7DayBuzz is probably one of the coolest new blogs out there that I found. It’s new, it’s fresh, and the contents are very diverse and interesting - the diversity reminds me of JohnChow.com. The owners’ names are Tom and Kim Sawyer (no, there’s no Huckleberry Finn on the editors board), and they are a nice couple who live in the Southern Neighbour, USA. In case you did not realize, I am Canadian.

7DayBuzz has a rule that resounds in its name - they will update every day, if not more!!! That’s more than I can say about my own blog, unfortunately. And did I mention the diversity of content already? There’s something for everybody. Here’s some takes on the more interesting posts that they’ve had recently.

Vaccinations: What To Do (or Not Do) - We all acknowledge Vaccination as something we do as a given. But some say that vaccines can cause autism, aspergers, and other disabilities and anomalies. The official recommendation is that children are to receive more than 2 dozen vaccinations, and then there’s the question of what side effects it may have! Read for yourself, and pitch an opinion.

Is America Ready for a Black President? - Let’s say you’re a democrat who supports Clinton (not Bill), and Obama (the potential Black President) wins the nomination for the Presidential Election. Would you rather vote for John McCain to prevent a black man from becoming the US president? Sounds crazy eh? Well, at least by Canadian standards, this is complete bigotry and would not be tolerated in many places, but hey, we never had slavery - USA did, and apparently, some people feel that way! They’d rather vote for a Republican candidate in order to stop a black man from becoming president. Get the scoop!

The Messiah’s Disciples and Their Behavior Towards One Another (MATT 18:1-35) - Redefine a “child” through biblical teachings and meanings. I hear many of you saying “well I’m not religious so…” Here’s the thing about the Bible, the Koran, and other scriptures - even if you are not religious, there’s things in the scripture that can be used as universal learning material, not to mention give you a good education in anthropology and culture.

Yes, as you can see, the diversity of posts are astonishing, and it’s one of those places where you can hang out, chat, sometimes get into a heated debate/argument over politics, and have fun.

It’s fucking gay and it’s fucking stupid. If you don’t know, twittering is some kind of a status update system that will update your status in terms of what you are doing or your status, across Facebook and other applications which have the “your status” or “What are you doing right now” field.

I don’t give a fuck if you just took a nap, or if you are sleepy at the moment and are about to take a nap, or if you just had sushi, or if you just went shopping, or if you just fucked my sister (which i don’t have, conveniently enough). I don’t give a fuck if you just went for a nice drive (maybe I’ll care if you say you bought a brand new Mercedez or something like that), I don’t give a fuck if you just came back from a day of skiing.

Unless you can keep your twittering to valid and interesting information (such as “just saw the newest edition of the iPhone - check it out!”), please shut the fuck up cause I don’t care about the smallest details of your lives.

What’s next? “I just sat down in my toilet.” -> “I just took a big dump and it stinks.” -> “I ran out of toilet paper.”

Well I won’t be the one there to give you a fresh roll of toilet paper, I’ll just hope that out of the scramble and panic you’ll drop your fucking iPhone in the toilet so that you can’t twitter anymore.

John Chow just informed me that he was one of the first to get the pre-release edition of the iPhone that is being officially launched in Canada, with the new version 2.0 software mounted in it, which means installable 3rd party applications to make your iPhone do even more (like it needs to!!!).

John Chow used to be against macs - he said to me, when I first got my Macbook Pro, “Should have gotten a PC!!!” but recently he got a Macbook Pro (same as mine!) and is loving it. Now he’s finally done it - he got the iPhone the first moment Rogers started releasing limited editions.

Check out John Chow’s review of the Rogers iPhone here. Yes, Canadians no longer have to jailbreak and unlock US editions of the iPhones anymore. What relief!

Over 2 years ago I was working for Bell Mobility, at a fixed hourly rate of $17.21, with a comfortable benefit program as well as 37.5 hours a week guaranteed unless I wanted less. For those of you who know me well, you can obviously picture the lack of balance - currently I own and operate a design & marketing company out of Vancouver, BC (Synchronous Design & Marketing), and I take my own fate into my own hands. No benefits, no guarantees. I love this environment however because it constantly challenges me and I have no complaints.

That being said, the corporate world does give you some valuable insights into business, finance, and human relations, and I would still go through it again if I had to do it over again (although just after a year, I hated it so much I quit without a back-up job). For young people who want to become independent business owners and entrepreneurs, yet do not have the funds or the ideas to start upon, I would actually recommend going through a corporate job for the experience of it. Learn what you can get, and then leave.

My specific job function was a call centre agent, and for the most part I worked in the business/corporate account department. I was the asshole on the other side when you call 611 and then press 0 on your cell phones. And then I would go onto explain why that extra charge IS a valid charge and you still have to pay it, or give you some lame excuse to why we’ve raised the System Access/911 Fee on your cell phone bills. Now out of my defense, I was one of the best agents for troubleshooting phone problems, billing errors, and also troubleshooting our own customer management systems that we used to handle inquiries.

This job obviously involved plenty of conversation with customers, as well as interaction with colleagues as well as obliging to corporate standards and guidelines. It was interesting and educational while it lasted.

1. Memorizing your workflow or training is not always the best thing.

   Memorization of cell phone plans, billing details, pricing etc. was discouraged at Bell. Of course, there are some items that you memorize after a while (price of Caller ID etc.) but the truth is that the pricing for those items, the conditions etc. can differ from many different account types, and trying to memorize this all during the training course was a ridiculous goal, not to mention unnecessary. The truth about these plan details and what not is that they tend to change from time to time as well. We had an internal knowledge-base system similar to Wikipedia, with all current and past details of different products and services that we were encouraged to refer to. This may increase each call time by a small amount, but it drastically reduced training time as well as margin of error on account handling.

   The same applies to my current profession as a design & marketing guy, who constantly works with PHP code. It’s a given that I probably have tonnes of PHP commands and syntaxes memorized, but I don’t try to memorize it. All I need is to be aware of what is possible, and when the time comes to use it, I look it up on the PHP official website to verify, or look it up on Google for application examples. Some people that know how much I code may assume I memorize most of my functions but that’s far from true.

2. Rules ARE bendable depending on your people skills.

   In my work environment there were always disputes about pricing, contract extensions and what not. As much as there are corporate guidelines on the eligibility for perks and discounts for certain clients (based on length of business, length of contract, average monthly revenue and past promotion records etc.), there’s always a margin to it.

   Some clients would call in all ready for an argument and complaints - some people just seem to have an issue with corporations overall, and preserve that left-wing attitude that makes them view corporations as the “enemy” or something of the sort. When these guys call in and start an argument from the beginning, there was no way I would budge and give a discount, or make a one-time adjustment. I would hold my ground and did not give a shit if it escalated to one of those “supervisor” calls (and they’re not always the actual supervisors - just more experienced agents specializing in escalations).

   On the other hand, if a person calls in with a happy jolly tone, the last thing I feel like saying is “Sorry ma’am, that is a valid charge as per your service agreement.” or “That offer is no longer available on your account.” To avoid any potential arguments, and to keep the conversation civil, I would just let it go and turn a blind eye. Besides, the management is not capable of checking all the discounts and adjustments made, so small amounts could just fly. It was simply the margin of error that the corporation had in mind anyways.

3. Sales pitches, and mirroring personalities

   Even in the customer service center which is set up to wait for inbound calls, we had a fair bit of sales quotas to meet. For example, when a person calls in, and we notice they are using some text messages but does not have a text messaging bundle, we can offer it and try to get him/her to add it to the account. These are small sales in amount but sales nonetheless, and throughout my career I became better and better at naturally spotting the clients’ needs, offering the right product in the right tone of voice, and getting the sale.

   What also helps is to always mirror the personality of the person you are trying to sell. If it’s a rowdy businessman calling in with some ego, your tone of voice would match, and the choices of words as well (”You got that right sir!!!” in a up-beat tone, kind of sucking up would do the trick). If it’s an older female who is about to stick a golf club up your bum if you say one wrong thing, you want to keep things very fine-tuned (”Yes, that is correct ma’am.” in a polite tone would be suitable). There are many different archetypes of people based on personality, age, ethnicity and what not, and over time I obtained some natural feel on how to respond to different people. And this is a continuous learning process for me - to keep learning and polishing my skills for sales.

I came across this Facebook ad that was rather interesting - a high-end student housing offering in a central area of Montreal. I clicked it to check it out. It was quite fancy alright, although the apartments were 4 or 5 bedrooms - I don’t think I can handle that many roommates. The living rooms were clean and well-furnished, and the location seemed alright even though I know nothing about Montreal.

And then a banner caught my attention - it started with “Win a free lease and..” or something like that. I waited for the banner to keep scrolling, and here’s what I saw:

Yes, you can win a TV.. and not just a regular TV, you can win a COLOUR TV!!! And even better, it’s spelt “colour” with the extra U, the French (or the original) way to spell it, in accordance to the spirit of Montreal. The last time I saw a colour TV was about 4 hours ago… it seems like yesterday however. Wait, it was yesterday, since it’s 2AM as I’m writing this. Those things are so rare these days, that I had to venture all the way out to my own living room to spot one.

Honestly, we live in an era where a Black & White TV would probably sell for more than most colour TVs due to its antique factor, as a collector item. I can’t believe somebody actually decided “we should specify that it is a color TV, in case somebody thinks we’re giving away a B/W tv set.”

So. Anybody want a fancy dancy colour TV? Go to the 515 Ste. Catherine rental website and check it out! It’s a chance of your lifetime.

According to a recent news flash, Toshiba, who is behind the HD DVD format, is considering withdrawing from HD DVD as it seems apparent that Blu-Ray DVD technology is projected to be the winner.

Blu-Ray currently has over 80% of the market share, and more retailers as well as movie producers are choosing the Blu-Ray format over HD DVD format for a variety of reasons.

This review, however, did not trigger a decline in Toshiba shares, but rather, an incline, as it is viewed as a wise move to cut losses. Admitting defeat is also a very admirable trait, I suppose, and Toshiba shares went up, and the rating by Nikko citigroup for Toshiba shares went from “neutral” to “buy”. This is a rather interesting movement on the stock front, a somewhat unconventional one (although maybe it seems that way because I’m not an expert in stock trading).

Full News Story on HD DVD’s potential defeat to Blu-Ray

Internet Explorer is probably the worst browser out there among commonly used browsers. By commonly used browser I mean the following :

• Internet Explorer 7
• Internet Explorer 6
• Firefox 2
• Safari

Of course there are other rogue browsers that are rarely used, like Camino, Netscape, and some other nameless ones that most people do not know about, but the above 4 are the most frequently used browsers in the world right now.

Among all of them, Internet Explorer has, perhaps, the worst parsing and display system. It has problems with displaying PNGs (alpha layers will show as a weird light blue) while the CSS parsing as well as certain Javascript command handling are limited. Also the security vulnerabilities are not very nice either. Oh, did I mention, IE6 is the only one among the above list that does NOT support tabbed browsing? That means that if you wanted to have multiple web pages open while you navigate the World Wide Web, you need multiple windows open.

Many people still use IE6 because they are simply unaware of what is available to them - either switch to Firefox, or use Internet Explorer 7. Compared to IE6, the two browsers I recommend have far better parsing, security, and usability, with less errors.

Now let’s think about this from the industry perspective. Web development becomes more time consuming if IE6 compatibility is demanded, and that means higher production costs for websites, as well as bigger headaches for web developers like myself. The faster IE6 is phased out of common use, the more efficient our industry will be as a whole. Money will be saved, and time as well.

In an effort to convert more people to use Firefox or Internet Explorer 7, I have put a little addition on my company website for Synchronous Design & Marketing (www.synchronous.ca). If the website detects that it is opened by IE6 (or God forbid, lower than that), it will show a black box in the top space which is normally blank, and ask people to upgrade their browsers, since the one they have are outdated. Check out the following screenshot.