Blogging Schedule

Regular readers of my blog have probably noticed that my blogging schedule has been a bit erratic lately (not that I've ever stuck to a strict schedule :). Unfortunately I haven't had much free time lately.

I've started taking classes to obtain a certificate in usability from the University of Washington.  At work I recently gave a presentation at a user conference and I'm rewriting the UI framework that our company uses. And my family has taken up some time as well with football, birthdays, etc.

However, I do plan to keep my blog going and will try to fit some short posts into my schedule on occasion. Who knows, maybe someday my writing will improve enough where I have Jeff Atwood's (from Coding Horror) problems.

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On another note, what types of articles would you like to see?

My most popular post is Data Binding Classes, Interfaces, and Attributes in Windows Forms 2.0. This post is even more popular than my main page. Perhaps I should write more articles focused on the .Net UI. This is my area of expertise. Perhaps I could write articles on design-time support for Visual Studio? I am certainly aware that this is an area that needs more documentation.

Of course I am also starting to focus more on usability at my work and I'm taking the certificate program. Perhaps I should write more articles that discuss this topic?

What about other topics? Business of software? Cool technology? Developer productivity? Others? I would love to hear from you and get your opinion!

I would especially like to hear from you if you read my blog in an RSS reader. I do not believe that the analytical software that I use (Google Analytics and StatCounter) tracks RSS feeds. So I have no idea if anybody is reading my blog through an RSS reader. Just a "Hi, I read your blog through an RSS feed" would do fine :).

Windows Live Writer Beta 2 Now Available

The last Windows Live Writer blog post was dated November 21 10:41 AM. That is until yesterday, May 30 2:59 PM, when they announced a new beta was being released (Windows Live Writer Beta 2 Now Available). I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, I just found out about it, but I am looking forward to it.

The big question is why did it take over 6 months to update their blog much less to just release another beta? Is this project just one guy working on it in his (or her) spare time? Or is this a serious project that Microsoft is committed to? It would be nice to know the answer to this question so I can properly set my expectations.

One of the new features that I'm looking forward to is the support for Blogger labels. Currently I have to edit my blog post in Blogger after I've posted it using Live Writer in order to apply the labels. This is problematic for a number of reasons. One, it's a pain. Two, I often forget. And three, it messes with my web tracking.

I will definitely be posting a review after I've had a chance to play with it. Stay tuned :).

Seven steps to remarkable customer service

Joel (from Joel on Software) had another great post today (Seven steps to remarkable customer service). In today's post he talks about how to provide great customer service and how great service with highly qualified and compensated employees can actually save a company money in the long term.

As a consumer, I know that I would rather pay more for something (within reason of course) if the company is one I trust. The company's I trust are the ones that provide great service. I define great service as a company that returns phone calls, is on time, honest, listens to my issues, and attempts to address my issues in a reasonable fashion. It seems like most service companies (at least in my area) seem to fail the first test (I can't get any landscapers to return my calls, grrr).

The company I work for has off-shored some of the development work to India, but they kept the technical support in the United States (where the majority of our customers are). This seems to make a lot of sense to me. I know I grow frustrated when I get a technical support person with a heavy accent. I always feel bad when I have to ask them to repeat something because I don't understand what they said.

I've contacted Microsoft developer support a few times in the last couple of years. I've been happy with the level of service that they have provided. They seem very committed to resolving whatever issue I may be having and will go to great lengths to resolve it. However, the support call usually starts off in India (I assume the support person is in India due to their heavy accent). The person is usually very helpful, but I often times have trouble understanding them. Of course, overall I'm satisfied with the level of support, but I would be happier if I didn't have to deal with the accent as well.

My prediction for the next big movement in customer service will be home-based customer service representatives providing support for their local region (I have heard of some companies doing this already, but it isn't wide-spread yet and the infrastructure to support it doesn't seem to be quite there yet). With telephony services the next big thing in the Internet, it's only a matter of time before some large organization has figured out how to provide this type of customer service in a cost-effective way that maximizes customer satisfaction.

Of course, based on Joel's article, this approach may not be very practical when taking a long-term approach to customer service (at least for the software industry). Having a strong feedback loop from customer service to product development is very important in improving the quality of the product which reduces the amount of customer service that is required to support the product.

I've changed my blog style

I didn't like how narrow the article column was in the last style (especially for some of the source code). Let me know what you think of the new style. 

Trying out Windows Live Writer

I was unhappy with the blog editor in Blogger so I've been searching for a desktop blog editor that I can use instead. After spending way too long searching for one, I decided to try out Windows Live Writer (by Microsoft). The software is still in beta, but it looks promising.

One of the things I wanted to try out is uploading photos with my post. Here's a picture of my family at a recent Luau we had in our backyard (the picture is actually taken in front of a wall hanging in our basement). Unfortunately this feature did not work for me. When I tried to publish the post, Live Writer said Blogger did not support image upload. I ended up using Picasa to upload the file which meant I had to create a post and then delete it :(.

Being new to blogging, I'm not sure what features to really look for, but Live Writer seems to have all the features I can think of, including several different views such as normal, web layout, web preview (includes template), and HTML code (it seems to create reasonable HTML) and a spell checker (very handy to avoid embarrassing myself to badly). It's also built to be extensible, and with Microsoft backing it, it's likely to have a lot of good extensions soon. The fact that it's free is compelling as well (hopefully it will stay that way).

If you are interested in a good review of this software, check out Writer is Microsoft's first Live killer app on ZD Net.