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The reef along the Shelly Beach headland forms a surf break called 'The Bower'. Most people assume that it is one solid piece of reef under the break, but getting above it in a helicopter you can see that the reef is actually made up of thousands of small boulders. If you ever surf the break on a big day and put your head underwater you can sometimes hear the boulders clicking and rolling as the waves pass over.
Surf stories aside, this photograph is something very simple, but very strong. The rocks form hundreds of shapes that individually look busy, but viewed together become quite tranquil.


This course is suited to students who speak English as a second language and is recommended for those who have completed LANG1254 Advanced English 1.
Professional English is aimed at refining and developing students' ability to communicate effectively in English in a wide variety of professional settings and situations. This course is particularly suited to students whose mother tongue is a Language Other Than English. It will specifically support students who need a high command of written and oral English in their disciplinary field.
As this course comprises students from a variety of discipline areas, a great deal of emphasis is placed upon assisting students to identify and reflect on their own learning needs and goals. Students will be able to submit reports or present on topics that are relevant to their fields of expertise.The weekly session is broadly divided into 3 parts: theoretical presentations, hands-on practice and reflection.
A range of practical learning experiences are planned for this course including input from the lecturer, mock interviews/meetings, report writing, submissions of cover letters, group presentations and peer review activities. Students are encouraged to assess their individual needs and to set their own priorities and goals for the course. Class work will be supported by an online component to facilitate communication and to provide additional resources. The completion of weekly homework will be paramount in order to progress and achieve the goals of the course.
Class work will be supported by an online component to facilitate communication and to provide additional resources.
You will be required to submit a range of assessments throughout the semester. Assessment tasks may involve working independently and/or as part of a pair or team on a range of written, oral and interactive tasks.
There are 4 assessment tasks, involving written assignment, oral interview, report writing, and presentation.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Since 2003, the Law Society of Scotland has been responsible for the quality assurance of civil legal assistance provided by solicitors through the legal aid scheme. The Society has published a detailed Peer Review Manual to assist solicitors in fulfilling the requirements of quality assurance. It is a comprehensive guide to the quality assurance scheme, covering the process of peer review, the requirements of the scheme and current themes arising from recent reviews.
All firms providing civil legal aid must join a central register maintained by the Scottish Legal Aid Board and are subject to peer review in six-yearly cycles, by peer reviewers who are solicitors in practice, and who are trained as reviewers on behalf of the Society. They examine a sample of the firm's files and assess the quality of the work done by the firm according to the Society's published criteria.
The peer reviewers report to the Quality Assurance Committee of the Law Society of Scotland. The committee works to maintain and improve the quality of service and legal work provided by solicitors using legal aid, and has powers to remove firms from the register if necessary. In the cycle of reviews completed in October 2009, 92% of firms passed, with 8% of firms being required to improve procedures prior to further review before passing.
The legislative basis for the quality assurance scheme is contained in the Law Society of Scotland Practice Rules 2011 (Rule C3). Its joint operation by the Law Society of Scotland and the Scottish Legal Aid Board, is governed by the Memorandum of Understanding between the two organisations.
View a flowchart of the quality assurance process.


Our 2011 Road Trip #24: Washington vs. Columbus « Midlife Crisis Crossover!
After lunch at Peanut Butter & Co., we walked another block-'n'-a-half northeast through Greenwich Village to Washington Square Park, one of those diverse, bustling, happy public places that all the best city parks aspire to be so they can attract the attention of Hollywood location scouts.
The park's origins date back to the 1820s, with occasional reconfiguring and adding done since then. You might remember it from such films as, well, every film that's ever had a scene of Manhattan elderly facing off at outdoor chess (the Pixar short "Geri's Game" comes most recently to mind). Sadly, either we entered on the wrong side or they were temporarily removed — the west end of the park was, as with much of NYC this week, torn apart, mid-upheaval and under construction.
But its most prominent feature is that big, bold Washington Square Arch, which was dedicated in 1895, some years after the hundredth anniversary of President Washington's inauguration. As late anniversary presents go, I imagine this one's lateness was forgiven.
A common fixture in movies and 1970s Marvel comics, as I vaguely recall from old issues of Amazing Spider-Man.
Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.
That's the side facing south toward the park. The north side faces Fifth Avenue and isn't so flat.
On each side are two different statues. "Washington at War" is at far left in hat and trenchcoat; "Washington at Peace" is so relaxed that he has no need for accessories to make him feel more protected.
Washington Square Park is a bubbly refuge for street artists, at least one drag queen, and several charming musicians, even those with non-portable instruments.
Good luck dragging this piano through a subway entrance.
A rare sight in Manhattan throughout our week: pretty garden flowers!
My lovely assistant Anne directs your attention to this mandatory park fountain.
Due northwest of Washington Square Park was the same subway station we'd used on Tuesday for our brief McDonald's diversion. I have no idea how we missed this entire park on that walk. We descended, boarded, and returned to Columbus Circle. This time we took a few extra photos.
Probably the only roundabout we saw all week.
The Circle's centerpiece is the the 1892 Christopher Columbus statue, made in Italy for that 400th anniversary celebrated in schools but largely lambasted a lot on the internet these days.
Some of the authentic Italian inscriptions carved into the base.
The USS Maine National Monument, dedicated in 1913 to remember the Main, recently celebrated its centennial.
We'd previously seen the Trump International steel globe on our way back from Grant's Tomb, but this time we had a new perspective, emerging from the Columbus Circle subway station just underneath it.
Every history class needs a cool globe like this in their classroom. I guess it's okay if they're smaller.
From there we moved on to one last, long walk down Broadway and through Times Square. For old times' sake.
1. I'm a big fan of roundabouts. Here in Indy in recent years they've been multiplying like rabbits who really, really love each other very much.


text:
Nursing Home Employee Safety Compromised
On Behalf of York Law Firm | Mar 3, 2021 | Blog, Elder Abuse, Nursing home Abuse, Nursing Home Neglect, Recent Articles
Bad enough that more than 100,000 senior citizens in nursing homes have died so far from the Coronavirus, now, add to that toll tens of thousands of nursing home employees who were also infected and died. According to the New York Times, more than 163,000 people in nursing homes (residents and staff combined) have been killed from Coronavirus to date, representing 34% of all US deaths and 5% of all cases. The shocking failure of skilled nursing facilities to protect its residents and staff clearly indicates incompetence, greed, and negligence. When the dust settles, nursing home chain operators must be held accountable for the unimaginable harm they have caused.
Now comes the big question: who is supposed to oversee dangerous conditions at nursing homes? That responsibility is the purview of a federal agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which monitors worker safety in long-term care facilities. The US Department of Labor's workforce is tasked with controlling 40,000 worksites and the 2.8 million workers employed in one way or another by nursing homes and residential care facilities.
What are some of the reasons why Nursing Home Employee Safety is being compromised?
What happened when the Coronavirus hit? Between February 2020 and August 2020, OSHA penalized only six facilities, out of the thousands with Coronavirus cases, in the entire country! In the remaining four months of 2020, the agency did only slightly better, citing 200 facilities. The average penalty was only $13,000. Thousands needlessly died, yet OSHA during the Trump Administration somehow couldn't find reasons to intervene on behalf of vulnerable staff and patients.
A CNN investigation revealed a trail of incompetence and negligence. By the end of 2020, workers at 1,000 facilities had contacted OSHA by phone or email, but the vast majority were closed by operators who denied the claims or promised to address the issues. In one tragic case, Victor Sison, a nurse at Complete Care at Hamilton Plaza in Passaic, New Jersey, posted a photo of himself with the headline: "LORD HELP ALL MY FELLOW FRONTLINERS." Sison died in April 2020 of COVID-19; the facility where he worked did not even report his death to OSHA, and OSHA didn't launch an investigation until CNN contacted the agency in July.
Why was OSHA so slow to act, and why is the agency still not doing enough to enforce its own regulations? According to Marissa Baker, an assistant professor of occupational health at the University of Washington, the issues are that OSHA is understaffed and that the agency does not have enforceable standards related to COVID-19.
Enough is enough. We now have a new administration in Washington, and let's hope that common sense comes back into fashion – fund and staff OSHA with employees willing to take on Unsafe Employers. People shouldn't die because they go to work every day to earn a living. OSHA needs to do so much more.
We can't bring back the dead, but we can enforce the regulations already on the books and quickly work to tighten others. When the history of the Coronavirus is eventually written, OSHA will, unfortunately, be implicated in the needless suffering and deaths of thousands, a tragic consequence of a failed administration.
Attorney Wendy York of York Law Firm specializes in prosecuting elder abuse and wrongful death cases in California. If you or a loved one is in need of legal assistance please contact Wendy York today.
— Nursing Home Employee Safety Compromised
How can you find a good nursing home?
Reasons people get away with abuse in a nursing home
3 ways to prevent bed falls in a nursing home
What to know about the abuse of memory care patients
How understaffing endangers nursing home residents
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


This is a program to monitor and setup the Solar Trackers. It is fully compatible substitution for older web based "WebMonitor" program.
The program support now English and German language.
Usage is allowed only with products made by SAT CONTROL.
No communication with PC? Check the CABLE WIRING (pdf) here is drawing of cable.
Copyright © 2002 SAT CONTROL, d.o.o.


There are eight critical interview questions that may be uncomfortable to ask but will be worthwhile as you make your decision to hire a candidate. These questions generate frank conversations in order to determine if the candidate really is a good fit for the position. In addition, they will alleviate any surprises of a candidate declining your job offer.
#1: Why do you want to leave your current job?
This question can help pinpoint why the candidate feels unfulfilled in their current role. If your company has similar processes, you know the person would not feel fulfilled your open position. Alternatively, this could be an opportunity to "sell" your company to the candidate.
#2: Take this role to the side, what would a perfect role look like?
By asking this question, you can get a feel for what the candidate is passionate about and then assess how that plays into the role you're interviewing for.
#3: Have you spoken to your boss about the fact you're unhappy?
No employer an address concerns if they don't even know those concerns exist! This question helps determine how good of a communicator the candidate is. Will they try to work through concerns, or simply look elsewhere when the going gets tough?
#4: Have you looked for other opportunities internally?
This question is a good way to assess if they are serious about leaving their current company. If they are applying internally, this could be a tactic for leverage on higher salary with their current employer.
#5: Are you in the process of applying elsewhere? How many other interviews do you have?
If the person has many other interviews lined up, it could be a sign that they are in high demand. This means you may want to be more proactive in your approach to moving the interview process through each stage. That is if the candidate is a good fit for the position and organization.
#6: (If they are:) Which role is your preference and why?
This is a great follow-up question to assess how interested the candidate is in your position. If it ranks lower, what's the point of pursuing them?
#7: Who else in your life will influence your decision?
Candidates will most likely speak to their spouses and/or family members before making a big move in their career. If the candidate indicates they have not spoken with family members, it could be a sign they lack serious interest in the role. Probe further to understand why they have not talked to them.
#8: Do you have any reservations about accepting this role if offered?
Now, this is an opportunity to get some great feedback on any lingering concerns the candidate might have. If they answer 'yes', this is an opportunity to address and overcome any hesitations. Then you can avoid any surprise declines on your job offers by addressing any concerns up front.
Read more about these questions here.


text:
Football Websites : What makes These Thus Well-known?
October 8, 2020 Other	 | No comments
Football is not a new game. The game can be traced back several centuries ago, The game has been remarkably popular since its inception. However, it's earned more popularity within the last few decades. It's now played in all of the countries through the globe and that shows its rising popularity.
There are lots of football crazy fans through the world. They have their particular favorite players and teams. The elite clubs enjoy support from all around the globe. As an example, Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain are popular worldwide. Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Wayne Rooney, Diego Costa, Luis Suarez and other star players have their followers in every football-playing country. Given the popularity of the sport, you mustn't wonder why football websites are very much favorite with the crazy fans.
What these websites do?
Footballers are now style icons. They're as famous since the silver screen heroes and that reality has put into popularity of the football websites หนังสือพิมพ์กีฬา. The sports lovers now want to remain updated on news about their favorite teams and players. Because of quick accessibility to internet, increasing number of individuals are now showing their curiosity about going through the internet sites that may provide them with the present details of the overall game and its star players. These websites can be easily accessed by individuals from different demographics.
Do you want to find out about the outcome of recently played matches? Are you curious to know if your favorite player is to remain put together with his current club or going elsewhere? Is the club changing hands in immediate future? Do you have any idea about sponsors the big clubs are working with? I do hope you also take curiosity about tidbits. All they're revealed by the websites. Match report and incisive analysis are widely considered since the Holy Grail for the sport lovers. These websites are equally popular one of the fans and players.
According to studies, the celebrity players also read the most reputed websites to be able to find out about valuable tips as to how they can improve their game.
Financial Attractions
In addition to the latest news, you can find other attractions for those visiting the websites. Many popular football websites offer attractive gifts and financial costs for the visitors. Such offers attract more visitors and in-turn, benefit the site owners via commercial advertisements..
There are several important aspects that produce a certain football site a stand-out from others. Let's now take a peek at those aspects:
Quick Updates: Readers don't appreciate stale news. In order to stay before electronic media, a soccer website needs to supply the latest and authentic updates to the readers. No reader loves to go through an injury report that really surfaced a day or two ago. Hourly update is most important and liked by the supporters.
Tracking Tools: A soccer website, to be able to be favorite with the readers, must be way distinctive from its competitors. It must include a wider variety of information pertaining to different facets of football news.


The Duo Plus 9-in-1 Programmable kitchen appliance with advanced microprocessor technology has all of the great features that made the Duo a best-seller. It has new and improved programs and features to continually support a fast-paced, health-conscious lifestyle.
The Duo Plus includes three new programs, Cake, Egg, and Sterilize. The Cake program has been designed to pressure cook soft and moist cakes; whereas, the Egg program has been created to prepare perfect eggs in just a few minutes.
The Sterilize program makes it easy to pasteurize milk, and sterilize baby bottles, jars, and utensils; as well as, making some types of canning easier than ever!
The Duo Plus is designed with a large blue LCD display with an all-new user interface to adjust the cooking settings, pressure levels, keep-warm on/off at any time during the cooking process.
There are four new icons to easily view the status of the cooker, Heat, Pressure Cook, Keep Warm and Sound. The 'Heat' indicates heating or cooking in progress, 'Pressure Cook' indicates the pressure cook program is selected, 'Keep Warm' indicates if it is on/off, and 'Sound' indicates if the sound is on/off when cooking starts or is completed. NOTE: This product is 110v, and for use in North America, if you live in Europe or other 220-240v territories this product will not operate.


Discussion in 'Hommes' started by Flashbang, Jul 23, 2009.
His looks is so captivating!
Here is Aram at his agency party with Arthur D.
I didn't see him either. It's a pity.
Carlo Pignatelli Outside Mens S/S 2010 Milan. HQs.
Yay! finally some new work!
I feel like he looks more mature in this campaign!


text:
layout: post
title:  "Innovators"
authors: Walter Issacson

---

## History

Combination of technologies led the digital revolution

> For more than a decade, beginning in the early 1970s, the development of networks and that of home computers proceeded separately from one another. They finally began coming together in the late 1980s with the advent of **modems, online services, and the Web**. Just as combining the **steam engine with ingenious machinery drove the Industrial Revolution**, the combination of the **computer and distributed networks** led to a digital revolution that allowed anyone to create, disseminate, and access any information anywhere.

Industrial revolution and assembly lines

> The Industrial Revolution was based on two grand concepts that were profound in their simplicity. Innovators came up with ways to simplify endeavors by breaking them into easy, **small tasks that could be accomplished on assembly lines**.

## People

Balance of people

> Eckert and Mauchly served as **counterbalances for each other**, which made them typical of so many digital-age leadership duos. Eckert drove people with a passion for precision; Mauchly tended to calm them and make them feel loved.

Interplay of ideas and team

> This latter approach tries to show that what may seem like creative leaps—the Eureka moment—are actually the result of an evolutionary process that occurs when ideas, concepts, technologies, and engineering methods ripen together. Neither way of looking at technological advancement is, on its own, completely satisfying. Most of the great innovations of the digital age sprang from an **interplay of creative individuals (Mauchly, Turing, von Neumann, Aiken) with teams that knew how to implement their ideas**.

Focus yet ability to change mind

> The same traits that make them inventive, such as stubbornness and focus, can make them resistant to change when new ideas come along. Steve Jobs **was famously stubborn and focused, yet he dazzled and baffled colleagues by suddenly changing his mind when he realized he needed to think different**. Aiken lacked that agility.

Workplace innovation

> Like Xerox PARC and other corporate research satellites that followed, Bell Labs showed how sustained innovation could occur when people with a variety of talents were brought together, preferably in close physical proximity where they could have **frequent meetings and serendipitous encounters**.

Interior design of innovative workplaces

> The **corridors were extremely long, more than the length of two football fields, and designed to promote random meetings among people with different talents and specialties**, a strategy that Steve Jobs replicated in designing Apple's new headquarters seventy years later. Anyone walking around Bell Labs might be bombarded with random ideas, soaking them up like a solar cell.

## Innovation criteria

Price is a key for innovation

> Transistors were being sold in 1954 to the military for about $16 apiece. But in order to break into the consumer market, Haggerty insisted that his engineers find a way to make them so that they could be sold for less than $3. They did. He also developed a Jobs-like knack, which would serve him then and in the future, for conjuring up devices that consumers did not yet know they needed but would soon find indispensable.

New markets

> But Haggerty understood the **importance of spawning new markets rather than merely chasing old ones**. He convinced a small Indianapolis company that built TV antenna boosters to join forces on what would be called the Regency TR-1 radio. Haggerty made the deal in June 1954 and, typically, insisted that the device be on the market by that November. It was.

Innovation in other fields

> Indeed, there was a **symbiotic relationship between the advent of the transistor radio and the rise of rock and roll**. Elvis Presley's first commercial recording, "That's All Right," came out at the same time as the Regency radio. The rebellious new music made every kid want a radio.

Flexible university

> Throughout the 1950s Terman, who went on to become Stanford's provost, grew the industrial park by encouraging its occupants to have a **symbiotic relationship with Stanford; employees and executives could study or teach part-time at the university, and its professors were given leeway to advise new businesses**. Stanford's office park would end up nurturing hundreds of companies, from Varian to Facebook.

When to push, when to heed

> One useful leadership talent is **knowing when to push ahead against doubters and when to heed them**. Shockley had trouble striking this balance. One case arose when he devised a four-layer diode that he thought would be faster and more versatile than a three-layer transistor.

How to know if the idea is right?

> Worse yet, Shockley's infatuation with the four-layer diode turned out to be misplaced. **Sometimes the difference between geniuses and jerks hinges on whether their ideas turn out to be right.** If Shockley's diode had proved practical, or if he had evolved it into an integrated circuit, he may have again been regarded as a visionary. But that didn't happen.

Venture capital

> It was hard to get money, especially from established corporations, to start a completely independent company. The **idea of seed funding for startups was not yet well established**; that important innovation would have to wait, as we shall see, until the next time Noyce and Moore leaped into a new venture.

Transistors for pocket radios

> The traitorous eight who formed Fairchild Semiconductor, by contrast, turned out to be the **right people at the right place at the right time**. The **demand for transistors was growing because of the pocket radios** that Pat Haggerty had launched at Texas Instruments, and it was about to skyrocket even higher;

Rapid daily iteration, not a single breakthrough

> "I don't remember any time when a light bulb went off and the whole thing was there," conceded Noyce. "It was more like, every day, you would say, 'Well, **if I could do this, then maybe I could do that, and that would let me do this**,' and eventually you had the concept." After this flurry of activity he wrote an entry in his notebook, in January 1959: "It would be desirable to make multiple devices on a single piece of silicon."

Inventing and finding use cases

> One aspect of innovation is **inventing new devices; another is inventing popular ways to use these devices**. Haggerty and his company were good at both. Eleven years after he had created a huge market for inexpensive transistors by pushing pocket radios, he looked for a way to do the same for microchips. The idea he hit upon was **pocket calculators**.

3 team - Noyce, Moore, Grove

> In contrast to Noyce's sweet gentility, Grove had a blunt, no-bullshit style. It was the same approach Steve Jobs would later use: brutal honesty, clear focus, and a demanding drive for excellence. "Andy was the guy who made sure the trains all ran on time," recalled Ann Bowers. "He was a taskmaster. He had very strong views about what you should do and what you shouldn't do and he was very direct about that."

Authority and culture

> In addition to being a recruiting tool, the culture at Atari was a natural outgrowth of Bushnell's personality. But it was not simply self-indulgent. It was based on a philosophy that drew from the hippie movement and would help define Silicon Valley. At its core were certain principles: **authority should be questioned, hierarchies should be circumvented, nonconformity should be admired, and creativity should be nurtured**.

Innovation ingredients

> Innovation requires having at least three things: **a great idea, the engineering talent to execute it, and the business savvy** (plus deal-making moxie) to turn it into a successful product.

Making of research labs

> A few corporate research centers, most notably Bell Labs, existed before the war. But after Bush's clarion call produced government encouragement and contracts, hybrid research centers began to proliferate. Among the most notable were the RAND Corporation, originally formed to provide research and development (hence the name) to the Air Force; **Stanford Research Institute and its offshoot, the Augmentation Research Center; and Xerox PARC. All would play a role in the development of the Internet.**

## Computer

Creative collaboration

> They instinctively isolated and routed around any node that tried to claim more significance than the others. The Internet was **born of an ethos of creative collaboration and distributed decision making, and its founders liked to protect that heritage**. It became ingrained in their personalities—and in the DNA of the Internet itself.

Origin of packet switching

> That led to an unstable hair-trigger situation; a nation was more likely to launch a preemptive strike if it feared that **its communications and ability to respond would not survive an attack**. "The origin of packet switching is very much Cold War," he said.

the 1960s... music, space, computers

> It was thus that in the second half of 1969—amid the static of Woodstock, Chappaquiddick, Vietnam War protests, Charles Manson, the Chicago Eight trial, and Altamont—the culmination was reached for three historic enterprises, each in the making for almost a decade. NASA was able to send a man to the moon. Engineers in Silicon Valley were able to devise a way to put a programmable computer on a chip called a microprocessor. And ARPA created a network that could connect distant computers.

The early Internet

> It was still a **gated community, open primarily to researchers at military and academic institutions**. It wasn't until the early 1980s that civilian counterparts to ARPANET were fully opened, and it would take yet another decade before most ordinary home users could get in.

The mother of all demos

> They even were able to create hypertext links together. In short, Engelbart showed, back in 1968, nearly everything that a networked personal computer does today. **The demo gods were with him, and to his amazement there were no glitches**. The crowd gave him a standing ovation. Some even rushed up to the stage as if he were a rock star, which in some ways he was.

Homebrew club and first meeting

> This first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club was held on a rainy Wednesday, March 5, 1975, in Gordon French's Menlo Park garage. It occurred just when the first truly personal home computer became available, not from Silicon Valley but from a sagebrush-strewn strip mall in a silicon desert.

Hardware as commodity and software as profits

> What Gates and Allen set out to do on that December day in 1974 when they first saw the Popular Electronics cover was to create the software for personal computers. More than that, they wanted to **shift the balance in the emerging industry so that the hardware would become an interchangeable commodity, while those who created the operating system and application software would capture most of the profits**.

Programming language for a chip

> That summer Gates and Allen became enchanted by **Intel's new 8008 microprocessor**, a powerful upgrade of its 4004 "computer on a chip." They were so excited by a story on it in Electronics Magazine that years later Gates would remember the page number it was on. If the chip really could act like a computer and be programmed, Allen asked Gates, why not write a programming language for it, specifically a version of BASIC?

Steve Woz

> For fun, he would study the manuals of the office computers made by Hewlett-Packard and DEC and then **try to redesign them using fewer chips**. "I have no idea why this became the pastime of my life," he admitted. "I did it all alone in my room with my door shut. It was like a private hobby." It was not an activity that made him the life of the party, so he became pretty much a loner, but that talent to save chips served him well when he decided to build a computer of his own.

Learning to do a smaller successful product first

> The escapade ended after they got ripped off at gunpoint trying to sell one in a pizza parlor, but from the seeds of the adventure a company would be born. "**If it hadn't been for the Blue Boxes, there wouldn't have been an Apple**," Jobs later reflected. "Woz and I learned how to work together." Wozniak agreed: "It gave us a taste of what we could do with **my engineering skills and his vision**."

Simplicity + focus

> **Devices should not need manuals**. "That **simplicity rubbed off on him and made him a very focused product person**," said Ron Wayne, who worked with Jobs at Atari. In addition, Bushnell was able to help mold Jobs into an entrepreneur.

Designing and selling

> Jobs also started accompanying Wozniak to Homebrew meetings, carrying the television set and conducting the demonstrations, and he came up with a plan to sell circuit boards preprinted with Wozniak's design. It was typical of their partnership. "**Every time I'd design something great, Steve would find a way to make money for us**," said Wozniak. "It never crossed my mind to sell computers. It was Steve who said, 'Let's hold them in the air and sell a few.' "

UX principle - least surprise

> "The goal was to give the user a **conceptual model that was unsurprising,**" Frankston explained. "It was called the **principle of least surprise**. We were illusionists synthesizing an experience."

Execution > Prototype > Idea

> But Jobs was the first to become obsessed with the idea of incorporating PARC's interface ideas into a simple, inexpensive, personal computer. Once again, the **greatest innovation would come not from the people who created the breakthroughs but from the people who applied them usefully**.

The first GUI

> What caught his attention was the graphical user interface featuring a desktop metaphor that was as intuitive and friendly as a neighborhood playground. It had **cute icons for documents and folders and other things you might want, including a trash can, and a mouse-controlled cursor** that made them easy to click. Not only did Jobs love it, but he could see ways to improve it, make it simpler and more elegant.

Linus' approach

> **Instead of trying to market what he had produced, he decided simply to offer it publicly**. He had recently gone with a friend to hear a lecture by Stallman, who had become an itinerant global preacher for the doctrine of free software. Torvalds didn't actually get religion or embrace the dogma: "It probably didn't make a huge impact on my life at that point. **I was interested in the technology, not the politics** — I had enough politics at home." But he did see the practical advantages of the open approach.

Stallman and Linus

> Torvalds admitted to "not exactly being a huge fan" of Stallman, explaining, "**I don't like single-issue people, nor do I think that people who turn the world into black and white are very nice or ultimately very useful**. The fact is, there aren't just two sides to any issue, there's almost always a range of responses, and 'it depends' is almost always the right answer in any big question."

Coexisting all approaches

> Each model had its advantages, each had its incentives for creativity, and each had its prophets and disciples. But **the approach that worked best was having all three models coexisting, along with various combinations of open and closed, bundled and unbundled, proprietary and free.** Windows and Mac, UNIX and Linux, iOS and Android: a variety of approaches competed over the decades, spurring each other on—and providing a check against any one model becoming so dominant that it stifled innovation.

## Internet

Computers vs network

> As a kid growing up on the edge of London in the 1960s, Tim Berners-Lee came to a fundamental insight about computers: they were **very good at crunching step by step through programs**, but they were **not very good at making random associations and clever links**, the way that an imaginative human could.

Places and people for innovation

> During his Oxford years, microprocessors became available. So, just as Wozniak and Jobs had done, he and his friends designed boards that they tried to sell. They were not as successful as the Steves, partly because, as Berners-Lee later said, "we didn't have the same ripe community and cultural mix around us like there was at the Homebrew and in Silicon Valley." **Innovation emerges in places with the right primordial soup**, which was true of the Bay Area but not of Oxfordshire in the 1970s.

Web protocols

> Instead Berners-Lee insisted that the **Web protocols should be made available freely, shared openly, and put forever in the public domain**. After all, the whole point of the Web, and the essence of its design, was to promote sharing and collaboration.

Display and not editing

> The emphasis on display rather than editing tools nudged the Web into becoming a publishing platform for people who had servers rather than a place for collaboration and shared creativity.

Crowd intelligence

> Sanger turned out to be wrong. **The uncredentialed crowd did not run off the experts. Instead the crowd itself became the expert**, and the experts became part of the crowd.

To tell the truth or not

> Page told his advisor Winograd that, according to his rough estimate, his Web crawler would be able to accomplish the task in a few weeks. "**Terry nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough to not tell me**," Page recalled. "**The optimism of youth is often underrated**!"

UX - no user blaming

> 'Why are you giving people garbage?' " Page said. The answer he got was that the poor results were his fault, that he should refine his search query. "I had learned from my human-computer interaction course that **blaming the user is not a good strategy**, so I knew they fundamentally weren't doing the right thing. That insight, the user is never wrong, led to this idea that we could produce a search engine that was better."

Refining

> Page and Brin proceeded to refine PageRank by **adding more factors, such as the frequency, type size, and location of keywords on a Web page**. Extra points were added if the keyword was in the URL or was capitalized or was in the title.

Product people

> Most of the successful innovators and entrepreneurs in this book had one thing in common: they were product people. They cared about, and deeply understood, the engineering and design. They were not primarily marketers or salesmen or financial types; when such folks took over companies, it was often to the detriment of sustained innovation.


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The disease of our times is that we live on the surface. We're like the Platte River, a mile wide and an inch deep
STEVEN PRESSFIELD has made a professional life in five different writing arenas—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, narrative nonfiction, and self-help. He is the best-selling author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, The Afghan Campaign, and The Lion's Gate, as well as the cult classics on creativity, The War of Art, Turning Pro, and Do the Work. His Wednesday column on stevenpressfield.com is one of the most popular series about writing on the web.
This'll sound crazy, but I have certain places that I go to, usually alone, that summon up for me earlier eras in my life. Time is a weird thing. Sometimes you can appreciate a moment that's gone more in the present than you did when it was actually happening. The places that I go to are different all the time and they're usually mundane, ridiculously mundane. A gas station. A bench on a street. Sometimes I'll fly across the country just to go to one of these spots. Sometimes it's on a vacation or a business trip when I'm with family or other people. I might not ever tell them. Or I might. Sometimes I'll take somebody along, though it usually doesn't work (how could it?).
What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the "real world"? What advice should they ignore? I'm probably hopelessly out of date but my advice is get real-world experience: Be a cowboy. Drive a truck. Join the Marine Corps. Get out of the hypercompetitive "life hack" frame of mind. I'm 74. Believe me, you've got all the time in the world. You've got ten lifetimes ahead of you. Don't worry about your friends "beating" you or "getting somewhere" ahead of you. Get out into the real dirt world and start failing. Why do I say that? Because the goal is to connect with your own self, your own soul. Adversity. Everybody spends their life trying to avoid it. Me too. But the best things that ever happened to me came during the times when the shit hit the fan and I had nothing and nobody to help me. Who are you really? What do you really want? Get out there and fail and find out.
What is the book (or books) you've given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
The single book that has influenced me most is probably the last book in the world that anybody is gonna want to read: Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. This book is dense, difficult, long, full of blood and guts. It wasn't written, as Thucydides himself attests at the start, to be easy or fun. But it is loaded with hardcore, timeless truths and the story it tells ought to be required reading for every citizen in a democracy.
Thucydides was an Athenian general who was beaten and disgraced in a battle early in the 27-year conflagration that came to be called the Peloponnesian War. He decided to drop out of the fighting and dedicate himself to recording, in all the detail he could manage, this conflict, which, he felt certain, would turn out to be the greatest and most significant war ever fought up to that time. He did just that.
Have you heard of Pericles' Funeral Oration? Thucydides was there for it. He transcribed it.
He was there for the debates in the Athenian assembly over the treatment of the island of Melos, the famous Melian Dialogue. If he wasn't there for the defeat of the Athenian fleet at Syracuse or the betrayal of Athens by Alcibiades, he knew people who were there and he went to extremes to record what they told him. Thucydides, like all the Greeks of his era, was unencumbered by Christian theology, or Marxist dogma, or Freudian psychology, or any of the other "isms" that attempt to convince us that man is basically good, or perhaps perfectible. He saw things as they were, in my opinion. It's a dark vision but tremendously bracing and empowering because it's true. On the island of Corcyra, a great naval power in its day, one faction of citizens trapped their neighbors and fellow Corcyreans in a temple. They slaughtered the prisoners' children outside before their eyes and when the captives gave themselves up based on pledges of clemency and oaths sworn before the gods, the captors massacred them as well. This was not a war of nation versus nation, this was brother against brother in the most civilized cities on earth. To read Thucydides is to see our own world in microcosm. It's the study of how democracies destroy themselves by breaking down into warring factions, the Few versus the Many. Hoi polloi in Greek means "the many." Oligoi means "the few."
I can't recommend Thucydides for fun, but if you want to expose yourself to a towering intellect writing on the deepest stuff imaginable, give it a try.
This cost a lot more than a hundred bucks, but I bought an electric car, a Kia Soul, and got some solar panels for my roof. Driving on sun power is a major giggle, trust me.
I just wrote a book called The Knowledge about my favorite failure and guess what? It failed too. In all truth, when my third novel (which, like the first two, never got published) crashed ignominiously, I was driving a cab in New York City. I'd been trying to get published for about 15 years at that point. I decided to give up and move to Hollywood, to see if I could find work writing for the movies. Don't ask me what movies I wrote. I will never tell. And if you find out by other means, BE WARNED! Don't see 'em. But working in "the industry" made me a pro and paved the way for whatever successes finally did come.
I would not have a billboard, and I would take down every billboard that everybody else has put up.
I've never invested in the stock market or taken a risk on anything outside myself. I decided a long time ago that I would only bet on myself. I will risk two years on a book that'll probably fall flat on its face. I don't mind. I tried. It didn't work. I believe in investing in your heart. That's all I do, really. I'm a servant of the Muse. All my money is on her.
I've always been a gym person and an early morning person. But a few years ago I got invited to train with T. R. Goodman at a place called Pro Camp. There's a "system," yeah, but basically what we do (and it's definitely a group thing, with three or four of us training together) is just work hard. I hate it but it's great. T. R. says, as we're leaving after working out, "Nothing you face today will be harder than what you just did."
In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? What new realizations and/or approaches helped?
I got a chance a couple of years ago to visit a security firm, one of those places that guard celebrities and protect their privacy—in other words, a business whose total job was to say no. The person who was giving me the tour told me that the business screens every incoming letter, solicitation, email, etc., and decides which ones get through to the client. "How many get through?" I asked. "Virtually none," my friend said. I decided that I would look at incoming mail the same way that firm does. If I were the security professional tasked with protecting me from bogus, sociopathic, and clueless asks, which ones would I screen and dump into the trash? That has helped a lot.
I have a friend at the gym who knew Jack LaLanne (Google him if the name is unfamiliar). Jack used to say it's okay to take a day off from working out. But on that day, you're not allowed to eat. That's the short way of saying you're not really allowed to get unfocused. Take a vacation. Gather yourself. But know that the only reason you're here on this planet is to follow your star and do what the Muse tells you. It's amazing how a good day's work will get you right back to feeling like yourself.
Great, great question. In the world of writing, everyone wants to succeed immediately and without pain or effort. Really? Or they love to write books about how to write books, rather than actually writing . . . a book that might actually be about something. Bad advice is everywhere. Build a following. Establish a platform. Learn how to scam the system. In other words, do all the surface stuff and none of the real work it takes to actually produce something of value. The disease of our times is that we live on the surface. We're like the Platte River, a mile wide and an inch deep. I always say, "If you want to become a billionaire, invent something that will allow people to indulge their own Resistance." Somebody did invent it. It's called the Internet. Social media. That wonderland where we can flit from one superficial, jerkoff distraction to another, always remaining on the surface, never going deeper than an inch. Real work and real satisfaction come from the opposite of what the web provides. They come from going deep into something—the book you're writing, the album, the movie—and staying there for a long, long time.
"Endings don't have to be failures, especially when you choose to end a project or shut down a business. . . . Even the best gigs don't last forever. Nor should they."
"It all happened so suddenly and cinematically that it might defy belief—I remembered that actually I had always wanted to be a writer. So I started writing that very evening."
Previous post "Endings don't have to be failures, especially when you choose to end a project or shut down a business. . . . Even the best gigs don't last forever. Nor should they."
Next post "It all happened so suddenly and cinematically that it might defy belief—I remembered that actually I had always wanted to be a writer. So I started writing that very evening."


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Q: Command not executing in row level ContextMenu on DataGrid in WPF C# I have my template declared like so -
<DataGrid.Resources>

    <ContextMenu x:Key="RowMenu" DataContext="{Binding PlacementTarget.DataContext, RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}}">
        <MenuItem Header="Remove" Command="{Binding Cancel}" />
    </ContextMenu>

</DataGrid.Resources>

I'm applying the template using row style -
<DataGrid.RowStyle>

    <Style TargetType="DataGridRow">
        <Setter Property="ContextMenu" Value="{StaticResource RowMenu}" />
    </Style>

</DataGrid.RowStyle>

The menu shows up ok
But the command (on the ItemListViewModel) does not execute when a context menu item is clicked
public class ItemListViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
    public void Cancel()
    {
        MessageBox.Show("Cancel test");
    }
...
}

My binding is otherwise working properly, as I can do things like this -
    foreach (ItemListViewModel ul in mylist.SelectedItems)
        MessageBox.Show(item.FullDescription);

I've been at this all night trying to figure it out. Just started with WPF today.
Please somebody tell me where I've gone wrong

A: I don't think you can bind to a simple method. You need to bind to a command that should be an implementation of ICommand interface. In you case you need to create a class that would implement that interface and add property of that class type to your model.
See this example as a reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd419663.aspx

A: I decided ListView was better for my needs and I'm using that instead. I'm no longer trying to bind the context menu to the item, but rather have a single context menu for the whole listview and simply enable or disable items in the ContextMenuOpen event where need be.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Free Shipping in Canada on Orders Over $79! Use Code FREESHIP (Details)
Soul/R&B/Funk
Iron Maiden - Killers
Home / Iron Maiden - Killers
Remastered from the original analogue source
Iron Maiden's sophomore effort, Killers, is mostly composed of pre-existing material that had been left off the debut, with just a few new additions. It's certainly a better-sounding release than the debut, with new producer Martin Birch beefing up the band's studio presence and lending their instrumental attack a newfound clarity that throws their considerable skills into sharp relief. In fact, this helps mask the fact that the songwriting isn't quite as strong overall as it was on the debut. But the teaming of new guitarist Adrian Smith with Dave Murray forms the most formidable twin-guitar attack in heavy metal, outside of Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing. Plus, bassist Steve Harris' busy, driving lines are now consistently audible in the mix. The resulting instrumental fireworks are what truly make the album tick.
Mindbomb Records
© Copyright 2021 Mindbomb Records - Powered by Lightspeed


Rutgers +3 for 2 units. Home dog here. Both these teams are a little above .500 against the spread this year. Rutgers have an advantage inside and played great against Purdue in their last game. Indiana is 1-7 on the road this year. Rutgers are actually outscoring opponents at home by almost 8 points a game. The line has moved from +1 to +3, I would not have taken this game at +1, but I like the points in what should be a close game.


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Steve Hindley
This month we go way back in time with a classical music track that you've probably heard thousands of times whilst On Hold.
This company contacted us because the track doesn't reflect their forward thinking technological brand.
We're only too happy to help, by replacing the existing classical track with professionally recorded On Hold Messaging and music.
If you would like to benefit from Professional On Hold Messaging click here to request a free audio demo or call 0800 0112 123
Tagged: Worst Music On Hold, Bad Music On Hold, Bad Hold Music
We left part 5 of our History of the Telephone in the transatlantic, with cables stretching 1,500 nautical miles to connect the UK to Europe, the US and Canada. It was also the year that AT&T's monopolised hold on the telephone industry was reduced, limiting them to 85% of the telephone network in the US.
As modern conveniences became more and more important to the everyday consumer, Bell's merchandising department realised that growth was limited by the company focusing on customer's needs rather than wants. Rather than a utilitarian hallway phone, people wanted ease of contacting whoever they wanted, whenever they wanted and wherever they wanted from within their home. Bartlett Miller, one of Bell's merchandisers decided to tap into this potential market to deliver a design with marketing over engineering in mind. The idea was to produce a product that could sit neatly in the home, easily placed on bedside tables, in hallways, on the kitchen counter, wherever the owner wanted their phone.
Henry Dreyfuss was entrusted with designing the new phone which was named the Princess phone, he oversaw the design after having designed earlier models for Western Electric. The result was a 'little and lovely' telephone, lighter than previous models, smaller and all round more stylish. Released in 1956, criticism flooded in about the design, which didn't evenly distribute the weight of the phone, meaning callers had to hold the base down in order to dial with the other hand, leaving them to position the phone between neck and shoulder. The early design floor resulted in the Princess phone being commonly referred to as the 'three handed phone', not quite what Miller had hoped for.
Over the next ten years the Princess Phone is re-developed, re-weighted, re-coloured and adapting to customer demand. Touch tone models were released in 1964 and replaced in 1968 with a 12 button model. Dreyfuss had earlier designed the Model 500, in 1949, it was consistently redeveloped like the Princess phone, to include more touch tone keys.
Back in the UK and two years on from the installation of the transatlantic cable, the Subscriber Trunk Dialling service is introduced in 1958. Callers were able to make calls without the use of an operator. Queen Elizabeth II was the first to use the new system, dialling a call from Bristol to Edinburgh, 300 miles away. The new system made it easier for callers to connect with areas further distances away and was much cheaper!
With the Post Office being responsible for the UK telecommunications industry at the time, they introducted their own take on Dreyfuss' 500 Model with the 700 Series, designed for the Post Office by W.J. Avery of Ericsson (yes that one!) in 1959.
We all know how important customer service is, particularly in telecommunications. In 1959 the Friendly Telephone policy was introduced by the Postmaster General to ensure there was a focus on positive customer service and call handling, operators were allowed to use risqué phrases such as 'Good Morning' for the first time in 54 years, when previously restricted to asking the customer for the number they wished to dial.
This was a huge step towards not only improving the role of the telephone in business and social aspects but also in customer service and as a customer focused company, social surveys were carried out to meet customer's needs and find out what they wanted, all promoted by the Post Office.
"The aim and purpose of the telephone service is not only to serve, but to please the customer. Everything must be subordinated and surrendered to that aim. Our telephone service must be a personal service to meet the customers' wishes. We must study their wishes all the time; we must then satisfy them by a service which is courteous, pleasing and speedy."
http://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/BTsHistory/1912to1968/1959.htm
With the UK focusing on improved customer service, the Post Office laid a second transatlantic cable, connecting areas of France and Canada in the same year, a year later in 1960, the first direct cable to link Sweden and the UK was laid. Despite advancements in laying cables and connecting the UK to the rest of the world, public telephones were still frequently used, with a home telephone still being considered a luxury at the time.
Over the years, from 1951 to 1966 the amount of households with a telephone had increased from 1.5 million to 4.2 million. Despite this, by the end of the sixties we Brits were favouring the television, with 75% of households owning a TV but over 50% still not owning a telephone. Cost was still a huge factor with people having to rent a phone from the General Post Office. It's easy to draw comparisons in the way the GPO regulated and monopolised the UK telephone services to the way Bell's company had done years before. http://www.retrowow.co.uk/telephones/700_series/60s_telephone_service.php#foot1
Cost and time were an important factor, with calls taking nearly forty seconds to connect and costing £10 to have a phone installed, rising to £20 just two years later, this is the equivalent of over £350 today. Over the next twenty years the UK would see developments in mobile communications, BT would become established and British telecommunications would advance even further.
Tagged: History, Phone
Every month we'll showcase the worst Music On Hold we've heard that month.
March 2017 we have this beauty straight out of the 80's which sounds like a broken ice cream van.
Needless to say the client contacted us because clients made negative comments about the On Hold Experience,
Tagged: Worst, On Hold Music, Music On Hold
1 in 5 Callers Get Through On The First Attempt
If you've read our past blog posts, you'll know we're quite fond of statistics. We're back again with some more shocking stats that should push you into action to prevent new and loyal customers from slipping through the net.
Think back to the last call you made to a company, was your call answered first time? If it was you're one of the lucky ones, with 8x8's recent research finding that a staggering 78% of callers hadn't had their call answered the first time they rang. Meaning only 22% of your potential new customers, or loyal current customers, are reaching an agent on their first attempt.
What could you be missing out on? Well 35% of those callers were new customers. How off putting is it to call somewhere you're looking to do business with, purchase something or find some information out, only to waste precious time calling back later? Your customers are trying to reach you and have made the effort to call directly, meaning you are potentially losing out on gaining new business.
The risk of new customers being put off doesn't even end when they eventually do get connected, with 12% of those surveyed, that's one in eight people, searching for a competitor whilst speaking with a company on the phone. You might also want to consider your audience, with this figure rising to 26% when focusing on young people aged 25 to 34. The tolerance for poor customer service is much lower in younger people, with the figures also finding that 26% of young people also named and shamed a company live on social media whilst on the phone.
Making multiple attempts to call a business is a huge pet peeve, it can be difficult to avoid if you are a busy company but you need to be able to manage the volume of calls or put measures in place to keep your waiting callers happy. You should review the technology you have in place, you could use a call back service, a message to direct waiting callers to other means of getting in touch, or take a look at our options for On Hold Marketing!
Just one in five people manage to get through the first time they call a business, which is a likely explanation to why 91% of us Brits revealed that we'd had a poor experience over the phone. We're not shy about singing from the rooftops about it either, with almost three-quarters of those surveyed saying that they feel personally responsible to warn others about a company after they've received poor service. What you should also bear in mind is that for every one customer who makes a complaint directly, 26 remain silent only to share their experience through other means such as social media or word of mouth, the silent assassins who will be detrimental to your reputation.
Kevin Scott-Cowell, 8X8's UK MD has a few words of advice;
"A business only has one chance to make a great first impression and getting off on the wrong foot can destroy the customer relationship for good. That starts by making sure new customer calls are answered first time. With the right technology in place, it can be easy for businesses to make sure calls are routed to a manned phone and appropriately-skilled agent so new customers are never left to competitors."
Avoid competitors snatching up customers who called you first, call us today to find out more or take a look at our On Hold Marketing options here.
Resources: https://www.helpscout.net/75-customer-service-facts-quotes-statistics/
http://contact-centres.com/8x8-just-one-in-five-customers-get-through-to-a-business-first-time/
Merry Christmas from iNarrator OnHold
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from everyone at iNarrator On Hold and a big thank you for your custom and support throughout 2016.
We'll close at 5pm on Thursday 22nd December and are back on Tuesday 3rd January 2017.
Have a fantastic Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year.
Tagged: Christmas, Merry Christmas
After Veil's demise in 1920, the Bell Telephone Company needed to refocus, they were facing financial trouble with costs rising more rapidly than revenue. Walter Gifford followed in the footsteps of Veil in 1925, he proved to be as innovative a leader as his predecessor, realising that the many pies that Bell System and Western Electrical had dipped their fingers in, meant the focus wasn't on providing communications services anymore. He sold off various researching arms to other companies, and was quoted as saying that Bell System has "to provide the most telephone service and the best, at least cost consistent with financial safety".
In 1927, the first commercial radiotelephone service was introduced by AT&T between America and the UK, costing £9 for a three-minute call, with around 2000 calls made per year. On January 7th 1927, Gifford contacted Sir Evelyn Murray, who was the then secretary of the General Post Office in the UK, who managed the phone system in the UK at the time.
The call hears Gifford explaining that this achievement will facilitate business, act as a social convenience and strengthen the ties of friendship, something that still resonates with how we use the phone today. Murray notes that there are still difficulties to face regarding regulation and reliability of their service, before declaring the service open to the public.
You can hear their telephone conversation here, http://www.history.com/speeches/first-transatlantic-telephone-call
The service continued to spread, connecting North America to Europe, followed by a Pacific service in 1931 and Tokyo in 1934, costing $39 for three minutes. 1935 was a year for celebration as AT&T made history once again. Gifford and T.G. Miller, VP of AT&T, phoned one another from separate rooms, in the Long Lines Building in New York, with their telephone call being transmitted on a circuit which travelled 23,000 miles around the globe. You can listen here http://www.history.com/speeches/first-transatlantic-telephone-call
However around this time at this time and following from where we left Part 4, Congress were considering a new legislation to regulate the telegraph, broadcasting and telephone industry, passing the Communications Act in 1934, this meant the telephone industry was under investigation, with the monopoly created long before, finally being scrutinized.
The war left the Bell System weakened, seeing nearly 70,000 of it's employees serving in the armed forces and the focus of business shifting to provide army telephone facilities. By the time the war had ended the Bell System was in need of modernisation to cope with the increased demand for the use of the telephone. The situation in the UK for those at the Post Office was just as strenuous, with 73,000 employees joining the armed forces, in some areas losing up to 25% of their staff and again the focus of telecommunications shifting to serve the forces. During the war, continental telephone services dropped, gradually re-opening during 1946.
75 years after the invention of the telephone, the UK introduced the first law of the telephone as being a separate device to the telegraph. The Telephone Act was introduced in August 1951 and allowed for rental charges by statutory regulation. This was also the year that the first answer machine became available, the Swiss Ipsophone.
By 1952, the telephone was widely available but there was still no solid transatlantic service, the Post Office External Telecommunication Executive was created in order to control overseas services, it would later become BT. On December 1st, 1953 AT&T, The Post Office, Eastern Telephone & Telephone Company and the Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corporation signed an agreement to deliver the first transatlantic telephone cable.
Four years later, on September 25th 1956, the first transatlantic telephone cable was launched, linking Canada, the USA and the UK. It was a victory for modern, world wide communication. The 30 telephone circuits provided a link to the UK from Canada and the US, with the remaining circuits dedicated to connecting the UK to the rest of Europe. The project cost £12.5M and three years of careful planning and installation to complete. The entire cable was laid by one ship, the Post Office's Cable ship, Monarch, it carried 1,500 nautical miles . Although cables had been placed under water before, this was on a much larger scale and required development of new methods of securing the cables in deep waters, although the cables and technology had been in development since WW2.
1956 was also the year that a consent decree was introduced to limit AT&T to 85% of the national telephone network in the US, in a bid to reduce the hold the monopoly had over the telephone service industry. Communication was growing ever more easy across the globe, with some of the first 'mobile' phones being introduced.
What the NHS needs now is... Clarity
For the past few weeks I've been suffering with a cold, thanks to the great British weather, I'm not one for letting a little cold get in the way of work or play, so I've been soldiering on. Before a day of meetings, a couple of weeks ago, I learnt not to take the wrong cold and flu tablets before bed, yes you guessed it the ones that contain caffeine, I was wide awake at 2:30am on the Tuesday morning knowing I had a full day of meetings ahead, not good, but thankfully one of the team was driving not me!
Anyway I digress, on Saturday after a walk followed by coffee and cake with the family, I had to give into the nagging of my wife, sister and mum to finally seek medical advice. Being the weekend, the doctor's is closed, so I took the line of least resistance... the pharmacy. On explaining my symptoms, the pharmacist said, 'You've probably got a chest infection; I'd advise you to see a doctor'.
Now this is where it gets interesting from a business point of view. My wife handed me her phone which was calling the out of hours GP line, I was greeted by an automated message along the lines of, 'This out of hours phone line is no longer answered... if you're at death's door call 999, if it's not urgent call 111'.
Thinking that 111 was not going to get me an appointment with a GP I drove to our local walk-in centre, and booked in. As you can imagine the waiting room was packed, not to worry I came prepared - popped in my headphones and continued listening to my audio book.
After a 25 minute wait I was called in for assessment, the nurse did all the usual stuff, temperature, blood pressure, sats... all normal if you're interested. Then informed me it was a 2 hour wait.
She could see my face sink, so I asked why the out of hours GP service was no longer available, to which her reply was "it is". After explaining that I'd rung the out of hours GP number before coming here and got a message saying no one was available she said, 'Well did you ring 111?' My response was, 'No because that wouldn't get me a doctor's appointment'. What she said next made complete sense and I can see why the PCT or whatever it's called now have made this change because it's for the better but the way they've implemented it is shocking.
The nurse explained all enquiries are now fielded by the North West 111 service, they perform an initial triage assessment over the phone to decide the most appropriate form of treatment for you, one of which being an out of hours GP appointment. This was not made clear in the voicemail message I received when calling the out of hours GP.
I told the nurse and the receptionist at the walk-in centre, I wasn't going to wait 2 hours and ring 111 instead.
So after a quick 10 minute call I had an appointment to see a GP in 30 minutes. Driving straight from the walk-in centre to the surgery I arrived early and was surprised to find the car park only had 3 cars in it and the waiting room completely empty! Turns out the 3 cars belonged to the 2 doctors and 1 receptionist, there was literally no one else there, so a couple of minutes later I left with a prescription having received the best service ever from the NHS... it was like having a private appointment.
Empty waiting room at the Out of Hours GP
Walking out I couldn't help thinking how many of the people at the walk-in centre could have been seen by a GP? My guess is at least 70%. But because of an ill thought out voicemail message which fails to explain how to get help properly, no one knows how to access the out of hours GP! I'd like to know how many patients were seen by the two doctors at the surgery on Saturday compared to the walk-in centre.
What's the point of my ramblings? I've got one thing to say...
In business your message, whether it's a marketing message or operational message, needs to be crystal clear.
Effective communication and getting your point across in the simplest way possible is super important to the success of your business.
Imagine for one second that the walk-in centre and out of hours surgery were normal businesses, that had to turn a profit. One would be overrun with customers and the other would be shutting up shop within a month due to lack of them. All because of an unclear voicemail message which didn't give me (the customer) all the information I needed to make an informed decision.
Make sure your message, whatever it may be, is crystal clear.
PS If you know anyone at the North West PCT I'd love to have a chat with them to help improve the quality and clarity of their voicemail messages.
Tagged: NHS, Clarity, Voicemail
When was the last time you called your own company?
I'm sure that no matter what sector your business belongs to or you work in, that you're no stranger to calling other businesses. On hold marketing is where you get your first impression of a company, sure you can see their website but the likelihood is that they used a fancy web designer for that, it's not a true reflection of their customer service.
If you've not called your own business for a while or if since you've had your on hold messages in place you've not really thought about them then it's definitely time that you picked the phone up to yourself.
Why would I call myself I hear you asking…
Do you know how your on-hold audio and IVR menus sound? Are they muffled, crackly and full of echoes? Do the voiceover and music track suit your business?
Does your script make sense? Are you being as clear as possible in your messages about what your company does and the services that you offer?
Do your menus make sense? Is each option clearly described and will it make navigation a breeze or will your customer select an option and still be passed around from department to department?
Is everything up to date? Have you mentioned your opening hours and contact details, are these still correct? Do you mention a service you no longer offer or have you expanded to offer more that you should be informing your callers about?
Can you navigate your own menus? Do you find yourself thinking 'None of those options are suitable for why I'm calling?' If your caller doesn't find an option has been presented to them that reflects why they're calling, they'll likely press any button just to get to speak to someone. This means that callers for that department are in a queue and that the original caller will likely need to be transferred somewhere else, taking not only your customer's time but also your team's. You can accommodate these kind of callers by making sure you're aware of the most common queries and addressing these in your on hold messages, or having an option for 'all other enquiries'.
Are your call handlers able to offer the best possible advice to your callers? You might think this has nothing to do with your on hold marketing or navigation, sadly you're mistaken. If calls are coming through and your team aren't able to help your customers, then you need to ensure training is topped up! This is a double edged sword, your on hold messages need to be organised in a way that quashes quick queries, by directing callers to your website as an alternative source of information. You also need to make sure if you have an IVR menu that when callers are connected to their choice, that the team has the ability to help them.
We hope this has given you something to think about, having up to date on hold marketing and menus is not only the first impression a customer will get from your company, but this also affects how they will perceive your customer service. Nail both of these and you'll soon be as well known for your customer service as these guys.
Tagged: Customer Service, Customer Experience, On Hold Messages, on hold marketing, Music On Hold
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