centre{source}

Nutshell: After having a terrible experience with them during my campaign (read more) & spending weeks to get it fixed, they decided to come back and harass me one last time – for old time’s sake. Since I’m out of the race, I decided to close my campaign-related paypal account. Upon emailing them, they send me directions on how to close the account – which I perform successfully. A few weeks later, I learn that my business-related paypal account is disabled and none of my linked credit cards even work when trying to pay someone else that uses PayPal. Last, I tried to follow the steps listed in my account but they were ‘blank’ and even confused the customer care rep – who was also nice enough to let me know that she really couldn’t help me… only an email to compliance@paypal.com.

So, we’ve decided that its probably time to change our name :) After 3+ years in business, its become very clear that CentreSource is a case study in how NOT to name your company or create a logo. In the beginning, CS was envisioned (by me) to be a global outsourcing provider for a variety of services – kinda like LBMC. After 1.5 years, we decided to become a web design firm and the name became less of a fit. Moreover, we constantly have to explain the spelling since we pronouce it “Centersource” and when people read it they say “Centrasource”. The best kicker is that we designed the logo so that the first part of the word is separated from the second part – and we even capitalized the ’s’! This leads everyone to write it out as ‘Centre Source’. Whew, talk about trouble.

Want to know the perfect formula on how to create a frustrating system, provide terrible customer service, and manage to drive a loyal customer to hate? Just take lessons from PayPal – they are doing a great Job at really screwing up.

Here’s the magic combo:

First, PayPal created some security restrictions that ‘automatically’ triggered on my account. While they won’t say, I’m guessing its because I accepted 20-30 payments before I attempted to make a full-withdrawal. Regardless, this sparked their security system and it asked that I certify my account (this is different than verify). To do this, I have to ADD MY PERSONAL CREDIT CARD to the account ?@?#$@#$# I also have to verify my SS#. The first step takes 1 week for the transaction to show on my personal CC#… The second step fails because they say that I’ve used my SS# at some point in the past.

I just found a great backup app (utility) for my USB drive. The app that comes with PortableApps isn’t very flexible and it drove me to finding something better. Luckily, I found Freebyte Backup through PortableFreeware.com. They even told me how to ‘make it more portable’ by avoiding the installation and simply running the .EXE & creating my own profiles. Hope this helps others looking for a stable, feature-rich USB backup utility.

In the early years, some could argue that having a website, albeit bad, was still superior to not having one at all. Websites were not the ‘norm’ and having one proved that your firm was unique and cutting edge. Fast forward 10 years and this is no longer the case – every business and organization is expected to have a website. But times are changing again! It is no longer acceptable to simply have a website. Now organizations are at risk to the dangers of a bad website.

Shout out to my friend, Sunny Patel, for passing along a great utility for both Windows and Mac users. Now everyone can rip their DVDs to an easier to use format, MPEG, thanks to a great program called MediaFork (formerly Hand Brake). It will rip DVDs to MPEG, thus making them MUCH easier to put on your iPod, Apple TV, generic Media Center, etc, etc. We are one step closer to making it easy to take your digital assets anywhere, anytime.

A friend recently recommended: http://www.cerberusweb.com

It is a very popular (and affordable) email management solution for help desks & sales teams. It is a bit complex, so you’ll want to take a moment to review the features and consider ways to synthesize it for your business. It appears that everything is managed through email and you have certain email addresses that customers and prospects use (or that it recognizes).

There is workflow, tagging, team resolution, and an integrated knowledge base. Instead of typing an article into the knowledge base, simply answering a client’s problem would give you the ability to ‘Tag’ and file that email into the Knowledge base.

If you thought that anti-spam protection for your incoming mail would alleviate your e-mail problems forever, think again – another issue that can cause more than a few headaches are DNS BlackLists (DNSBLs), sometimes also called RBLs (Realtime Black List). DNSBLs are not a new idea, but their usage is increasing rapidly. In short, a DNSBL is an innovative use of DNS to provide access to lists of IP addresses (or other info). These lists are created on varying criteria — for example, the IP address was caught sending spam, or it’s owned by a company known for supporting/sending spam. Or perhaps the IP address hosts a mailserver not following the rules, or a web/proxy server that has been compromised in such a way that it could be used to send spam. In this way, common sources of spam can be compiled into these lists and checked by a mailserver before accepting mail. If you show up in the blacklist, your mail is rejected.

As the spam-war has escalated, DNSBLs have become a double-edged sword. They have probably saved SMTP from being utterly inundated with spam to the point that it’s useless. However, blacklists have also been forced to get increasingly aggressive. It’s not uncommon for an organization to find itself blacklisted, even if it didn’t overtly send spam (that it knows of). If your organization becomes the unlucky member of a DNSBL, you’ll find that most (if not all) of your email is rejected by the outside world because you’re now considered a spammer. The worst part is that you may have no idea why you were blacklisted and no idea how to get de-listed!

I’m now the proud owner of a 2GB USB Drive & I wanted to share a few tips/tricks I’ve learned for getting the most use from it! I want my USB to provide a self-contained computing experience that I can take with me. When I pop it in, I want everything that I’m comfortable with at my finger tips :) I’ll help you setup your USB drive to address the following needs (no order):

1. Sensitive Data Storage – Examples include financial info, passwords, etc.
2. Email Access – Allowing you to comfortably check your mail from anywhere
3. Synchronization – As storage amounts increase, more data can be backed up
4. Buddies/Contacts – Instant messaging to friends is available anywhere
5. Office & Productivity – Work on docs, spreadsheets, and presentations

CentreSource has jumped on the Blackberry bandwagon! After complaining for months that I spend too much time with email, I gave up trying to avoid the problem and simply decided to further my addiction :) We purchased three new Blackberry 8703e’s and have now started the painful process of getting them to work in our Open Source environment. That’s right, Blackberries in a world without Outlook and Exchange. The verdict? It works, but not great.