Techization

Everyone has probably sent an e-mail they regretted right after clicking the send button.  It’s natural to want to include emotion and tone in your e-mails, it’s how we naturally communicate.  Without this tone, our communication would be uninteresting and robotic.  However, without facial expression and non-verbal communication cues included in the transmission, our words can often be taken out of context.  A new Internet tool helps with this problem and it’s way cool!

The service is called ToneCheck.  ToneCheck reports that studies show e-mail is misinterpreted 50% of the time.  That’s a pretty high statistic, don’t you think?  Don’t fear, ToneCheck is here!

ToneCheck flags sentences with words or phrases that may convey unintended emotion or tone, then helps you re-write them. Just like Spell Check… but for Tone.   – ToneCheck.com

It currently only works with Outlook.  However, they will soon be launching support for web-based e-mail like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc.  I highly recommend for anyone in the business environment who deals with a lot of e-mail, especially human resources and managerial positions.   This service could really save you a boat load of office hassle, believe me!  It would also be useful for college students who often communicate with professors via e-mail.  Check it out and let me know what you think of it by commenting!

Happy e-mailing!

Many readers aren’t aware that I’m an avid weather enthusiast.  I’ve loved mother nature’s fury ever since our home was struck by a tornado when I was a child.  I’ve been chasing/spotting severe storms for 10 years total, and 8 years on my own with various chase partners.  I’ve chased all over the upper-plains from Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and into the Dakotas.  In addition to this life-long obsession,  I’ve been an amateur radio operator, or “ham”, for four years.  However, I’ve been involved in two-way radio communications and electronics since I was a child.  Now I have premised my experience, let me get to the point of this blog!

This evening, a large area of severe weather struck Minnesota, eventually making its way into the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.  The Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro SKYWARN swung into action taking check-ins from all over the twin cities metro.  What sounded like an older female was acting as net control.  This operator is my primary, but not only, criticism.

Coming into this evening, I’ve respected the professionalism and coordination the metro SKYWARN group has.  However, now my confidence is shaken. The net control seemed to be lacking the skill set needed for this position.  She couldn’t even keep the difference between watch and warning straight.  I hope she understood the difference at least and was simply mixing them up.  She often repeated “warnings” that did not exist, instead telling operators in outlying counties they had “tornado warnings” when really they were under a “tornado watch”.  This happened at least seven times in a one and a half hour span.  One time she was corrected by another operator on-air, just once.  Otherwise stations simply ask for clarification because what she is saying doesn’t even make sense.

“Washington county under a tornado warning till 11 p.m.”   She stated this at 9:15 p.m. for a squall line racing through.

Wait, an hour and forty-five minute tornado warning!?

Then she’d come back on the air 2 minutes later and say a list of counties like, “Washington, Hennepin, Chisago etc. under a tornado watch till 11 p.m.”

2 minutes later…

“The NWS out of Chanhassen has extended the tornado warning until 3 a.m.”

You can see how confusion can then add up and discredit much of the net.

In all this confusion, a local camp ground manager came on the net and asked for clarification.  I don’t blame him one bit.  He had obviously been tuned in listening to the net and was so twisted by listening to this female net controller, he had no idea what was occurring anymore.  He informed net control he had over 100 campers piled into a safe area and wanted to know if a particular tornado warning had expired so he could release his campground from shelter.  Instead of an answer, another net control station, possibly an emergency manager, told him in a very condescending and direct way to tune into his “AM/FM radio” for the answer.  Are you kidding me?  Is this how you treat a completely understandable request?  Your net control can’t say hardly anything properly and this guy is overseeing the shelter and campers and your giving him a hard time?  There was obvious tension on-air between the campground manager and the net controllers after this spat on the air.  I side 110% with the campground manager.  If your net controller is announcing watches and warnings over the net, reading statements, then they should be held accountable to provide clarification, and not snarky either.

Later into the evening, a station asked the female net control station where the area of interest was and if she had heard of any rotation in a particular storm.  She replied,

“I’m looking at radar now and don’t see any rotation.”

You may ask, what’ s wrong with that?  If she can’t distinguish between a watch and warning correctly, do I really trust her to interpret radar?  I sure wouldn’t.  Is she qualified in the least even as an “amateur radar observer” to know what she’s looking at, and what kind of software is she using?

Then the highlight of the evening.  A station ID’d and checked into the net with a report of UFO’s over the metro.   I laughed quite hard as this man described lights flying in unison across the sky.  He was quite excited and perhaps even a bit liquored up, it was hard to tell.  The net controller instructed this station to dial 911 and report the UFO phenomena.  This led to another operator coming on-air repeatedly cursing the other operator out calling him a “stupid fuc*” and to “have another fuc*ing drink”.  You can see how when your net isn’t properly controlled, things can get out of hand quickly.  You can stop anyone from interrupting a net, but you can deter those by having a clean and well executed net.

So what have we learned?  It is imperative you have the right person “behind the controls” when you need it most.  Tonight’s net controller was obviously not that person and their net was really quite poor.  From constant “repeating” of simple information that took up time and created extra traffic, to false information about warnings and watches and everything in-between, the net was a borderline disaster.  The bright spot was collecting damage reports.  Aside from some problems not being able to transcribe fast enough, most damage reports were handled quite well.  One problem spot on damage reports I heard went like this…

“9463 damage…” operator

45 seconds go by

“9463 damage…” operator

“standing water…” net controller

10 seconds go by

“9463 DAMAGEEEEE”

“station all I heard was standing water over roadway”

I ask how in the world do you get “standing water” when the station is clearly stating his SKYWARN ID number and that he has a damage report. I’m not sure what in the world was going on here.  Again, confusion.

I’m sorry Metro SKYWARN, I thought you were better than this.  I heard bright spots of good, but a wholeeee lot of bad in there tonight.  You and I provide a valuable service to the community and there needs to be professionalism through out the process.  I know you mean well and I know were all volunteers. I hope you choose to do a debriefing on this net and find where the hiccups are and correct them.  I might add a suggestion, look at net control from tonight first and go from there.

A report published I read this week really surprised me, or did it?!  When I think about Internet privacy I imagine my parents who are too afraid to use Facebook or do heavy amounts of online banking or shopping.  They don’t have any kind of presence on the Internet, and they want to keep it that way.  However, some new research has led to some intriguing results.

Mary Madden and Aaron Smith of Pew Internet and American Life Project published a very interesting report, Reputation Management and Social Media, that really put my mind into a spin.

• 44% of young adult Internet users say they take steps to limit the amount of information available about them, compared to 33% of users ages 30 to 49 and 25% of those ages 50 to 64.
• 71% of younger social networking site users actively change their privacy settings to limit what they share with others online, compared to 55% of those 50 to 64.
• 41% have removed their names from photos of them posted by others, compared to just 18% of those 50 to 64.

So what does this say about the state of privacy?  I believe the younger generation is more willing to share their life online and engage in socialmedia.  However, they want to know their in control of the information.  They want the say in what is streamed out, and what is not.  Rightfully so I might add.  A larger portion of the younger generation have an online presence because it truly is “norm” for them.  So even the privacy conscious feel compelled to be on these social platforms; however they really take note of their privacy trying their best to lock it down tight.

Older generations are either with it, or they are completely against it.  If they feel okay with having their information online, they are generally very “open” type people.  They have nothing to hide and don’t fear what others may know about them.  These types of people are much less likely to be overly concerned about privacy.  They don’t change privacy settings and they don’t un-tag photos of themselves.  Those in the older generation didn’t grow up with it so they could take it or leave it, it’s not viewed as a “necessity”, like it is to some of our younger generation.  In essence, the adopters of technology in the old generation are truly comfortable with having their indentity online.

These reasons are why Mary and Aaron received the results they did.  I wouldn’t call them overly surprising, but more so highlighting the generational divide in technology adoption and the varying principles between the two.

When many people hear the word Zappos, they think about shoes.  That is partially correct.  Zappos is a major player in the shoe game online, but their company thrives and is centered around one thing, customer service.

So much of our economy is centered around chasing revenue and meeting market expectations etc.  While having capital to continue operating is important, caring about your customer is more important.  Customers don’t want to be a number or just another face in the crowd.  They want to feel close and cared about by the brands they love.  Your customers keep you in business, care about them, not their money.

Zappos has used strategic moves to serve their customers to the fullest.  Zappos operates their warehouse in Kentucky 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Running a 24 hour warehouse is not the most cost-effective.  It would be cheaper & more efficient to let orders pile-up and let the picker gather a larger number of orders.  However, this practice slows down delivery.  Zappos picks your shoes when you hit the “Submit” button.

The next key in their strategy is Kentucky.  You may be confused like, what, Kentucky… What the #&$^?!  The Zappos warehouse is located just 15 minutes away from the UPS hub located in Louisville, KY.  If you’ve shipped UPS, chances are your package went through the hub in Louisville.  If you order a new set of Crocs at 10:59 p.m., Zappos can have them picked from inventory and on a UPS plane before midnight and you’ll have them the next morning!    Oh, did I mention they will upgrade you to overnight shipping without your knowledge just to surprise you for free.  Zappos calls this the “wow” effect.  They want you to say, “wow!” with every aspect of their company you deal with; ordering, customer service, delivery, you name it.

Zappos by nature is a customer service company that just happens to sell shoes.  Take a look at this real customer feedback:

I don’t purchase a lot of stuff on the Internet, but you guys really changed my mind into doing more. I was going to purchase my shoes with another online store, but I decided to go with you because of the free shipping both ways. So, I placed my order at 4:45am on Thursday. And you did not disappoint! You upgraded my shipping to next day for free, and I am wearing the shoes as I type on Friday at 9:40am. That is what customer service is all about! Thanks, you just earned a lifelong customer by doing the little things right! Again, Thanks

It’s all about doing the right thing.  A recent computer glitch at Zappos caused their prices to be incredibly lower than what they should be listed at.  The funky pricing only lasted about 6 hours.  There were $1500 items selling for only $50 on one of their associated domains.  Orders came in at those prices and Zappos honored that price.  Zappos ended up losing $1.6 million dollars on this 6-hour glitch.  But without even thinking, they honored those prices.  Why scorn their customers when it was their computer glitch that caused the problem, right?  They may have lost out big on those products, but what will that choice do for them in the long-term?  Lots!

Zappos is a perfect cultural atmosphere to study and try to model any business after.  It’s about doing the right thing, caring about your customers and doing the little things.  Little things go a long way, in the long run. Zappos isn’t worried about this quarters revenue; Zappos is concerned about the long-term impacts of their actions.

Don’t sprint, you’re running a marathon.

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Want to learn more about Zappos?  I suggest this 10 minute Nightline segment produced by ABC News.  It really captures what Zappos is all about

I’m sure everyone has heard of the BP oil spill by now, it’s all over the news.  One thing BP has done is setup a live camera from unmanned submarines at the ocean sea floor.  The camera is trained on the oil well 24 hours a day and accessible by anyone on the Internet at any time.  This satisfies our society’s craving for instantaneous data and “LIVE” coverage.  The cam makes the oil spill story much more impactful when you see the oil spewing from the sea floor. However, is BP damaging it’s brand by feeding society’s need for this “LIVE” type coverage?

Every time major news outlets talk about the spill, they show this live camera with oil spewing out.  This is really ingraining this image of oil tainting our oceans into the minds of viewers.  Not only that, the use of the word “BP” as you view the live cam re-enforces that BP is the company involved with the spill.  Twitter users have even began to spread pictures of BP’s logo with a slight modification (see below).

So is BP doing the right thing by streaming the oil spill online 24×7 or are they hurting their reputation and brand even more,as if the spilling of millions of barrels of oil isn’t enough to damage them already.  Does the public have a right to view the problem even though it’s miles below the surface of the gulf?  All I can say is, I hope they hire a great PR firm.

Last year I created a internal memo at the University of Wisconsin — Stout, Wisconsin’s Polytechnic University, about e-readers and their future on college  campuses.  For those uninitiated, UW-Stout is a leader in technology with a high percentage of smart classrooms and providing high quality Macbook’s and HP notebook’s to their students.  Every student on this campus has a laptop.  I think it would be a natural progression to have UW-Stout look into providing their students with this new technology. 

When the Kindle first came out I was excited about it’s potential, but it had many limitations that would make it insufficient for an academic enviornment. It was a non-color screen, so science textbooks would be all but useless no the device.   There was no way to make notes in the margins or alter anything on the screen; us college folks love our little notes in the margins.  I knew that this technology was heading somewhere but it was still in the early stages. 

Now comes the Apple iPad. (cue cheesy music)  A beautiful color screen and plenty of computing power making this a legitimate contender in the ever expanding “how small can I get my personal computing device” race.  It works as a beautiful e-reader and solves some of the problems the Kindle had for use in academic settings.  Some schools are brave enough to jump on the bandwagon early, like Seton Hill University.

“Most of Seton Hill’s 2,145 students will have to pay up to $800 a year in additional technology fees for an expanded wireless network and support system.

And Seton Hill says students may still need to buy textbooks. “We believe the iPad will make e-textbooks more viable to assign and use,” said Kary Coleman, media relations director for the school, in an emailed statement”  (Wall Street Journal)

Some schools are early adopters of the iPad, but Kary makes a good point.  This platform as a digital textbook locker will really take off when publishers start pushing their content to online stores, and that change is coming.   Google is opening an e-book store by this summer while other digital book stores continue to expand their content offerings daily. 

Devices like the Apple iPad and others still in development will look to revolutionize the education industry.  No more heavy backpacks and notebook paper flying all over the room.  A seamless and organized experience, interacting with all your textbooks and notes in one digital environment.   It’s truly an exciting thought.

The shift is occuring, who will be those first “leaders” in this new technology and embrace “e-reader like” devices for textbooks and content creation among students?  It’s still early, but they’re coming.

Want to see the shift that is occurring in action?  Watch this…

British Airways is in the midst of a strike by its crew members causing major havoc for the major airline .  Just in case you are still in the dark, here is a short passage from the Sydney Morning Herald on the current situation.

British Airways cabin crew enter the final stage of a three-day strike Monday, in a dispute over planned changes to pay and conditions that has caused travel misery for thousands of passengers.

After a weekend marked by fierce disagreement over the strike’s effects between the airline and the Unite union, which represents its 12,000 cabin crew, the workers staged a final day of industrial action.

And unless a solution is found to the standoff over attempts by loss-making BA to downgrade its employees’ pay and perks packages, among the most lucrative in the industry, the staff will walk out again for four days from March 27.

Now the chief executive of British Airways, Willie Walsh, came out on YouTube expressing his stance on the strike.  Now what made this move such a great one for British Airways?  Let me explain…

People have great bull sh** detectors built-in.  We as people are not stupid and can read people and situations quite well.  Genuine thoughts and feelings come through and people can sense that.  British Airways could have just issued an official statement and left it at that .  Howver, it would have been carefully crafted by the BA public relations office and consumers would have just ignored it after the first sentence or two, and not given one thought to British Airways stance.  People would have said,”Well they must be doing something unfair to their employees, they are scared to even address head on?!”

Instead of this approach BA came out with a YouTube video showing chief executive Willie Walsh standing in a casual office setting.  No script, no carefully worded sentences.  The video showed Willie’s stance and what the companies feelings are towards the situation.  People want to interact and feel personally connected with their brands.  This is a great example of British Airways personally connecting with their consumers and critics during a rough time.

Great move British Airways,  great move.

I’m working on a presnetation on ambient awareness.  It has been a research area of mine during my years at UW-Stout.  Now I’m pulling together data, white papers and other research to present an overall idea and analysis.  Do you feel closer to your network because of digital ambient awareness.  Does using tools like Facebook, Twiter, Friend Feed etc. lead to more information crossing our networks?  Let me know your thoughts by commenting!

Here starts a story about the geo-location tool Foursquare.  I was a casual Foursquare user for months and found it fun; the special offers at businesses wasn’t a bad deal either.  It made it worth my while to use the tool though I didn’t have any personal friends of mine using the mobile tool.  I finally recruited a few friends to jump on board and the fun began.  Racing for points, vying for mayorship of our most renowned academic buildings.  Finally my two friends, Mikey and Josh, both used it extensively to track their movements just a few days ago, boy was I in for a surprise.

I checked into Harvey Hall for my 9 a.m. statistical anaylsis course, after 5 minutes of sitting down I get an alert notifying me Mikey just checked into Harvey Hall as well.  “Oh, cool” I thought to myself, maybe I’ll run into him.  I thought nothing of it and left at 10 p.m. to get some lunch at our student center on-campus. 

I checked into the student center at 10:08 a.m. to sit down for lunch, shortly thereafter Mikey checked in as well.  My eyes peeled the room looking for Mikey.  However, the student center is a big place so not seeing him eating wasn’t a surprise.  I ate my quesadilla and kept an eye out for Mikey on my way out around 11 a.m.

I returned to my dorm and awaited for my 2:30 p.m. sociological principles course in Harvey Hall.  I made my way up the hill to Harvey Hall, I checked in for the second time today and almost instantanelousy, Mikey checked in as well.  “Whoa, this is getting creepy!  Is Mikey stalking me?”  I chuckled and went to my class, again I didn’t see Mikey in the building as it is very large with my points of exit and entry. 

I wen’t to Price Commons, the main eatery/cafeteria for on-campus students as I do every day at 4:15 p.m.  Heading to the “Commons” is a habit I do every weekday and I have never seen Mikey there before, until this day. I sat down with friends to eat my supper and in walks Mikey no less than 2 minutes later.  “Okay, now I’m really getting freaked out” I said.  How could this be happening?  Is a friend playing a joke or is this a effect of using Foursqaure with my social network of friends.  Don’t jump the gun, the freakiest situation hasn’t happened yet!

Later in the evening my significant other and I decided to have a very late dinner at the local Applebee’s (shameless plug here) for half-off appetizers.  The local Applebee’s closes at 11 p.m. and we arrived at 10:30 p.m on a Tuesday night.  There were no cars in the parking lot except for the four cars of those who were working.  “Awesome, we will get our food really fast!”  We were about to be seated when I look on the window and who do I see?  Josh and Mikey among other friends are walking in 2 minutes behind us, my phones buzzes as they both check-in at Applebee’s with me.  My mind was bugging out over how this could be happening.   Tuesday night, late, miles from our campus and here they are, again! Ahhhhhhhhh!

So what should I make of all this?  Mikey and Josh were not following me on purpose, who has time for that?  They weren’t checking in from alternate locations just to freak me out as I verified them being at most of the places they said they were.  I think this lends to just how small our ‘world’ is.  We have all heard that phrase, “Small world we live in.”  I believe it to be true.  Most of us go through our day in our own little worlds and don’t realize how close we are to other in our own networks.  Foursquare amplifies these connections and it’s very interesting to see just how close you are to your network at all times of the day.  You may be right around the corner from your best friend or acquaintance and not even know it.

Tools like Foursqaure show just how close we all are.  Is my situation skewed a little? Yes, most of these happenings took place on a 4-year univeristy campus.  Could you stalk an avid Foursqaure user?  Absolutley.  However my generation feels much more comfortable with transperancy than previous generations.  Will I stop using it due to this odd day? Absolutley not. 

Foursquare is a great tool that gets its users out to explore their local communities in fun way.  Check out Foursqaure and learn more here.

For those who don’t know me personally, I’m an avid gamer on the PlayStation platform.  Microsoft fan boys need not haze!  When I purchased my PS3 long ago I knew I needed a headset.  Any real gamer must have a headset to communicate with fellow gamers.  I made due with a Mad Catz bluetooth headset for much of that time, and it was an okay peripheral.  The only problem I had was the audio in the ear piece was a little low.  I sure didn’t realize what I had been missing until I bought the official Sony PS3 headset.

Sony did not have a third-party company build a headset and slap their name on it, they built this headset in-house to their specs to match up with the PS3 perfectly.  This headset has two microphones, one on the end for your voice, and one facing outward to take in ambient noise and cancel it out leaving you with clean crisp audio.  Hands down, no contest, no one in the ball park, this headset has the best audio quality on the PS3 platform. 

The button layout on the headset are large and easy to use, even for my large hands.  It fits comfortably on my ear and causes no pain like other headsets I have used.  It comes with the dock you see in the picture above.  What is super cool about that is it will work as a mic even when it’s charging.  When docked, the microphone earpiece acts like a desktop microphone. 

Battery life is about 6-7 hours which is more than most gamers can last in one sitting.  Pairing it with your PS3 via the included USB cable gives you additional features as well.  It will show an on-screen battery indicator and a mute/un-mute icon and offer you a “HQ” audio mode. 

In conclusion, this headset is the top of the line in terms of PS3 headsets.  If your looking for a quality bluetooth ear piece for your system look no further and just drop the money once and be done.  Sony PlayStation hit a homerun with this one!

Price – $49.99