Saw this video over on www.smbitpros.com

It’s worth reposting. Will Smith has a great attitude on life.

It’s raining here in San Diego. A rare and welcome site.

Rain in San Diego

We all have limited time in each day. Looking to increase my productivity and free myself from mundane tasks I decided to try a Virtual Assistant service called AskSunday. With AskSunday you can delegate tasks like ordering food, flower delivery, purchasing event tickets, booking travel plans and many others.

My experience with AskSunday was not good. Here’s a breakdown.

Inputting Service Requests. To start a new request you can send an email, login via the AskSunday website or call. Since I am a heavy Internet user this sounded great. Unfortunately this was anything but great. Email notifications that my request was received were delayed. If I’m offloading a task from my todo list to AskSunday I want confirmation that they received that request immediately. The web interface was very slow. PAINFULLY slow. That is unacceptable. The design and user interface are circa 1999. The only positive is that at least they weren’t requesting you to fax in requests. OK, maybe there were no positives. Grade: F

Request #1: Resolving a billing dispute with TiVO. I requested that AskSunday resolve a billing dispute. I received no response other than the automated email that my request was received. That was 10 days ago. Grade: F

Request #2: Cancel a recurring subscription that was no longer needed. I requested AskSunday to contact a vendor and cancel my recurring subscription to their service. Again, 10 days later I have zero updates other than the fact my request was received. Grade: F

Request #3: Cancel appointment. Due to a hectic schedule I needed to cancel an appointment to see my physician. This task was completed, but I didn’t receive confirmation for 24 hours. Grade: C

Request #4: Book a hotel room. I requested that AskSunday book a hotel room and obtain a special group rate I was offered. 24 hours later I was informed the rate was no longer available and therefore AskSunday did not book a room. This would be OK if I received the information within a few hours but receiving it 24 hours later could have caused problems. Grade: D

The free trial. To sign up for the free trial you have to provide a credit card. Although AskSunday completely ignored two of my requests for 10 days they still charged my credit card when the free trial ran out. So, I’ve submitted one final request to have those charges reversed and my service canceled. Grade: F

I had high hopes for my virtual assistant. Unfortunately, 10 days later I feel like Donald Trump on The Apprentice because all I have to say is “You’re FIRED!”.

Chris Brogan wrote a great piece on choosing three words to act as guideposts for what you want to accomplish in 2010. I encourage you to read his entire post but to summarize Chris writes:

Setting goals is what January 1st is all about. Over the last few years, I’ve practiced something I call “my 3 words,” where I come up with three words that I use as guidance for how I should conduct my efforts in the year to come. I set goals around these three words. I build deadlines and projects around these words. They don’t have to mean anything to you, but the process might prove interesting to you, especially if you’ve found goal-setting difficult in the past.

My three words for 2010 are Be, Empower and Passion. As Chris states, your three words don’t need to make sense to everyone as long as they hold meaning for you.

• Be refers to “being present”. Being in the moment 100% without distraction. Being present for others. Being present to who I’m being so I can execute at my absolute best.
• Empower refers to empowering those around me. I cannot accomplish what I want to accomplish unless I empower those around me. Life is a team sport.
• Passion acts as a reminder to do what I enjoy and enjoy what I do.

Would your company benefit from defining three words for 2010? We’re already working on ours!

I’ve shared my three words. What are yours?

One of the most powerful ways to get control of your incoming email is to use filters. I’m not talking about filtering SPAM because Postini already does that for us. We’re talking about automatically filtering email that you want to receive to a folder other than your Inbox. Automatically filtering your incoming mail ensures that less important email does not get in the way of messages that matter or are time sensitive.

My current filters automatically divert ~20 messages per day to a folder I scan once or twice a week. While I do want to receive these emails, they are mostly automated informational emails that do not require action on my part. With automatic filters routing these emails to a special folder I can check these messages on my schedule, not the senders. I regain control of my email and my time. It’s a refreshing change!

In the past week we’ve experienced Twitter in a new and unexpected way: as a tool for resolving customer service issues.

We speak with customer service representatives on a daily basis. It can be a very frustrating experience. That frustration can lead to a need to vent. Recently, we’ve vented on Twitter.

Twitter has become so popular that many companies are monitoring Twitter for real time feedback about their products. Call it “brand protection”. If a company sees a negative comment about their product they are jumping on the opportunity to fix the situation. See also our earlier blog, What is Twitter? (and why you should care) where we posted:

Twitter is impactful because people are moving towards consulting their peers in real time about their experiences via Social Media. Had a great steak? Take a picture with your phone and share it, instantly, with all of your followers. Wondering why traffic is so bad? Ask the “Twitterverse” and find out. Looking to interact directly with the consumers of your products? Bingo! Twitter is your answer!

This week we tweeted our frustration about two vendors and within the hour they responded to us on Twitter and within four business hours we received follow up phone calls from Managers who offered us an ideal solution. Why we couldn’t reach that same solution via standard support channels is still a challenge that companies need to fix, but getting the right type of support is an improvement over no support at all.

If someone searches on Twitter about your product do you want them to see a lot of negative feedback or only positive customers raving about support? What are people saying about your company on Twitter? If you don’t know, maybe you should find out.

We’re on Google’s Favorite Places list.

The Official Google Enterprise Blog has a post about the City of Los Angeles choosing Google Apps for their new Email system that will serve 30,000 city employees. The entire post and video are available via this link.

Some highlights from their post:

• Important decision. 15 proposals were submitted. The top four candidates gave oral presentations to city officials. The City Council unanimously chose Google Apps.
  
• Improved collaboration. Much of the city’s work requires multiple people – even multiple departments – to work together. With instant messaging, video conferencing, and simultaneous review and editing of documents by multiple people, employees will have better tools to work together on projects.
  
• Easier remote access. In a fast-paced city government, people often need access to work information when they’re not at work. With Google, employees will be able to access their information from any computer with an internet connection, as well as from their mobile phones.
  
• Expanded storage. With Google, we can provide employees 25x the email storage they have today, saving them from having to make difficult decisions about which emails to keep or delete.
  
• Cost savings. Moving to Google will free up nearly 100 servers that were used for our existing email system, which will lower our electricity bills by almost $750,000 over five years. In short, this decision helps us to get the most out of the city’s IT budget.

2010-02-03 UPDATE: Google Apps can now remote wipe an iPhone and enforce security policies. Read more here.

Apple has two three* ways to secure company data on an iPhone in the event an iPhone is lost or stolen.

If you have a subscription to Apple’s MobileMe you can now find a lost iPhone and/or wipe all of it’s data from the MobileMe website. More info on the MobileMe capabilities are available on the Apple website.

Many corporate users do not use the MobileMe service (which costs $99/year) but still need to protect the data on their iPhones. Well, Apple has you covered there as well. You can enable a four digit passcode on your phone. If the incorrect passcode is entered 10 times in a row, then all the data on your phone will be erased. If the data is erased accidentally or the code is forgotten you can restore the phone from iTunes.

Here’s how you would enable the setting to wipe your phone after 10 incorrect passcode attempts. From your phone choose:

1. Settings – General – Passcode Lock
2. Enter a 4 digit passcode twice to confirm. Be sure you won’t forget this passcode!
3. From the next menu click on Require Passcode and choose a timeout. A shorter time is more secure.
4. Make sure Erase Data is set to On. Screen should like the image below.

That’s it! Your iPhone will now wipe all data if an incorrect passcode is entered 10 times in a row.

Each method has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. We feel the built-in feature of using a passcode is the most straight forward solution and provides a high level of security.

*Companies running Microsoft Exchange Server can remotely wipe an iPhone. Please see your company’s system administrator for details.

In this post we’ll take a look at the power and ease of use of Google Apps Forms. We’ll cover creating a form, viewing the data in a spreadsheet and using that data to create graphs. But first, a quick intro video:

 Forms allow any Apps user to create a custom form for gathering information. Forms can be used for anything, from vacation requests or ordering lunch to complex business processes or client surveys . The sky is the limit. Below is a screenshot of creating a sample form:

Notice above the different types of questions. Forms are very easy to create. Forms can be emailed, require sign-in to use or made public for use by anyone. Each completed form will become a row in a spreadsheet and alert notifications can be set as needed.

Here is an example of the form created above:

Here is an example of the spreadsheet this form creates with one submission:

Once a form is created it is very simple process to create graphs from the data. These graphs can then be posted online or shared privately. The ability to share data collected via a form so easily is a very powerful feature. As an example I’ll share data from a form I created to track a diabetic dog’s blood glucose.

Diabetic dogs require accurate tracking of blood glucose, insulin doses and food over long periods of time. Our vet was regularly asking for this information so I made a form, used the spreadsheet data to create a graph and then made the graph public and shared the link with my vet. Now the vet can get real time updates on my dog’s diabetes by visiting the chart I published online. Think about the potential for your business. How could you use this functionality? Track client responses? Gather sales inquiries? Employee feedback? Executive dashboard? Here are the examples from my spreadsheet.

The form:

The data:

The graph (click for big):

When a form is submitted the spreadsheet and graph are updated in real time! What metrics in your business could you track on a daily basis that could make a difference for you?

Since Google Apps Forms are online applications all that is needed to use these powerful tools are a Google Apps account and a web browser. In fact, most of the time I use my iPhone to fill out the form to track my dog’s diabetes. See screenshot below: