But this year is also a little different. Kubler-Ross no longer applies as most of us have cycled through all the stages by now. But, with the passage of time, it is possible to start getting an historical perspective and draw parallels to other times. Doing so might remind of us of Georges Santayana’s edict:

Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.

Cruel month

September does not seem kind on New York. While most of us will spend time remember the events that, for my generation, marked the end of innocence and forced us to grow up, there have been other disasters both past and recent that have befallen Gotham.

A few generations ago, on September 16, 1920, one of the deadliest acts of terrorism on American soil targeted Wall Street: 38 people died and 400 were injured on that day, thanks in part to the poor timing of the perpetrators, who detonated their explosives shortly before the lunch hour. In the next 24 hours, in an act of defiance to the terrorists of the time, the bodies were removed, the street was cleaned up, and the stock market reopened the next day, kicking off an era of continued speculation known as the roaring twenties, a run that would end a bit over 9 years later.

The crash of 1929, which is often seen as the start of the great depression, did not actually happen in September but it is interesting to note that the beginning of the decline started in September with the stock market reaching its peak on September 3rd, 1929, followed by a 17% decline for that month. In other words, the speculative bubble brought on by increasingly complex financial instruments (margin positions came of age in the 1920s) for the time and speculation in the real estate market (the 1920s also marked the age of the skyscrapers, with such towers as the 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler building rising above the city).

Last year, in the first weeks of September, a bubble brought together by increasingly complex financial instruments (Credit Default Swaps) and increasing speculation around the real estate market, similarly brought the world economy to the brink of financial disaster. In those short weeks, the US government had to bail out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG; Lehman Brothers went under, eventually bought out in bankruptcy court by Barclay’s. Wachovia, Merryl Lynch, and Washington Mutual all ended up being gobbled up by other banks; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley changed their legal status to allow them better government protection; Similar economic activity quickly spread to the rest of the world, almost pushing some countries to go bankrupt (eg. Iceland).

The still on-going economic destruction arising out of that catastrophic month will continue to have a toll not necessarily calculated in human lives lost on a single day, as we did on 9/11, but it is very possible that the toll it will take on all our lives (and potentially on some lives lost) will be a strong and as long.

Parallels?

After the towers fell, on 9/11, and after the world had managed to cripple his operation, Osama Bin Laden swore to bring the US to its knees economically. And yet, it was the recklessness of our own people that almost became the tool of our own demise.

To say that 9/11 scarred us is to ignore a deeper, and somewhat more uncomfortable truth: much like the terrorist attack of 1920, the attack of 2001 did not stop us from becoming agents of our own financial demise. And while many of us will still grieve today and remember the friends and family members we have lost, the rest of the nation will look to this as an aberration, asking people why they have not moved on yet.

The answer, sadly, is that we, New Yorkers, we, the survivors of 9/11, we, the ones who lived through those horrible events and can still tell their tales, have yet to receive what we were promised. Sure, one will point to the fact that there is, finally, after 8 long years, a foundation for new buildings at ground zero, the truth is that there is still a hole in our skyline and a hole in our hearts.

We may or may not have liked the towers before 9/11 but we are still missing them. And so, as a sign of healing, the nation had promised us that it would never forget and that it would build new towers, maybe even higher and more magnificent, as a defiant sign that America does not give, America does not give-up and that terrorists may tear down our buildings but they could not tear down our optimism nor could they destroy our ability at turning adversity into triumph. The new towers rising above ground zero were supposed to be our phoenix, rising ever more beautifully out of the horrors of that day.

8 long years later, we are still waiting.

Scraping the sky

In the olden days, things were different: 90 percent the New York subway system was built, using private funds, in 4 years; the Woolworth Tower: 3 years; the Chrysler Building and 40 Wall Street: 2 years; and let’s not the city icon, which was built after the wall street crash.

Between its excavation starting on January 22, 1930 and ribbon cutting ceremony on May 1, 1931, the iconic Empire State Building was built in a mere 13 months, helping lift the spirits of New Yorkers as it showed that financial crashes may devastate us but that we, New Yorkers, we, symbols of American power, can still build amazing thing amazingly quickly. In a way, the Empire State helped lift the spirit of an earlier generation when it needed it most and that is what I would have liked to see happen at ground zero.

Sure, many people will say that the rules are different now, that workers’ protection and union powers slows things down. The argument might hold water if it weren’t for what happened over the rest of New York: The Time-Warner center was built in under 3 years. Same for the New York Times building; The Bank of America tower: 5 years, injuring more people in the process than were injured during the Empire State Building’s construction.

3 major skyscrapers since 9/11/2001, none of which is at ground zero. So why can’t we get a single tower over ground zero?

In 1931, a shinning beacon of hope rose above the city when the city needed it most. After eight years, WE are still waiting for ours.

In Memoriam

Carlos Dominguez, Mark Ellis, Melissa Vincent, Michael DiPasquale, Cynthia Giugliano, Jeremy Glick, David Halderman, Steve Weinberg, Gerard Jean Baptiste, Tom McCann, David Vera.

Following is the first part of a list of the first 18 applications to have been initially banned on the iPhone, along with relevant information related to the rejections. Those bans were eventually reversed, allowing applications to make their ways into the phone. In this first part, we will look at the big 4: Phone, Mail, Safari, and the iPod (the next entry will examine the other ones).

Phone

It comes as a little known fact that the approval process almost killed phone functionality on the iPhone. The original developers had a hard time getting the application approved, as can be seen in this initial rejection letter:

Thank you for submitting Phone to the iPhone approval process. We’ve reviewed your application and determined that we cannot include this version of your iPhone application at this time because it contains objectionable content which is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

We have heard that so called “phones” can be used in a number of ways including communicating secrets related to the internal working of large Cupertino-based companies located on Infinite Loop to people outside said companies. Please make the necessary changes to the application as soon as possible, and resubmit your binary to us. Thank you

After many emails going back and forth, it was agreed that any mention of words picked from a still secret list of product names and companies names would result in the phone immediately losing signal and the call being dropped. A secret message would also be sent to an undisclosed location identifying the people involved with that call.

Mail

The second rejected iPhone application was a little more understandable. After all, Apple is known for its simplicity and the fact that the company tends to remove redundant functionality from its devices in order to ensure the best user experience. While little visibility is given into the decision process around defining what what gets approved or banned, TNL.net got hold of internal transcripts of the discussion that led to eventual ban of the Mail application. Here is the abridged version, as we wanted to protect sensitive information:

Reviewer 1: Hey, we’ve got this mail application here, looks like it does (shuffle of paperwork to review what information has been submitted)… uh e-mail.

Reviewer 2: I’ve heard of that. I understand you can contact your friends with that and write them notes.

Reviewer 1: Why would you want to do something like that.

Reviewer 2: (pauses) uh.. well, let’s say you wanted to tell a friend a joke

Reviewer 1: You mean like call them on the phone and tell them a joke, looks like it’s reproducing existing functionality.

Reviewer 2: Hmmmm. Maybe but you could also use it to communicate information to a lot of people in one shot. For example, if you were a Nigerian prince looking for someone to help you move money out of your country…

Reviewer 1: Why wouldn’t you use a phone for that?

Reviewer 2: Well, long distance costs, for starter. And then, it would take a lot of time to call people individually.

Reviewer 1: (looks up list of countries in which the iPhone is slated to be sold) Well, Nigeria doesn’t appear on the list so let’s reject this.

Reviewer 2: Oh, I didn’t realize Nigeria was not on the list. Definitely reject then.

After several phone conversations, three international meetings and sign-off from half of the company, it was agreed that mail should be allowed because pictures of lolcat just don’t seem as good when recounted over the telephone.

Safari

At this point in the iPhone’s development cycle, getting applications approved was still getting tough but Safari, slated to be the third icon on the device also had its own uphill battle. The submission of this application came to established the short-lived record of being denied in under 10 minutes. The denial did not even come by email but was delivered in the form of a message on the developer’s voice mail system:

Reviewer’s Manager: Thank you for submitting Safari, your “web browser” for inclusion on the iPhone. After researching this web thing via our macs, we have come to the conclusion that it is too obscene, offensive, riddled with pornographic and other useless material to warrant use by iPod and iPhone users. Furthermore, we have discovered that some of the content seen there is replicated content that can be bought in the iTunes store and stored on iPods. Should you make changes to the application that would ensure this internet thing is sectioned off, we would be happy to re-review after you submit a binary to us.

In this particular case, Steve Jobs himself intervened, providing a note in an internal memo (and reiterating the point when the device was released):

We have been trying to come up with a solution to expand the capabilities of the iPhone so developers can write great apps for it, but keep the iPhone secure. And we’ve come up with a very. Sweet. Solution. Let me tell you about it. An innovative new way to create applications for mobile devices… it’s all based on the fact that we have the full Safari engine in the iPhone.  You can write amazing Web 2.0 and AJAX apps that look and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone, and these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, check email, look up a location on Gmaps… don’t worry about distribution, just put ‘em on an internet server. They’re easy to update, just update it on your server. They’re secure, and they run securely sandboxed on the iPhone. And guess what, there’s no SDK you need! You’ve got everything you need if you can write modern web apps…”

With Steve’s seal of approval, the app was approved.

iPod

The last of the big 4 to be issued such rejection was unsurprisingly the iPod functionality. It has long been rumored that the reason for such rejection was largely due to the head of the iPod division sending out a company-wide voicemail to express his frustration at the inclusion of iPod functionality. However, due to the offensive nature of the language used in that message, few have been willing to provide any information about it. An iPod-compliant file was provided to TNL.net and, after spending several months trying to clean up the language, we are providing the cleanest excerpt we could, blanking out offensive words (reader’s discretion is advised):

iPod division head: Why you #### ##### ##### ##### ######## ######### ###### ####### ####### ######### cannibalize the iPod market #### ###### ############### ####### ###### hurt margins ######## ####### ###### kill the company ####### ####### Steve will hear about this.

While we do not traffic in rumors, some people sayhat, after his meeting with Steve Jobs, the manager was never heard of again.

In the next entry, we will review some of the other applications that felt the sharp edge of the reviewer’s pen, providing even further visibility into the otherwise opaque approach.

Update: Part 2 is now available.

But today, I can say that I got past most of the funk. Sure, I still look up in the sky when a plane flies lower than expected; Sure, I still get some chills down my back when I get close to ground zero; but, for the most part, I can go about my life without being reminded of what happened.

Today, my concerns have evolved: it’s more about building a better future for the generation born after 2001, that of my son, than it is about dwelling on that horrible and unfortunate date.

But today is also a time for reflection: there is still only a construction site on ground zero, the result of wrangling by different factions about what the place should be: it may be weariness on my part but maybe the best way to honor the dead would be to put your own agenda aside and try to figure out where the common ground is. Whether you were affected directly, through the loss of friends and loved ones, or indirectly (and, let’s face it, most of us in the USA were affected at least indirectly), a way to celebrate might be to reach out to someone you generally wouldn’t and try to understand what ground you share.

7 years ago, New Yorkers pulled together. 7 years ago, we were all as one but somewhere along the way, the country went back to being apart. Why not make today a day to bring all of us together again as New Yorkers, as Americans, as members of the human race.

In Memoriam: Carlos Dominguez, Mark Ellis, Melissa Vincent, Michael DiPasquale, Cynthia Giugliano, Jeremy Glick, David Halderman, Steve Weinberg, Gerard Jean Baptiste, Tom McCann, David Vera.

My journey to this moment is one that, in retrospect, would pretty much a given. Since 1992, I’ve been involved on the outer periphery of presidential elections. In the mid-1990s, for a brief period, I was even lucky enough to be present when policies and legal precedents that continue to shape the Internet were established.

In the last presidential election, I took a week off from work to put my money where my mouth was, volunteering with the A.C.L.U. to help protect individual citizens’ right to free assembly and free speech during the New York Republican convention. I’ve had many memories from that week but what stuck most, in my mind, was the courageous group of three Republicans who, one night during that week, went down to Union Square, where most people were protesting against the GOP, and set up individual spot asking the protesters to debate them. The exchanges were both fiercely partisan and cordial and I am still amazed by the fact that people who sat on opposite extremes of the political spectrum could not only sit down and talk with each other but do so in a manner that may have helped all participants.

And yet the time passed and it took me another few years to even apply for American citizenship. But last year, I finally decided to make the leap. And the leap was made on one small but crucial and all to often taken for granted right: the right to vote.

I have not posted any partisan thoughts on this site when it comes to American politics. It was a conscious decision: back then I was a resident alien (yes, that’s the technical term) and I felt that to use this bully pulpit to discuss American politics would be in bad taste. As a non-citizen, I felt that I had little or no right to really voice my opinion as loudly because I considered it to be in bad taste.

But things started bugging me. It’s not that I was starting to dislike America but rather that I started to dislike how the administration was dismantling the idea of America that has been set down by the founding fathers. People who know me well know that I can be a bit obsessive about the US constitution and the bill of right. And what I felt, after a few more years of the Bush era, was that this administration was going against a substantial amount of what the founding fathers intended.

A worse crime than attacking the foundation of the American republic though, was in the way it was done, attempting through twisted logic, to paint that attack as in line with what the founding fathers intended. To besmirch their names in such a way was, I think one of the final straw.

The people who assembled in Philadelphia in 1776 and declared that enough was enough put their necks on the line for us with the declaration of independence. And the people who, 11 years later, came up with the US constitution did the improbable: they decided that, having defeated the mightiest army of the time, they would not accumulate and aggregate the power amongst themselves but rather, they would form a country where checks and balances would rule the day to ensure that the people had the strongest voice possible.

So the states would act as a check on federal powers; 3 branches of government would balance each other out to ensure that none became too strong; even those would be balanced as internal mechanisms would limit the authority of any single person within that branch.

George Washington, who had initially had a hard time prosecuting the war but eventually turned things around to win a country was given a chance at becoming the country’s new king. But not only did he turn down that opportunity, he did not seem to argue for a strong executive branch. Once in power, he not only avoided the trappings of royalty, but also set foreign policy precedents by declaring the US as a neutral nation in foreign conflicts, and eschewed any attempts at war, preferring peace.

Alexander Hamilton believed that the country’s burden ought to be shared by all. However, while heading the house of representative, he decided to sway votes to ensure that his political opponent (and a fierce advocate against that idea), Thomas Jefferson, could become president because he felt that doing otherwise would undermine the legitimacy of the country.

Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, decided to deride the practice of slavery in his initial draft of the declaration of independence and time and time again, pushed for laws that ended up dismantling some of his own interests.

The men intended on building a new country based on equality and justice for all, even if that meant that they would no longer be guaranteed worship but instead would be considered equals to all. And for this, I would say that they were not just mere men, they were supermen.

But somewhere, somehow, things started going horribly wrong in our times. And I suspect that the main issue has been one based on economics, with many people believing that the golden rule (”he who’s got the gold makes the rule”) should be the basis for our nation. That golden rule led to a belief that each American is an individual and, as such, has little or no responsibility to the rest of society. It elevated the individual to a place where kings would be OK, and thus, the belief of a strong president, stronger than congress or the courts, started to take hold.

And so, a new era of selfishness replaced the basis of selflessness that our founding fathers intended.

I could recount the ways in which those things can be illustrated by the actions of this administration. Whether it is a rush to war (and here, I do not talk about Afghanistan, a war that was based on facts and a real enemy but rather about Iraq, a war that was “sold” because it appealed to a certain group) or the belief that corporations can be above the law (for example, the telecom prosecution exemptions currently being discussed which, I’m sure, are leaving every criminal trying to figure out how they can present their trade in a way that will make them benefit from the same approach large telcos do), something went amiss.

But things going amiss are not the reason to become citizen of a country like the United States, a country that was founded on optimism, hope, and renewal.

And hope, renewal and optimism seems to be the flavor of our times. While we are still living in dark ages, there is a sense that a new breed of politics, a new breath of fresh air, may be allowed its place at the public table. In fact, I would even be so bold as to say that wild concepts like substance over style could have a chance to enter this election cycle.

Granted, Obama oozes style, with the type of delivery that not only presents new ideas but voices them in a way that people find it inspiring. Granted, McCain offers substantive policy but I am not wild about that sustance, as it provides a view of an America angry at the world, and fearful of others.

And that, ultimately, is what this precious voting right comes down to. By now, having lost half of the people who generally read my site (an assumption I’m making because I suspect that the previous few paragraphs will leave many of my Republican leaders angry), I can say that a lot of my thinking about getting US citizenship revolved around the right to vote and the right to belong. The USA, only 7 years ago, was a country that, for the most part, welcomed non-Americans. But since 9/11, things have changed and there seems to be a growing resentment of foreigners, largely dictated through policy pronouncements that would make the founding fathers spin in their graves.

So I am now a new citizen and, on election day, I will most probably go out and vote FOR Barack Obama. Voting FOR someone is an opportunity I missed in the 2000 election cycle (I have to admit that, had I been a citizen in 2004, I would have been more intent to vote AGAINST George Bush than FOR John Kerry).

But of course, there is a lot of work to do between now and then, and there is more than one election to go. This country, my country, is in trouble and I, like many others, have worked to do. And I hope that one or more people, having read this, will consider reconnecting with their civic duty.

But do not take this for my telling you who to vote for. Whether you believe in John McCain or Barack Obama only matters to me inasmuch as I might have to work with or against you politically. However, what would really touch me more than anything is if you, reader in any country where leaders are chosen by election, could reconnect with your community and help improve it by restoring real political dialogue, just like those republicans, with whom I respectfully disagreed on a warm night in August 2004, who decided to talk to their non-republican counterparts. On that night, all those involved may have come from different political factions but they talked in the language of exchange of ideas that so many decades ago inspired the world and defined one country, my country, the United States of America.

The Job Search

The job search has ended and thanks to the many people who have helped. It’s been an interesting excercise in learning how to use social tools to achieve a specific goal. Here’s how I did it:

As longtime readers of this site may know, I am a tad obssessive about keeping my address book up to date. Over the year, it’s grown and now has about 1600 people in it. When I started this search, there were over 1700 people in my address book but, after doing an email blast, I had to prune it as I could not find information about the missing folks.

With over 1600 emails out, I also combined a blog entry, used twitter, facebook, linkedin, and friendfeed to alert people to my job availability. Those efforts paid off as I ended up getting over 600 emails relating to my job search, talked to 82 prospective employers, followed up through second and third rounds of interviews with about a dozen companies and ended up with four serious offers. This all happened over the course of less than 60 days and I am now happily employed again.

So I’m sure you’re now wondering who and what.

To answer that question, I must first go back to a previous entry and revise some of my earlier thoughts. When I first left HSBC, it was over the belief that all banks were equally impacted by the mortgage crisis. It was also based on the belief that regulatory controls had left all banks in a state of near paralysis. However, I must now say that judging a whole industry based on a single example, no matter how powerful a player that example is in a particular market, can lead to a number of flawed assumptions.

At the same time, one of the thing I’ve been thinking about a fair amount since I left HSBC is the nature of transactional data and how the type of experience one acquires in the finance world easily translates to other online effort. As a result, it’s given me a deeper appreciation for the fun that finance provides, as far as building complex technical solution.

Yet, building purely based on specifications other people have put together is something that I’ve always found limiting. I wanted to be more involved in the discussions around strategic positioning and product development and these discussions seem to have moved largely outside of the control of IT departments. Increasingly, the information technology department is concerned with building based on a set of specification in which they have had little strategic input. It explains some of the disconnect I felt in my last year at HSBC and also explained where I wanted to take my career. It wasn’t a fully conscious decision until I put it under the microscope and figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up.

As I stated time and time again when talking to people over the last few months, I bring three types of capabilities to the table: I’m a strong internet strategist, a strong technologist, and a decent international IT project manager. Those are the three skills I bring to any organization, listed in order of preference.

When researching the market, I figured that this meant I ought to find a job where I could help shape the internet strategy of a company and/or of internet-based products for that company.

As a result of many discussions, and based on my background in both Internet and exposure to the financial sector, one job became more attractive than the others in front of me so I took it.

I am now Vice-President, Product Management for the Global Transaction Group at Deutsche Bank. The news started filtering out over facebook and linkedin when I updated my profiles there but I had not come out and stated on TNL.net so here we are. As always, activities on TNL.net continue to reflect my own opinion and are not related in any way shape or form with my employer. They don’t tell me what to say here and I do not speak on their behalf on this site.

But wait there’s more!

Of course, one of the downside (or maybe upside) of being between jobs is that one finds ways to start getting involved in new projects. And for me, that new project is Extra 15. It’s very stealth right now and I’m working on the coding at night but I can tell you that it’s very fun to get my hands on code again. Beyond the regular job and the demands of regular life, that project is where I’ll be concentrating some of my energy for the next few months so updates on TNL.net may continue to be light.

So there you have it. Another update on what I’m up to. I’ll have more soon….

At the time, however, I did not expect things to turn as they just did: I’ve been laid off as I was told that a strategic decision was made by GroupM to get rid of its project management office. With no project management office, there is no need for a project management office director and so, I’m back on the job market.

The shock is still very fresh and I have to admit that I haven’t fully absorbed the blow. My boss was telling me that he was happy with the progress I was making. I was told my work was excellent; and then this.

It’s a sad fact that large corporations do not look at the impact of their decisions on people and so I’m now faced with something I’m not used to: an uncertain future, with unknown prospects.

So I’ve dusted up my resume and I’m starting to pass it around.I’ve also updated my Linkedin profile and sent a twitter message out to my “followers”. I’m wondering if there’s any other “social network” related things I ought to do.

I will entertain any opportunity in the New York area (I do not plan to relocate) and, to sum them up, my skills encompass a wide variety of areas from project management (following some of the models established by PMI and applying them with a practitioner’s eye to what works and doesn’t, both on a local implementation or on a global one), technology (it appears, based on recent experience, that I have a deeper understanding of technologies relating to the internet than a lot of my peers), and strategy (readers of my blog are familiar with some of my strategic positioning)

Based on this, I think that I could easily fit into executive roles in software development, program (or portfolio) management, and product management.

I hope you will all be able to help me in my search for a new position. If you hear anything, drop me a note and thanks in advance for your help.

As was the case for the previous part, I have only edited the content for formatting sake.

Q: Let’s switch gear to the unit replacement program: The Palm website seems to have difficulties recognizing existing accounts. Part of the frustration of my own experience was that, having bought a device from the Palm website in early 2007, I was unable to get to the information online because the site did not recognize the email address I used to register (even though I have some emails sent by palm to that email address). This resulted in my being unable to get the exact date of my purchase. When I talked to the customer service representative, I was told that we could not move forward with any replacement without that information. Considering the device hadn’t been in the marketplace for a year, I thought that it would be considered under warranty no matter what. Why is it that customers still need to provide a purchase date for devices that are less than a year old?

A: They shouldn’t have to, you are right. Unfortunately, since we primarily sell through the carrier channel, determination of an in-warranty vs. out-of-warranty device is not a perfect science. Our practice is to systematically derive the purchase date from the manufacture date, based on the serial number.

We have very reliable data on how long a product takes to move through distribution and sales channels that helps us ensure we offer all of our customers a minimum of 12 month warranty, as stated in our contract with the customer (i.e. the warranty). If an agent believes the product may fall outside of the 12 month period, we request proof-of-purchase (POP), which is not unusual in the consumer electronics industry. That being said, an agent must use their best judgment and always handle these discussions in a professional and courteous manner with the customer.

To better serve our customers, we’re currently exploring instituting a policy that will not require agents to check purchase dates for products that have been newly released (i.e. less than a year old). This should help eliminate unnecessary questioning and allow our agents to proceed directly to getting a customer’s issue resolved.

Q: If customers are not able to supply a date, why is it that there is no way for a call center operator to look up information for devices bought from Palm’s online store?

A: We do aspire to have all of our customers’ transactional information available to our service agents. However, this is not the case for a variety of reasons. First, there is some information that will never be available or kept; carrier sales information and information protected by privacy laws, for instance. But, for the rest, specifically any transactional information Palm is exposed to and legally able to maintain, we are making huge investments in a CRM program that is bringing this information all together in a master customer database. Just this past year, we integrated most of our direct sales transactions (e.g. from our online store) into our service application, loading both customers and assets. As for Tristan’s case, unfortunately the purchase last winter was prior to this integration going into effect, so the purchase record was not there.

Q: Forced to supply a date, I gave a date at random in order to push the call further. I was then told that it was the exact date of my purchase (a dubious claim at best since the date happened to be, after I checked, before the date of the press release announcing the release of the Treo 680). When I contested the possibility of this being the date at a later time, I was told that you are tracking devices dates by serial numbers. If that’s the case, why is that information not being used initially? (It’s generally easier to find a device’s serial number than its purchase date since the serial number (and incidentally, IMEI) is on the device)

A: I suspect that in this case, and what is probably routine behavior by agents, is to request the date of purchase from the customer, and to take their word for it — which is the proper thing to do. Now when a customer is not confident about the purchase date or does not have any recollection, then an agent is going to check out the serial number to get a good idea of the purchase timing — it’s only then that we are going to call into question the warranty, and perhaps seek proof of purchase.

Q: Vendors like Apple and RIM track their device purchase date by IMEI. Why isn’t Palm doing the same? And if it is, why isn’t that information available to call center personnel?

A: IMEI and ESN are two industry relevant codes for mobile devices. The serial number is a Palm-specific number generated at time of manufacture. Because it is consistent across all Palm products — where it is not for IMEI and ESN — we tend to rely on serial numbers as our default tracking method.

Q: The retail price for an unlocked Treo 680 is $379, the street price for an unlocked Treo 680 is around $250. In either of those cases, the device would come with a one year warranty. The replacement price for a Treo 680 is $199. Why is the replacement price so high?

A: The primary drivers of repair and replacement cost are parts and labor, and hence can’t be directly compared to the product. The wireless industry subsidizes phone purchase prices, making the total cost much lower than the actual cost of hardware and labor.

Q: Looking at the prices listed on your site, it appears that all your phones have the same replacement price ($169 by web, $199 by phone) However, prices for the unlocked devices listed in the Palm store range from $379 (for an unlocked Treo 680) to $669 (for an Alltel Treo 700p). Does that mean that the repair cost for all units is the same? Why isn’t there variable pricing on the repair costs?

A: The actual cost of repair may vary across units, but this variance is much less than you’d think. The process steps that all units go through for diagnostics, component replacement, cosmetic refurbishment, and logistics are identical. The only real difference is the value of the parts required for a given repair.

While variable pricing seems like the best thing for the customer, we actually provide fixed pricing to deliver a better customer experience. This is because we want to quote a price upfront and quickly process the replacement without having to come back to the customer and explain that their fix was different or more costly than what was expected at the outset. This would create unnecessary tension and delays when a customer needs their phone back to them in working order as soon as possible. We don’t really know what parts will be required until we open the device, and a call center agent would not be able to accurately estimate the costs.

Q: A year ago, the replacement cost for a Palm 600 was $100 (I unfortunately broke 4 screens on Palm 600s through the years so I’m familiar with that price). Today, such a replacement would cost $169. Why the price increase?

A: As products get older, our cost to service that product normally increases. It reflects the growing cost of acquiring parts, maintaining inventory, expertise and training for repair events that become more and more infrequent.

Q: Apple has made it a practice to sell special contracts (called AppleCare) on their devices that provide extended warranty. This includes selling AppleCare for iPhones (for $69). The program includes replacement of defective units at no extra charge and extends warranty from 1 year to 2 years. Why isn’t Palm offering a similar program?

A: With the first line of smartphone product support at multiple carriers, including warranty processing, an extended warranty program has been a challenge for Palm to offer — mostly because of channel complexities. We are presently working through the challenges that have made this difficult, and hope to offer this service feature to our smartphone consumers in the future.

Apple has a unique relationship with AT&T that may make these programs a bit easier to provide.

At the time, I figured that this was a nice and convenient answer that really acted as more of a way to stonewall me. So it was with great surprise that I was contacted with a follow-up by John Moses, the VP of customer relations worldwide for Palm.

Not only did John apologize for my own experience but he was considerate enough to provide me with a lot of answers to questions I asked (and, in a closing to my encounter with Palm, he also provided me with a replacement unit for my Treo 680). While my faith in Palm hasn’t been restored yet, I think there is a lot to ponder in the questions and answers John provided me. Because there is a lot to digest, I am breaking this Q&A into two parts: The first one, which follows, addresses general issues around customer support and around my own experience. The second part talks about the unit replacement program and some of the decisions made there.

So without further ado, here is the Q&A, which is not edited in any way, save for light formatting to increase readability .

Q: First of all, thanks for taking the time to do this interview and alleviate some of the fears people may have after I posted my experience with Palm. The Treo 680 has been out for about a year now. As the head of Customer Relations, have you seen particularly high levels of calls relating to it as opposed to other palm devices?

A: Because of a special program we implemented and highly marketed this past year called 1-800 Free Setup Help, we have had a higher volume of calls related to the Treo 680. This Palm sponsored program — where we have also gained the support of our major carrier partners — encourages customers to call us at no charge within the first 90 days of purchase for dedicated device setup assistance. The results have been highly encouraging and we are continuing to evaluate additional programs that increase the number of interactions we have with customers so they get more out of their device.

We also strongly recommend that customers take advantage of the Treo 680 software updaters, as they do make a noticeable improvement to the performance of our devices. Customers can find these
on our website.

Q: It is my understanding that Palm works largely on second line of support for mobile phone companies they have partnerships with and works as first line of support for unlocked devices they sell. As a result, I would suspect that the number of calls for unlocked devices is probably higher. Is that the case?

A: You are right that for the majority of our phones — all of those sold through the carrier channel — we are the second level of support. Our carrier partners have extensive support capabilities and are interested in maintaining a connection with their subscriber customers — and we respect that. As a general rule, these customers are encouraged to begin support with their wireless service provider, and they will in turn escalate to us at Palm if the issue warrants additional device expertise.

There are exceptions to this, however, and customers frequently contact us directly; this most often is because they are taking advantage of our special programs including our Free Setup Help, which I mentioned before, or our MyPalm Membership, where customers can receive special benefits including a dedicated member assistance line.

For those customers who have bought unlocked devices directly from us on our website or in our stores, we certainly are committed to be their first line of support. In terms of call volume, we receive more for carrier-locked devices than unlocked ones, partly because there are just more sold, but equally so because we have a close relationship with our carrier partners which involves regular collaboration and warm transfers.

Q: Are calls for unlocked devices routed to different call centers than calls for locked (or carrier specific) devices? If that’s the case, could you explain some of the logic behind it?

A: No, support for both types of devices is provided by the same call centers, and with the same agents. Our support agents are trained on all Palm products and all customers are treated the same.

Q: Palm recently started to move phone support to a pay model (I believe it’s $19.95 per call unless it results in an exchange). Does Palm look to its phone support as a potential profit center?

A: First, customers transferred from a wireless carrier or a call with a basic inquiry will not be charged. Also, if a call results in a repair or if an agent cannot solve the issue, we would waive the fee.

Palm has always charged for phone-based technical support beyond 90 days of purchase, based on our standard support policy and warranty — this is standard industry practice for many consumer electronics manufacturers. We have just reduced (in December) the cost of post 90-day technical support (from $25 to $14.95), and when we do charge customers, the funds are used to subsidize the costs of the support infrastructure we provide.

Palm regards the relationship with its customers and support specifically, as an investment in the future, not as a profit center. We try to make Palm support valuable and affordable to customers by offering various options, including several options that are free of charge (e.g. Online Chat).

Q: Has reaction among customers to the move of phone support to a pay model been negative or positive?

A: As I mentioned before, Palm has always charged for certain phone-based support services. We have seen a positive response to our new “Expert” pay services, which certainly is evidence that customers don’t mind paying a fee for a service that they deem important and that is well executed.

Q: The level of expectations for a service one pays for is generally different than the level of expectation for something that is free. What has Palm done to ensure that the experience around paid calls is better than the previous (free) experience for customers?

A: Palm still provides many free service options, so a customer is never forced to pay for support. We also strive for and expect the best level of service for both types of calls — paid and free — as the same customer may experience both types of support options during the time they own their product and we want their interactions to always be consistent and of the highest quality.

Q: I am sure there are studies about user satisfaction across the industry as a whole. Do you have information about Palm’s standing, compared to its competitors, in terms of customer experience? Is it better? Worse? What are the main issues around it and what is Palm doing to address them?

A: I can tell you that our case satisfaction scores — those scores that rate the quality of the support given by an agent for a given service request — is either at the top or very close to the top of any comparative set you will find for true technical support on complex consumer electronics. Of course we always believe we can do better.

We have a number of teams that continually analyze everything from call center activity, to web searches, to satisfaction surveys in order to find ways we can support our customers more effectively. Thankfully, our customers take the time to give us feedback, and we take that very seriously, and we listen and apply it.

Q: Has Palm outsourced its call centers or are the overseas call center employees also Palm employees?

A: Yes, we have chosen to outsource and offshore a majority of our technical support. The technical aptitude and average tenure of the agent pools we use offshore are very high. We also supplement offshore service with onshore escalations (which should have been leveraged by the agents in your case). Interestingly, our customer and case satisfaction data over the past year show that the actual difference between our onshore and offshore agent service is marginal — a fraction of a point — so we believe that we are not compromising quality in any real way.

Q: What kind of training does a Palm call center employee customarily receive?

A: All of our agents get an average of three weeks of classroom training per year. This includes technical support training, operating system (Palm OS and WinMo) training, language and cultural skills training, customer service skills training, new product training, product refresher training, and Palm systems, procedure, and policy training. In addition, agents regularly receive intensive one-on-one coaching and mentoring using call recordings, quality monitoring and customer satisfaction surveys.

Q: In my own experience, as well as in other experiences documented online, it appears there have been many instances of Palm call center employees lying to customers. Just for the record, though I suspect the answer will be no, are Palm call center employees asked to lie to customers?

A: We invest a lot of time and energy in providing official scripts, bulletins, knowledge bases, and training that help agents to respond swiftly, professionally, and accurately to the myriad of consumer inquiries that they face each day. They are also encouraged to use our hierarchy of support to escalate calls and questions when they are not informed or positioned to answer — so there is no reason an agent should provide inaccurate information at any time.

In your case, the agent lost control of the conversation, and things were said that shouldn’t have been. These types of cases result in an investigation, and oftentimes interviews with those agents or managers involved.

Q: What would happen to an employee that is found to have lied to a customer?

A: We conduct an investigation — perhaps reading call notes, listening to calls if they’ve been recorded, interviewing agents, and so forth — to get a better idea of what really transpired. We would then follow our established guidelines for discipline, performance improvement, or dismissal.

Q: Also for the record, though I also suspect the answer will be no, does Palm CEO Ed Colligan take call center calls?

A: Ed is one of the most passionate and participatory executives you will ever come across. While I don’t believe he has ever taken a technical support call per se, he certainly will contact a customer directly, and does so all the time. He has a dedicated voicemail box where he receives customer messages that I don’t even have access to. He routinely is responding to not just voicemails but emails, faxes, and letters that come across his desk. And Ed knows the names of these customers, and he looks to me for status updates on how we have handled these cases and whether or not we have restored their trust in the Palm brand. He is zealous about this — and so am I.

I was first walked through the script by employee C13763, who balked when I told her that I didn’t know the exact date of purchase of my device. Having purchased the device from the palm US store, I thought they could look that up but I discovered that it wasn’t the case. Keeping her on the line while I tried to login in the store, I discovered that palm no longer had any trace of any accounts of mine on their site. With 4 palm devices bought over the last 3 years, I was surprised by that fact, especially after checking the address on the welcome email (palm has a tradition of sending you a welcome note to their world every time you buy another device) and asking for a password to be reset for the email address I had received emails at from Palm.

But at that point, I could say it was all basically my fault for not keeping good records. I asked for forgiveness and gave a date based on my rough rememberance. It was around the end of the year and the Treo 680 has been introduced at a show in New York only a few days before. So I looked up the rough timeline (device introduced late November 2006 and released around December 2006) and gave a date (January 1, 2007). I knew the date was wrong as I had gotten the device later than that but figured I needed to give them a date that was within the range of warranty and on the outside of the date I bought the device.

After doing so, I was told that I needed to do a hard reset (I had already walked through that) and indulged the call center person (I figure they get enough abuse as is). That, of course, did not solve the problem since it was a hardware issue (speaker blown off due to the fact that the volume setting on the palm, if set too high blows off the speakers and the fact that the volume setting buttons do not lock with the rest of the buttons on the device, ensuring that any type of shaking in pockets or bags will ensure that your volume is either set to the top or bottom setting most of the time). After another 15 minutes of walking through the scenario, I was told that the replacement unit would cost me $299.

$299 would not be much of an issue, with one possible exception: the retail price for a brand new, unlocked, Treo 680 is $379. The street price ranges from $200 to $300. A new unit comes with a one year warranty on all parts. A replacement unit does not.

The message this sends to customers is that once you’re a customer, you’re hooked and therefore the company is going to try to milk any profit it can out of you. As a shareholder, I thought this was the wrong message so I asked employee C13763 to transfer me to her superior. After some going back and forth, I was finally transfered to employee C11329, a “senior technician” to whom I referred my case number (case number 1-511-464-84488) before continuing the discussion.

I first voiced my concern about the fact that there was a problem in terms of locating sales data from their own servers. Since I had bought the device from Palm’s website and I had given my serial number while on the previous call, I thought it odd that they could not locate the date of purchase of the device (especially since they consider it such vital data for customer service) . I was told that since my device was sold on January 1, 2007, the date I had given only a few minutes earlier to the previous call center person, it was out of warranty. I’m writing this on December 27, 2007 and, the last time I checked, a one year warranty generally extends 365 days from the date of purchase. My concern as a shareholder now turned to anger and frustration. With 3 other broken palm devices in front of me (2 of them my own fault so I won’t even bother talking to Palm about those), I thought that I could be considered a solid customer. But now I was told that warranties were not real and paying $199 (a drop in price of $100 in only a few minutes since talking to the previous person) was going to solve my problem. In the past, broken devices were repaired for $100 so this was getting closer to reality but I wanted to talk to someone more senior about two problems: first, it seemed that one can give any date and it won’t be checked (or maybe it will) and two, if it is checked, warranty terms do not apply for a full year.

So I asked employee C11329 to be transfered to her manager. She told me she was the most senior person at Palm. I asked her again politely to transfer me to her manager. She told me she had none. I asked to be transfered to the person that was reviewing her work, giving her assignments, etc.. I was told she had none. I told her I felt that was odd as, apart from the chairman and CEO, I didn’t know of anyone in a company not having a manager. She told me she was the CEO.

For a second, I paused. “You’re the CEO of Palm, Inc.?” I asked again, not really believing what I was hearing. “Yes, I am” she replied, now with a defiant tone. “So you’re telling me you’re Ed Colligan?” I asked. “I am the CEO and that’s all you need to know.”

Well, turns out I was now in a very odd situation. I had been at several industry events where Ed Colligan spoke (including a number of product launches from Palm) and, as far as my memory was concerned, his voice was neither feminine nor did it sound south-Asian in its inflection. My memory might have been playing games on me but I was pretty sure I was not talking to the CEO of Palm.

“Do you mind if I start recording this call? I’d like to get your answer to my question about being CEO on an audio record as I’m having a hard time believing it” I asked. The first part of this question is a standard I was taught in journalism school: if you’re going to record a call, first ask if it’s OK to do so. Laws applying to phone taping are a complex mess of regulations with little overlap between different jurisdictions: however, if both parties to a conversation agree to the taping of that conversation, it is generally recognized as OK to do so.

Obviously, I was dealing with someone who knew (or guessed) that I would not legally be allowed to record the conversation so she replied that “no, that would be illegal”. I was stuck so I asked her to transfer me to her manager again. She said no. I asked again with the same result. After another 15 minutes of back and forth, I finally figured that she being CEO, she could transfer me to anyone in the company so I asked to be transfered to the company’s general counsel. The call dropped. I let the line run for another few minutes figuring that maybe it was taking time for the transfer to occur but no, the line went dead.

After a few hours, I realized that while my experience had been horrible, I may have found a great story: PALM, the stock, is not doing so hot. Palm, the company is having its own issues, as are Palm the devices. In the past, the saving grace in all this was that the customer support was very good and decent. So the question is whether tech support (or other forms of horrible customer interactions) could be the straw that breaks Palm’s back. I called Palm’s PR agency to ask some questions about this but most of the people are on vacation. One of their agency’s PR people told me that she’d pass the message on so we’ll see what happens.

On a personal note, I’m joining the many others who are abandoning palm the device. I am also, like Mary Hodder, regretting all the recommendations I made. I’m now shopping for another device and would welcome any recommendation. I also wouldn’t mind getting some information about how other people feel about tech support not only at Palm but also at other unlocked devices sellers. Is unlocked a category of the market that most vendors dismiss, reserving their best services for 3rd party mobile providers and is it something that might change in the future? I don’t know but what I do know is that I am now part of the group of people who must say: “Don’t ever buy a Palm device.”

I was recently describing my update process to David Strom, after he had posted an entry on his blog about how poor the contact management system in Gmail was, and I hit upon a realization: A lot of the work that goes into keeping all that information up to date seems to be something that ought to be more suited to some level of automation. Why is it that there is no real linkage between my address book, different email systems, social networks, IM systems, Skype (and other voice over IP solutions) and my mobile phone? Each of those appears to live in a silo, unable to offer me a full view of the people I know.

While Plaxo does a good job of synchronizing metadata about people (What I would consider as rank, name, and serial number ie. the basics like physical address, IM address, phone, and email), it has yet to evolve into a solution that would give me a full view of the relationships I have.

I also played with a number of CRM packages like SugarCRM but ultimately, they fail because their view is completely sales-centric, with the idea of people being largely seen as members of a company and sales prospects to be closed. I am not much of a salesperson (unless you consider pushing new ideas on people a type of sale, which arguably it is) but my view of the world is much richer than that. I don’t want to think of people as buyers.

However, the concepts of grouping information in CRMs is somewhat attractive. What I want is a view of my relationship with people that would group:

• The basic type of address book information available in my address book and/or on my PDA and/or phone.
• The rich email discussions I have had with said people
• The similarly rich IM discussions I have had.
• SMS or MMS discussions synched from my phone.
• Social Networks interactions
• Feeds for the person (to things like their blog, their last.fm account, etc…)
• Trackbacks and other blog related discussions.

The interesting thing is that each of this information is available in a digitized fashion but there is no centralized point that allows me to see said information about Joe Smith.

Why is that?

So I’d like to suggest the creation of a new class of software called the “Personal Relationship Manager” or PRM. The purpose of a PRM would be to help you manage your life instead of trying to manage sales.

Basic Personal Relationship Manager

Of course, people are going to say that this product or that product solves my existing problem. In order to get those people to think before they push their solution, let me describe in details what I want:

Contact Information

• Integration of my address book across different email services: the contact part of this is largely completed by Plaxo as they have managed to integrate and aggregate the address book from a number of services. They need to provide an interface to integrate others but they seem closer than anyone else on this.
• Integration of my address book across different IM services: top line, the following would be needed from day one: AIM, MSN IM, Yahoo IM, Google IM, ICQ, and Jabber. I should not have to reenter information for each.
• Integration of my address book across different social networks: this is getting trickier as most of the popular social networks look to that type of data as owned by them. However, an ideal PRM would integrate and aggregate the information my friends give on a social network into a single view.
• Integration of my address book and mobile and VOIP solutions: Caller ID on my VoIP solutions like Skype, Vonage, etc… and on my mobile phone should be integrated into a contact view. Today, my Treo asks me if I want to create a new contact or add a number to a contact if it’s not in my address book already. I want that type of feature across all voice communication solution.

Conversations and Status

• Integration of Email conversations across all email services I use: At minimum, this should allow to bring IMAP and POP into my PRM.
• Integration of IM conversations across all IM services I use: Most IM services now have an archival feature. That should be presented as part of a user view.
• Integration of Social Network Status and related messages across all socially-aware applications: From social network status to Last.FM music, from WeSabe to Twitter, my friends are updating information in a variety of services. I should have a dedicated news feed for each individual view.
• Integration of SMS/MMS history: SMS and MMS sent to my mobile phone should be integrated into the overview of people.
• Possible Integration of Voicemail and audio messages: At a later time, integrating those into the package would be a nice to have.

Input

• The PRM should manage relationships across social network: This ought not be aggressive but the system should check when people I know join a particular network I’m on. If it finds a match, it ought to tell me that it did and, based on my settings, either ask for a linkage automatically, or ask me to approve/deny asking for such linkage.
• The PRM could (not should) become a single point of entry for broadcast messages. For example, if I change jobs (as I did recently), I would update that system with the job change status in a single location and it would update that information across all the touch points where I have entered that information.
• The PRM could (not should) be a single entry point for status broadcast. At the very least, it should allow me to set which system ought to be integrated via simple rules similar to filtering (for example, I could say “If I update Service X, also update Service Y and Service Z.”

Programming Bits

• Low change footprint: A new application should not force me to change everything I already use. Instead, it should work with the applications I already use. This is probably the hardest thing in developing the application I’m highlighting as it will have to integrate with other services/software via some kind of service oriented architecture but not take over their basic features.
• Fully addressable via API: The PRM, if built successfully, would become central to managing relationships. As a result, it could become the source of data that applications could be built on. Because much of the data is personal, a strong set of security and access controls would need to be in place in order to ensure that only the data people in my PRM want to distribute is distributable. On the other hand, the data should be formatted in such a consistent way that developers could build applications that integrate with the PRM.
• Online/Offline addressable: Knock me off the network and I should still be able to have access to some of the data. Put me back on the network and I should be able to resync it all with the most up to date information.
• Decentralized: People tend to prefer having their contact info in the hands of more than one providers as they feel that type of information is largely personal. A PRM solution would thus have to be in a mode that can be federated so no single entity is in full control of the data.

So the purpose of the system, once built, would be to give me a view of my friends/contacts/etc… that is consolidated. It would probably provide me with a high level contact overview (listing all the ways to get in touch with someone), and then allow me to drill on the different conversations I’ve had with the person across a variety of systems (Email, IM, phone, social nets) as well as give me an overview of what they’ve been up to thanks to a status message and socially aware apps screen. And it would have to do all that without me changing any of the systems I’m currently using. It’s a tall order but it’s one that, if satisfied, could easily become the central way for people to manage their relationship.

If your product does indeed satisfy all those requirements, you may have made a sale. And if you have an interest in developing a PRM, I’ll be happy to be an alpha tester.