We All Want to Be Young from box1824 on Vimeo.
We all want to be young Nov 27, 2010
Just stumbled upon this great video. Take a 9-minute break to watch it:
Nice Customer Support Tool for Startups/mISVs
All developers face this at some point: your software somehow just refuses to work on the customer's computer, BUT it does work fine on yours. You spend hours, days, weeks trying to figure out whats wrong and, eventually, go crazy. Especially after you have tested your software in Firefox, Chrome, IE7, IE8, Safari and even the freaking IE6 and Opera - but you still can't reproduce that freaking bug, that the customer reports.
That's when you get desperate and your only option is to use TeamViewer or some similar remote-desktop software.
I have recently found a handy solution - showmewhatswrong.com. It's a great web-application that generates a special link that you can email to your user. This link, when opened by a user, launches a browser extension and records a screencast of what is actually happening on the user's computer and sends a flash video back to you afterwards.
I just tested this with an actual customer of ours (thanks, Al!) and it works. Awesome.
Too bad they do not offer commercial use for this tool, otherwise I'd be happy to integrate this into our web-based help-desk software. Sent them a request couple of weeks ago - no response...
P.S. Actually I've twitted about this tool not so long ago, another reason to follow me if you don't.
That's when you get desperate and your only option is to use TeamViewer or some similar remote-desktop software.
I have recently found a handy solution - showmewhatswrong.com. It's a great web-application that generates a special link that you can email to your user. This link, when opened by a user, launches a browser extension and records a screencast of what is actually happening on the user's computer and sends a flash video back to you afterwards.
I just tested this with an actual customer of ours (thanks, Al!) and it works. Awesome.
Too bad they do not offer commercial use for this tool, otherwise I'd be happy to integrate this into our web-based help-desk software. Sent them a request couple of weeks ago - no response...
P.S. Actually I've twitted about this tool not so long ago, another reason to follow me if you don't.
Give Me Some Angry Feedback Nov 11, 2010
Here's an old story I've learned a lot from. Once I had lunch with an ex co-worker of mine and the restaurant turned out to be an awful place - they brought us the wrong order, the waiter was impolite, the food was rubbish, the dishes were dirty etc.
I was going to ask for the manager, ask if there was a way to leave negative feedback - some book of complaints maybe, but my friend has suddenly stopped me.
"Don't waste your time optimizing someone else's business" he said. "If you want to punish them - not leaving any feedback would be best".
People feel the need to fulfill their anger, so sometimes filling a complaint seem to be a good way of "punishing" a company... Use that anger for your own good and offer them a way to "punish" you - a feedback form on your app's error page with a "what else we can improve" field would be nice. Cause the most negative feedback is no feedback at all. That's a real punishment.
So every time a customer sends you an angry email, remember - that's awesome. No email - would have been worse.
I was going to ask for the manager, ask if there was a way to leave negative feedback - some book of complaints maybe, but my friend has suddenly stopped me.
"Don't waste your time optimizing someone else's business" he said. "If you want to punish them - not leaving any feedback would be best".
People feel the need to fulfill their anger, so sometimes filling a complaint seem to be a good way of "punishing" a company... Use that anger for your own good and offer them a way to "punish" you - a feedback form on your app's error page with a "what else we can improve" field would be nice. Cause the most negative feedback is no feedback at all. That's a real punishment.
So every time a customer sends you an angry email, remember - that's awesome. No email - would have been worse.
AppStores Coming To All Platforms? Nov 8, 2010
Microsoft is rumored to develop its own App-Store for the Windows platform. This, and the recent Apple's announcement of an App Store for Macs sounds really disturbing.
Andy Brice wrote a great blog post on this, there's really nothing I can add. Web-apps and the SaaS model are becoming the only choice for mISV's. Learn HTML5, fellas.
Andy Brice wrote a great blog post on this, there's really nothing I can add. Web-apps and the SaaS model are becoming the only choice for mISV's. Learn HTML5, fellas.