August 2004 Archives

As publishers, we get our share of feedback and we love it. Negative feedback is great because it allows us to improve, while positive is nice as it reinforces what you are doing right. As you might expect, most of our feedback comes from people either buying or selling technology products or services, the typical readers of our publications. Occasionally, you receive feedback from someone so well-known and respected that you do a quadruple-take.

Such was the case yesterday when I was shown a letter to Tracey Schelmetic, the Editorial Director of
Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine, from none other than Warren Buffett. Mr. Buffett is a personal hero of mine; unlike others, he amassed a huge fortune for himself and shareholders by investing in a deliberate and steady manner while steering clear of the volatile technology sector. And unlike others, he didn't bet the farm on Amazon or Yahoo and bail four months later.

He has a portfolio of companies that have outperformed virtually all others, but that portfolio is practically devoid of technology holdings. He may be one of the most-imitated investors around.

  

Getting back to the letter. Tracey wrote an excellent article on Geico recently and received the following from Mr. Buffett himself:

Tracey Schelmetic
Editorial Director
Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine

 

One Technology Plaza

 

Norwalk, CT 06854

 

 

 

Dear Tracey,

I've just read your July 27th (2004) commentary about GEICO on TMCnet.

Naturally, I love both your conclusions and your writing style. In fact, I'm Tempted to have you write the Berkshire Hathaway annual report -- but the improvement would be so noticeable that our shareholders would all catch on.

Thanks for all the kind words. You are definitely our policyholder of the year. Sincerely,
Warren Buffet


 

Here is the actual letter:

 

 

 

 

So I would like to publicly praise Tracey for an article well done and thank Mr. Buffett for taking the time to read TMCnet.com and send us this most-appreciated letter.



I purchased a Mosquito Magnet Liberty Plus recently as the whole West Nile scare has gotten to and I wanted to do whatever possible to reduce the risk. I believe it was Consumer Reports that said that there is no proof that these devices catch the mosquitoes responsible for carrying West Nile. Regardless, I went out and purchased one jut in case. I was going to write about how bad the product was because I couldnt get it to work after reading the manual repeatedly and thoroughly. A brief discussion with tech support told me that most problems are caused by using propane exchange stations instead of pumping real propane. Problem solved. I switched to a new tank of propane and it worked perfectly. I just checked it after a few weeks and it is literally loaded with what I assume to be biting insects. Of course the web site doesnt say anything regarding this propane requirement and the literature that comes with the device is devoid of this info as well. Someone in marketing should fix this issue ASAP. I almost smashed the unit and gave up. Thankfully I called tech support instead. Highly recommended with fresh propane.

The Airlines Embrace CRM?

August 6, 2004 10:56 AM | 0 Comments
Having been a vocal critic of the airlines in the past, it is my responsibility to point out what they do right as well as wrong. On the way out to the VoIP Developer Conference, my team was delayed for about 3-4 hours. Here is a great e-mail they sent as an apology. OK American Airlines, apology accepted Now how about some bonus frequent flyer milerswink

Big News At VoIP Developer

August 3, 2004 2:29 PM | 0 Comments
The SIP Forum had a kick off reception tonight at VoIP Developer and it was an opportunity to get a number of developers together to start networking and discussing the opportunities in VoIP. A number of old friends and some new ones were there. What surprised me most was how many different types of companies I met with. There were contact center companies looking to IP enabled their offerings. Product testing vendors looking to add VoIP to their offering. Finally, I met with government buyers looking to add VoIP to their applications. The buzz in the reception was that TMC really timed this event perfectly. There is no other event filling this niche. There are partnering shows, enterprise events, service provider events, etc. Nothing else gets these hard core developers out in droves. In this case droves will equate to about 500 people. There is a chance that a strong walk up will move those numbers far northward but we are comfortable that 500 will be there for sure. I had a long talk with AT&Ts Chris Wood. Chris is the director of CallVantage. A little known fact is that although AT&T has pulled out of consumer long distance, CallVantage is just getting rolling. We can expect to see them inking deals with other domestic service providers who will resell their service. The scoop is that there are lots of services that arent included in the service yet because it would be overwhelming to consumers. We will see them rolled out slowly. Very soon, we will see the ability to import addresses for example. Another interesting tidbit is that international expansion in a handful of countries is in trials now. We talked about speech recognition a topic close to my heart as we just launched Speech-World, an event in the speech technologies space. Although I couldnt remember the name during the conversation, I mentioned that other service providers are ahead of the curve as they offer speech today (I was thinking of Z-Tel). Chris told me that AT&T has a product called VoiceTone that does something similar. It hasnt really caught on. Regardless, I think we are ready for speech in service provider networks. Chris agreed that they may have been ahead of the curve. Case in point, who has all of their contacts in their cell phone, home phone and office phone. It is about time to have Outlook integration with the address book, pick up the phone and say, Call Dominos on Main Street. I have friends I dont call as often as I would like because I need to boot up a laptop to get to their cell or office numbers. Certainly I cant be alone. We talked about the future of VoIP. Chris makes a great point that focus groups arent the ones that will decide the future of VoIP. After all, which focus group would have told you they wanted MP3 players? Sometimes compelling applications build markets. That is why the worldwide development community is convening in San Jose this week. To explore what these opportunities The products and services will be. Thanks to those of you that will attend, our sponsors and our Platinum Sponsors, Avaya Developer Connection Program, Aculab and SIPfoundry.

Recent Activity

Monday

Sunday

  • Rich Tehrani tweeted, "Droid Won't Kill the iPhone But Google Guide Might: For the record, Google Guide is not a product or service develope... http://bit.ly/idsyt"
  • Rich Tehrani posted Droid Won't Kill the iPhone But Google Guide Might

Saturday

More...

Recent Comments

  • Backbooner: Why is xG still around? When will it close down? read more
  • cram: Something tells me that "exactly" couldn't even begin to explain read more
  • chezhanson: Just a postscript for you, Marc- I have never been read more
  • chezhanson: "Fired"? "anon jilted engineer"? I've never been fired in my read more
  • peynir: I'm really very useful to follow a long-time see this read more
  • cristine: I find your blog very well-written, routinely updated, keyword-oriented and read more
  • uglyphilkarn: Wow, you chatted with a guy in Florida who says read more
  • uglyphilkarn: Who would believe a sneaky yellow nip anyway? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL read more
  • uglyphilkarn: ooooooo an anon jilted engineer who are a dime a read more
  • uglyphilkarn: Final Word, Chez you Moron? I doubt it. You´ll be read more

Subscribe to Blog

Blogroll

Recent Entry Images

  • itexpo-east-2009-exhibit-hall-aisle.jpg
  • tmc-halloween-2009-tom-keating.jpg
  • google-tricycle.jpg
  • benioff-apple-behind-the-cloud.jpg
  • happy-cell-phone.jpg

Archives

Around TMCnet Blogs

Latest Whitepapers

TMCnet Videos