Jeff Maurone

Easter in the canyon

We spent Easter weekend on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I hope you enjoy a few representative photos. If you're interested, you can find the whole set, here.

We actually did this trail (10mi r/t, Bright Angel to Indian Gardens, 6000ft tot. elevation change) but started from an entrance without a "Crampons Recommended" warning. Goodness was it icy. We all fell and I still hurt nearly a week later (but the hike was worth it).

Continually reminded me of the lone Cypress at Pebble Beach.

No one understands why I like this photo so much. That's El Tovar in the background.

East rim entrance.

On the return trip, we stopped at the experimental community brainchild of Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti.

AOL and Xdrive respond. Finally.

Last month I recounted the terrible customer service experience I had after finding corrupt files on my Xdrive. Thirty-six days and roughly 125 hits from inside AOL/TW later, I received a mail from a director at Xdrive. Darin gave, all things considered, a great update on how Xdrive is working to improve their service after I sent a few suggestions.  In recognition of the effort that Xdrive and AOL made, below is the email thread in its (near) entirety.

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From: Ohlandt, Darin
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 9:00 AM
To: Jeff Maurone
Subject: Your postings on Xdrive

Dear Mr. Maurone,

My name is Darin Ohlandt and I am the Director of Xdrive's online storage services at AOL.  At you convenience, can you please contact me on [redacted]?  I would like to discuss your experience with Xdrive and our customer support team in order to understand things more fully in the hopes of improving them.  I'd also like to get more information on the files you reference so that we can try to resolve your issue if at all possible.

Thank you and best regards,

Darin Ohlandt

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From: Jeff Maurone
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 8:20 PM
To: Ohlandt, Darin
Subject: RE: Your postings on Xdrive

Hi Darin,

Thanks for getting in touch.  Below I’ve put together a few points I’d like to enumerate via email.  Hopefully they prove helpful in your efforts to advance and improve Xdrive.

Incidentally, I felt like I pushed as hard as I could to get my issue resolved using the standard channels and got nowhere.  I turned to my journalistic tendencies and published that piece.  The few suggestions below, I hope, can avoid this happening in the future. 

Provide structured ways for users to restore files

I think one of the key selling points for users of Xdrive is being able to rest assured that their files are intact and if anything happens to them, Xdrive has nice backup systems maintaining versions of these files.  Hopefully that’s the reality in the backend.  I know that if I come across an instance where I file I have authored become corrupt, I instantly freak and turn to places where I could potentially have this archived.  Having a feature on the Xdrive where I can specify a file on my Xdrive and a date for the version I need and then receiving an email within five working days could really make some folks more confident of backups (using myself as a archetype user).

Provide confirmation for uploaded files

This is a standard feature request as well.  I suspect much of the corruption that occurred to my files was resultant of problems during upload.  Having some type of confirmation after uploading to assure me that my files made it intact would be immensely reassuring.

Fix customer service

You’ve seen my thread with customer service.  Hopefully you see that it’s all but unintelligible.  I absolutely understand the organizational pressures at AOL that force you to leverage their extensive support system to maximize the way you leverage the AOL assets.  But sometimes the regression in quality is so significant that, frankly, it just sucks for users.  Customer service in this situation would be personal email addresses to reps accountable for resolving individual user issues with real proactive amounts of communication on the part of AOL/Xdrive.

Fix public relations

I wrote my “Do not use Xdrive.com” post on January 28^th but didn’t receive your email until thirty-six days later on March 4^th.  In the interim, I received what I estimate to be 125-150 hits from *users within AOL or AOLTW domains*.  A PR team tasked with monitoring instances of Xdrive appearing in blogs and the press would immediately know about situations like these where brand perception is at risk and respond quickly and appropriately.  As a point of reference, I have received quite a few more requests from users searching for “xdrive corrupt files” or “using xdrive” or “missing files xdrive.”  Finally, configuring monitors for activity like this is quite straightforward.

Feel free to respond with additional questions; I put effort into this because I believe in the relevance and future of online storage.  I do appreciate the gesture toward recovering my files, though at this point I’ve gone through the legwork to rewrite them.

Thanks.

Jeff

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From: Ohlandt, Darin
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 6:43 PM
To: Jeff Maurone
Subject: RE: Your postings on Xdrive

Jeff,

Thank you very much for your comments.  They are very much appreciated and will certainly help us to improve the level of service -- across all facets -- that we provide for Xdrive.

I totally understand your frustrations, especially with respect to customer service.  It took me a few days to get back to you so that I could do some research and get an understanding regarding some specifics as to what was going on. 
If you'll allow me, let me please brief you on some of the changes we are making to our service to better help our customers, including you.  I do consider you to be our archetypical customer so we should model our processes after the types of concerns customers like you have with the service.

We are in the process of completely redoing our customer service.  We have brought in additional resources to specifically provide expert level technical and operations support and have set up a new e-mail address that goes directly to this tier of support:  XdriveHelpLine@aol.com.  We are revamping our processes to get information and problems to this tier more quickly and efficiently so that they can help users who don't have standard questions (billing, logging in, product information) and can get their issues resolved more quickly.

Within the Xdrive Desktop Client software, you can define multiple back-up sets so that you yourself can have multiple versions of your data resident on Xdrive.  You can then select "restore" for any single back-up set to move these copies back to your hard drive.  That said, we are developing mechanisms to make this more apparent to our users and are working on better mechanisms for general restore capabilities.

May I ask if you were using the Desktop Client software or the Web version of Xdrive?  As you may see from our changes to our home page and within certain areas of the application, we have embarked on a program to complete update and renew Xdrive.  This started with the introduction of our new Xdrive Desktop Lite software, which uses the new Adobe AIR runtime environment and flex (currently in beta).  We will extend this to our web interface and also update our client software as well.  Your comments and suggestions are very helpful as we continue down this path.

I appreciate your honesty and forthrightness in explaining your situation.  I am happy that your posted your blog since it has enabled us to (1) engage in a dialogue with you as one of our protoptypical customers and (2) work to improve our levels of support.  I am disappointed that our customer service team could not help you more readily, but (as I pointed out) we are actively engaged in improving the customer service that we provide to our users.  It certainly should not have come to this, but I hope that we can learn from this experience and formulate better products and procedures to help you, our customer.

Sincerely,

Darin

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From: Jeff Maurone
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 11:25 AM
To: 'Ohlandt, Darin'
Subject: RE: Your postings on Xdrive

Hi Darin,

Thanks for the response. It seems that the efforts you’re taking are significant; hopefully they all prove to be fruitful in terms of user satisfaction. In recognition of the efforts you took to reach out to me, I’ll be sure to post this thread to my blog and link to it from my original post.

[Redacted] If there’s anything you need from me in terms of reviewing future software or whatnot, feel free to get in touch.

Thanks.

Jeff

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From: Ohlandt, Darin
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 1:40 PM
To: Jeff Maurone
Subject: RE: Your postings on Xdrive

Jeff,

Thank you very much for your feedback.  My goal is to make sure that we incorporate this feedback into improving our Xdrive service from inital product registration to user experience all the way through to customer support.  I hope that you will continue to use and experiment with Xdrive -- I would love to hear what you think about the product as we implement various changes over the coming months.

[Redacted]

Thanks,
Darin

Ten Steps to Going-to-Market

At MIT Enterprise Forum we're cresting over the halfway point in our spring 2008 series, which we've lovingly labeled Ten Steps.  We've covered general planning, aligning a firm for an angel financing round and now we're on to taking your product to market. Below is our official marketing text and you can register here. We hope to see you next Thursday in Seattle!

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
6:00 to 8:00pm
Doors open @ 5:30

"Ten Steps to Going-to-Market"
(Part three of the Ten Steps series)
One Union Square Boardroom
600 University St., First Level
(Lower lobby, 6th Avenue level, behind the escalator)
Seattle, WA 98101

Almost by definition, going to market is the most important part of your business.  If you don’t go to market, you don’t have a business.  Sure the idea and the product have to be properly developed but taking it to market is where the rubber really meets the road and the success or failure of your venture is determined.

Join Venture Lab speakers Trevor Rubel of First Data and Jamie Lomas of AdReady as they identify and explain ten steps to going to market.

Trevor Rubel – Vice President of Product and Strategy - First Data

A veteran of analytic and enterprise data systems, Trevor Rubel is the Vice President of Product and Strategy within the First Data Analytics Center of Excellence. In this position, Trevor oversees the company’s analytic product strategy and manages the design and development of technology products and services.

Trevor joined First Data in 2007 through the acquisition of Intelligent Results where he was the Chief Strategy Officer. During his tenure at Intelligent Results Trevor oversaw the company’s overall product strategy and lead product marketing, product management, corporate marketing and business development.  He was also responsible for planning, managing and launching the company's first products, IR Discover™ and IR Modeler™.

Before joining Intelligent Results, Trevor led product marketing and product management at Personify, a CRM analytics company. While at Personify, Trevor oversaw the creation and rollout of new products and services, spearheaded the creation of Personify's OEM channel and established the first OEM relationship. Prior to Personify, he was at Wall Data where he had overall product marketing and management responsibility for the company's SALSA product line.

Jamie Lomas – Vice President, Sales & Client Services - AdReady

Jamie brings over 14 years of experience in online media sales, business development, and marketing. Before joining AdReady, Jamie was Vice President of National Sales, for United Online, inc (NASD: UNTD), where he was responsible for US online media revenue for the company. Prior to United Online, Jamie managed the online media business unit for Classmates.com. Early in his career, Jamie worked in business development and product management for Internap Network Services (NASD: IIP). From 1994 to 1999, he worked in a variety of sales and marketing roles with Visio Corporation (acquired by Microsoft). Jamie graduated with a BA in economics from the University of Washington and currently serves on the Broadband, Sponsorship and Terms and Conditions Committees for the Internet Advertising Bureau. In addition, he has been a guest lecturer on the UWTV television network and has participated as a speaker in many industry events.

McGraw-Hill Media Summit 2008

Last week, colleague Bryan and I attended the McGraw-Hill Media Summit hosted by Digital Hollywood in New York.  Here are a few shots of the ongoing conversation over the future of media.

BusinessWeek editor (and J. Welch's coauthor) John Byrne interviews Bob Iger.  Here's a video of a particularly interesting piece of Iger's keynote.

Jeff Jarvis

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia CEO Susan Lyne

Executive dinner with Vivian Schiller (NYTimes.com), Mitch Gelman (CNN.com) and Nic Fulton (Reuters)

This Future of News panel was fascinating, with Jon Klein from CNN and, unbelievably, Howell Raines

Incredibly technocratic panel of private equity folks: Joshua Steiner, Jonathan Miller, Richard Bressler

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Opening image credit: Flickr user Christopher Chan, under Creative Commons license. [Link]

Flickr = Piratr?

It's been interesting to watch the increasing number of anecdotes of professional and amateur photographers sharing their photos on Flickr only to have them stolen and used on professional communications, advertisements or other commercial outlets.  This has led to Flickr users watermarking their photos, slapping horrid "Property of John Smith" frames around photos or other measures. These are terribly awkward solutions, undoubtedly, but I suspect this is a real problem for photogs that count on their work as a primary source of income.  Funniest anecdote?  Former coworker Lauren's. I'll let you go see for yourself.

I expose all of my shared Flickr photos under a Creative Commons license allowing anyone to use my photos for noncommercial purposes as long as they attribute them to me and share any derivative works (abstruse legal text here). I follow that same process with all of the content I produce for this blog. 

This morning, I found my shot (above) of the control room at Nightly News featured as the main art on a Wired blog post asking, "Should Cable News Networks Cover Science?" My first thought was that this usage, because that blog is a Wired blog and sells advertisements, is commercial usage. Am I going to actually request a takedown? No, the hold of that terrible sin of vanity is too great for me to ask for removal of my work from such a well-trafficked blog.  But it represents yet another example of the growing problem of image piracy online.

Cai Guo-Qiang at the Guggenheim

Last week in New York I had the chance to swing uptown to the Guggenheim to the Cai Guo-Qiang installation titled, "I Want to Believe."

I first encountered Cai-Guo Qiang (OK, I'm just calling him CGQ) at the opening of the Seattle Art Museum expansion in 2006 (a couple of my pictures are here).  CGQ has done incredible things to broaden our traditional definition of art.  He has hung Ford Tauruses from the ceiling of Seattle Art Museum.  He has explosion "events" where he may detonate explosives alongside a train in a sequence of particular symbolism.  He did one event where he sat in the center of an explosion with an EKG machine connected to himself and seismographs in the ground below him (the printed data from both devices became part of the art).

I found myself in awe of what CGQ did to the Guggenheim.  In one gallery you find a river installed by CGQ complete with a yak skin raft that visitors could row through the river to experience his art in a new context.  In another, hundreds of life-size wolf sculptures prance forward, up into the air and crash into a glass wall (pictured above).

A few hours very well spent.

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Image Credit: Shot of CGQ's work by Flickr User t_a_i_s.  Creative Commons License.  [Link]

Intern at the intersection of technology and journalism

There's NBC's Anne Curry preparing for last Wednesday evening's broadcast of Nightly News.  We sat in on this broadcast last week while Bryan and I were visiting editors and technology folks at a number of members of the NBC family.  Yet another incredible week of experiences in the news business...or the technology business...or, well, both.

Are you a student in a computer science program with a keen interest in journalism?  OR, are you a student in a journalism program with a keen interest in technology?  If you are, I'd love to hear from you.  This summer, I'm hiring an intern Program Manager focused on developing features and tools that will shape how millions of people learn of the news.  I've copied our official recruiting text below (you can find it on msnbc.com here).  Are you interested?  Email me.

MSNBC.com seeks a Program Manager intern for summer 2008. Duties include responsibility for driving individual features through the entire development lifecycle. Specifically:

• Determining the feature’s place in a larger product strategy
• Communicating the vision and gaining support for the feature
• Gathering requirements
• Defining success metrics
• Developing estimates and project plans
• Writing specifications and designs
• Creating and managing schedules
• Communicating and coordinating regularly with team members and management
• Ensuring the feature is released on time and on budget
• Tracking and reporting on the success metrics after the feature has released

You’re a good candidate for this position if:

• You’re pursuing a course of study in technology, journalism or (is there anyone out there?) both!
• Your interest in Web publishing is backed by specific URLs that you’ve contributed to or created.
• You’re genuinely inspired by the ongoing potential of the Web to deliver content-driven experiences online.
• You have exemplary writing skills.
• You’re the type of person who’s comfortable working under little (or ambiguous) direction.
• You’re a news junkie.

We should warn you, however, that this place is pretty intense. This is the news business, after all. Some days you get to work on what you planned. Some days you get Hurricane Katrina. You’ll need to be able to thrive in a fast-paced collaborative environment, juggle priorities and resources with ease, improvise and adapt to overcome obstacles, and assess risk and make trade-offs to achieve project goals. No one said driving the future of news was going to be easy. That’s why we try to have a little fun during the downtimes and even the busy times.

At msnbc.com, thinking big and taking risks is a part of our culture. If that’s the kind of challenge you’re looking for, contact us today.

And yes, we pay.

Links for a gray Seattle Monday

"Designed for one of the biggest developers in the United Arab Emirates, Nakheel, Mr. Koolhaas’s master plan for the proposed 1.5-billion-square-foot Waterfront City in Dubai would simulate the density of Manhattan on an artificial island just off the Persian Gulf." [Link]

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If you haven't seen the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope demo yet, I highly recommend a look at this video.  What I'd love to see is a response from the academic arm of the astronomical community.  Does this represent a shift in how astronomy is practiced at all levels or simply a revolution to how hobbyists view the night sky?