Trunk Media

Being appreciated

11 September 2007

The other day as part of an internal IT upgrade we rebuilt our Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS). It’s a reliable Compaq unit whose batteries needed replacing after years of faithful service. I like to know how things work and I like getting hands on so I did it myself. I ordered the batteries from a friendly company on the North Shore of Auckland, MH Power Systems, and had a great chat with the guy there about solar power, wind turbines and battery life in general. He only needed to sell me batteries but was willing to impart with me any information I showed interest in.

Once I got back to the office with the batteries I started the disassembly of the UPS. I’d grabbed the battery replacement PDF from the Compaq site and quickly had the covers off and the battery rack out. Inside the battery rack was a maze of wires connecting 16 sturdy lead acid batteries. However it all looked very simple as under the wires was a wire layout card showing every wire route and the polarity of the batteries. After removing all of the wires and the card I removed the old batteries. To my surprise, punched into the steel chassis supporting the batteries were postive symbols indicating the battery alignment for replacement. Then I opened the battery box containing the first 10 batteries I had bought. Looped under one battery at the front of the box was a plastic band which allowed me to pull out one of these very solid batteries without having to rip open the box to gain access. Someone had thought about how to make my life as a consumer of these products easier. It’s a very satisfying feeling. With the new batteries easily removed from the box and correctly aligned in the UPS I used the chart to ensure I had made no errors in reconnecting the wiring and with the PDF instructions the UPS was back up and running in no time at all.

The whole process was flawless due to the consideration the manufacturers had put into the needs of the consumers of their products and it makes me want to use these products again. We try and do this as much as possible with our websites. In our office we regularly debate over how a feature of a website is going to be used, colours, layouts, warning messages, context of copy and a host of other things that are important to making sure our clients websites are as useful as possible to their clients. We hope that our clients and our clients clients feel as appreciated by the design of our sites as I felt rebuilding the UPS. This appreciation is the feeling we strive to deliver for all our clients.

Posted in Marketing, Technical | No Comments »

Xtra bubble

4 September 2007

I’m not going to go for the easy shot and mentioning bubbles bursting but I did want to relay the unfortunate experience I had to put up with as a result of Xtra’s bubble roll out. Two weeks ago we needed to change the Telecom account holder at my house. As a result we needed to get a new password set for our broadband. Due to no fault of our own, we had to endure queues of an hour as a result of all the problems of Xtra rolling out the bubble system.

If we hadn’t been within the 12 month account exit charge fee, we would’ve changed to either Ihug/Vodafone or Icon straight away. If I’d known how many times my patience would run out waiting listening to annoying music (as well as constantly being told I’m important), I would have fronted the $100 for the Telecom exit fee and gone. I know of many people who have switched companies because of the bubble problem.

It amazes me that a company of this size is unable to have a rollback strategy for when something goes wrong. We have a rollback strategy for virtually every site and upgrade we do. On major upgrades of a website, if something goes wrong with the new one we generally have it set up so we can switch the old one back on almost instantly. There are also additional measures we can take if we REALLY don’t want to have any chance of our clients clients being dissatisfied and apply these as necessary.

The base steps however are something we do as a matter of course because we really do value our clients and we don’t want to give them any reasons to leave. Does this feeling only apply to small companies such as ours? Is it true Telecom doesn’t really care? Either way, there is no reason why Xtra could not have a roll back system in place and there is no excuse for why they didn’t. If Telecom have only learnt one thing from the Web 2.0 phenomenon, it should have been to stick a big BETA sticker on the new service.

Posted in Technical | No Comments »

Google’s constant innovation

3 September 2007

I’m always amazed by Google, they seem to be constantly coming up with new things. As a company, they don’t seem to be maturing like other companies do. Most companies that grow huge settle into a flat growth curve then carve and protect their niche monopoly and fight anyone that will try and enter it by any means necessary. Google on the other hand just seems to want to keep pushing the boundaries of what can be done. They’ve had plenty of flops and plenty of successes. Their latest to catch my eye is their street level mapping.

I’m confident you’ve driven past a new store who’s number you’ve got out of the phonebook. You don’t know what the store looks like because you’ve never been there before. Only once driven to a maddening frustration at the lack of numbers on buildings, you eventually find the store. Well Google is seemingly going to solve this problem along with a million others with it’s street level mapping which will show you a photo of the store before you get there, you will probably be able to do a virtual drive by. View some of the photos of the vehicle fleet currently touring the USA in this massive data collection exercise. I’m assuming from Google maps you will soon be able to take a virtual tour of the location you’re looking at much like you felt like you were driving around London in the Sony Playstation game “the Getaway”.

Obviously there are huge privacy concerns with photos of you being up on the internet in locations you might not want to be seen, wearing clothes you realised just don’t suit you or in a situation you’d rather regret. Apprently you will able to have your likeness removed and there has even been a suggestion of a sign you can print out and hang on your house to have your property voided, much like the online HTML “noindex” meta tag value. How far will this markup language for the real world go? Does the US Military need to put some up?

Posted in Technical | No Comments »