June 14th, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Costa Rica ganó ante su similar de Cuba 5 a 0. Lo cuál tendería a enviar un mensaje equivocado que Costa Rica está jugando excelente al fútbol. Sin embargo un análisis más detallado muestra exactamente la verdad. Cuba desafortunadamente mostró una importante falta de condición física y falta de entendimiento táctico que es evidente al ver los resultados de todos sus partidos de la Copa Oro. Read the rest of this entry »
May 16th, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Uno de los problemas más grandes de algunas corporaciones a nivel internacional es el servicio al cliente. El momento en que un cliente necesita comunicarse con el proveedor de un servicio, ya sea para comprarle más servicios o para corregir uno que no se está brindando adecuadamente.
En este post, voy a dar el ejemplo de Amnet como uno de los peores ejemplos de servicio al cliente que he experimentado.
En mis varios años de consultoría tanto en Estados Unidos como internacionalmente me he dado cuenta que las empresas que logran tener más éxito a largo plazo ponen cierto énfasis en el servicio al cliente. Read the rest of this entry »
March 9th, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Hello everybody. So Tuesday has been the first day of DrupalCon Chicago and lots of great things happening around the Drupal community. First, Dries Buytaert, project lead of Drupal, gave his keynote and talked basically about the future of Drupal, an overview of Drupal 8 and of course the philosophy behind it. I think that he is in the right path on his assumptions of media consumption and how people are using mobile devices increasingly. Read the rest of this entry »
March 2nd, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Steve Jobs introduces Ipad 2
Ok so for everybody that didn’t hear about the event in which Apple unveiled the new iPad 2!
Here it is:
1. Most of the revenue to Apple comes now from iOS devices.
2. 15 million iPads sold in 2010. That is more than any tablet PC’s.
3. As usual Apple – Steve Jobs, always comes out saying how great Apple is and how much their competitors suck.
4. The new ipad has camera. No shock here.
5. Facetime to the iPad. No shock here either.
6. Phil Schiller: “No one predicted this would be as successful as it’s been.”
7. Ipad is being used for a variety of things and in many industries including medicine (brain surgery), and others.
8. Dual core processors, Up to 2X faster CPU, 9X faster graphics, Same low power as a4 and first one to ship with a dual core.
9. Metallic back.
10. Read and Facing cameras.
11. 33% thinner to a 8.8 mm. Thinner than the iphone 4! It feels totally different. 1.5pounds to 1.3pounds. It feels lighter.
12. Available in white and black from day March 11th, 2011.
13. Available also from At&t and Verizon.
14. Same 10 hour battery life – dramatically thinner.
15. Prices: $499, $599 and $699 for wifi and $629, $729 and $829 for wiFi and 3G (prices are 16gb, 32gb and 64gb respectively). Same pricing options as before. 5 of this 6 models are less expensive than $799.
16. Available on March 11th, 2011 in the US -> March 23rd in the main 26 countries that Apple works.
17. THIS IS THE AWESOME PART: HDMI Video out that works with every app. You can use it while charging it. This output is in 1080p. Supports rotation. No setup or config. Only for $39.
18. The case is simply not my type of case, but it is a cool thing… either leather or polyurethane.
Ok now other software upgrades – 4.3:
1. Personal Hotspot for the iphone 4 – Share your 3g connection?
2. Photo Booth, of course, you can now use it to manipulate your photos and apply effects as usual.
3. iMovie – new in iOS4.3. You may share your movies directly to Youtube, Facebook, Vimeo, CNNiReport or Itunes. Only for $4.99 Available on March 11th, 2011.
4. 65,000 apps available for the Ipad.
5. GarageBand – Guitar Amps and Effects, 8 Track recording and Mixing and over 250 loops. In this I like the drums – view.
Ok we are good with the iOS4.3 improvements and the good new apps.
So in a nutshell: Faster, lighter, thinner. Cameras and gyro. iOS 4.3 and FaceTime. iMovie and GaragrBand. 3G on AT&T and Verizon. Same battery life. Same prices. Black and white. Smart Covers.
February 24th, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
So all the Egypt problems last month have shown that when people get together for any cause, amazing things can happen. The reason is simple: people in numbers have a lot of power. Today I was reading about how J.C. Penny got penalized by Google because of their “dirty” practices in buying links. It is almost like Google is trying to send a message to everybody saying if you get involved in link schemes we will punish you.
Now, there is a problem with that approach. Google can indeed punish a lot of businesses but it can’t punish all of them. Google lives only because it actually can return relevant results. For example, today I tried to find the samsonite luggage page in JCPenny and it’s nowhere to be found -> because of the penalty.
Now what would happen if a big group of the Fortune 500 companies decided to get together and all of them do whatever they want with SEO instead of listening to Google guidelines? You guessed it right. Egypt’s case. Google wouldn’t be able to enforce its guidelines without loosing what it is.
The biggest problem is that this is happening already. So many big companies are bending the Google guidelines that it is impossible for Google to target all of them, or any of them for that matter. Simply impossible. So are we getting ready to see an incredible decline in the capacity of search engines to provide valuable results? Yes.
The problem is that Search Engines are destined to fail because they can be manipulated. The more people manipulate the algorithms the more it becomes useless as a search engine. If it is useless, then people (searchers) won’t use it to find their information, and therefore they will turn to other alternatives. Then, companies won’t be interested so much in manipulating the algorithm because they don’t get a good return from doing it.
Google has a fundamental flaw (imho), they are so big that it seems like they own the Internet: but they don’t. Google is similar to a dictator ruler that decides to rein until he wants to. That may happen for many years, and people may sometimes be happy with the way they govern, and sometimes they will get upset, but surely they eventually will want change. When that change is so powerful in the community, they won’t stop until the dictatorship is ended.
No matter how bad or good the new government is, they just don’t care as long as the old government is gone.
In my opinion Google seems to be a pretty good government with some bad decisions sometimes, but overall good. However, I think that some problems with trying to play the card of “the user would think” and the “user would prefer if” sometimes gets in their way of saying: “we are Google and we want it a certain way and since we have much more power than you do, then we will do it the way we want it done.”
That is fair business. Google is huge and they have very good ideas and seriously the web wouldn’t be what it is today without them.
February 17th, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
So let’s say that you decided to install drush in your Mac OS and also you were running MAMP at the time and everything was working great a while ago. But lets say that you decided to upgrade Drush. And you simply grabbed the latest version of Drush from the repository in Drupal.org and everything worked great. Read the rest of this entry »
February 15th, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
The city of Raleigh a while ago had provided information about their $500,000 website that they had agreed to build. Now, from then to today, much has changed including the fact that now the price tag for the new website is $800,000 instead of the half a million. Now, if you were a private company that purchases a website for $800K you would make sure that the functioning of the website would be flawless, right? Not the city of Raleigh. The city’s website was crowded with functionality issues, display problems and also simple mistakes.
According to Justin Moss, reporting for NBC 17: “the City of Raleigh says it is making efforts to address concerns brought up by citizens about its recently launched website.”
According to Mr. Moss, Gail Roper, chief information officer for the City of Raleigh said: “she was not with the City when the final decisions about the site were made. She could not say which person gave ultimate approval on the site design.”
In other words, Mrs. Roper is not aware of which person gave the approval on the site design. This must mean to her that she is then not responsible for the outcome of such decision. It would be like a chef that starts working today in a restaurant and says that he is not responsible for the quality of the food.
I think this is simply outrageous. Not so much for the problems with the website, as a designer I can tell you, every website has its problems. The outrageous part is that it is a website with a price tag of 3 luxury 2011 Lamborghinis. Have you seen a Lamborghini fail the first day that it is bought? Have you seen a Toyota fail the first day that it runs? Hold on, have you ever seen anything that is constructed with a budget of half the cost of a car and when it fails nobody says anything?
I have a problem the moment that somebody purchases something at premium price with the expectation of receiving the highest craftsmanship and engineering, yet when it fails, everybody remains quite. That says something to me.
Look at what Mrs. Roper says according to Mr. Moss: “Roper said no additional funds will be spent on improvements, however existing staff will dedicate time to making the changes on the site.”ARE YOU KIDDING ME? You paid the equivalent amount of a luxury home in the best residential part of Raleigh and you simply say that the existing staff will dedicate their time to make changes to the site?
Friends, I am not a fisherman, but something smells fishy to me here.
The last time that I paid for a nice steak I made sure that it was cooked right. If that wouldn’t have been the case, I would’ve made sure that somebody would’ve known my complaint. If I pay a fair price for perfection, I expect perfection. If the people of Raleigh, through their representatives, paid top price for a website, they should expect top design.
Kudos to Mr. Moss for the article, I hope that he follows through and that the responsible people are held accountable for this. It is outrageous.
June 15th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Today Apple, INC. was to release their pre-orders for the new generation of iPhone, the iPhone 4. However the store was down and it seemed the problem was the validation communication with AT&T. In any event, what I wanted to write about was the human behavior behind the whole new iPhone. Read the rest of this entry »
June 7th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Steve Jobs, CEO of the arguably the most popular company in the world, announced today the most-expected release of the 4th generation of the company’s star product the iPhone. The announcement came as part of the keynote presentation as the kick-off for the Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2010. Over 100 Million iPhone OS powered devices have been sold by Apple… Read the rest of this entry »
June 4th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
So I thought I had seen everything with AT&T, not so. You know, I hear everybody complaining about AT&T all the time and I usually defend them saying that they are not that bad. Today, that has changed 180 degrees. Read the rest of this entry »
