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Thanks $WEBEX_CON_EMAIL

4 Jun 2012

Thanks $WEBEX_CON_EMAIL

Dear WebEX,

We’ve been testing out a few conference systems and first went with WebEX as several of our clients/partners seem to use it, but after a few calls, it seemed like a lot of moaning and groaning on our end about having to navigate their UI.

We’ve since settled on GoToMeeting as their tools/interface feel much easier to interact with.

So, today… I went through your cancellation process, which required me to call and wait on hold for 20 minutes, talk with one of your agents, explain why we wanted to cancel, turn down their offer for free training of using their tool, and eventually wait for my confirmation email. I’ve gone ahead and provided it for you.

I’ll give you some credit though. When I first compared WebEX vs GoToMeeting, I found your marketing/sales pitch to be more compelling, so pulled my credit card out for you first. However, once you gave me access to my new account, It was nothing but headaches and annoyances for the team. Very difficult tools to interact with… the epitome of a web tool designed by technical people who lack much empathy for the end-user. I worry that you’re losing a lot of customers for similar reasons… and would encourage you to have some of your usability experts focus on your online scheduling/planning tools as it was too painful for us to work with.

Sincerely,
$FIRST_NAME

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An Occupying Force

1 Jun 2012

Ultimately, the organization’s instinct is to protect the ground that’s already been taken rather than take new ground. Every organization begins as an advance force and ends up as an occupying force.

Todd Henry from The Accidental Creative

Article  |  Development

Take the Ruby on Rails Hosting In 2012 Survey

30 May 2012

In January 2009 we invited the community to participate in a survey about the state of hosting Ruby on Rails applications. We wanted to get a better understanding of how people are currently managing their deployment and hosting process, and what they’d like to see going forward. Our goal was to use the information provided to help us continue to evolve our hosting-related products and deployment services (this actually helped us decide to accept Bluebox’s acquisition of our hosting business later that year). Additionally, we wanted to provide this information back to the community so that our colleagues in the industry could also use this information in their decision making processes.

Given that it’s been over three years since we ran this survey, we felt that it would be interesting to see just how much the landscape has changed by running another one.

We’ve modified a few of the old questions and added some new ones for good measure. Responses will be collected through the month of June and the results will then be shared with everyone (similar to 2009).

If you have a few minutes to spare, take our survey and help us how Ruby on Rails applications are being deployed in 2012.

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People are the web

29 May 2012

Beyond the baseline demographic data of age, race, sex, location etc, we should ponder some questions: Who are they? How are they? How well do they sleep? Are they anxious? Are they extroverts displaying their digital peacock feathers? Are they introverts who can socialize but head home early because their feet hurt and they’d rather read a book? Are 52% of them introverts who live voyeuristically through the safety of glowing screens? What is it that they want? Can we provide for them? Do we have to?

Dave Allen, director, interactive strategy for NORTH from Memorial Day musings: Facebook, Bob Dylan, Paul Krugman and introverts

It sounds like Dave had a lovely weekend down in Palm Springs and busted out this thought-provoking post about Facebook's recent IPO and what they are likely going to need to focus on as a business... while raising a lot of good questions for us all to ponder.

Article  |  Strategy

White Paper - Responsive Design vs Mobile Site

29 May 2012

Our team is currently working on a series of white papers and have just finished our first one, which introduces businesses to two strategies for designing and developing a site that targets mobile traffic.

Responsive vs. Mobile

Given that we've approached several projects from both angles, we felt that it would be worthwhile to share our experiences of each with you.

You can now get our white paper, "Responsive Design vs Mobile Site" on "our new white papers page":http://planetargon.com/white-papers/responsive-design-vs-mobile-site.

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Link  |  Development

Google+ Fuss

24 May 2012

What the Plus

Guy Kawasaki releases What the Plus!, in which he explains what “makes Google+ as special as Macintosh”.

I was a little surprised when I first read about this, as my experience of Google+ so far has been like walking down a deserted street, complete with tumbleweed and whistling wind. In all honesty, I’ve probably not been fair with it and wrote it off quite quickly. However, when somebody as well-respected as Guy Kawasaki makes such a bold comparison it did make me want to go take another look at it.

One of the points he makes is the clean interface, with plenty of white space. Google’s interfaces are not for everybody – often being described as utilitarian, but my feeble brain tends to prefer this style. The most important aspect though is whether or not there is any activity, and several months on (with admittedly small circles) I’m still seeing barely any activity. Going there makes you feel like you chose the wrong party. The few people there are standing at the edge of the room, and its all disturbingly quiet.

My prediction? The next Wave.

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