heh. So you've got the comment problem resolved. Great news, and well done. (shows how far I am behind. :-) )
Re usabilty of podcasts: Granted, I'm living in the cretacious period, but I don't have sound on my workstation in the office. A podcast is completely unusable at work. My comments are on the status of dialog and this list, related directly to what other people have been saying. I honestly could not help myself. The irony of your pointing out that a podcast monolog was coming when someone asked for dialog on a product was too much. I am not judging tucows for their use of technology. You have my permission to do whatever you like. Your actions, however determine whether you get my participation or not. Make a place for dialog, and you are likely to get it. As far as your staff goes, you have the power to create an anonymous tucows user for this list. Everyone can use the one id if they like. I do not see the need to know who at tucows is posting articles or responding to posts. Just to clarify, I am happy enough with the amount of information that tucows presents. I don't use half of it, and it is my choice. I could go out of band look/listen, and bring up a conversation here. I don't. I am commenting on the limiting nature of some of the technology that you are using in relation to the lack of dialog on this list that other people are noting. -- Tim. On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Ross Rader wrote: > Tim Woodcock wrote: > > Tucows, You seem to have missed the point. > > > > People here are commenting on the loss of _dialog_. dialog is 2 way > > communication. > > Our customers ask us for a lot of things - a lot of which has to do with > working out how to best work with them. Having a real dialog with a > diverse set of customers means we need to use mailing lists, > newsletters, conferences, podcasts, web pages, FAQs, glossy flyers, > personal visits, IRC, and so on - just to make sure we hit the sweet > spot with as many of you as possible. > > What we need to improve, in my opinion, is the balance of our > communication. We need to make sure that our customers are similarly > informed regardless of how they prefer to communicate with us and > receive communications from us. The reverse is true as well. We need to > make sure that we benefit as much as possible from all the various forms > of input we receive from you. Criticism made here on this list should > get the same weight as criticism made on a blog, or over the telephone. > > I confess that I don't understand your thoughts on limiting comments to > same medium as the original message. A newspaper is inherently a > monologue, but I still write letters to the editor and complain at the > water cooler about the headlines. You're right - its hard to leave a > comment for a podcast from a workflow perspective - but you can leave > your comments here, or talk to your sales rep, or call me directly, > or...Talking about the contents of an MP3 file (developer relations > podcast) on the mailing list seems about as natural as using it to talk > about the contents of a PDF (API docs). > > I'm also not sure that I understand your concerns about the usability of > podcasts either. Anyone with a web browser and an MP3 player (winamp, > VLC, whatever) can listen to a podcast. Just download the MP3 and listen > to it on your desktop. We've also made similar information available via > teleconference, press release, and I'm certain that if anyone had > specific questions regarding our messaging plans, that we could also > make it available here. If you want to get fancy and sync your iPod with > our RSS feeds, then have at it - but you're on your own :) > > That said, I don't want to detract from your central point which (if I > understand correctly) is that you want to see this list used for more > back and forth dialog. I'm a long-time poster here, so is Elliot and so > are various members of our product management team - Kim Phelan and > Siobhan McLaughlin are the most prolific, but Zjelko, Greg and Bruce > have been known to pop in once in a while. I've asked Kim to consider > making a larger investment of her team's time in the forums, and we'll > see how that goes. Regardless of whether you'll see more product > managers posting or not, you will definitely see more support people. > Based on the feedback we've seen this week, our customer support team > has committed to spending more time on these forums. I'll let Hutch (our > Director of Technical Support) and his team introduce themselves - I'm > not quite sure if they are ready to decloak yet - but I'm extremely > happy that they are similarly interested in helping balance out the flow > of information back and forth between us. > > > Maybe the time for the mailing list has past. Maybe not. There is a lot to > > be said about the 'keep it simple stupid' principal. IMHO, if your > > customers want dialog by email list, you should be committing to dialog > > by email list, but I don't know how many people want this. > > I don't think this list has outlived its usefulness. I wouldn't be > posting if I did. Some might (on both sides of the fence), but I'm not > ready to throw in the towel yet. I disagree that we've got the luxury > of truly keeping it simple (i.e. using the list for all dialogue). As I > said earlier, everyone likes to communicate in slightly different ways. > We have to be responsive to this while ensuring that we're balanced in > our approach. We haven't been balanced in the past, which means that > certain types of listeners, like those that only use their inbox, don't > get the benefit of a complete picture. > > > As far as news goes, the only channel I am tuned to is my email box. > If it > > isn't there, I'm not there to listen. > > I'm desperately resisting pointing out the irony that some people in > this discussion are using their web browser, I'm using an NNTP client > and you are using a mail client. :) And if I could get a few developer > hours to fix the RSS, we'd probably have a few more people lurking using > Bloglines or Start or some similar RSS aggregator :) > > Cheers, > > -ross > _______________________________________________ > domains-gen mailing list > [email protected] > http://discuss.tucows.com/mailman/listinfo/domains-gen > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Woodcock [EMAIL PROTECTED] BareMetal.com http://baremetal.com/ Dev Team ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ domains-gen mailing list [email protected] http://discuss.tucows.com/mailman/listinfo/domains-gen
