Two Things...

1.  Ok, this is the neatest ad I’ve seen in a while. I fell for the wee lemur sitting in the corner of the MobileSyrup page…..

Nifty the things that advertisers can put together with a bit of fancy code and polish.

2.  What’s the deal with Saskatchewan and the subsidizing of broadband for all? I suppose that stratergy only works when the government owns all the telecom infrastructure. :-( God help any independants in Saskatchewan. (are there any?)

3. Etsy completely rocks my world. Ok, I said there was only 2 things, but this is worth mentioning. I’ve recently started purchasing bits and pieces of beauty from Etsy. The independant sellers sent me email thank yous, included thank yous in my packages, and even showered me with free gifts. Cripes. I think I should invite them to Christmas dinner. They *are* amazing. I check the mailbox every day for more
postal love.

Ontario: Go Out And SHOP

CTV Toronto- McGuinty urges Ontarians to spend this Xmas - CTV News, Shows and Sports — Canadian Television

“But if you don’t buy that car — even though you can actually afford it — if you don’t buy that fridge, if you don’t shop at Christmas time, it can actually put us in a bit of a downward spiral.”

McGuinty said he’s not trying to tell families not to be prudent and responsible, but they should be aware that about 60 per cent of the economy is connected to consumer spending.

Now this is simply bizarre. I understand that he’s trying to keep the weak economy crawling forward, but that’s a pretty insensitive comment, considering all the job losses this week.

Operational Efficiencies in a Time of Economic Turmoil

I’m tightening my belt.
Companies all over the world are doing the same.
In times of uncertainty, it’s *prudent* to be conservationist when it comes to finances. Of course, I’m not saying anything you don’t already know.

But in our house, there are a few levers we can pull to reduce operational expesnes: 

1.  Be more practical with groceries: no more silly purchases. Just the food, ma’am. The diet we are on has helped cut down on frivolity significantly. I don’t buy *too* much any more or end up throwing out foods that have spoiled.  We also don’t have many leftovers any more. Good news for us. Bad news for the dog.

2.  Thermostat: 69 degrees. Full stop. I’m working on getting the Wiz down to 68, but he’s getting old and feeling the cold more ;-)

3.  No more PPV movies. (and no more rented movies) As easy as it is to succumb to PPV movies, we’ve now got such a build up of shows and movies that are PVR’d that we could watch pre-recorded entertainment until Spring 2009.

4.  Controlled Christmas Spend. This is the first year I’ve actually put together a Christmas Budget. In a spreadsheet. In a Google Docs spreadsheet, so I can get to it wherever I am, and from whatever computer I happen to be at. Sure, we usually have an idea of what we spend for Christmas, and it’s always too much. This year, I’d like to have our January bonus (which is likely going to be slimmer this year than in previous years) to go to something other than the Amex bills.
I’m making more gifts this year. :-)

5.  Reducing vehicle costs. The leases on both our vehicles are up this spring. Already we are sussing out the new alternatives. Already we’ve put limits on how much we want to spend. :-) We are going to be able to go from $1100/month on vehicles down to about $800. That’s an exciting $300/month more in our bank account. If’ I’m really tricky, maybe we can get it even lower!! :-)

How are you creating operational efficiencies in your home?

operational efficiency, economy, savings, budget

Allstream: The Good and the Bad

Yesterday, MTS Allstream announced that Dean Prevost would be succeeding John MacDonald as the new President of the Allstream arm.

Dean has always been a brilliant visionary, and this is simply a fantastic move.

On the flip side, it’s November, and Allstream has been partial to November layoffs. The Enterprise group is going through its usual house cleaning, with casualties coming in the form of layoffs and 3 month *wondows* to find alternate roles within the organization. The last big November sweep was in 2005, where over 300 employees were released to the industry.

In these uncertain economic times, we're very mindful of the need tomanage and reduce our costs while 
improving our decision-making speed and effectiveness," said Mr. Blouin. "The streamlining of our executive 
team is but one example of what is happening across the company to strengthen our competitiveness.

There's a Storm on the Horizon

A Blackberry Storm, that is.
From TELUS.
I can’t begin to contain my wee bit of excitement over this phone. I’ve had a Blackberry for 9 years. Sometimes I’ve had to have a cell phone as well as a Berry (since there was a time when the Berry was just a Berry). But I’ve been a one-device girl for the better part of the 21st Century.

I’m not the only one talking about this phone. The anticipation is huge.

I love the look and feel of the new Storm. And you know I can’t wait until it gets added to the list of potential company provided phones. I would even consider subsidizing it:-)

TELUS, Blackberry Storm

SMS Dying in Canada?

A neat article about the future of SMS in Canada has got me thinking. Twitter is changing their service model for SMS messages to Canadians because of the *pricing* that carriers are charging for delivery of those wee bits of bytes.

Hmm..... Considering that inbound SMS messages are charged to the user now, I'm finding it tricky to understand where the additional costs that Twitter is complaining about are coming from.... unless there are a gazillion twitter updates being pushed to a gazillion phones in Canada. Of course, there would be a charge to twitter for putting the messages into the network, but the bulk of the cost of delivery should now be paid by the user.

I wonder if originally it was free for twitter to dump SMS messages into a wireless network? Or it was cheap because there were few Canadians interested in twitter?  Here is a great example of twitter being able to actually build a revenue stream, but oh no.... it's gotta be free. :-(

twitter, SMS, Canada

Work Dreams...

I've had a few days respite from work related activities (sort of, I will admit I've had one eye on the berry at times).... and I was all set for a wee afternoon nap today. I awoke in a cold sweat. I was in a customer meeting selling "Managed Furniture". We had spreadsheets, designs, quotes and samples. I couldn't figure out where the network designs were, or what the real telecom solution hook was. I asked, and the dream people said that it was a full furniture solution. No network.

I hate afternoon dreams. Sheesh.
Although, managed furniture sounds like a pretty neat portfolio.

All I Wanted Was Animal Planet

It was was of those routine things to do: add a channel to my Bell TV Package... certainly not brain surgery.
Last night I invested over 2 hours trying to use Bell's "my bell" service to add The Animal Planet to our account. (Side Note: Starting today, Animal Planet is running a 7 episode mini-series on Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd)

Easy, right?
Ahem. No.

Easy enough to log into mybell, pretty obvious to navigate to the area where you *should* be able to add additional channels, and then all hell breaks lose. The web application coughs, chokes and explodes.

Last night, there were page load delays, painful error messages and timeouts. I tried Flock, Firefox and Internet Exploder. None of the browsers worked.  I chalked it up to a bad night on the server farm.

This morning, i thought the dawning of a new day would bring better results. After all, Whale Wars doesn't start for another 12 hours....I've still got time.

And...... no. The self serve application woefully fails again.
At least the delays are improved when it tells me the service experienced an error.

Sigh.
So much for self serve.
Bell, you are headed down the right track, but if you want people to help themselves, please help your tools.

Bell, Animal Planet, Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd

Checking in on GrandCentral - No News is Bad News

Eleven months ago I wrote about GrandCentral, one of the neat new telephony innovations purchased by Google. Since then, I've got a feeling that the Google purchase has resulted in the touch of death for GrandCentral. In February, I provided a non-status update.

Despite the interest, globally, for GrandCentral, the past 2 years have brought no changes to the GrandCentral site, offerings or availability.
In fact, I've got a feeling that the service has stalled in the US, never mind being able to offer it in Canada. It's not  likely a good sign that their blog hasn't been updated since April 2008. They mention that they are incorporating feedback into the new version. How about "do something". Google, what did you do to GrandCentral?