You know how annoying it is when you call a vendor's help line and you get dumb questions like, "Is the monitor turned on?"  Even I get this treatment.  (I used to get annoyed, too.)  Well, when I got off the subway last night, there was a panicked call from a client.  "There are no icons on my desktop and it looks like the accounting system is corrupt."  After a brief conversation this morning with the client on his cell phone while on his way in to work, I headed out to his office.  As I was waiting on the (elevated) subway platform, I got another call from the client.  He had arrived at his office, turned on his computer, and everything seemed okay.  Now, Gary's law is that 95 percent of computer problems are resolved by rebooting the computer and I had failed to ask if he had done that.  Most of us have troubleshooting scripts, whether written or internalized, and I had failed to follow mine, so I'm writing this post at a Starbucks, rather than at my desk.

June 20, 2009 -- For those who thought Twitter was just a fad, I guess there's a lesson in what is happening in Iran.  Going to the Twitter site and entering the search terms #iranelection and #gr88 yields an avalance of short messages, mostly from iran, about what is going on in <140 character bursts.  For example, one mesage I see says "confirmed: Multiple srcs confirm Basij [Iranian security forces] are at hospitals. Go to embassies."  Another message provides a link to a list of embassies accepting the wounded.  On Tuesday, Twitter, recognizing the importance of 9ts site, postponed maintenance scheduled for early in the morning here, but during the day there, so coverage woud not be interrupted.  While I believe it is incorrect to call it a "Twitter revolution" (see this interview with Gaurav Mishra), twitter's iis playing an important, if not critical, role.  Does this tell us anything about how small businesses and nonprofits can use Twitter to enhance our missions? 

June 11, 2009 – I like it when my clients want to do things for themselves. For example, a staff member at one of my client’s, whom I trained, has been handling adding new users, deleting users when they leave, and changing passwords as needed. An intern, whom I also trained, does the physical setup of computers for new users.  It saves me time for more productive work and saves them money.   Another client decided to replace his old Anti-virus (A/V) software with new software, did a little research, and chose a good product.  I like collaborating with clients like these. On the other hand, sometimes clients makes choices using criteria that, I think, could have been better.  One client’s staff member was concerned about the (slight) slowdown their business A/V product was causing and chose to replace it with a free product.  I would have made another choice and that got me thinking about how I evaluate A/V products.