Outside Look

Use Case for Decoupled Debit Cards

There has been a fair bit of buzz around decoupled debit products (here is a good write up with many good links from Digital Money Forum). I just haven't been able to figure out why people would take the time to get one. The points are a nice idea, but most people get those with a credit card, and more banks are beginning to offer points and rewards with their check cards. The user experience doesn't seem any different (I don't have one yet), it is a point of sale card that you use like any othe...

BarCamping

It's not what you think - not a bunch of people hanging around a bar, not is it going camping with lots of booze. BarCamps are informal conferences, without an agenda, loosely organized, and incredibly cool. For me, BarCamp Bank SF was my first BarCamp experience, and this is a little bit about that experience for those who haven't attended one. Since this was my first time, I didn't know what to expect beyond what I'd read on the BarCamp wiki and some blogs. At first blush, it seems that it ...

Improvements in Airport Security Screening

"The government...expand an airport security program that creates special checkpoint lanes for families and "expert" travelers." This is great news for everyone involved. Not as cool as, Clear, which is a must for any frequently traveler departing from a participating airport - but provides value to everyone. By asking travelers to self select in to family, intermediate and advanced/expert it is no surprise that all lines move faster and travelers are happier. I can't express how many times I...

Dear United, What’s Going On?

In November I switched my primary airline from Northwest to United, in part due to moving away from a Northwest hub, and in part because I was tired of the mediocre service. For the first few weeks I was quite happy. The service was generally good, and despite not having the Gold elite status, I was impressed by the better service from the flight attendants, gate crew and customer service people. Sadly, the honeymoon appears to be over. During the month of January I have had two canceled flig...

Let’s Talk Marketing Strategy

This week I bought a Blue-Ray player. I wanted a new DVD player, and thought it was time to go hi def rather than grab the old technology cheap. So, why did I buy Blue-Ray rather than the equally good HD-DVD format? Two very simple reasons: there 'appeared' to be more Blue-Ray titles available, and I could get 5 free titles out of the store, and 5 more free by mail (which isn't as good as it sounds as the titles are very limited by mail). It was really nice to see just a few days later that W...

Taking an Outside Look

The New York Times has an excellent short article on the barriers to innovative thinking. One of the key points is the fact that we become experts in a field and then have a hard time thinking 'outside the box.' Many managers wish to hire people with significant industry experience, yet think they are bringing in 'new blood' - and it won't work. Bring in new ideas from people who have proven successful in other businesses - B2B marketing managers with consumer packaged goods experience, banki...

Of Banks and Blogs

The other day I went looking at banks to see what they were doing with blogging, and I wanted to share my results here. I looked at the top 20 US banks by deposits, and left out a few with high deposits but low consumer presence. My expectation was that of the top 20 banks, 4 or 5 would have a blog presence, and I expected that they would be focused on things like retirement planning, online security, and new products. It turns out I was completely wrong. List of bank web sites reviewed: ...

iPhone Unknown Error (6)

Phew, what an afternoon. Hopefully someone can find this frustrating experience useful. I picked up my iPhone this afternoon and found it had apparently spontaneously rebooted and was hung on the boot screen with the Apple logo. A few home+sleep/wake reboot cycles with no change left me quite concerned. The best choice seemed to be to force a restore, which was the best advice I could find from the net. As seems to be the case for many (though most often with jailbroken iPhones, which mine...

What Didn’t Happen in 2007

There are so many lists about the amazing things that happened this year, and at the risk of sounding cynical, there are a few things I was hoping would happen that didn't. I think 2008 will see some of these things happening. Social Networking in the Enterprise Corporations over a certain size have a terrible time maintaining internal communication and coordination. Different groups within the same company duplicate efforts because they are in silos that don't talk to each other, and expert...

Firefox on Mac Hint

This seems pretty obvious, but some Mac + Firefox users may appreciate it. I recently upgraded to OS X Leopard, and one of the things I really like is the stacks feature. This isn't a mind blowing feature, but as someone who doesn't like a lot of files on the desktop, but does like quick, easy access, it works quite nicely. Safari automatically downloads files to the downloads stack, and I was irritated that by default FireFox downloads files to the desktop. As someone who tries out a lot of ...