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Friday, April 12, 2013

Customer Support Training | What is excellent customer service ...

Excellent customer service isn?t just something that happens from company to consumer. Customer service starts within a company. We all know about Zappos customer culture and their willingness to stay on a call with a customer for up to 10 hours. This article is to shine a digital light on a few other companies who have ?WOWED? me and their secret sauce to create long term impact that makes at least my day a little bit easier. This makes me excited to share these companies with everyone I know. It?s the same effect you want on your customers.

The Product Companies

37Signals, ProductPeople.tv and LeadPlayer

I?m a ridiculously passionate person. Sometimes I?m afraid it freaks people out how much I care. There?s a caveat though. I only get behind good people. ?My twitter bio even says ?Determined 2 meet all Inspiring Honest people?. It?s true. ?Jason Fried of 37Signals taught me long ago, ?You don?t sell to companies, you sell to people?. Their company philosophies mean so much to me I even have a screenshot of their company?s MO as my desktop screen image.

Through Jason?s tweets I discovered the actionable, entertaining and authentic podcast ProductPeople.tv, ?for people who love building products?. Their core audience are developers and project managers, but I think everyone interested in business should be listening. They are genuinely creating these podcasts to educate and inspire people who love building products as much as they do. They focus on a specific market and?over deliver?quality education. ?Listening to their in depth interviews and hearing 100% authenticity, I jumped on the chance to get one of their ?Shout Outs? for my company SaveBusinessTime. ?Problem was, in order to do the shout out they asked me how to describe my company and being that I am once again a newbie start up this is a huge challenge I have been working on every day. ?So I sent this tweet?

productpeople twitter

And I got this back?

productpeople email

It was a sense of relief that this guy with an insane amount of experience building products, who I don?t know, based in Canada? no where near me, took the time to help me better communicate my brand.

And then the very next day I happily heard my ?shout out?? here it is if you?d like to hear it? I?m the 3rd company in > http://d.pr/a/xrOf

Recently I started using LeadPlayer to power the videos on my website. ?It?s this awesome SAAS that allows me to include links and email forms inside YouTube videos. ?As I have been ?using it I have had a learning curve on how to get it working. ?I reached out to their customer support several times with questions and right away I got a response from a charismatic person on their team. Feels good knowing if I have a problem they have someone who cares on the other side to address it immediately.

The Virtual Assistant Companies

FoundersCard , Zirtual and FancyHands

These three companies focus on dedication to consumer experience. FoundersCard is an invite only community of entrepreneurial leaders. FoundersCard staff are always quick to return my emails or look into resources that help make my everyday living easier. It was only fitting that they have a partnership with the virtual assistant companies Zirtual and FancyHands. ?I signed up for both. ?Lets? start with Zirtual. ?In the beginning there were a few hiccups, but the team behind the company truly wanted to give me an incredible customer experience. ?My account manager showed that she valued me as a customer and wanted me to have the perfect dedicated assistant to work with. ?I appreciated the care, saw her passion and wanted to be a part of their journey, just as much as my account manager showed me Zirtual wanted to be a part of mine. So I hung in there and now I have the perfect match. Richard Branson says rather than the perfect business tool, he values a brilliant personal assistant. Thanks to Zirtual that?s exactly what I have in my life now. Just as dynamic is ?FancyHands which, in my opinion, is a completely different service than Zirtual. Zirtual is for dedicated assistants. ?With FancyHands I get different people working on my tasks every day. They are all dynamic and the experience is consistently flawless. Each assistant has a positive attitude, but what puts them over the top is their technology. ?Their time and task tracking dashboard make their customer experience organized and dependable. The best part, when I rave about them in the social sphere they respond with appreciation and humor.

FancyHands tweet

party gif

The Media Company

TechZulu and my previous company ZexSports

Today TechZulu sent me something that, in most jobs, is just another formality, but with this job, it is an honor > my TechZulu business card. I am so proud to be part of this team. ?I believe in their vision, I feel a sense of community, I am constantly valued and shown appreciation. ?So this isn?t just another card, this is a gift that I am so grateful to receive. ?Having awesome customer service starts with great leadership. ?People follow the leader so if a ?team? doesn?t respect their leader then it should be no surprise if they take out their resentment and unhappiness on the company?s customers. If you want enthusiasm from your staff when communicating with your customers, then create a happy workplace.

zexsports_team With ZexSports my team was so hard working, stayed late always with a smile, took chances to benefit the company?s success. They did this because their teammates were doing it. They all believed in the company vision and wanted to work together to achieve it. Plus they knew that I cared just as much about their individual success as I did my own. So they made sacrifices to grow with my company and to give it their absolute all.

IN CONCLUSION

HAVE great leadership and a passionate team

BUILD great technology to enhance the customer experience

SHOW appreciation and value for your customers

USE humor

QUICKLY respond to support tickets with enthusiasm and care

HELP your customers with resources to make their lives easier

FOCUS on a specific market and overdeliver

CREATE a mission that people can align themselves with

Espree Devora

*the Girl who Gets it Done* In addition to being a speaker, moderator and journalist for TechZulu, I am an entrepreneur . My company SaveBusinessTime.com is a curated site of the best business software for start ups to get things done faster. For the LA Tech community I put together a calendar of all the tech events here in Los Angeles on WeAreLATech.com which I update weekly. Coo-coo for coco puffs over business, action sports, guys sneakers, sushi and the internets.

More Posts - Website - Twitter - LinkedIn

Source: http://techzulu.com/customer-support-training-what-is-excellent-customer-service/

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Faster than silicon: Redesigned material could lead to lighter, faster electronics

Apr. 10, 2013 ? The same material that formed the first primitive transistors more than 60 years ago can be modified in a new way to advance future electronics, according to a new study.

Chemists at The Ohio State University have developed the technology for making a one-atom-thick sheet of germanium, and found that it conducts electrons more than ten times faster than silicon and five times faster than conventional germanium.

The material's structure is closely related to that of graphene -- a much-touted two-dimensional material composed of single layers of carbon atoms. As such, graphene shows unique properties compared to its more common multilayered counterpart, graphite. Graphene has yet to be used commercially, but experts have suggested that it could one day form faster computer chips, and maybe even function as a superconductor, so many labs are working to develop it.

Joshua Goldberger, assistant professor of chemistry at Ohio State, decided to take a different direction and focus on more traditional materials.

"Most people think of graphene as the electronic material of the future," Goldberger said. "But silicon and germanium are still the materials of the present. Sixty years' worth of brainpower has gone into developing techniques to make chips out of them. So we've been searching for unique forms of silicon and germanium with advantageous properties, to get the benefits of a new material but with less cost and using existing technology."

In a paper published online in the journal ACS Nano, he and his colleagues describe how they were able to create a stable, single layer of germanium atoms. In this form, the crystalline material is called germanane.

Researchers have tried to create germanane before. This is the first time anyone has succeeded at growing sufficient quantities of it to measure the material's properties in detail, and demonstrate that it is stable when exposed to air and water.

In nature, germanium tends to form multilayered crystals in which each atomic layer is bonded together; the single-atom layer is normally unstable. To get around this problem, Goldberger's team created multi-layered germanium crystals with calcium atoms wedged between the layers. Then they dissolved away the calcium with water, and plugged the empty chemical bonds that were left behind with hydrogen. The result: they were able to peel off individual layers of germanane.

Studded with hydrogen atoms, germanane is even more chemically stable than traditional silicon. It won't oxidize in air and water, as silicon does. That makes germanane easy to work with using conventional chip manufacturing techniques.

The primary thing that makes germanane desirable for optoelectronics is that it has what scientists call a "direct band gap," meaning that light is easily absorbed or emitted. Materials such as conventional silicon and germanium have indirect band gaps, meaning that it is much more difficult for the material to absorb or emit light.

"When you try to use a material with an indirect band gap on a solar cell, you have to make it pretty thick if you want enough energy to pass through it to be useful. A material with a direct band gap can do the same job with a piece of material 100 times thinner," Goldberger said.

The first-ever transistors were crafted from germanium in the late 1940s, and they were about the size of a thumbnail. Though transistors have grown microscopic since then -- with millions of them packed into every computer chip -- germanium still holds potential to advance electronics, the study showed.

According to the researchers' calculations, electrons can move through germanane ten times faster through silicon, and five times faster than through conventional germanium. The speed measurement is called electron mobility.

With its high mobility, germanane could thus carry the increased load in future high-powered computer chips.

"Mobility is important, because faster computer chips can only be made with faster mobility materials," Golberger said. "When you shrink transistors down to small scales, you need to use higher mobility materials or the transistors will just not work," Goldberger explained.

Next, the team is going to explore how to tune the properties of germanane by changing the configuration of the atoms in the single layer.

Lead author of the paper was Ohio State undergraduate chemistry student Elizabeth Bianco, who recently won the first place award for this research at the nationwide nanotechnology competition NDConnect, hosted by the University of Notre Dame. Other co-authors included Sheneve Butler and Shishi Jiang of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Oscar Restrepo and Wolfgang Windl of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

The research was supported in part by an allocation of computing time from the Ohio Supercomputing Center, with instrumentation provided by the Analytical Surface Facility in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Ohio State University Undergraduate Instrumental Analysis Program. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Center for Emergent Materials at Ohio State, and the university's Materials Research Seed Grant Program.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Ohio State University. The original article was written by Pam Frost Gorder.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Elisabeth Bianco, Sheneve Butler, Shishi Jiang, Oscar D. Restrepo, Wolfgang Windl, Joshua E. Goldberger. Stability and Exfoliation of Germanane: A Germanium Graphane Analogue. ACS Nano, 2013; : 130326123449003 DOI: 10.1021/nn4009406

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/computers_math/information_technology/~3/w9fiRPZ0kZo/130410131502.htm

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Thursday, April 11, 2013

South Korean island in North's crosshairs

For six decades, the residents of South Korea?s Baengnyeong Island have practically stared down the barrels of North Korea?s artillery. Located just 10 miles off the North?s Yellow Sea coast, this South Korean island is at the forefront of what some observers say could be the next military flashpoint.

Now, amid the recent uptick in bombast from Pyongyang, the regime has singled out the island for a possible attack. And, even as much of the rest of South Korea seems to remain unphased by the North?s rhetoric, South Koreans here are taking the recent threats seriously, if calmly.

?North Korea?s recent aggression, the fact that it does not recognize the maritime border in those waters, and South Korea?s pledge to respond to any provocation with force increases the likelihood of an incident in this area,? says Yang Moo-jin, a North Korea analyst at Seoul?s Dongguk University.

RECOMMENDED: Kim 101: How well do you know North Korea's leaders?

If the North made good on its promise, it would be the latest in a series of battles around South Korea?s five Yellow Sea islands. Even during times of relative calm on the Korean peninsula, the navies of both nations have engaged in deadly skirmishes. In 2010, a South Korean naval ship sank not far off Baengnyeong?s shore: The South later determined it was struck by a North Korean torpedo, resulting in the deaths of 46 sailors. And later that year, neighboring Yeongpyeong Island was shelled by the North?s military, killing four South Korean soldiers and civilians.

That incident hit close to home for many of Baengnyeong?s 5,500 residents. Since then, new fortifications on the island have been built, and South Korea?s military has bolstered its presence there. Officials on the island estimate that troop numbers now hover around 4,000, but the actual total is a military secret.

The island is prepared, says Kim Jin-guk, who heads Baengnyeong?s Civil Defense Force.

?Many of the locals say they feel safe because we have close to 90 bomb shelters on the island and we have a large number of soldiers and marines stationed here," Mr. Kim says. ?This might make Baengnyeong Island more safe than some other parts of the mainland.?

Last month, Pyongyang?s official Korea Central News Agency reported that North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un ordered troops on a military base just across the sea from Baengnyeong to take aim at the island if war breaks out with the South and "engulf the island with flames." The Civil Defense Force?s Kim says despite that directive, residents remain calm and, to his knowledge, no one has fled the island.

?I trust that the military would protect us,? says Park Dong-sik, the owner of a hotel on Baengnyeong Island. ?The situation is very tense, but I would never leave the island because of North Korea?s threats.?

While Pyongyang escalates the belligerence of its daily diatribes directed at Seoul and Washington, most South Koreans remain unmoved by the rhetoric. Some observers say this apathy is a coping mechanism.

?It?s a part of their psyche,? says analyst Jasper Kim. ?You either ignore the noise from North Korea, or you simply go crazy.?

North Koreans attend a rally held to gather their willingness for a victory in a possible war against the United States and South Korea in Nampo, North Korea, April 3, 2013 in this picture released by... more? North Koreans attend a rally held to gather their willingness for a victory in a possible war against the United States and South Korea in Nampo, North Korea, April 3, 2013 in this picture released by the North's official KCNA news agency in Pyongyang on Wednesday. REUTERS/KCNA (NORTH KOREA - Tags: POLITICS MILITARY) ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. REUTERS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY, CONTENT, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS IMAGE. THIS PICTURE IS DISTRIBUTED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED BY REUTERS, AS A RVICE TO CLIENTS. NO THIRD PARTY SALES. NOT FOR USE BY REUTERS THIRD PARTY DISTRIBUTORS less? ?

Mr. Kim, who heads the Asia-Pacific Global Research group in Seoul, says that Koreans have always lived in range of the North?s guns, but have had little choice but to accept the reality of the situation no matter how grave it might seem.

?It?s like living next to a nuclear power plant, you know that there is a small likelihood that something could go terribly wrong, but you don?t want to question it on a daily basis, because then you start questioning why you are there in the first place,? Kim says.

Still, the barrage of threats might be taking its toll on Baengnyeong?s residents, where tourism, the island's main source of income, is down. For some, like Lee Hwan-sun, the heightened tensions in the Yellow Sea means he cannot earn a living.

?I used to take my fishing boat out about five minutes from the port,? he says. ?But now, because of the situation here, I wouldn?t dare go out that far.?

?We?re scared of Kim Jong-un, he?s unpredictable, he?s worse than his father,? says one local woman in her 70s, who did not want to give her name.

Though most South Koreans are not panicking, there are signs that they are growing tired of the North?s rhetoric. Since the 2010 incidents, the South Korean government has faced criticism for not reacting more strongly to such incidents. That has prompted new President Park Geun-hye to give the Ministry of Defense carte blanche in the event of another North Korean military provocation. This in turn increases the probability of the current war of words turning into a firefight, says analyst Kim.

?They [the South Korean government] have created a broad definition of what a provocation is from North Korea,? Kim says. ?Something very small could demand a military countermeasure by the other side and that?s where problems can arise.?

RECOMMENDED: Kim 101: How well do you know North Korea's leaders?

Cinemagram expands its horizons to Android, lets you create animated GIFs on the fly

The iOS legion has been able to play around with Cinemagram since February of last year, but now it's finally time for Android users to also experience what the app's all about. And while there are certainly other animated applications on the platform that are somewhat similar, Cinemagram stands out from the majority due to its built-in social features -- think of it as an Instagram of sorts, where other users can easily comment on and keep up with your recent four-second creations. What's more, the app allows other tidbits like special effects to be added to videos, while the ability to share these "GIFs on steroids" to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr are also options within Cinemagram. It's even already had one update, adding the ability to delete creations within the app. Hey, perhaps this could be the solution to all your Vine-induced sorrows.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile

Comments

Via: The Verge

Source: Google Play

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/hjKqdLyi6M8/

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Metabolic fingerprinting: Using proteomics to identify proteins in gymnosperm pollination drops

Apr. 10, 2013 ? Proteins are vital parts of living organisms, performing a variety of essential functions such as DNA replication, catabolizing reactions, and responding to stimuli. The complete set of proteins expressed in an organism at a given time, under defined conditions, is known as the proteome. While the genome of an organism remains relatively stable, the proteome is remarkably dynamic, varying from cell to cell and even within a single cell and changing rapidly in response to developmental and environmental cues.

Proteomics is a powerful technique for examining the structure and function of the proteome. For some organisms, proteomics can uncover the relationship between DNA, RNA, and the production of proteins -- enabling the comparison of the genome to the proteome. For those organisms that have not yet been sequenced, proteomics facilitates the discovery and identification of proteins. In a new study published in the April issue of Applications in Plant Sciences, graduate student Natalie Prior and her colleagues demonstrate the suitability of proteomics in determining the composition of gymnosperm pollination drops.

"The biggest limitation in what we are doing is that there is no published gymnosperm genome," says Prior. "Most of the work on gymnosperms has been anatomical, histological, or morphological. The biochemical perspective is really lacking."

Mediating signaling between the pollen and the ovule, one role of the pollination drop is to provide a germination medium, which can be species specific. Additionally, in some species, anti-microbial proteins have been identified, suggesting that pollination drops provide protection in addition to acting as a landing spot for pollen grains.

"The proteins we are finding are really starting points for other research," says Prior. "We can identify these proteins, but there is a lot more research that can be done once we know what proteins are there."

Identification of the proteins found in pollination drops provides a metabolic fingerprint and thereby informs understanding of seed plant evolution. Comparing the proteomes of different species allows for identification of proteins, elucidating pollen-ovule interactions in gymnosperms.

"We are using proteomics to examine the biological relevance of the proteins that the pollen grain is exposed to in the drop," comments Prior. "It's fascinating to know if any of those proteins are consistent among groups of gymnosperms and what we can learn from that."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Journal of Botany, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Natalie Prior, Stefan A. Little, Cary Pirone, Julia E. Gill, Derek Smith, Jun Han, Darryl Hardie, Stephen J. B. O'Leary, Rebecca E. Wagner, Tyra Cross, Andrea Coulter, Christoph Borchers, Robert W. Olafson, Patrick von Aderkas. Application of Proteomics to the Study of Pollination Drops. Applications in Plant Sciences, 2013; 1 (4): 1300008 DOI: 10.3732/apps.1300008

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/-sCZFEGftUE/130410141545.htm

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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Antarctic ice samples: What do they say about global warming?

Antarctic ice core samples, up to 150,000 years old, may help scientists estimate whether it will take 50 years - or 500 years - for the Ross Ice Shelf to collapse at the current rate of climate change.

By Nick Perry and Rod McGuirk,?Associated Press / April 6, 2013

Scientist Nancy Bertler holds the final section of ice she collected from a half-mile under Antarctica's surface in a laboratory freezer, near Wellington, New Zealand. Antarctica's pristine habitat provides a laboratory for scientists studying the effects of climate change.

(AP Photo/Nick Perry)

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Nancy Bertler and her team took a freezer to the coldest place on Earth, endured weeks of primitive living and risked spending the winter in Antarctic darkness, to go get ice ? ice that records our climate's past and could point to its future.

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They drilled out hundreds of ice cores, each slightly longer and wider than a baseball bat, from the half-mile-thick ice covering Antarctica's Roosevelt Island. The cores, which may total 150,000 years of snowfall, almost didn't survive the boat ride to New Zealand because of a power outage.

Bertler hopes the material will help her estimate how long the Ross Ice Shelf would last under the current rate of climate change before falling apart.

Evidence from the last core her team hauled out needs further study, but it contains material that Bertler said appeared to be marine sediment that formed recently ? at least in geological terms measured in thousands of years.

That would bolster scientists' suspicions that the shelf could collapse again if global temperatures keep rising, triggering a chain of events that could raise sea levels around the world.

"From a scientific point of view, that's really exciting. From a personal point of view, that's really scary," said Bertler, a senior research fellow at the Antarctic Research Centre at the Victoria University of Wellington.

The ice shelf acts as a natural barrier protecting massive amounts of ice in West Antarctica, and that ice also could fall into the ocean if the shelf fell apart. Scientists say West Antarctica holds enough ice to raise sea levels by between 2 meters (6.5 feet) and 6 meters (20 feet) if significant parts of it were to collapse.

Ted Scambos, the lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, said that even under the worst case scenario he thinks it would take at least 500 years for West Antarctica's ice to melt.

However, he said a discovery of sediment would indicate a significant portion of the ice shelf is under threat of becoming unstable again, and that the implications were "huge."

Bertler hopes the material she recovered will help her to estimate by the end of this year whether it will take 50 years or 500 years for the ice shelf to collapse at the current rate of climate change. Those answers should prove important for policymakers who, she said, may need to decide whether to build sea walls or move populations to higher ground.

Bertler's project is one of scores that take place on Antarctica every Southern Hemisphere summer. To scientists, the continent's pristine habitat offers a unique record of the planet's weather and a laboratory for studying the effects of climate change.

Studies indicate that while the Arctic has suffered what scientists consider to be alarming rates of ice loss in recent years, the Antarctic ice shelf has remained relatively stable despite having have lost ice in recent decades.

Research in Antarctica creates huge logistical and personal challenges.

Bertler's camp on Roosevelt Island is a three-hour flight from the nearest permanent Antarctic outposts, Scott Base and McMurdo Station. The island is surrounded by the Ross Ice Shelf, the world's largest mass of floating ice, covering an area the size of Spain.

Even during the spring and summer months when Bertler's team was working there, the temperature sometimes dropped to minus 25 C (minus 13 F) and there were frequent storms and thick fog.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/x_6KmBRtxxI/Antarctic-ice-samples-What-do-they-say-about-global-warming

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