Author Archives: nik

How likely are you to recommend Microsoft 365 to others, if asked?


The web version of Microsoft teams does not let me right-click in the way I am accustomed to right clicking on content inside Google Chrome. Instead it overrides the right click menu to mimic the desktop version of Teams which is limited. I have browser extensions perform other actions when I right click on text that I would like to use.

Losing access to TD online banking.

Suddenly TD decided to prompt me with their extra security authentication form. It involves getting a text or a phone call to a SIM which I no longer use, and the only way for me to remedy the situation is by going there in person. I feel like they should have another enough other data points on me to authorize me without going into the branch. Maybe it is time to take advantage of that new CIBC promotion and get $350 for opening an account there.

Enter Security Code
Your one-time security code was sent by voice message to
+1 (•••) ••• – ••••
This code will expire in a few minutes.
Enter Security Code
Type code here
Didn’t receive your security code?
Send a new code to +1 (•••) ••• – •••• fi
Standard wireless carrier message and data rates may apply.

 

Then this:

Sami Outalbali looks like a Young Brown Billy Bob Thornton

Is it just me, or does Sami Outalbali, in Netflix’s Sex Education, look like a young Brown Billy Bob Thornton?

I mean I know that the haircut has something to do with it, and if you have never seen Fargo, then maybe he doesn’t look like Billy Bob in other movies, but still the resemblance is uncanny. Not exactly doppelgänger, but still very similar.

AmazonAssistantがなかなか関係ないけど、面白い商品を紹介しようとする

先週4人の宇宙旅行者が宇宙に行きました。

そしてこういう画像がソーシャルメディアに投稿されました。 たくさんの人がスタートラックのユニフォームと似てるとかコメントありました。

特に赤いユニフォームが強くないと言う冗談が多かった。 スタートレックのテレビ番組の中に、もし4人が惑星を尋ねようとして大抵レッドシャツの人が無事に戻ってこなかったことが多かったからだ。

Redshirt (stock character) - Wikipedia

あるコメントが「著作問題あるんじゃないかなぁ」と書かれて、「 どうせ無視するだろ」 と別のコメントがあった。 そしてちょっと気にはなったけど「なんで日本はたまにそういう誰も被害がない時、 そういう小さいルールを無視できないのかな」と思ってちょっとGoogleで検索してみました。 そしてAmazonAssistantが以外の商品の紹介してくれようとしました😅:

AmazonAssistantの変な推薦

ThoughtSummit 2019 Recap

Much of the messaging was geared towards first time collaborative intranet admins & corporate comms folks on the ThoughtFarmer platform.

One of the classic moments for me was when someone in the audience asked the presenter (Sean Biehle of MedData) if they just let anyone contribute anything?

To which he answered “well we keep a tight control on our intranet home page and our corporate-comms blogs, but outside of that, teams are free to engage and whatever communication they like, of course following our code of standards. Brought me back….

The whole summit, felt a little like a single-track for new users at an old JiveWorld conference.

Speaking of tracks, there were at least three groups of people from small credit unions or banks from British Columbia and Oklahoma that I know of. In the future they might want to have a speaker who can discuss the successful implementation of a collaborative Intranet in a financial organization. Similarly there was one community manager from a municipal police department in BC, and a two-person team from a small city in Alberta the could benefit from hearing how similar government organizations set up collaborative intranets.

2ToLead gave a powerful presentation on the functional coexistence of a SharePoint / ThoughtFarmer combined Intranet. They also discussed some of the out-of-the-box search adapters ThoughtFarmer offers including the one for Office365.

In Chuck Gose’s and Kristin Hancock’s talk on not “Commsplaining”, they  helped comms people become more self-aware in communicating to elicit better responses from the organizations. Kristen gave one example of creating bridges with IT teams. If I were to add anything to their talk, I think I would add that corporate comms folks are often graduates of English or journalism at university, and hold themselves to a high standard in writing. But when you are trying to evangelize workers to blog more, you need to tone down the rhetoric about following style guides / standards etc. which are irrelevant to people like engineers.

The summit included a few opportunities to change gears and stop talking shop. One was an inspirational talk by Julie Angus and her adventures rowing across the Atlantic, another was our trip up Cypress Mountain and meeting with the owls and bears. And then it was finished off with a happy hour at an intimate bar with great food – and music volume not too loud to continue talking a little shop or really anything. I’m having a little flashback to the Final Night Party at JiveWorld15, where you really couldn’t hear a thing.

Blaine Kyllo gave an excellent talk on how creating quality knowledge articles inside your intranet can help reduce the costs of running a help desk, because agents can get answers faster. With general knowledge workers it is hard to prove that the ROI on spending a little bit more time dumping knowledge into a company-wide knowledge base can actually be huge. However most call centers can tell you exactly how many dollars it costs to answer each phone call, so any measure to cut the cost can immediately be seen.

During the only live demo of the summit, Trevor Allen showed us FormFlow. There were some standard use cases, like ordering business cards etc.. I understand there are similar products for other intranet platforms out there, however I think that ThoughtFarmer’s price point, and ease-of-use make it an attractive option. The 80-20 rule definitely applies, it is a simple workflow application that will definitely meet 80% of the workflow needs of most organizations.

The highlight for me was Chris McGrath’s talk on chat bots. Despite the current state of most chatbots being very hokey information collection systems with a simple chat like interface and little actual value to the user (my take, not his), the vision down the road is more like an Alexa or Google Assistant natural language conversation with your Enterprise systems which would include your collaborative intranet. But even today his company, Tangowork’s product can provide useful information discovery today across multiple chat interfaces (Slack, Skype for biz and many others).

I look forward to the day when I can talk to my intranet on the drive to work and say “Tell me what the top 10 liked blog posts are from the last 7 days” or “Read to me the 2nd last blog post from the CEO” so I can stay up to date on news without it eating into my most productive work hours.

Facebook following and an Anecdotal Story Showing How it can be Misunderstood

Most people know the story of social media, that unlike many online communities, Facebook insisted on real names, later a little relaxed, however during its launch in the universities pre-2007, and then its open launch after 2007, made it effectively kill myspace, classmates.com, and a number of other pre-existing online communities.

It was known as crackbook to some, as it was addictive to connect with old friends for free, and then let you try to gather as many new FB friends as possible.

Shortly thereafter Twitter was born by focusing only on public microblogging, following and hashtags. Despite the power of the social connection that Facebook was monopolizing, this secondary use case of talking about ideas rather than relationships was enabling Twitter to enjoy its own level of success. As the popularity of the Facebook use cases started to stale, and Twitter continued to expand, Facebook moved to acquire several other key social media platforms, as well as develop their own microblogging strategies, one of these was the follow button.

Facebook Follow Button

Before the follow button, the closest thing FB had was the like button on its product or company pages, so if you liked, for example, Toyota USA, then anything Toyota USA posted, might come up in your news stream. But then they decided to copy Twitter and released their own follow button – both on these public pages and also on personal profiles. As they do, when they introduce new features, these are usually turned off by default. Before the follow button, if you saw a an interesting public post by a stranger, and wanted to see more from them without friending them, you really only had two options, one would be friend them, or the second would be to bookmark them in your browser. But obviously Facebook saw the success of following in Twitter and other social media platforms, so they finally got with the times. I started noticing follow buttons on people’s profiles, and then Googled “how to add a follow button to my Facebook profile”. But it didn’t seem Facebook cared that much about this feature, because in the social groups I was a member of, Facebook was still encouraging me to friend strangers rather than follow them. Still with more concern about personal privacy, I decided to stick to my guns, and follow a strict protocol around connecting with people on social media. In fact when strangers would try to friend me, I would send back some templated responses like:

My basic policy around friending people is,

  1. I have to have already known them, or
  2. chat with them and decide I want to be their friend.

My policy around following people on Facebook, is pretty much the same as Twitter. Basically the person/organization has posted something I have liked, and I want to see future posts from them. But in addition to Twitter, I might also follow someone who is in the same artist/author fan group as me, lives in the same community as me, or I have mutual friends with them. And certainly if someone shares more than one of the above common traits, then it’s all the more likely that I will think they are follow-worthy.

That brings me to the other day. This guy out of the blue IMed me saying “why the hell are you following my girlfriend?”

I was sort of busy with something, but I knew I was dealing with a serious case of Technology ignorance. The first thing I did was IMed him back and said Who is your girlfriend?

Then I proceeded to find out who she was, and then told him that she and I are members of the same Office fan club Facebook group, Dunder Mifflin – Limitless Paper in a Paperless World.

He claimed that my following her was harassing, and asked me to stop it immediately.

Going to Follower her Even Harder

Immediately I wanted to respond with this meme which says now I will follow her even harder. but you have to be an office fan to really appreciate this kind of humor. So instead I decided to just send him an informative link which describes how to turn off public following, and told him that if it is truly a bother, that she should turn it off so that nobody can publicly follow her.

Anyway I was quite busy and, I think I was watching a Christmas movie with my family. As I work East Coast hours, I get tired very early, so I think I went to bed without checking Facebook, and when I woke up, he wrote some more threatening things, including showing me a screenshot of him messaging my wife saying that I am inappropriately following his girlfriend. He even threatened to message all of my friends and contacts that I was doing something inappropriate with his girlfriend. I decided it was too much of a hassle, so I unfollowed her and was

Guy IMs my wife

ready to drop it. But then my mom mentioned that if he is that jealous and possessive, he might actually be a threat to that girl. So I decided to just IM her to let her know what happened, and apologize if my following her had caused any inconvenience. Furthermore, I told her that if it was a problem, she should really just turn off that setting to prevent any strangers from following her. She was quite friendly about it, she even said my Office meme was funny, but didn’t deny that he was her boyfriend, so I dropped it.

I think it’s funny how people make up rules about using technology which is often times not what the original designers intended. It sort of reminds me of when I started playing Call-of-Duty with my kids back in 2010, and there was this thing that when you do the sniper rifle you should always quick scope. They would literally accuse you of cheating if you look through the scope of your rifle. I’m pretty sure the game designers let you look through the scope of your rifle to simulate using a real sniper rifle, but it didn’t prevent the kids from making this new arbitrary rule.

On a related note, I recently joined a group in Facebook for talking about Facebook features, but I’m surprised by how few people there are in it. There really must be a better way of ideating than is out there right now. Maybe Facebook will listen if we post it on Twitter. 😉

Facebook’s “give feedback on this photo” – wish there were more options

I wish It had scope for more General feedback, like no Mom that’s the wrong date for this photo. I tried IMing in my mom and describe for her how she can change the dates of a photo, but it was useless, so now my only choice is to hide it from my timeline or display it with the wrong date.

But according to them they only using for “We use your feedback to help us learn when something’s not right.” like Nudity Violence Harassment Suicide or Self-Injury False News Spam Unauthorized Sales Hate Speech Terrorism 🙁