a better place! Because I struggle everyday to be fair, to bring harmony, to understand people even if it's difficult to (those bastards!)! Because I love the sun and refuse to dwell in the dark shadows of the GraySkull eventhough sometimes I'm tempted! Because I'm She-ra! I'm Orco! Because I'm wearing a skirt today and I feel pretty! Because email is my preferred choice of communication second to love! Because The Aquarian has a big heart but is demanding I write an essay on why I deserve a gmail account and she gave me an invite to gmail!

Yes friends! In related news, I got google mail!! It's foliage@gmail.com =). Google requires more than 5 words so dahon is not applicable. But foliage! Foliage is many versions of dahon/me but it's still all me. =). Test it! Go ahead!

Happy Birthday Google!

5 years! I love you very, very much! You inspired me to write my technical paper that my boss ignored, you helped me search for the soul of whoever is my crush-of-the-month, you gave me a billion websites to keep me from dozing off at work, and whatever browser i use, be it internet explorer, firebird or safari, you are my home. I love you and happy birthday!

Update: Teammates celebrated google's birthday by eating icecream! As quoted from tech lead, "Pano na kaya mga projects natin kung wala ang google." True.