Indecisive? Try Hunch.

The advent of the internet is called the “information age.” We use the web to help us make decisions by easily finding information about things that would have been out of our reach a generation ago. This is obvious with research material – we are no longer limited to our local libraries’ catalogues, we can find information from books and journals around the globe.

Web 2.0 adds to published information, helping us make decisions based on others’ ratings and comments. If ten people dislike a new restaurant, I probably will too, so I can decide not to go there. If a bridesmaid’s dress gets a 4 ½ star rating from 244 amazon users, but the top 5 ratings state the dress is larger than the size chart suggests, I will buy the dress a size small. Their experience leads to my decision.

But – what about tough decisions, like whether to buy a Mac or a PC if you are looking for a new laptop? There are too many opinions on this one to sort through the user reviews, and there is too much information published by Apple, IBM, CNET, and other experts to determine which is really better for me.

There is now an online tool that helps people make these decisions - Hunch. Hunch quizzes users on their likes and dislikes, then helps them figure how to handle an unknown. Their algorithm is based on other users’ similar responses.

For instance, Hunch has determined that the choice between a Mac and a PC can be based on whether a person likes to dance or not. Dancers prefer the Mac.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/17/people-who-switch-to-macs-like-to-dance-and-other-strange-hunches/

Only problem so far, I haven’t been able to try it - I’m still waiting for the invitation to come through in my email account.

More good information about Hunch from the Hunch fact sheet http://www.hunch.com/fact-sheet/:

“What problem does Hunch solve?
Our long-term goal is for a user to be able to come to Hunch with any decision she is pondering, and after answering a handful of questions, get as good a decision as if she had interviewed a group of knowledgeable people or done hours of careful research online.
“Eventually, when Hunch gets good enough, we hope users will trust it to make an informed decision without having to turn to lots of external time-consuming sources of information.”

“Hunch uses machine learning to get smarter in two ways:
“User contributions train Hunch to be smarter overall. Contributions can take many forms, from correcting a fact that Hunch got wrong, to suggesting new decision topics to feature, follow-up questions to ask or decision results to propose.
“The more Hunch learns about each individual user's personality and preferences, the better Hunch can customize decision results for that user. It's like a friend getting to know someone's taste and preferences over time, so they can provide sound and trusted advice.”

Poor attempt to personalize

I got my “mine.” magazine, which I first discussed in this blog. Wow – seriously disappointing.

I knew they were going to customize Lexus ads to fit me. This was about as personal as junk mail. They even highlighted with a lighter color those sections of the ad that had been obviously mail-merged. I’ve had some experience with mail-merging, so this is what it looked like to me:
“The All-New 2010 RX. Now with more [FName] [LName].”
“It’s easy to locate the best [Destination1]s near [City] with our new voice-activated Navigation System.”

I had high hopes that the money Lexus put into this effort would have been better spent on tools to actually personalize the ads. This was plain key ring-style personalization.

The magazine also disappointed me. They totally got it wrong. Because I had to sign up for 5 out of 8 choices (3 of which I didn’t really want), I couldn’remember which I had signed up for. I think I signed up for Time, Real Simple, In Style, Money, and Travel+Leisure – in THAT order. I was really hoping that at LEAST the order I put my choices in would be considered – like, more articles from Time and fewer from Travel+Leisure. It wasn’t.

I may have signed up for Food & Wine instead of In Style. However, I’m totally positive I didn’t sign up for Sports Illustrated or Golf Magazine. What came in my “mine.” was Travel+Leisure, Real Simple, Time, In Style, and Sports Illustrated. WHAT?

The articles didn’t seem to be “picked” for me either – I think they were picked for this magazine. They were all very short, and had lots of references to stuff you can find online. One whole article (in In Style) was about jeans you can have custom-made online. I understand that a lot of what we do includes using the web, so I am used to articles referring to websites, but these articles seemed to include more “.coms” than most.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the ridiculous advertising for the magazines I had selected. Before each set of 2 short articles, an entire page was dedicated to pointing out exactly which magazine the articles were from. White space and a bold magazine title. I don’t care about the magazine, I care about the content! That’s why I wanted “mine.” instead of each magazine! What a total waste of money.

This should have been easy. Use my name, location, and survey answers to send me relevant articles from the magazines I chose. Determine whether personalization is successful by asking me if I want to pay to keep subscribing to “mine.”

When I wrote this blog, I thought “mine.” was an attempt by a magazine company to sell more magazines by leveraging some of the lessons online companies have learned, and tools they use for personalization. Now, I think this is just a big ad to sell more of the same magazines – without any customization.

Wow, what a miss.

DIY customer service – GAACK!

Ok, I actually love the fact that companies have reduced their overhead by providing customers with the ability to “help ourselves”. This goes for populating content online – including forums, rating sites and wikis, as well as self-checkout at Home Depot and check-in Kiosks at the airport.

These are all great because, if we run into more trouble than we can handle, it’s no big deal. On a forum, we can simply refrain from posting, or ask our question someplace with a more user-friendly application. In the grocery store, we can press the “Help” light, and (after a short wait) a clerk will override any errors we may have caused (.. normally this is due to the fact that we buy super-clearance, and these items are not normally logged in the inventory system. One checker still rolls her eyes whenever she sees us J)

The point is, we can do it ourselves - until we need help.

This is NOT the case with DIY over the phone, though. I can’t stand hearing Comcast’s recording with “simple step-by-step instructions” about how to reboot my modem and router. I KNOW! REBOOT FIRST! I don’t call Comcast when I need to reboot.

I went down another slippery slope today with a call to Linksys. First, I tried to avoid their “self help, at your own pace setup” by talking to a customer service rep. He took a case number for me and promised someone would call me back, which didn’t happen. Two hours later, I went for the recording. Overall… it worked. But, the first thing it had me do was reset my router. Apparently, this was a bad idea. Then, it didn’t tell me how to add security to it.

I ended up calling over to customer service anyway. After asking me LOTS of aggravating questions that had nothing to do with my SIMPLE problem (what’s your name? Phone number? Email address? Address? Serial number? What time did you call before? And on.. and on..) I said, “Hey – I just want to set my router up like I had it before, with a name I recognize and a password so the security is enabled.”

Then, she asked if I had pressed reset. “Yes, your automated system says that is the first thing to do to set up the router.”
“Maam, you must never press the reset button if you want to keep your Router ID and password.”
Why am I getting in trouble for following their directions? Anyway, that chore is done now (15 minutes of work and 3 hours of hassle), but it made me think – can’t we do this better?

For instance, I love customer service "chat" that is available online. We could have something like this on the phone as well. There could be an "opt out" key - like "if this has nothing to do with your problem, press 9." That way, we wouldn't get stuck in LOOPS of unhelpful audio. Also, if there was an "I don't get it" key - like if the instruction was garbled or didn't make any sense "if you need a better explanation, press 5."

Another thing that would help SO MUCH on the phone would be if you would get the customer service rep first - instead of the maze of select-a-question. Seriously, if they would spend 5 seconds sending us to the right place immediately, people wouldn't be so frustrated after spending 20 minutes pressing buttons to dead end on menus that don't make sense.

The reason this is relevant is because customer service is even MORE important when customers do MOST of the work ourselves. When we need help, we are REALLY in a bind. It's not just because we didn't reboot.

Everybody Stream!!

I love streaming radio.

I know everyone is ga-ga over streaming video, and I agree that it’s great to see TV online for many reasons. However, my television gets great picture and sound. I can put it anywhere I like, and this will be the case.

As many of us experienced as children, though, this was not always the case. Anyone remember the rabbit ears covered with aluminum foil with a hanger sticking out to try to catch a couple of extra signals?

Well, this is STILL how most of us listed to radio. Yes, Satellite radio is available, and HD radio is finding its place. However, when my alarm goes off in the morning, I’m getting fresh radio waves. If I roll over juuusssttt right, I can actually hear what is being said through all the white noise.

This is one of the reasons we have radio streaming over the computer for the rest of the day. We can HEAR it! Better than that, though, is the incredible variety available at our fingertips when we stream radio online. Pretty much every radio station in the US (and many other countries) has an online stream available.

We can catch radio from different places, and in different time zones. This is handy when a syndicated show is on at different times across the nation. Even the best 1980’s short-wave can’t beat this clarity!

A new utility I would love to see would be a tv-guide-like website for streaming radio. This would show the hundreds (thousands?) of different radio stations available online, and their daily show list for a week. You could set it for your time zone and see what is available and when. Then, when you miss a syndicated radio show, you could look up the next time zone it’s in and listen to it from Cincinnati or Seattle or Honolulu. (you wouldn’t need to wait for any pod casts to be posted)

Streaming TV can’t beat streaming radio because there is nowhere near this amount of availability from TV stations. Radio is still a much more free and available form of media!

Google Docs – Spreadsheet.

It’s no secret, I’m a spreadsheet geek; an MSExcel geek to be more accurate. Today, I took the plunge and decided to try out Google’s spreadsheet application.

At first, I was pretty impressed. Not only did it handle all of my normal functions like sumif and vlookup, it even had a little hovering function template. It has lots of formats for numbers, though it is oddly missing the ability to manipulate the number of decimal places to display (you can do all of them, 2, or rounded to 0) unless you add a formula to round to a specific number of decimal places.

Also, there are many tables and charts that excel does not have, which can give a report serious pizzaz, or function as more than a spreadsheet. There are pictorial graphs (worms, chocolate, money all in the size of a bar chart), and there are moving flash graphs. There are also internet-savvy charts, like word-clouds! To function as more than a spreadsheet a Google gadget will produce a Gantt chart, with just task titles and dates. An org chart can also be created by listing manager’s names in one column and subordinates names in another (multiple columns = multiple levels).

However, there is an enormous barrier to using Google Spreadsheet if you are an analyst like me – there are not enough fields. The regular table only has 100 rows and columns to “T” (2003 Excel has 65000 rows and columns to “IV”, and even this is limiting, so I heard 2007 Excel has 100,000 rows). There are not many major trends that can be analyzed in only 100 rows, nor can an analyst find historical data within only 100 rows.

You can add up to 500 more rows, but no more columns. When I added the rows, the spreadsheet crashed.

I may try to use Google Spreadsheet again, in order to finish off a report. Apparently, .xls files can be uploaded into the Google application, so I can use it for my summary findings, and create some nifty charts and graphs for the ooh-la-la factor that execs are always dying for.
Are you catching this, Microsoft?

Online Health Self Help?

Can Web 2.0 help us avoid trips to the doctor? To the wrong doctor?

The other day, I had a sore throat. The last time I went to the doctor with a sore throat, they peered down it and said I was fine. This isn’t the first time a doctor has told me I was fine, when I was sure I had a malicious bug – maybe I’m a hypochondriac.

Another route I like to follow when I feel a bump in the wrong place or have a phantom pain is the web. There is instant gratification in self-diagnosis using a symptom checker. This is much quicker than making an appointment, taking time off work, and traveling to the doc’s (besides, the symptoms have usually subsided by then anyway).

WebMD is one I like because of the cool interface – touch a part of the body that hurts, and describe the symptom:

I found out, though, that this is not the most effective website. This is an article where several symptom checkers are reviewed. Looks like WrongDiagnosis.com is the winner.
http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/Home/News.asp?id=52025&PageMem=2

There are stories about hypochondriacs over-hyping their symptoms (“why aren’t we going to rule out ovarian cancer, are you sure its just a UTI?”), and there are stories about people who under-diagnose themselves, and end up having awful infections that could have been avoided had they just gone to the doctor.

There are also those who, after receiving a diagnosis from a doctor, surf the web incessantly, trying to find alternative cures their doc didn’t mention.

For these reasons, many doctors loudly proclaim that the Internet should not be a place people go to for their own health care.

Docs also don’t want patients posting reviews on their medical care online. Just like Yelp!, sites that allow patients to write public comments about doctors end up with libel issues. There are even doctors that are beginning to ask patients to sign a waiver, stating that they will not post reviews online without the doc’s permission. More in this NPR story: http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=102297861&m=102297852
Bottom line – I will keep surfing online for medical advice. I know that I am on the hypochondriac side, so I won’t under-diagnose myself. Also, I trust my doctor, so if she isn’t worried about a symptom, I won’t be worried either. On that note, the only thing most patients can review about a doctor is their bedside manner – that trust factor. Unless someone has received a second opinion from another doctor, or has attended medical school themselves, people should not make claims against a doc’s ability as a scientist and healer.

Yelp!

Yelp is a customer review web page, which is a great way to figure out what’s going on from locals.

This site may compete a bit with TripAdvisor, but the thing that differentiates Yelp from TripAdvisor is that the reviews are for locals, by locals. Any and all companies can be reviewed – this is not limited to “top things to do,” but includes local pet stores and hair salons in addition to restaurants and bars.

Another site that may compete with Yelp is GetSatisfaction. However, GetSatisfaction is more for customer complaints, while Yelp is all reviews – in fact, on Yelp, there are 60% positive reviews (4 or 5 stars), 20% neutral (3 stars), and 20% negative (2 or 1 stars).

The upside is clear – people looking for products and services can find them with the help of prior customers. Businesses get “free” PR from customers who want to talk publicly about their experiences.

In the middle is the way Yelp makes money. Apparently, Businesses can pay fees to Yelp in order to have a “fancier” review page, and be allowed to “thank” individual customers for good reviews. They also have the ability to highlight one review to post at the top of their Business Page.

There has been some scandal over whether paying sponsors have other benefits – like negative reviews dropping to the bottom, or being deleted by Yelp altogether. However, Yelp firmly denies that these are benefits of sponsorship.

The downside - in all open online forums, people are making public statements. If these statements are unfairly negative, the victims may sue for libel. Defamation is a tough case to make, but more than one Yelp reviewer has been sued by the business that upset them.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/161997/dentist_can_proceed_with_lawsuit_against_yelp_reviewers.html

While I understand why laws against defamation exist, I am truly concerned about the fact that a business (especially one with deep pockets) can tie up a customer (usually smaller pockets) in a lawsuit. Spreading negative reviews by Word of Mouth is the best defense that customers have against businesses that would otherwise rip them off, or sell sub-par service or products.

It seems like the only defense against this is to have the businesses who are reviewed on Yelp agree to having the reviews posted. In their Terms&Conditions, businesses could agree not to sue reviewers. Instead, the company could simply refute a disputed review.
Because social media is a conversation, companies can participate openly with customers, rather than pitting themselves against their customers!