the webthinking blog

I’m close to finalizing reading the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. Awesome book by the way! A good part of it touches upon outsourcing jobs to India, especially call centre jobs.

So, here’s my story: Bell Sympatico DSL users have been experiencing major service disruptions in the Toronto area over the past few days. This affects me as well, living in Richmond Hill, always hitting a Toronto server and an IP address that had a reverse name as “basXX-torontoXX.dsl.bell.ca”.

I pick up the phone to call Bell and ask them “How much longer?” An extremely polite Dominique answers my call. “Sir, before we go any further, just in case we get disconnected, is there a number I can call you back?”

Uh, ah, I thought I was talking to Bell – the phone company. Why should I get disconnected?? Because the ‘net is not working for me?

So my question to the Rep was “Do you mind if I ask where are you located?”

“No sir, in Southern part of India”. Ahaa, just as Friedman’s stories from the book I’ve mentioned above.

After convincing the person at the other end (of the world) that my modem was actually powered on – I get a new challenge.
“Sir, how can you possibly experience connectivity problems related to the Toronto area when you are living in Richmond?”

Hmm – I get it. Now I have to convince him that I live in Richmond Hill, ON and not Richmond, BC.

Two days later Bell has not fixed the problem yet. I’m posting this through my BlackBerry. Lovely!

To Bell: in addition to all screen captures of modem types in use posted on that intra/extranet, you should make available a at least a Google Maps lookup tool, as well. :)

I have just finished reading the free eBook manifesto – Trust Economies: Investigating the New ROI of the Web by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Excellent piece!

I’m starting to think that B2C has now changed its meaning to “Business to Community”. What’s your opinion?

Great event this week-end – PodCamp  Toronto 2. Here are couple of snippets from day one:

* Same things don’t work over time – Chris Brogan
* Social media is a cultural revolution, not a commercial revolution – Collin Douma
* The “trust economy” emulates the human relationships on the web – Julien Smith

See some of the pictures I’ve taken and the whole podcamp flickr stream.

“Talking” Blackberry with PodCamp co-founder, Chris Brogan:

PodCamp Toronto 2008 is just two days away – I’m so excited to attend for the second year in a row.

In the mean time, this one – PodCampToronto.com, just slipped through the fingers of a domain name broker, so I’m more than happy to put it back to work for this vibrant community. See y’all there on February 23.

Yet another reason to vote with your wallet and give up Rogers and their throttled Internet service.

Interesting article by Karen Wickre, Mother of the Google Blog.

I have too keep this numbers handy… Awesome! Via Chris Penn.

A new Forrester report divides the U.S. online population into six groups according to their social participation on the Web:

• Creators – those who blog, publish web sites, upload videos, or participate in other content creation activities – 21 percent own Macs, while only 12 percent own Dell computers;
• Spectators – they read blogs, watch videos, and listen to podcasts – 55 percent own Macs;
• The majority of Inactives – they don’t participate online – 55 percent own Dells.

Social Participation on the Web:

Source: Forrester. Via: Macworld.