One of the largest consumption of my time, next to delivering Internet solutions to my clients, is following the news and trends in the Internet space. It is tough to keep up with all that is new, some of those things more relevant or interesting than others. Twitter has been in the headlines since the recent South by Southwest (SXSW) conference. I won’t rehash what Twitter is, and fellow Chicagoan Andy Wibbels wrote this good overview of Twitter.

To me, the fact that someone will care about what I am doing right now, the core of Twitter, is as much fascinating as it is odd. However, when I hear of new services or gizmos such as Twitter, I tend to think of more practical implications. Perhaps knowing what I have been doing all day, at the end of the day, would help in accounting for my time? And in addition to logging what I am doing, could I also log what I just did or notes on something I need to do? Could an application like this replace scraps of paper and sticky notes all over my desk?

Twitter has inspired me in this regard. But I won’t be using the application itself, as I don’t want the world to know what I have been doing all day. A small enhancement to an existing custom Web application could just do the trick. I’ll let you know how this plays out.

Business • Technology • (2) Comments • Permalink

How would you expect a widely-popular email mailing list with thousands of subscribers, where people would post requests for information on a wide variety of personal and business topics, to shut down? Not to mention that it was shutting down altogether, without any justification other than the fact that the owner was “moving on.” Then take this confusion and multiply it by dozens of cities around the world, and you are wondering, as I am, why the ChicWIT mailing list and its "owner" WorldWIT are really shutting down.

WorldWIT, by their own description, was "the free, friendly online and offline resource for women in business and technology." That being said, men were never excluded from joining their mailing lists or participating in their events. In Chicago, the “chapter” was called ChicWIT, and the name refers to the first four letters of the city, not women. Its most outward function was its email mailing list, where at last count had over 6,000 subscribers. It was an eclectic list of requests, everything from requests for Thai restaurants to pet psychics and everything in between. It was a moderated list, and it required things like event tickets be sold at face value and it would not promote events for other organizations. ChicWIT’s own events were every few months, from paid topical events to open socials.

On Wednesday, March 21 someone posted to the list that they read that the mailing list would cease to operate on Friday, March 23, two days later. Upon further review, this message was posted on the WorldWIT Web site’s home page, on the right under the heading of “What’s New.” The reason given was “WorldWIT founder Liz Ryan’s demanding speaking and training schedule prevented her from taking the self-funded WorldWIT to the next level.”

Where we all wish Liz Ryan the best, why just shut it down? I had no idea that she was the sole owner and was footing the bill herself. Why didn’t she remove all transparency and reach out to the community and ask for help – either to fund it, or to sell it? And I intentionally use the word community, as she had truly created a virtual community of people, and their connection was the several-a-day email messages, as well as the events. I emailed Liz Ryan yesterday to ask why, and as of this post I have not received a reply.

The ChicWIT list was a tremendous resource for me. I can trace most of the connections I made here in Chicago over the past 3 years to that mailing list, whether directly or indirectly. It was a resource not only for specific questions I wanted an opinion of from the community, but to keep a pulse on what others were looking for and thinking of. For a professional “organization” its demise is anything but.

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I usually come up with ideas when I'm not expecting them. Yesterday, when walking back from The UPS Store, after having a great conversation with the manager Neal about customer service, a thought popped into my head about JetBlue’s woes with people being stranded on their planes. So David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue, I offer this one to you for free, though I am not sure why you didn’t think of it earlier.

Whenever the status of a flight changes, or whenever it does not change within an acceptable time period, you get an email message. I am willing to bet US$1.00 that you have a BlackBerry (or if you are smart, a Treo 680!) and you are probably on it all day as it is. For example, if a flight does not take off within an hour of its scheduled departure time, you would know, and then you could find out why, and take appropriate action. This would surely have prevented people from being stuck on the tarmac for all of those hours.

Hopefully you are already receiving these emails as I write this. Many of the things we as people and businesses do are in reaction to something. If not, then a simple thank you reply in the blog is all I ask, though now that you are flying into Chicago...

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I don’t believe there is hope for the United States Postal Service, an oxymoron of a name if there ever was one. And this is not just me, as the Chicago Sun-Times has reported on the lack of service, delivery and accountability this past weekend. I will spare you my own mail debacle stories, for now at least.

About the only smart thing the post office has come up with is so-called "forever stamps" where once you buy the stamp, you can use it whenever, and it will be valid at the current rate at that time. So if you buy a 39-cent stamp the day before the rate increase and use it a week later, you do not need to add additional postage. After witnessing the insanity at Chicago’s Loop post office on the day of the last stamp price increase last year – where they literally ran out of two-cent stamps – I am actually surprised that the same organization came up with this idea.

This article from spudart.org on the historic stamp price increases has a cool stamp design they should consider for the first forever stamp!

Business • Diversions • (4) Comments • Permalink

Whenever I meet with a new client to talk about delivering a new Web site or enhancements to an existing one, I always talk about who may be visiting it. At the end of the discussion, I always add to the list “anyone” as the reality is that if you have a public Web site, truly anyone can see it.

When people think about viewing a Web site, most of the time the though is that it would be viewed online, using a browser. The next natural way is that it is viewed on a handheld device. But what about TV? Last night, one of my client’s, Foresight Childproofing, was featured on a local Minneapolis TV station relating to a child safety story. At the end of the story they showed the home page of their Web site, childproofhome.com. You can watch the story here:

http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_066101558.html

So the next time you think of who will be looking at your Web site, realize it could be a couch potato.

Business • Technology • (2) Comments • Permalink