Two Cents and a Thousand Words

A couple of experiences lately have strengthened my belief in transparency within communication when dealing with a product or service.  I’ll detail my stories later, but for now, I’d like to focus quickly on the benefits of transparency.  Quite simply, it seems that giving customers accurate and truthful information allows them to build confidence in your product (even if that means you have to admit some mistakes).

Case in point: Panic.  Panic has this wonderful product called Transmit, which is probably the best FTP browser for OS X.   I’m comfortable with stating that opinion even though I’ve never actually used the software.  I’ve been a Cyberduck guy for a while (I like free stuff), but I’ve been very impressed with Transmit 3’s design and feature set.  I subscribe to Steven Frank’s blog (and no, not just because he mentioned mine), and his latest post on the latest version release of their product reiterated what I believe is missing in a big segment of the business world: the act of taking responsibility.

Stupid mistake on my part. Sorry for the world’s shortest-lived Transmit version, everyone.

Call it counterintuitive, but that post inspired me to download the demo and very well may cause me to switch FTP clients.  Transmit looks really good… and I know there are people standing behind it that will make it worth my $30.

Amanda of the Lascivious Biddies posted an announcement recently that revealed a diagnosis of MS. In case you don’t know, the Biddies are one of hundreds of great bands that have embraced podcasting and have allowed podcasters to play their music. The Biddies are an extremely dynamic group: they can do jazz, country, pop, and more. I particularly like their jazz and cabaret-style music. I first heard about them on Accident Hash (my favorite podcast); if you’d like to listen to some of their tunes, head over to their page at the Podsafe Music Network.

The Biddies have started a fundraising drive for MS research that all leads up to a walk in New York City on April 23. They’re over 70% of the way to their fundraising goal already, but it’s a great cause; if you have a little spare change, please consider donating to the cause.

I’ve decided to put a new “Current Charity” (or fund, or cause, or whatever) section on my blog; Team Biddy is the first recommendation, and I’ll be changing it every so often. Please keep an eye on it and help if you can.

Man, that’s just not fair. NPR had a story about new tech right as I was waking up - I got all mad ‘n stuff that the reporter wasn’t grilling them on ethics. *sigh*

Google has some social commentary and geek humor via Google Romance, where even the 404s are funny. And if you ever questioned what good Flickr is besides looking at photos of people’s cats, today is (or isn’t) the day for you. (Flickr looks as though it did something very cool, but not all that difficult: a switch based on the user’s timezone. Now that’s geeky.)

Happy April Fool’s!