Everybody Helps

HelpDesk Waaay Before CrossLoop Days

We love anything related to tech support or help desk so when we found this, I had to get it up here. As you know we had another excellent video on an earlier post here.

I feel fortunate that it was not this PC Magazine (our first Print coverage, btw) that he was discovering

Good Night and Good Luck

CrossLoop - Best of the Internet in PC Magazine

I am yet to pick up the latest issue of the PC Magazine (as soon as I am done with this post), but I just learnt that CrossLoop has been covered by them under their 'Best of the Internet' on their Frontside section.

It is right here

This is an excellent recognition of the product our team has built and it is an honor for all of us. We thank our parents, spouses, our friends and users like Augustine, Ethan,  Jean, Michael, Steph.....(Do you hear music?)

I really do like weeks beginning like this!

Have to frame this one :) - Good Night and Good Luck

[Update1: I picked up a couple of issues and Yes - We are there!]

[Update2: This is the first time CrossLoop is in print]

1,000,000 Minutes on CrossLoop

This is probably one of my most exciting posts - I am literally jumping here to inform all of you that CrossLoop crossed a big milestone this last weekend.

We have now served 1 MILLION minutes of screen sharing in just about 4 months! 

1,000,000 minutes is equal to 1.9 years but to give you a perspective on how exciting it is for this small team to have achieved this, here are some facts:

• The average person spends about a million minutes on the phone in their lifetime!
• From first grade until early in your sophomore year in high school, you will have spent about 1 million minutes in school!
• It takes Mars about a million minutes to orbit the Sun!
• Watch the movie “300”, 8547 times!
• My daughter has been around only half that time!

Thanks to each and everyone of you!

If you have some cool stats, share it with all of us!

Good Evening and Good Luck

TechRepublic (a CNET company) reviews CrossLoop

We were very excited to see an excellent and detailed review about CrossLoop by Mark Kaelin, a Senior Editor for TechRepublic.

TechRepublic, is a CNET networks company, that provides real world advice on how to make technology work in business. It does this through a combination of articles, forums, and multimedia and a social network of IS and IT managers.

The detailed review by Mark is here and the photo gallery is here. You can read more of Mark's articles through his profile here.

Mark's "Takeaway: Whether it is for troubleshooting or collaboration, sometimes you just need to see what is on a user's screen to really know what is going on. The free software utility CrossLoop makes connecting any two personal computers as easy as typing a phone number and clicking Connect."

Yes - they do get our Juan Mann hug!

Good Morning and Good Luck

The Jonathan Livingston Seagulls of CrossLoop

This weekend I just finished reading the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and it hit me that most of you, our users, are very similar to Jonathan described in Part III of the book.

Many of you are teaching or helping your family - freeing them from the very same technology that should be empowering them. You are helping - parents, grand parents, in-laws, senior citizens and distant relatives, customers - and many of them live in far off places.

Here are some of the stories that express that analogy better than me:
 
Mike: During my Christmas visit, I installed Crossloop on both my mother’s and my father-in-law’s PCs.  The day after I returned home to Alabama my father-in-law called me to say that he’d lost his “folder view” in Outlook Express.  Crossloop made it possible for me to not only fix the problem, but to also show him how to “show and hide” the OE “folder view”.  Even if the student is aged 75+, I can still “teach a man to fish” instead of just “giving him a fish” using Crossloop.

Benson John: This is a fabulous piece of software that you've developed. I am an Indian student currently in Melbourne, Australia & this tool helps me immensely to troubleshoot PC problems for my folks back home in India.

Henk (paraphrased to make it short): I am a helper in a Computerclub for senior citizens in the city of Amstelveen (www.ascc.nl ) in the Netherlands. Our club has over 400 members (!!) of whom many are not very good on the computer and we are running a helpsystem visiting them at home. It is simple to manage and to explain the program to other. Thanks to CrossLoop we are able to assist less computer-experienced seniors. Once a month we have a clubmeeting (with about 80 members) explaining working with the computer. I demonstrated the working of CrossLoop. I worked on another computer communicating through Skype. It worked excellent and all members were very enthusiastic. Together with Skype we have an excellent possibillity for computerhelp.

I have more such inspiring stories that I will share over time but I did want to recognize all the Jonathans out there - it means and says a lot in this busy and tired world! May be it is time to categorize then as "Jonathan Stories" rather than "User Stories"

Good Evening and Good Luck

PS: I strongly recommend this book. It is quick enough to read and work at a startup :)

Smart Silvers Validates CrossLoop's Ease of Use

We always like to say that if you can dial a phone number and call someone, you can use CrossLoop.  Almost all the reviews on CrossLoop by many of you state the same.
 
We got very excited when The SmartSilvers Alliance - a leading consulting firm focused on technology products and services for our aging population - validated CrossLoop for its ease of use! As they refer to it through their TechEye blog post, it is "granny certified"! Apart from all the services that the alliance provides, their goal is to "leverage technologies which foster active aging"^TM

We all here at CrossLoop thank them for this strong validation!

Do not hesitate to chip in with your comments below on CrossLoop's ease of use. If you do find it difficult or have suggestions to make it easier, we want to listen and learn!

Good Afternoon and Good Luck!