Veotag

Verizon Wireless missed the point

I got a phone call from Verizon Wireless.  They called with an automated response system saying that they were sorry they could not speak with me personally but that I should get in touch with them right away.  Naturally, I assumed that there was some problem with my account.

I called them and was put in queue for 15 minutes.  When they finally spoke with me they thanked me for being such a good customer.  They went on and on about me being a good customer so I asked them if there were some problem and they said no, they were calling me to thank me for being a good customer.

So I spent 20 minutes on nothing.  20 minutes lost for them to thank me.  Sometimes, the best way to say thanks is to say nothing.  We expect a service provider to silently, efficiently and reliably do what we ask - no more.

At Veotag, we try to help our customers when they need help.  But I don't think we will be calling them with ARS (Automated Response Systems) to thank them for watching our videos!

Why Google Chrome is a bad citizen

I tried Google's new Chrome browser and it worked quite well except for a few glitches.  I went in to talk to our programming staff about it and they pointed out that it collects your personal information.  Unbelievable!  Think about the level of invasiveness that is involved in your browser collecting personal information.

There are many things wrong with this.  First, it is unlikely that the folks at Google developed Chrome without looking at the public domain browser software.  So that means that a lot of the IP is based on publicly donated work and effort.  Second, this violates a basic trust issue that you have with this class of software.  Imagine if Microsoft made Word collect your personal information.  It (Microsoft) could then sell the information it gets to the highest bidder.  For example, it could look at what you are doing and determine who would pay to get some salacious details.  Or, if it were important formulae, it could sell it to your competition.

There has to be a boundary where this stops.  I cannot afford this level of Corporate Spying.  Can you?