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I just got back from a vacation where most of the time was spent touring around the North East of the United States.  I have never driven there and wanted a leg up on looking like a yokel so I dove in and purchased a GPS unit.  Many of the cars I looked at buying recently have one built in but I had hoped to find one that was small enough to also be useful as a walking nav unit.

My searches found several likely suspects and I was almost a Tom Tom owner when the nuvi 200 popped up on sale at amazon.com.  As any good American I delayed my purchase until online was no longer a viable option for my trip and I began to scurry about to find one locally.  Enter Radio Shack who apparently was sure everyone would want the wider screen of the Nuvi 220 but did happen to have one of the units for sale nearby.  I went and picked it up on my way home that Friday and packed it with the rest of my gear for the trip that Saturday evening.

We began our trip and my exposure to the wonders of having yet another person in the car telling me where to go and I have to say I was really impressed.  The Nuvi is lite, the controls are simple, and it has everything you will need in the box.  Unless you require a special bag or case for the GPS, in that event you will be going shopping. Pretty quickly we experienced the now familiar “recalculating” as we decided to pull of to an Apple orchard/packaging facility in Maryland or rest stop or gas station or restaurant.  Pretty much anything beyond the single minded pursuit of our destination made our poor GPS let us know that she needed to recalculate to figure out how to get me back where we needed to be going.

That’s when she got her name, we thought if she were alive the one question she would constantly be asking herself is “Is he ever going to follow my instructions?”.  Thus Izzy became our navigator on the trip.  Travling through Buffalo NY or Boston MA or Philidelphia PA, they were all no match for Izzy’s sense of direction and knowledge of local hotels, restaurants and gas stations.  The trip was really very easy and enjoyable having one of these little wonders with us.  So, if your going on a trip, or travel occasionally outside a 10 mile radius of your home then you should look into one of these units.  They are handy for more than just directions as they also serve up info on local points of interest and trip info such as time in movement and speed.

Garmin Site for nüvi 200

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Because I don’t want to encourage Spam to these poeple I have altered the emails and phone number where appropriate to conceal their true contact info.  Other than that this is the email I replied to my Dell rep with after he sent me a email questionaire asking for a few answers.

———— email appears below ———- 

Unfortuantly Dell wisely chose to place a Confidentiality notice on their email, I have altered my response to allow you to see what their questions were…

Person who I can’t name due to notice,

I am answering your questions below in the form of a transcription of my efforts to buy a Dell server today…

It begins with the fact I am looking to buy a server today.  I have an HP in mind but want an alternate price and perhaps an alternate vendor.  It will be a Quad Quad capable box with 24 GB of ram.  Your out so I tried to call QChrisQ, couldn’t get his number down fast enough so I called back and zero’d out to the operator.  Kenisha badge number zzzyyyqqq wouldn’t transfer me until after I gave her the customer number you gave me in the email until I sent her a pimnt of blood for analysis.  Why she had to verify all our account info before she would transfer me I can’t imagine.  I suppose it is because your customers never call in this number a second time and you want to make sure you had their info correct.  How do you sell anything with this system?  I am of course typing this while on hold with Kenisha looking to find Chris’s number, I guess I should have just called and listened to your message again and hoped for the best or used email.  But neither of those two methods are what I would call high customer service.

12 minutes so far on the call…

I think the above qualifies as an answer to question 1. (Which I can’t leave below because of your notice, but essentially I am paraphrasing of course here is what you kind of asked…”Question 1 – Have U had difficulty dealing with Dell in the past? Was it to do with your account manager? Ordering? Tech Support?”)

The answer to question 2  (paraphrased of course - “Question 2 – R U a all Dell shop? If not, what is holding U back? If so, what do U like that I should keep doing?”) is we have no “in service” dell products.  Although we have over 60 HP servers and close to if not a few more than 500 HP desktops and 45 or so laptop purchases within the last year and a half.  Annual IT hardware spending is somewhere around $350,000, not a huge fish perhaps but it is not an amount to scoff at.

15 minutes…

Now supposedly QChadQ @ extension yyyqqqwww is my rep?  Again how do you guys sell anything?  I honestly want to try and buy a Dell server because although my HP gear never puts me through this to buy I had heard you were tight with VMware and have their product avauilable on the motherboard rather than me having to install it.

17 minutes still no one on the phone.

Question 3 (”Question 3 – What R your pain points, in your position or with your IT?) - is just primarily cost, quality and availability.

Question 4 - (Question 4 – What can Dell do to prove that U are truly a valued customer? What can eye do?) Have someone answer the phone - Don’t send out a questionare email before you plan to go on vacation for 2 weeks in the near future.  Send out a free server to evaluate forever for the trouble of the call.

20 minutes - Now in a pool hold queue, “please hold and the next available rep will assist you…”

22 minutes - resolution management (New England area) Nice person, no idea why I was transfered there, she is trying to transfer me to Chad…

New different music.

24 minutes…

27 minutes… nice lady returns and asks who or what I am trying to do or get a hold of.  I give her the spiel she sets to trying to find QKrisQ Qclomanti’sQ extension for me.  If she returns I will ask her to simply transfer me back to yours and I hopefully will get it down this time.  WOW that is service if that is what this comes to…

30 minutes…

32 minutes… She is extremely sorry about this, but she can’t find any one with that name to transfer me to.  I have asked her to transfer me back to your extension.

34 minutes… music just changed maybe I am in a new queue…

35 minutes… automated voice tells me to hold on while she transfers me…definately new music.

36 minutes… automated voice tells me your sorry but you cannot process the call further and hang up on me. WOW.  Excellent service.

New clock starts as I redial your 800 number to call you.

1 minute in: welcome to Dell to serve me better …

1:30 finally get your message…. 

2:15 redial the new number you have for Kris… Hilarious… the person you gave me is out as well but tells me to contact you as his assistant.  Truly exceptional service.

Question 5 - (”Question 5 – What is the most important thing to U when dealing with another company? (ie. Relationship, Response Time, Price, ect.)”)  Competant service and sales representation.  I can only hope I caught you in the worst “Perfect storm” scenario for bad service and that normally you are a top notch rep.  But after the Phone tag extension game I have my doubts.  Needless to say, I wanted to buy the server today with end of year funds that came available. Perhaps next time I will get to speak with you personally, or perhaps your replacement as I have yet to be able to build a relationship with a Dell rep as your turnover has to be record setting high in that regard.

I must be a glutton for punishment as I called back the 800 number and tried to enter the extension for the mysterious QChadQ that Kenisha said was my rep…  Ahh the number is no longer in servcie.

Never mind…

The remainder of the email was generalities such as these ” It’s my goal as your account manager for yyy zzz Inc to make sure that your experience with us is always top notch. I understand that in the past you may have had issues or concerns that may have gone unaddressed, and to me that’s not acceptable. So I was really hoping you could help me out by answering some of the questions below, because I really want to help you.  If U have some other feedback you feel eye should have, please forward that to me as well. I know you’re very busy, so I really appreciate the time you’re putting into this. If there’s something I can do for U to make life a little easier in your own position, please don’t hesitate to let me know.”

I sent them the above kinda not exactly that would break their confidentiality notice…

ME

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Well you need not worry about how hard it might be to return an e-Book to amazon. Same day service in fact. When purchasing a copy of the bible for my Kindle I chose what I thought was the tried and true NIV version. In fact when I received the bill I had indeed selected the “Todays NIV” a newer updated version. Now I have not read the Todays NIV and it may be fine but I did indeed want the other for sure so I used the customer support option again and sent an email this time. The question I posed was “Is it possible to simply switch the books out on their end or did I need to return the original”.  Their reply is below.

Hello from Amazon.com.

Thank you for writing about returning “Holy Bible, Today’s New
International Version”, which you recently purchased for your Kindle.
You can return any item purchased from the Kindle Store within seven
days of purchase.

I’ve requested a refund for the purchase and removed the item from
Your Media Library. If the item is still on your Kindle, please delete
that copy. After the refund is issued, you will no longer be able to
access it. I’ve included instructions for removing an item from your
Kindle below.

Refunds are issued to the payment method used to make the original
purchase and usually complete within 2 to 3 business days.

You can purchase the correct ASIN # B000FC2KBU at your earliest
convenience.

Information about making purchases and managing your content is also
available in the Kindle User’s Guide on your Kindle or on our Kindle
Support pages here:

http://www.amazon.com/kindlesupport

Also, I appreciate that you took the time to include your feedback in
your email to us. It is very important for us to hear about your
experience using Kindle and shopping in the Kindle store. Strong
customer feedback like yours helps us continue to improve the service
we provide, and we appreciate the time you took to write to us. I’ve
passed your feedback along to the Kindle team.

I hope you found this information useful. Our goal is to help you get
the most out of your Kindle experience. If you need further
assistance, please contact customer support at 1-866-321-8851.

Thank you for choosing Kindle.

*****
HOW DO I DELETE AN ITEM FROM MY KINDLE?
To move or remove an item from your Kindle, follow these steps:
1. If you are not already on the Home screen, press the Home key.
2. Scroll the cursor to the Menu selection, and press the Select wheel.
3. Select “Content Manager” from the Home screen menu.
4. Select one or more of the items listed using the check boxes to the
right of each item.
5. Scroll down to the Menu selection, and press the select wheel when
you have finished selecting items.
6. Select “Remove Selected Items” from the Menu.
7. Select “OK” to confirm removal or “Cancel” to abort.

*****

This may seem like a small thing but making it as easy to return a book as buy it was really important to me. If I wander into Barnes and Noble and get a p-Book (Paper Book for those of you like me who didn’t realize there was such an abbreviation, but I was exposed to it recently and thought it funny ) if I get it home and have buyers remorse they will typically take it back the next day with out fuss. Amazons has done the same thing.

The only surprising thing that was said was alluded to in the beginning of their reply… “If the item is still on your Kindle, please delete that copy. After the refund is issued, you will no longer be able to access it.” That would seem to indicate that items that are in the protected .azw format somehow phone home and see that they should not be used. At first blush I was mortified by this apparent phoning home, but upon reflection realize that is the nature of DRM (Digital Rights Management) and really should have expected it.

Since I did return the book it is only fair and correct that they have some way of insuring I do not continue to use it. I think that despite my Orwellian tendency to dislike any type of phoning home that this is exactly why I don’t have to pay for the wireless portion of the device. I can see this type of action occurring in a great number of devices and portends the ability for a MP3 device to truly be a subscription device shutting off access on a timed or tethered function in the future. But more on that perhaps later.

For now buy all the books you want, if you really hate them within the first 7 days you can return them, pretty much hassle free. How long will that policy remain unchanged? With the ability to shut them off by DRM perhaps a while, but there are some pretty fast readers out there. How long before we can simply rent a book?

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I just got off the phone with Kindle support from Amazon. It was amazingly simple, I went to manage my Kindle, the one that won’t arrive until the 11th and clicked the Kindle support Tab. Then clicked Contact Us and selected the phone tab. I entered my number and clicked the call button and the phone just rang. Not like a while for them, I mean instantly next to me. I answered and it said It was amazon Kindle support calling please hold, then less than 10 seconds later I was speaking to a human asking what he could do for me.

My problem was I had just sent an email with an 11 MB word doc attached to it to the free conversion site at amazon. For those of you like me who thought it was .10 cents to convert any document, that is only true if you want it emailed to your Kindle directly. If you happen to be at home with your Mac or PC for that matter you can email it to your kindle name @free.kindle.com it will convert the doc nd send you back an email letting you know it is done. There lies the rub, it was a little to easy. The email says “?????@gmail.com has sent the following files to your Amazon Kindle free conversion account:”NETBible_Noteless.doc”". The email address is a mail link and the doc name is a link as well, but it never occurred to me to click on it. That was why i had called to find out where my mystery doc had gone, I had expected it to be at my Amazon library. But no, it just a link, click on it and your getting the file to your Mac, too easy.

I was amazed at the size of the converted document, it was 11 MB now it is only 3.8MB which makes me think the format is a compressed one. In any event the impressive feat was the ease at which i got a human to talk to me, and they had the answer, albeit a fairly easy one in a snap. Kudos to amazon for creating a non-800 number or toll number support solution that undoubtedly is making use of a voip back end, but who cares I was helped jiffy quick.

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If you are a fan of the Mac ads make sure and check out the latest. I saw it on news.com and also on PCMag.com where I caught it while viewing an article on the Zune. (Click the picture below to see the whole ad)

YouTube - Don’t Give Up on Vista Ad

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The kindle is a newly released device from amazon that promises by it’s makers to to be what ipod was for mp3 player for ebooks. ebooks have been around for quite a while, I even designed one myself back in the late 80’s using a Tandy model 100 as it’s basis. It was huge and suffered from the same trouble all the past ebooks have to date. The delivery of content to the device. Displaying text legibly in a comfortable manner is important, but what is critical is how you get that information to the device, the kindle solves that with a built in free (for now, but who knows…) EVDO wireless network called whispernet. This connection is what will allow you to get whatever your looking for when your needing it wherever you happen to be.

It’s not just about replacing the printed page with an electronic one to me, but rather about opening the ability to spread information at little or no expense. My son is a freshman in college right now and in the first semester we spent over $85 in books. What if those same books were available for $9.99, no reason they couldn’t other than greed. Education is about availability to information and self drive to discover it. A universal reader that hopefully is less expensive than this device could be the answer to the no child left behind, allow all parents and children alike access to information. imagine a book that can also read written text aloud, I don’t know if the kindle can do this yet but when that occurs then the interaction between the written word and student will advance again.

Imagine learning to speak a language or prepare a meal by opening a book and interacting with it. This ebook does what no others could before, it tackles the delivery mechanism. You could never pack everything into a device the reader might need, but by allowing them to retrieve what they want or perhaps need then you extend the devices usefulness immensely. This could be a paradigm shift compared to what ultra portable PC’s had hoped to be. Instead of being a PC you carry everywhere, it is instead a knowledge device that is useful everywhere. When we see them incorporate the advances in battery charging through laying the device on a surface then this becomes even more powerful. Imagine it charging itself as it lays on your nightstand or table.

The last thing I want to point out is just what do you typically need to recall when your not in front of your computer, it is information, that most of the time you didn’t know you needed until you needed it. With a device like this delivery of information for humanitarian reasons becomes a new possibility, your stuck on the side of the road and need to know how to change a tire. Seems simple enough once you’ve done it, but for some it would be awesome to have the ability to read an owners manual with perhaps a illustrated diagram from their car’s manufacturer. Instead of shipping instructions if these devices were ubiquitous then you could simply register your product and receive the manuals to your Kindle.

Just in time information, anywhere in your house or outside is possible if these devices are embraced. Unfortunantly there is a critical mass that as to be overcome in order to raise the interest by all those companies and organizations. One I hope Amazon approaches soon is the google book project, adding access to a large number of public domain works would be a tremendous humanitarian gesture by a company who sells the protected works. But it would be in their best interests, adding value to the already expensive device through free content would make the acquisition costs lower for the individual. Amazon should consider offering a free service much like an itunes for the written word for new authors to publish their works, but that might step on a few too many publishers toes. Any ides on that? Could this be an opportunity for the Copyleft fellows or amazon to create a new mechanism for self publishing?

Amazon.com: Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device: Kindle Store

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I have to say I am impressed with the site and it’s functionality. Hulu manages to serve up video similar to a juke box experience with surely something for everyone. There aren’t complete seasons available yet that I have seen, but there are several recent episodes with each one basically being brought to the viewer with a short commercial in the beginning. Perhaps there are others embedded, but I have not seen any yet. I used an example of some content that I think is probably not just available everywhere, and that likely I wouldn’t subscribe to - which is a service that will email you when a new episode becomes available.  Hulu is in private beta with more poeple being added daily, if your interested go to their website and sign up for an invitation as they become available at www.hulu.com

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I have been playing at GTD for a couple of years, and although I can see no fault in the practices of those GTD users, I have trouble keeping after it. There are a ton of good apps out now for the Mac and they range from the excruciatingly detailed to the barely structured. If it has to do with GTD I probably have tried to use it. All this to introduce my current app of choice, TaskPaper. How long will it last? Anyone’s guess is possible, but one thing is for sure it is past the 3 week mark which is saying something for me.

In fact I am thinking I should be coming up with a new rating system for those Apps you can or can’t live without. Using my new system the first number is the attractiveness or wow factor, the second is the user friendliness number on a scale of 1 to 5 and the last is the number of weeks I have used it more than 3 times in a week. Once an app reaches 5 weeks it maxes out, then it has reached that “truly gotta have it” status as an app.

That brings us back to TaskPaper by Hogbay software. I would give the app a solid 3 on the attractiveness scale, it is utilitarian but pleasant to use. With the ability to control the fonts and colors it gives you a front end for a basic text file. That same text file can be used by any other app or parsed and acted upon by scripts. In my case it is a good old list that isn’t restrictive or too intelligent for my own good. If your looking for a little more flexibility than this one is definitely worth looking at.

In regard to use friendliness I would hit the app with a 3, only because there are still a few items such as manually moving the notes with a task when it’s completed that the developer has hinted will be resolved in an upcoming release that will easily move the app up to a 4 when it occurs. The price is also no bank buster and the developer although committed to his vision of 1 trick ponies seems eager to entertain improvements and involve his user base.

So if your a list monger then check out taskpaper. It is a solid 1.0.x app that has matured to an extremely usable state that creates a file you can easily keep on a thumb drive,or wherever your mind can come up with. For me, I am creating a script to move a copy of my file to my ftp server every hour so I can keep a current version / backup always handy. This would be a pretty nice addition I plan on suggesting, although if you have .mac you can do so with your idisk already.

As mentioned in the first paragraph I am in the beginning of my 4th week with taskpaper so my newly minted rating system gives this app a 3/3/4, well on it’s way to being a can’t live without app. Plenty of room for improvement, but worth working through the growing pains if you need a flexible task list oriented app.

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www.worthyjourney.com is up and running and I will be moving a bit of my time there. This site will remain available as an outlet for my worldy views on all things Mac and GTD or rails or whatever doesn’t fit in a spiritual walk. Perhaps they should be all one place but alas I feel this one has been around long enough to warrant keeping up.

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Microsoft has tried to supply a low cost PC that you could essentially use with your TV to fit all those grandparents out there looking to surf the web and send Email with their families. Having used one I found them grossly underpowered and really lacking in any expandability with the apps they can use. It is pretty much surf and try to send pictures and email. Zonbu has tried to bridge the gap between the set top box and a real PC, taking a stance that green is the differentiator between themselves and a build your own Linux Distro.

Using flash based storage and a box with no moving parts the unit is small and quiet. Getting updates from the mothership and utilizing a web based storage location you essentially rent 100GB monthly from the manufacturer for your primary storage needs. Other than the bizarre name I think this could possibly work if they could get some big box company selling them like Target or Wal-Mart as quantity is undoubtedly the key to them surviving the early lean years. Sun has always said the network is the computer and this little box somewhat makes that vision a reality. I hope the manufacturer is successful as there is a place in this world for low cost devices that could allow kids to surf the web protected and do homework without providing all the fuss that a normal PC or mac would bring.

When you want to make toast you use a toaster not your BBQ grill with all it’s attachments or the convection oven, there may be a place in the homes of america for a device that simply does the basic tasks we want a PC to do. With Steve Jobs espousing all the benefits of the Digital life, Zonbu has answered his call for a 10th the cost of an imac, could this device do just enough to make it a winner?

Zonbu: Green doesn’t have to make you Blue!

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