Wiki Wiki

Everyone who knows me well, know that I love some wiki action. Usually when I say that, I'm of course talking about the super fantastic wikipedia.

However, tonight I found myself in need of just a general purpose wiki. I wanted one I could setup, with a variety of potential topics, and get a group of people together for collaboration. I googled for about 30 seconds (I sometimes forget how lazy I have become over time courtesy of Google) and had about 4 potential sites. I checked out wikisites, wikispots, and probably something else named wiki. In the end though, Zoho's wiki solution proved to be exactly what I wanted.

No ads, nice clean design, and ability to create my own sites for collaboration. Very nice.

Somewhere, the Bluetooth DJ is doing a happy dance...

Yeah, I would be referring to Ryan in the title. If you have read his blog at all, you'll know that he often has pined for a much simpler way of finding/communicating with people. A single contact point that can find a person no matter what.

Well Google, that no evil doing behemoth, is positioning themselves one step closer to that. There are rumors that they plan to buy GrandCentral, a service where you can call a single number and it attempts to reach the person at all of their contact numbers.

Looks promising.

Negative Feedback

No, not Ebay, a bank. I do plan to create a financial advise blog very shortly, as I have a fair amount of experience in that area. Until I do, I will have to let some of it leak into this blog.

For tonight, enjoy my response to a certain large banking company who requested that I fill out a survey after a recent loan application. Keep in mind that I am glad to see companies requesting feedback of any kind, but I was particularly annoyed with them.

I did not have any problems with a recent mortgage through Countrywide, so I assumed I would not have problems with an equity loan either. Since I had the offer on my online account, I assumed it could be done more cheaply and easily than somewhere else also.

Instead, while I wanted to be closed within 2 weeks of my loan application (about 2 weeks before the end of the year), it was a few weeks into the new year before I received anything in the mail.

Once I did receive the package, I was expected to fax/mail an exorbitant amount of paperwork. My emails to my designated loan officer about this went completely unanswered.

Moreover, the closing costs were $600, compared to my local bank, who were able to close within 3 days, who had costs of $48.

So, a company that had just recently obtained all of my information and advertised this service to me (Countrywide), was completely inattentive, slow, and wanted to charge me over $500 more than my local bank for the privilege.

Congratulations. That is a spectacular formula for generating negative word-of-mouth and pissing off existing customers.

Weekend Tidbits

Some interesting sites I stumbled upon today, to occupy (I.E. waste) your time.

The first is an interesting concept albeit a bit too focused on the MySpace generation. Share2me is a site that lets you add your contacts from email, IM, and other places. Then, if you have something interesting to share with people, you can automatically add them from a list of contacts and send it to all at once. Regardless of whether that means it sends by IM, email, or posts to a MySpace page. I dig the concept of send once, regardless of mechanism. Go check out the demo on their page.

Second, is something even more tailored to me. A site that exists simply to allow for debating various topics. There are 3 different methods for presenting and arguing a topic. You choose one, make your case, and then attempt to with the debate. I know at least one person who reads this blog fairly regularly should be as interested in this as I am. I smell a new time waster...