AT&T – Getting an Annoying Band Back Together

With the recent purchase of Bell South, it’s like you’re least favorite band getting back together for a reunion tour. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth but at least it’s hard to ignore.

Of all the telecom services the new (same as the old) AT&T offers; mobile, long distance, local, DSL, etc. Only 1.5 of them matter; DSL and mobile. Mobile only matters until a wifi cloud approximates current mobile coverage. Leaving DSL – high speed internet services. Everything else can ride on top of that. (Yes, I’m seriously considering dropping our remaining landline phone for a Skype number.)

This means Net Neutrality is the telecom issue. More on this in Public Knowledge’s Good Fences Make Bad Broadband article.

You Have a Higher Tolerance for Ambiguity in Your Thinking Styles

I suspect anyone who spends more than 5 minutes with me could conclude that, including this neuropolitics.org survey.

Here’s their entire first impression of me:

“Your responses are consistent with the following attributes: You have a higher propensity for large-group social bonding. You have a probable elevation in your dopaminergic activation system. Your right prefrontal cortex is more involved in your political decision making than your left. Your olfactory system plays a less than average role in mating behavior. Indicators of enhanced left prefrontal and bilateral temporal activity in humor detection. Temporal cortical regions are facilitating diminished behavioral inhibition. Color preferences may indicate an enhanced dopamine level in your visual cortex. Responses point to a probable increase in activity in the right anterior cingulate and amygdala. You have a higher tolerance for ambiguity in your thinking styles, and a greater inhibition of your left inferior parietal cortex. Your responses indicated a tendency to classify facial expressions as more threatening, and an elevation in activity in your right amygdala. Overall, your cognitive style is balanced between your left and right hemispheres.”

Weblog, Podcast, Videoblog Workshop – March 25, 2006 at Acadia Cafe

If you’re interested in starting a weblog, podcast, or videoblog and don’t know where to start, come by the Acadia Cafe (1931 Nicollet Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403) on March 25th between 2-6pm.

I’ll be there, with (hopefully) many other local bloggers, podcasters, and videobloggers to show you the ropes. Everyone leaves with more knowledge than they left with.

Bring what you have, Learn what you need, Share what you know.

Wanna help or be helped, put your name in the comments and the times you’ll probably be by the Acadia.

See you there.

More on the Uplifter movement at Uplifter.org

So, there isn’t a panel or anything as formal as that. I’ll be near the door saying ‘Hi’ and helping people in search of bloggy knowledge find those with it that are already there.

Real Estate Agents and Dodo Birds

Steven and Stephen, the dynamic duo behind Freaknomics have a bit on Real Estate Agents being added to the Endangered Species list in the New York Times.

Nothing new to anyone with a little understanding of the real estate market and how the internet has dissolved both travel agents and stock brokers. The more conversations I have about the real estate industry, the more I see how ripe for change it is. Nice to see the issue in the NYT.

Let’s say it takes 5 years of owning a home to make it worth the closing costs. Now, let’s say the home sales slow just a tad. Just enough to push out the timeframe to 7 years. As the NYT article reminds us, 7 years ago stock brokers and travel agents had yet to be replaced by online tools.

Now just might be the last opportunity to sell or buy a home with an agent.

Two Tips for Cingular to Improve Customer Service

I caught Matt Ritchel’s Suddenly, an Industry Is All Ears bit in NYT on how Cingular is trying to improve their customer service.

On page two of the article, Ritchel identifies two small, yet high impact changes Cingular could make to dramatically improve their customer service experience:

“There is also a timer that tells the representatives how long the call is taking — the goal is to average less than 500 seconds a call, or about eight minutes.

The databases also instruct representatives how to address hundreds of billing and technical questions for a hundred different phones and multifunction devices.

To gauge the success of its new efforts, Cingular has deployed an automated questionnaire that gives a third of callers a chance to rate their customer service experience.”

First, drop the timer. Or if you must keep it, don’t show it to the representatives. Removing it will keep them focused on solving the customer’s issue rather than racing the clock. The representatives can’t serve both masters equally. Replace it with a metric more reflective of the business; subscriber counts, churn rates, or the stock price.

Second, send the questionnaire to every caller via email immediately after the call ends. A third might return with useful responses. That’s OK. Offering it to everyone means you care about every customer – not just some random third.

Citywide WiFi Needed in the Twin Cities, As Is Symmetrical DSL

I grabbed lunch with Leif Utne earlier this week. As you might expect, it was a pretty intense conversation on podcasting, technology, politics, and the overlap.

First order of business, I’m down with Minneapolis going with a private company to run citywide WiFi network for the two reasons cited in the Strib article:

  1. Startup Costs
    The faster the city is covered in a wifi cloud, the better. There are issues with that position, and this is one of them. Right now, the city doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to launch a network like this tomorrow. I wish it did. Any number of private companies do. Probably even a few local ones could pull it off. Either way, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and all the suburbs on the Met council need citywide wifi. Now. None of them can support it in-house yet. I don’t know how going with a private company prevents continual study into public ownership. Any funds spent on getting to public ownership should be considered research. Plus, only my water bill goes to the city. My other utilities; gas, electric, internet, phone – all companies (private or otherwise). Is that best? Not sure it matters.
  2. Legal Issues

    “Telephone and cable TV companies might sue the city on the grounds that a Minneapolis public network was using tax dollars to improperly compete with them.”

    FUD, I know, but it’s a good point. High speed WiFi (> 2Mbps) competes with every other communications method; telephone, radio, television. Aside from being inevitable, this is a very good thing. Plus, this is an opportunity for telephone and cable TV companies to offer valuable, unique services rather than collecting rent. Oh yea, both the non-profit HourCar.org and the for-profit ZipCar.com are in town. Choices are good things.

    Additionally, I think cable TV companies would be huge supporters of citywide wifi. It should get them off the hook for continual support of public access. (Citizen have their own “channels” on the internet).

All of this leads to the need for symmetrical (same upload speeds as download) service for everyday people. Why? Simple, the growth in media production isn’t from big media companies. It’s from you. The family photos, audio, and video you’re sharing with family and friends. Everyone a producer.

Imagine a telephone where conversations with your mom had a lag, but from a telemarketer was fine. Imagine a CD player that distorted the music you created, but played Top 40 artists just fine. Where is the line drawn on who gets quality service? When is famous, famous enough?

We live in this world today, and will until ISPs stop artificially bottlenecking transfer rates.

Doc Searles has been posting on Net Neutrality and symmetrical broadband for a while now. It’s taken me a little bit wrap my head around it. I wonder if the handicapping of businesses caused by asymmetrical service could be considered a violation of the Commerce clause.

Either way, this is the same issue I describe in TiVo’s Future is in Videoblogs post. Reminding me, TiVo needs to run BitTorrent and allow subscribers to upload video. Without that, yes, they are toast.

Amazing Race Season 9 – Episode 1

Two-hour kick off to Season 9. Premieres are tough, lots of people to meet right away, 11 teams, 22 people. Nobody jumped out at us during the introductions. They all talked smack in the same way, “Everyone else will underestimate us, and we’ll beat them.” Blah. Once is bravado – 11 times is scripted insipidity.

Destinations without any task associated with them feel pointless. Feels more like an ad, in this case, for the Unique Hotel in San Paulo than a valuable, useful piece of the race.

Detour: Motor Head or Rotor Head
The ‘rotor head’ task sounds really time consuming. True to the race, this one will give you a better flavor of place. Rebuilding a motorcycle from the frame won’t teach you about San Paulo – but it sounds faster. Based on the editing, it wasn’t.

Religious ceremonies in some nondescript Brazilian warehouse? Hmmm. Maybe that’s what we can turn our big boxes into when retailers are done with them – churches for snake worshippers.

Garrick’s Favorites

  • BJ & Tyler – #2
  • Dave & Lori – #4
  • Ray & Yolanda – #7

Feels good to be blogging about the Amazing Race again.

Tuesday Ten Pack – My First Favorites from SXSW 2006

After a week with the 650+ tracks in the first 2006 SXSW Showcasing Artist Bittorrent, here’s the first 10 tracks capturing my attention.

Some New RSS Feed Features

I just added a few, hopefully, useful links (comments, trackback, email, digg) to the RSS feed of Garrick Van Buren .com and my other blogs.

If you’re running WordPress and want to do the same (something like Feedburner’s FeedFlare), here’s the code I’m using:

< ?php comments_popup_link(__('0 Comments'), __('1 Comment'), __('% Comments')); ?> | < a href="" rel="trackback">Trackback< /a> |
< a href="mailto:?Subject=[]%20< ?php str_replace(" ", "%20", the_title_rss()); ?>&Body=< ?php str_replace(" ", "%20", the_author()); ?>%20said%20something%20interesting%20at%20%20< ?php permalink_single_rss() ?>">Email This< /a> | < a href="http://www.digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=< ?php permalink_single_rss() ?>">Digg It< /a>

Be sure to remove the "" to unescape the tags. I put it right after the < ?php the_content() ?> tag.