índica. océanos de contenido

Scenario: My MacBook was wrecked a few weeks ago. Several series of the Seagate hard disk were corrupted and I am one of the lucky owners… I decided to write a detailed letter to Apple, describing what happened and what I wanted from them (data recovery from the Seagate hard disk, money back for the new hard disk I purchased and a new MacBook with no problems…).

Today I received a phone call from Apple support. At the other side of the line, Mss Vanesa Venegas, in charge of the Apple support area. The conversation was more or less like this:

Vanesa Venegas (V.V.) - Hi, This is Vanesa Venegas, could I speak to Mr. Leal?
Juan Leal (J.L.) - Hi, Vanesa, this is Juan Leal speaking.
(V.V.) - Mr. Leal, after reading carefully the letter you sent us I have to say that we understand your problem.
(J.L.) - Oh, really?
(V.V.) - Yes, we do. Unfortunately, we can´t do anything for you.
(J.L.) - Anything?
(V.V.) - Anything, Mr. Leal, I´m sorry about that. I understand you.
(J.L.) - And… Why are you calling me? Just to tell me that can´t do anything?
(V.V.) - No, no. I am calling you to offer you something more. Listen, if you have any problem in the next six months just call me, I´ll see what can I do. This is my personal number.
(J.L.) - But… I don´t understand anything, Vanesa… You´re calling me to tell me that you can´t do anything for me BUT, you´re giving me your personal number in case of having any problem in the future?!
(V.V.) - Herrr, yes… Mr Leal. I understand you…
(J.L.) - Well, Ok Vanesa. I won´t keep your personal number but, I will keep your name if you don´t mind.
(V.V.) - Ok, Mr Leal. Thank you.
(J.L.) - Bye

And, that´s all folks! Another wonderful piece of brilliant service from AppleCare Support!! Nice, huh?!

Thank you, Vanesa Venegas!

“By 2030, the population of the world will have increased by 2 billion (+33%). Every day, 190,000 new city-dwellers are added all over the world, 2 in every second. In the year 2030, 4.9 billion people will live in cities”.

“But not all cities are taking part in this competition. In the last 50 years, about 370 cities with more than 100,000 residents have temporarily or lastingly undergone population losses of more than 10%”.

The following video is part of a project called “Shrinking cities” and shows the evolution of this phenomenon with an intelligent use of time, mapping and quantitative data. I can´t believe the cities mentioned bellow have the “Shrinking disease”: Detroit, Manchester/Liverpool and Halle/Leipzig.

Enjoy it! (Vimeo / 7:22 min):

Via Digital Urban.

Las week I found this picture in a Techcrunch post:

A weird traffic jam in Moscow city. It looks like something went wrong on the right lane and everybody was trying to reach de left one.

It remembers me a lot about what we do in social networks thesedays: Switching/jumping from one app to another depending on the “flow” of friends they´re already in. What little features (sometimes even invisibles) move users from one to another? In the Techcrunch post mentioned above it was the hidden “In reply to” option what moved users to use Friendfeed instead.

An outstanding amount of people is helping blogger Yoani Shanchez to keep updated a blog that Cuban authorities do not want to see online (blocking the access all around the island). The reason? An independent point of view of what´s going on in that country.

People from outside Cuba upload posts, moderate and send comments from the readers to her or even make backups. A blind blogger that needs other people to see the world.

The more Cuba tries to kill this blog the more this blogger tries to keep it alive.

(And yes, from now on we will try to post in the language of Shakespeare. My dear Collins dictionary is starting to warn up…).

RescueTime es una sencilla aplicación que escanea las aplicaciones que tienes activas en tu ordenador personal (Web, Talk, Office…) y que “aprende” conforme le vas asignando etiquetas (Comunicación, Diseño, Presentación, Personal, Blogging, Lectura o cualquier otra que se te ocurra).

Este escaneo se traduce en reports (diarios, semanales, mensuales o anuales) sobre tu actividad donde puedes observar cómo gestionas tu tiempo cada día frente a la máquina que más usas en tu trabajo.

Pero lo más interesante es quizá la opción de añadir objetivos: “Para la semana que viene quiero pasar más del 30% de mi tiempo diseñando”, y de lo demás se encarga tu amigo Rescue, que va viendo el tiempo de uso de tu herramienta preferida de diseño y al final de la semana te dice si sí o si no has alcanzado tu objetivo personal.

De momento, lo que más me me llama la atención es la cantidad de tiempo que le dedico a “comunicación”, casi al mismo nivel que la etiqueta “trabajo”:

Pero creo que lo mejor está por llegar, cuando con meses de uso y con etiquetas bien asignadas, puedas detectar tendencias de uso en función de picos de trabajo, época del año o incluso de tu estado de ánimo.

Recomendable 100%. Pasen y vean: Rescuetime.com