dadams.co.uk

I won’t go into all the details, but I’ve had a Blackberry Pearl sitting in my desk drawer since my friends at RIM gave me the beautiful device in December. Last week the process of getting it connected to e-mail and the world-at-large suddenly gathered pace, and then today my SIM was updated and I got the news that I was registered on the Blackberry Enterprise Server. An e-mail followed containing my enterprise activation password.

Having been a Palm user for a number of years (and briefly, I’m sorry to say, a Pocket PC user), I had an expectation that getting the Blackberry to receive e-mail and connect to Sametime was going to take a few configuration steps. How wrong I was… it couldn’t have been easier. I clicked on the enterprise activation icon, I entered my e-mail address and the supplied password, I selected ‘Activate’ from the menu… and that was it. The Blackberry told me it was going through the necessary steps, and when it reached 100% there was my e-mail (identical to what I could see sitting in my Notes 8 inbox) and there was my fully up-to-date calendar. It was too easy - having a technical background I could almost say I’d rather go through some pain to set things up because that’s how you learn how things work. But imagine supplying Blackberries to hundreds of users and it being that simple (because it has to be).

Now for Sametime 7.5.1 Mobile Edition… I used the Blackberry’s browser to visit the ‘OverTheAir’ install page, selected the right install option, and off it went. When the install finished I entered my Sametime user name and password, and my Sametime contact list appeared (same as the one that’s now integrated into Notes 8). Again, too easy… which is fine, businesses like easy because it saves them money and improves productivity (that sounds a bit marketing-like, but it’s true).

Late last week Ed Brill announced on his blog that there would be another public beta of Notes 8 before the product ships ‘mid-year’. I’m somewhat spoilt as I have access to internal builds of Notes 8 and have seen the quality improve in the time since the first public beta - I think that everyone else will be very pleased when they see the progress made.

Having been using Notes 8 for so long (since beta 1 late last year) Notes 7 looks almost alien when I see someone else using it. Notes 8 is packed with features that I use on a day-to-day basis and now can’t do without… stuff like:

• Message threads - seeing related e-mails grouped together on the surface of the Inbox, thus removing clutter
• Type-ahead addressing which picks up the names of people who you’ve collaborated with recently (even if you didn’t add them to your address book) or frequently (imagine how many Smiths there are in IBM, but it always presents my colleague Martin Smith first)
• Activities integration - a great capability for managing the myriad of information fragments that constitute a project, and the Notes 8 integration is slick and seamless
• The productivity editors - goodbye PowerPoint
• Integrated Sametime - which effectively puts Voice-over-IP, telephony and video capabilities into the Notes client
• The new design for the ‘day-at-a-glance’ calendar in the sidebar

With Sametime 7.5.1 just released (and way ahead of the competition), and with Quickr and Connections due to ship this Summer, the Lotus portfolio has never looked stronger. Spread the word.

Friday was the big day… our Sky Plus box was to be replaced. I had to go to a meeting in the morning (damn work interfering with my life as usual), so the wife was left in charge for the morning. The engineer called and said we were his first call of the day. Regular readers will know that any dealings with Sky are generally painful, but my opinion almost did a u-turn on this day.

I wasn’t there to witness the first visit of an extraordinary young man who broke the Sky mould. He cared. He wanted us to be satisfied with the service. He wanted to sort out the problems. He was concerned about the poor service we’d received. Hang on, was he really a Sky employee? Was he not a Samaritan with a tool box and ladder?

First thing he did was listen (are you getting this, Sky head office?) to the description of what had happened. He pointed out that because our system was actually under warranty from the multi-room installation last October (ah-ha, no-one at Sky Central told me that) we shouldn’t have to pay. So our young hero called customer service and told them so, and patiently waited (and repeated it five times) until it finally penetrated their thick skulls. He then installed the new Sky Plus box, fitted the correct connectors (the guy in October had used the wrong type), and then adjusted the dish to pick up a better signal. On leaving, he once again apologised on Sky’s behalf and left the wife his mobile number requesting a call if we needed any more help.

When I returned home all was well with the Sky Plus box, apart from live pause not working (but a forced upgrade on the software fixed this, I knew the problem was there on older versions). I was amazed to hear the story of some good customer service from Sky and the existence of an employee whose first directive was not to extract money from us. However, I then discovered that the movies and sports channels weren’t working. I called the engineer, and he confirmed that he had phoned Sky Central and asked them to pair up the viewing card and the box - a process which can sometimes have a short delay, but not four hours. He offered to come back to us on his way home… a promise he kept. I stood with him while he called customer service and went through the process again. He offered to stay until service was resumed but it was getting late so I insisted he should go and have a great weekend. I offered him some money to have a drink on me which he politely declined as he felt Sky had given us poor service (this is a true story). He told me to call him if there were any further problems.

By Saturday morning we still didn’t have movies or sport. I thought it unfair to call the engineer (he wasn’t on duty) so I called Sky Central. I went through the process yet again… account number, viewing card number, serial number. The lady in customer service admitted she didn’t know what was going wrong. After a few minutes she said that she was transmitting the fix and the channels would be available after a short delay.

Sunday… what a surprise. No movies or sport. I rung Sky Central again, same process again, except this time I asked what they were going to do different. I was passed onto an expert (hmmm) who asked me the same questions again. And then, get this, she told me that if both Sky boxes weren’t attached to the phone line I might incur extra charges. This is typical of Sky… I have a problem and I’m receiving crap service, and they’re more interested in their own revenue. Words fail me. After a few minutes she said she knew why the updates hadn’t worked and the channels would be enabled in two minutes. And she would call back in five minutes to ensure they were working. The channels did work, almost as soon as the call ended. Good. But did she call me back? What do you think?

By the way, if anyone from Sky’s top brass should happen to read this then contact me and I’ll give you the engineer’s name. Promote him, give him a pay rise… he is the ONLY person in your organisation who has ever given me the impression that Sky cares about it’s customers.

Okay, I used that heading once before. A couple of years ago we had Sky Plus installed, and in the first six months had four replacement boxes until, eventually, we got one that worked and stayed working… most of the time. Even then it wasn’t the most reliable of units - recordings would fail and live pause would stop working from time to time.

In the past few weeks however it got worse. This Sunday marked the third occasion this year that all the recordings disappeared into some technological black hole. It was getting to the point where half of the recordings failed, and those that did succeed would freeze numerous times during viewing (which does rather interfere with your viewing enjoyment). As for recording two channels at the same time… forget it.

Phoning Sky is something I dread and relish. Dread because I know that ultimately it’s going to cost me money. Relish because I know I’m going to have an argument with them and that I’m right (their customer service IS poor and their equipment IS crap). As my warrantly had expired, Sky’s answer was for me to pay £65 for an engineer to come along with a refurbished Sky Plus box. Now bearing in mind the obvious poor quality, the 90-day warranty on a refurbished box is worth the square root of bugger all. We recently got a new box for our daughter’s bedroom, and for nearly seven months that’s been trouble-free, a Sky Plus record in my experience. So £160 buys a new box with a year’s warranty. But let’s recap… their customer service IS poor and their equipment IS crap, so on top of the monthly £53 I pay already, I’ve paid £160 so that I can carry on being their customer. Am I a mug or a victim of their monopoly? Or both?

One saving grace is that I got to put one of their people in his place - on telling the sales department about my woes he chuckled, whereupon I told him to stop laughing as their poor service (now with added lack of empathy) was not funny in any way. Does anyone else have experiences of Sky that they’d like to share?

Fans of dadams.co.uk might have noticed a short break in service… nearly seven months actually. Sorry. Various reasons, not all happy ones. We moved house at the start of October, an experience which could eventually be described as ‘happy’ (especially now that I’ve finished decorating the lounge). Decorating three bedrooms (one is now my office), the landing and stairs, the family room and the lounge took a bit of time… just the fourth bedroom, the dining room, the entrance hall and the kitchen / utility room to do.

Among the unhappy events was the sudden death of my dad, John ‘Jim’ Adams. This happened less than a week before we moved, and between then and moving house I went to Florida and back in 48 hours. Needless to say this was a very sad time and I guess the major reason why I didn’t update the web site - I thought that if I wrote something I’d have to mention it, and I didn’t feel ready to.

The other major unhappy event was the death of our dear old Cocker Spaniel, Molly. After developing an infection of the pancreas she fell gravely ill and there was only one decision left - this was fairly recent, Good Friday in fact. We’re still getting over her loss - she was part of my daily life, always there in the morning, going out to do a final wee last thing at night, walks in the evening, always one step behind me in the kitchen.

Anyway, dadams.co.uk is back, and hopefully the mood will improve. A big change is the fact that I’ve moved away from the old static HTML pages (another reason for the lack of updates, it was a pain) and I’m now using WordPress to manage the blog and pages. And you can leave comments. I haven’t decided what to do with the old content - of course there are some absolute gems there, but if you think I’m transferring it all to the new system, think again.