The biggest computer company in the world, once known for their ugly and boring “beige boxes,” has been hot in the last month, shipping new products and getting the media abuzz with products in the labs. Here’s what’s been coming out of Dell lately:

1. Just now Dell announced a new addition to their Inspiron notebook lineup – the Inspiron 13 (1318, to be exact).  This is a 13″ notebook that replaces the old 14-incher, aligning the company’s Inspiron line with the higher-end XPS trim.
   Starting at $699, this (very good-looking) notebook is configurable with up to a Core 2 Duo T8300 (2.4GHZ, 3MB L2), 320GB of spinning storage, and 4GB of RAM.  This is a significant change for Dell because the old 14″ Inspiron didn’t fit with the line-up at all and this 13″ will simplify the company’s notebook lineup for consumers, which now consists of Inspiron 13″, 15″, and 17″.
2. Earlier in the day, PowerPoint slides with Dell’s planned XPS Studio 13″ and 16″ notebooks were leaked.  It’s very interesting what Dell is doing with their XPS and Studio lines.  Here’s a brief history:
   • Dell XPS started out as the gaming/high-end division within Dell, making desktops and laptops for gamers and those needing alot of power.  The first XPS notebooks were thick and heavy, but were very powerful – and were true gaming machines.  The desktops were equipped with lights and lots of power – just what a gamer is drooling for.
   • With the acquisition of Alienware, Dell expanded the XPS notebook line down-market to compete in the premium (non-gaming) segment.  Here’s when the beautiful XPS 13″ and 15″ notebooks were born.  These are still being sold by Dell today and are intended to go after Apple’s MacBook line.
   • In the beginning of the summer, Dell announced the Studio notebook line.  This threw the enthusiast and geek communities into a bit of a stupor, as the Studio notebooks competed with their XPS cousins – having almost the same design, price, and specifications.  The only difference is that the Studio line includes 15″ and 17″ models whereas the XPS (non-gaming) line has been sold with 13″ and 15″ models.  (Yes, there is still a 17″ XPS M1730 gaming notebook of the early generation XPS line – the bulky, heavy, and hot-running desktop-replacement rig being sold today, but consensus is that it is being phased out for Alienware notebooks).
   • With the leaked slides today, the earlier confusion about XPS and Studio lines was cleared up a bit: the Studio brand will become the higher-end Dell notebooks, the step-up from Inspiron.  Within the Studio line, the XPS line will bear the name of those notebooks that have the most premium and most powerful specifications.  Thus, XPS will be a sub-brand of Studio, creating “Studio XPS 16″ – as in the leaked slides.
3. In July, Dell has been reported to be developing either a mobile phone or a media player.  As you might remember, the company has competed in the media player space before (Dell Digital JukeBox) and in the “everything but a phone” space (Dell Axim PIM).  The DJ was not a “bad” product, but lacked the “oomph” and “coolness factor” needed to compete with iPod.  The Axim’s handheld market went away and morphed with the cell phone.  Both product lines are no longer made by Dell.
4. Now, Dell has assembled a very ambitious group of people to work on the rumored media player to compete with iPod.  Some member of the group have even worked at Apple.  Whatever the product/service will be, it is getting the most media coverage a Dell consumer device has ever received, and this is the first big step tipping Dell into the “hot” area of the thermometer.  The company, with Michael Dell at the reigns again, seems to be taking some early steps in becoming an innovator.  Now those are big words of praise for a company like Dell, especially coming from me, and here’s why: Dell has never really made and manufactured anything that was not a computer shell or enclosure.  Think about: the firm, ever since the beginning, has been known to take existing hardware and software, slap on the Dell name on the boot software/firmware, and design an outer case for it with the company’s name.  Compare that to Apple, a company which not only makes such “outer cases”, but also makes its own software that integrates seamlessly with those shells hardware.  So for Dell to be designing something from the ground up is a major step forward.

For me, Dell has now reached the point of having to make a cross-roads decision: they are well-known for quality in the PC market and are taking the right steps to change their old image of making ugly hardware (as witnessed by the notebook development above).  The real question is where else can they go?  And it’s a question that Michael Dell thinks about very often, if not dreams about.  The new media player and cell phone initiatives are a sign that Dell – as a company – has finally awoken and decided to hire a team of innovators and engineers (and not those that make PC “shells”).  In any case – whatever Dell is doing – it’s getting much buzz in the tech world and that’s why I consider the company to be “hot”.

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Microblogging services like Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce are gaining steam, popularity, and new users by the bucketful every day.  This article, however, is not about why I like to use these kinds of applications or how much I look forward to getting Twitter updates by person x.  No, this article is about the (as of yet unexplored) applications of microblogging services that could bring them into the black on the income statement.  What is this untapped use I write of?  Two words: customer service.  

It is very often that one sees such statements as “It is our mission to bring the best products to our customers.”  Some companies do a very good job of listening to their customers and meeting their mission statements, resulting in great customer satisfaction, and (more likely than not) great returns.  Other firms don’t fare very well in this department and don’t do a very good job in listening to the voice of the customer.  Whatever the scenario is, it has become very difficult for large corporations to listen to their customers.

This new “difficulty” has mostly been a result of information becoming more decentralized: we went from having print media (newspapers and magazines) to wide broadcast media (TV and radio) to the internet – where inputs can come from places not related to the company, such as online forums, chat sessions, and online user groups.  Some of these extremely valuable places of feedback don’t stay online long enough for a company’s employees to notice them.  Chat sessions, for example, aren’t even documented most of the time.  ”How can this be,” you ask?

On one hand, the internet has made communication easy with tools such as email, IM, chat, forum boards, and SMS.  On the other hand, the internet has also made it easier for people to interact on a global scale, increasing interaction and communication exponentially.  Such large-scale communication has made acquiring feedback difficult for some firms, especially ones that either serve large markets, sell many products, operate internationally, or perform a combination of all three.  Collecting feedback about a company or its product has become somewhat analagous to searching for a needle in a haystack.  Sure, most companies have Feedback and Contact Us sections on their web sites, but there are a few problems with acquiring feedback this way:

1. Not all users go there to leave feedback.
2. Those who do leave feedback either get a heartless, automated response email, or aren’t even informed that their input has been heard or has actually been applied and/or considered  in the next design of the product.  This leads to
3. Decreased participation on company-issued feedback mechanisms and a lesser opinion about the company in question.  People will think that “Nobody is even going to read or take seriously the information I just wrote to company x on its feedback website, so why did I just spend ten minutes wasting my time writing about how the product can be improved?”  After this, it’s a downward spiral that repeats itself and never ends.

These issues call for a different type of feedback mechanism – one where people’s suggestions and feedback about a company’s products get either

• Rewarded,
• Compensated, or
• Somehow acknowledged (by a human).
  • Automated emails don’t count… They’re so very “web 1.0″.

So where do we start in the process of designing these new “social customer service and marketing” experiences?  Yep, you guessed it: the microblogging networks.

*Note: since I know and use Twitter the most out of all microblogging network services, I will rely on its feature set the most in this article (no matter how many times or how long it’s been “broken”).  Moreover, most of the suggested uses I propose will seem a little “janky,” and that’s the point: currently, real-world uses are simply non-existent.  But with the help of a current microblogging company or a new one, it can be done.

First things first: a company can establish an account on Twitter and send out periodic updates such as new product announcements, changes to the product line-up, seasonal specials, promotional buying codes, and everything else far and in-between.  Twitter users interested in the company can follow it on Twitter and those who do are guaranteed to get updates in their Twitter feed that the company posts (or Tweets, as it is called by Twitter folk).  A great benefit of being on the receiving end of messages such as these is that posts on Twitter are limited to 140 characters, meaning no Biblically-long press releases that put you to sleep after the second paragraph; when on Twitter, all updates and announcements from companies have to be straight and to the point.  Here’s an example:

“Annoucning the iPhone 10G. Starting at $100. 80GB of storage, T1 download speeds in the palm of your hand. Your life, in your pocket. Available 7/1/2012. Visit apple.com/iphone.” Posted by AppleInc.

or,

“A kind reminder from your friends at Procter & Gamble that the Crest toothpaste you purchased last week might contain chemicals known to interfere with digestion processes. Recall information available at P&G.com/recall.” Posted by Procter & Gamble, Inc.

The great thing is that this can be done now, without any special modifications to Twitter, by any company who wants to participate.  Geek clothing company Uneek Geek , that prides itself on its unique and beautiful designs, already doing this (note: Uneek Geek is a sponsor).  Moreover, this would only work within a large company if one person (or one very tightly-integrated department) were responsible for the publishing of Tweets.  Otherwise, the message would be diluted.

Second things… second: Twitter has a nifty feature, it’s called “@”.  It is also known as direct reply.  Typing @ followed by a Twitter user name will send a direct reply to that user.  For example, typing @sashok followed by whatever you want to say will send a direct reply to me (my Twitter name is sashok).  Twitterers can use this direct reply feature to provide the company with valuable feedback.  Let’s imagine that Joe Consumer just received Apple’s update above on Twitter.  He can immediately reply to Apple by typing (@AppleInc) and say something like:

“Wow!  That’s great news.  I hope you were able to add cut-and-paste – something that has been missing in the iPhone for the last six generations”.

In a similar way, the preceding response can read something like:

“Will you please add MMS support as a software update… please?  Pretty please…”

Communications channels become two-way streets this and are much more open this way, with a company being in a position to quickly reply to all suggestions.  By replying to Joe Consumer, the company will have already solved our first goal above – acknowledgement.  Within the company, these suggestions can be categorized and sent up to the right people (software developers and iPhone engineers, in our case).  By doing so, companies are able to receive improvement suggestions in a way that’s fast and inexpensive, while satisfying those who make those suggestions (with quick, personal responses).  As a side benefit, this also adds a human component to a company.

The best for last: monetization.  Currently, microblogging services either have none what-so-ever or very little when it comes to revenue and profits.  Twitter is rumored to be working on a plan to bring in revenue and Pownce has the “freemium” model in place by offering premium services for paid users.  Both companies have somewhat high operating costs – dealing with incoming and outgoing text messages, server upkeep and capacity expansion, to name a few (no, I haven’t seen any real financial info… yet).  However, both companies’ services can be sold as packages to companies and corporations wishing to improve customer satisfaction, marketing, and outreach to specific audiences.

Twitter can offer firms the ability to auto-categorize responses and conduct surveys.  If, for example, a Tweet comes to Apple asking the above question about MMS, it can be automatically routed to the “questions about MMS list” within Apple’s (highly modified for large amounts of data) Twitter interface and an Apple Twitter representative can answer it.  Survey conducting is self-explanatory: Apple can Twitter-out a question asking which of the following features users would like to see the most in the next update to the iPhone:

1. Google apps push and sync capabilities (Gmail, Calendar, Docs)
2. A2DP Bluetooth
3. More storage capacity

Users can vote, 1, 2, or 3 by texting a direct reply.  Twitter can provide the tech infrastrure for Apple to tie into in order to count the responses and then make decisions internally.

Survey participation can even be rewarded.  If a Twitter user sends a reply to Apple’s survey, a special promo code can be sent back to the user to use in the Apple online store.  This takes care of being rewarded and compensated – as per our goals set out in the beginning.  To generate even more feedback, companies using Twitter can make a contest where every 1000th respondent to a company’s survey wins a free item.

If companies embrace microblogging services as a support a tool, the revenues generated from these new clients will become the bread and butter of microblogging services and communities such as Twitter.  Because of the very social nature of these services, they can bring a lot to the table by providing personalized customer service and marketing services for businesses, introduce a quality source of user feedback, while maintaining high morale of those who provide this feedback.

However, my model does have some limitations and exceptions.

1. It can’t be used very effectively for tech support on a case-by-case basis, so don’t expect to see Twitter conversations start up containing instructions on how to replace the hard drive in an iMac.  Even so, this limitation can be overcome by providing the user with a case number and the correct toll-free number to call in regards to the issue he/she is having.
2. Whether a company’s efforts pay off using one of these microblogging services greatly depends on the culture of the company.  This is a very complicated topic and is beyond the scope of this article, but (even though I used it as an example) I can’t imagine Apple providing an open, immediate, and direct answer to the following question: “When are you planning on including MMS support in the iPhone 3G?”  To this question, I would expect Apple to answer “We do not discuss unannounced or rumored features” or “We are constantly reviewing our products and services to improve their quality.  At this time, we are not prepared to discuss this particular feature.”  That’s just Apple, however.
   And yet there is something potentially powerful about Twitter being a service as I propose: it might just “open Apple up” and turn the company around from a closed-lipped beauty to a “talkative pretty”.
3. Companies that do choose to participate and improve customer service, marketing, and feedback on such services have some costs to pay and decisions to make.  Costs such as new employees to do the “Twitter thing.”  Decision such as which questions to answer and which to ignore.
4. When a company exposes itself in this way, it can easily become flooded with useless information.  Nothing prevents Twitter users to “swarm” a company and bombard it with questions, silly comments, and irrelevant material.

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When Steve Jobs announced Time Capsule last Tuesday, I thought it was a great product for computer “idiots” – something I would give to non-geeks for mindless backups. In fact, Time Machine already is considered to be the “idiots’ tool” for backing up. And this is not a bad thing – it’s very important to backup and Time Capsule will allow regular users who would otherwise not have backups to keep a copy of their data.On second thought, however, it’s a disguised competitor to Microsoft’s Windows Home Server (WHS), in a sleeker package. The purposes of both solutions is to perform routine and simple backups of networked computers. Microsoft has built in some added functionality into WHS like remote access to data and media streaming to media center PCs. With Time Capsule, I think I can encapsulate Apple’s future direction (pardon the pun). With a firmware update, Time Capsule can gain the “back to my Mac” feature of Apple’s .Mac service – only this time for Time Capsule. This would allow remote Macs to access back-up data created by Time Machine on Time Capsule, letting users “roll back” their data just as if they were at home on their Mac. Of course, this would make the most sense for notebook computers, as they “leave” the home network more frequently (I am not a rocket scientist and so I can make this statement without pointing out it’s blatantly obvious). And it would work the other way also – allowing users to make Time Machine backups to Time Capsule remotely. Of course, this can already be done with some smart configuration – after all, Time Capsule is just a router with a hard disk. However, it would still be difficult for the average Mac user to set up. With Apple putting their weight behind the remote backup initiative, this process would become just a few button clicks away.Some may say that Apple wouldn’t do this, since they already provide a back-up service with .Mac. .Mac, however, is expensive and has data storage limits and data transfer limits, limitations not crippling Time Capsule’s imaginary remote-backup service.But the fun doesn’t have to stop there! I think Apple is slowly building out a network of connected services and devices that, when used in conjunction with one another, provide the most benefit to the user. We have already seen Apple TV 2′s renting capabilities without a computer and its ability to transfer purchased or rented content back to the computer and then on to iPod and iPhone. However, there are still a few scenarios that Apple hasn’t yet addressed. Let’s focus on one here: purchased content and portable computers. Let’s say Nick purchased a season of Lost from the iTunes store. He has it on his brand new MacBook Air. Nick and his wife Jenny begin to watch the episodes on their big screen TV using Apple TV, streaming the content. In a few days, Nick leaves for a business trip to Italy and takes his MacBook with him, and along with it – all the Lost episodes. Jenny is now at home and would like to watch some Lost content, but she realizes that the content is not on the Apple TV but on Nick’s MacBook in Italy. How would she access the episodes now? (For this imaginary story’s sake, let’s say Nick is coming back in a week). Does this mean that poor Jenny is to be left in the suspense of Lost episode 4 for an entire week? Well, she can always repurchase the episodes or season from iTunes. But that isn’t really an “elegant” solution. So here’s what I propose: since Nick is a smart man who values his time, he has purchased Apple’s Time Capsule and performed automated backups of his MacBook to the capsule. Before he left, his MacBook connected with it and backed everything up on his machine. (Here’s where Apple comes in with a software update to Apple TV or Time Capsule or both and enables Apple TV to read Time Capsule iTunes backups). So now, Jenny can simply navigate on the Apple TV to Time Capsule volume on her network and select Nick’s back-up as a source. From there, Apple TV will just allow her to access iTunes content from Nick’s Time Machine back-up to Time Capsule that his MacBook automatically performed before he left (that’s a mouthful). Result? Jenny is a happy Apple customer and can watch the Lost episodes she purchased.Although this is a very nifty solution, the problem could have been avoided in two ways. 1) Nick could have transferred the purchased Lost episodes from his MacBook to Apple TV before he left, or 2) Apple could allow re-downloads of purchased content from the iTunes store. With the ladder, of course, the studios and record labels would have to be on board, and we all know how difficult they can be.So here’s just a glimpse of where I think Apple will take Time Capsule in the future, and they can do it with a simple software update.Let me know what you think,Alex

I got a newsletter from Apple today that includes a recap of HD podcasts. While reading the newsletter on my iPhone, I accidentally tapped the screen and much to my surprise it opened up iPhone Safari and gave this message from apple’s site:There is one caviat here for those with unlocked phones: you need to update to the latest iTunes and possible iPhone firmware, which might/might not disable your unlock Try it on your iPhone if you dare and let me know how it went! I won’t be doing it on my unlocked iPhone any time soon, that’s for sure (or until it’s confirmed that it doesn’t lock it back up).Alex