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In a recent article in a leading online magazine, the author recounts his ‘bad’ experience in a five-star hotel and then compares that with a supposedly ‘good’ customer service at another equally starred hotel. He says that the ‘bad’ hotel didn’t extend his check-out time (they said that if he pays extra it would be possible); but the other hotel gladly did so.

I have my own experiences of bad customer service. But we need to differentiate between bad customer service and annoying customer demands.

I remember a scene from my favorite romantic comedy – Notting Hill. In that movie, William Thacker – the protagonist – runs a travel book shop. One day a well dressed customer walks into the shop and the conversation goes something like this:

Customer :  Do you have any books by Dickens?
William :     No, we’re a travel bookshop.  We only sell travel books.
Customer : Oh right.  How about that new John Grisham thriller?
William : No, that’s a novel too.
Customer : Oh right.  Have you got a copy of ‘Winnie the Pooh’?

What is expected of William Thacker? Should he do something to attract this customer again? Should he send his assistant to get the latest John Grisham thriller and hand it over to the customer as a show of exemplary customer service? Isn’t that what we – customers – demand so often?

Before you complain next time about a bad customer service, think again. Were you an annoying customer?

Image courtesy: Webshots

I wanted to own an Apple MacBook for long. Very long. Since I turned an independent consultant, I thought why not go for a MacBook?

Coming from ‘Microsoft Windows’ platform, the first impression wasn’t that impressive – after all even Windows has GUI, dock & task bar. But when I started using it, I realized why Mac is superior. In less than two weeks, I’ve come to like MacBook. There are at least three features that make Mac to stand out  (I’m not sure even in a decade such features can come to Windows based laptop; same holds for Linux too):

• Install & uninstall experience – Drag and drop into ‘Application Folder’ for install; drag & drop into ‘Trash Can’ for uninstall. Just as simple as that. No registry; no clean-up of messy folders. Mac OS folks have done really good design and it is simply superb.
• No shutdown - Okay, not necessary to shut down. Close the lid and its off; Open and start working. Cool, isn’t it?
• Spotlight – something like desktop search. It is quick and precise (only once it didn’t return what I was looking for).

Mac Applications

A concern that I had was that I may have to spend quite a lot on applications. Not true. There are lots of open source and free applications for Mac too. And most of them are elegant in UI and efficient in what they are supposed to do. Here are some of the applications that I’m using:

Web Browsing : Mac comes pre-installed with Safari, which is a fast browser. I am also using Firefox.

Email : Mail, the pre-installed email program doesn’t have a provision to download only the headers. I’m using Gmail with offline feature and it is more than sufficient for me.

RSS Feedreader : Again I depend on Google for it. I’m using Google Reader with offline feature.

Office Suite : I’m using the Apple iWork. Might give a try to NeoOffice.

Games : I’m surprised that Mac doesn’t come with pre-installed games pack. There is only chess. I’m searching for some good free games.

Chat : My chat buddies have grown old (no I’m still young ). Everyone in the current friends circle use Gmail chat and so I go with it too.

Programming : I’m using TextWrangler for coding. But couldn’t find a decent SVN client. I tried SCPlugin, but for some reason it didn’t work.

Photography : I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop Elements and it worked in Mac too. Still to edit any photo in Mac but I’m sure the experience is going to be good.

Note Taking : Voodoopad Lite is a desktop wiki for Mac and it makes it easy to takes notes and organize within a single physical file.

Personal Finances : I tried mmex. But it kept crashing, though it works fine under Windows.

VirtualBox : I couldn’t find a decent Desktop Blog writer than Microsoft Live Writer; also I already bought SmartDraw. So went with VirtualBox to run Windows inside Mac. I am also using MMex for personal finances under Windows.

Others : iSync for syncing addresses & calender from Nokia E71; TweetDeck for tweets; SLife for tracking hours spent on applications; Books for cataloguing; Grab for taking screenshots.

Are there any other interesting Mac applications (preferably free) that I should try?

In the competitive software industry, if you don’t keep yourself updated, soon you’ll be outdated. Yet when swamped with hundreds of concepts, methods and techniques, it is impossible to be updated continually. There is also a risk of, being updated in a soon-to-be outdated area.

Whether lucky or smart, I’ve always worked on challenging, well-paying and emerging concepts & tools. Having reached a certain stage in my career, I’m preparing for the next stage. I’ve followed ‘learn-do-refine’ model which has worked pretty well so far. With that foundation, here is my learning model for the next stage.

My learning model is of two layers – a core layer, domains in which I want to be an expert and a support layer, domains which will help me to practice my expertise effectively.

Enterprise Architecture

Many-a-times, those in software industry asks, ‘I have an answer. Do you have a relevant question?’. But successful (read profit making) companies are those that solve a business problem by engaging technology. EA brings this success story as a practice. I’m excited to learn about EA and possibly apply those concepts in the coming years.

Customer Relationship Management

CRM covers topics such as finding new customers, selling more to existing customers, and retaining customers. Now-a-days, CRM is considered relevant even for government organizations. I’ve been in CRM domain for the past 8 years and I’ve enjoyed both functional and implementation sides. I would like to continue to learn how CRM concepts help companies (and even governments) to be profitable.

People Skills

Executive educator, Marshall Goldsmith, says in ‘What got you here won’t get you there‘, that most of executive’s challenges are ‘people related’. To achieve anything significant, there needs to be a team (composed of seniors, peers, and juniors) and it is important to develop people skills to work with and with-in teams. Having been a asocial introvert, I find that this part of the pie is the most frustrating and emotionally draining; yet a critical part to be successful.

Project Management

I would broadly term this part as ‘Getting things done’ – the execution part of the deal. I’ve worked with some of the brilliant minds who are able to place best ideas on the table, but lack what it takes to get it done. Though I like to conceptualize a solution and communicate it with enthusiasm to others, I find it satisfying to get it executed – not really bothering about who gets the credit. You know what? When you get into that attitude, you almost always get the credit!

Financial Management

This is one area where I need to start from scratch. Executives translate every action in the organization into numbers – either profit or loss. It is poor financial management that has gotten the erstwhile famous companies into bankruptcy.

…and some fun

Another critical piece to continue enjoying other pieces. Though I don’t expect to be Ansel Adams or Mark Twain or Michael Phelps, I like to pursue photography, travel, writing and swimming as they joyfully refresh the soul.

Do you have a learning model? Do you think it is worth having one and pursuing it? Feel free to share your comments.

An irony of being in software industry is that as I gain more experience, I go farther away from constructing software. I keep learning lots of abstract concepts, but don’t get to test them. Not to be out-dated, I write pieces of software myself to test these concepts and theories. Its like being in college continuously!

Of late, I’ve been reading a lot about cloud computing, SAAS, REST and web2.0. But I couldn’t find a way to test them. So I decided to develop an application, which I named YATSY – Yet Another Ticketing System – utilizing years of experience in customizing other helpdesk, support desk and service desk systems.

Only Google offered a free hosting (limited free hosting; with an option to upgrade) on the cloud. With its current offering Google AppEngine (GAE) supports only Python. And web2py, a python web-framework, makes it extremely easy to develop for GAE. Not only that – web2py claims to make it easy to build stand-alone applications for all the three platforms: Mac, Linux & Windows. Though web2py doesn’t have many contributed 3rd party plug-ins, I went ahead with web2py because of the above feature set.

One more negative about web2py is that it lacks a fine documentation. So it is little difficult for beginners. Yet discussions on their google group compensates for this lack.

With that said, web2py does make web-programming easy and hosting on GAE is even easier. Here is what I’ve been able to achieve.

You can see it hosted in Google AppEngine. The code is checked in Google Code.

Your comments are welcome.