Everybody Helps

CrossLoop with Mother on Her Day

As Mother's Day comes up this weekend, I am seeing a lot of articles on what to buy. The most common in the technology space has been gadgets so here is our little idea with a big heart:

Spend one nice hour with undivided attention doing any of the following with CrossLoop and shrink that distance:

• Clean up her computer and speed it up
• Backup her files and pictures
• Teach her how to use one of many of the instant messaging tools so that she can always be in touch
• Give her a tour of some cool sites that are about learning new things
  
  • Like Howstuffworks (one of my favorites)
  • Subscribe her to Wikipdia's 'On This Day' article by email here
  • Or like Paolo Barone on Twitter here, take your mother across the world on Google Earth! Today, for that you don't need expensive tickets.
• If she wants to maintain an online journal, blog and you can set her with a free account on a service like Vox (like my personal Blog here). Its one of the few services that actually allows you to privately share posts, photos, videos etc specifically with those you identify as "Family"
• How about a remote slideshow through all the photos on your computer (SHARE mode) with her on the phone (and ACCESS mode) telling her details and stories behind each. Once you are done, drag and drop all those pictures onto her desktop (Here is how to transfer files with CrossLoop) and she can cherish them at her will or use them as a screensaver (like my mother). Here is how to do it on Lifehacker.

According to a 2007 research I found, stay-at-home mothers in the US put in about 92 hours a week and are worth about $138,095 a year! She is busy so make sure you get on her schedule fast.   

More creative thoughts? Please share them in the comments section below and if you do happen to use CrossLoop with your Mother, please do email me [mrinal [at] crossloop.com] since they inspire us. We might even be able to share them here on our blog.

Good Afternoon and Good Luck to Mom, Mummy, Mommy, Ma, Maman, Mama, Ammi, Moder, Mor, Meteara, Imma, Ummi, Niang, Bohqin, Mãe, Patrino, Anne and more!

CrossLoop Servers are Slow so Tom is Sprinting

As some of you know that its been only a few hours since we launched the new Marketplace. It was a really exciting one and here are some outlets that have already written about it:

• VentureBeat: Desktop sharing startup CrossLoop opens its Help Marketplace
• Mashable: CrossLoop Officially Launches Help Marketplace
• Digital Inspiration: Run Your Own GeekSquad Style Tech-Support Business from Home
• SmallBizTechnology.com: Get Support or Give Support with CrossLoop

and here are a couple of publications that have already picked up our press release:

 

Soooooooooo that means Tom, our CTO, has a whole lot of new users coming right at him and he is working hard to get the servers all running optimally. We have noticed our servers slow down, which might have affected some of our users trying CrossLoop sessions, searches etc.

We apologize for any inconvenience but please bear with us as we work hard on accommodating all the new users.

Thats Tom upfront on the right during the last NYC Marathon.

Good Afternoon and Good Luck!

Over 20,000,000 CrossLoop Minutes

We ended 2007 with a very inspiring recognition from CNet's Download.com as one the of the best 10 downloads for 2007 and now I get a chance to inform all of you that we have started 2008, with another excellent recognition - a recognition by one of the best authorities out there for us, all of you - our users!

It didn't feel too long ago that I was all excited about our first million minutes and here I am again, ecstatic to inform you that CrossLoop has now served over 20,000,000 minutes (=38 years!) over sessions between people helping and getting help! Today, a year ago, we had served 532,000 minutes i.e 37x growth in the use of our product because of you!! [Note: We show minutes served on our new homepage on the top left]

To give you a feel how far we have traveled in 38 years, here are some events that happened in 1970:

• Paul McCartney announces that The Beatles have disbanded
• This one is for Tom (our CTO who has run a few of these): The first New York City Marathon is run
• Jimi Hendrix dies
• Fiji becomes independent
• The global population is 3.6B

You get our customary hug and a hug-e Thank You from each and everyone from your team at CrossLoop!

Good Afternoon and Good Luck!

Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal recommends CrossLoop

For a small company like ours, today is really a big day since we got recommended by Walt Mossberg - one of the most popular personal technology columnists in the world - who writes The Mossberg Solution, Mossberg's Mailbox of The Wall Street Journal and also is the Co-Founder of All Things:D.

He recommends us here (the free version on All Things Digital) today in Mossberg's Mailbox - here is the (con)text:

Q. My mom is legally blind and has difficulty working with email and downloading files. I try to help her by phone, but it never works, and we live far apart, so I can't just go over to help her. I would like to install an application on her PC where I can take over remotely from home. Do you have any suggestions for this type of application?

A. There are a number of possibilities. One very simple option is a program called CrossLoop, at crossloop.com. Some versions of Windows, such as Windows XP Professional and Windows Vista Ultimate, also have remote desktop control built in.

Needless to say, this recommendation is HUGE for this team and No - we do not have a PR team or agency working for us :)

Good Afternoon and Good Luck!

CrossLoop Is Doing Something Right

Some of you may have noticed this today morning - - our servers went down in the morning. The entire team's apologies for the inconvenience. Tom and his team are working hard to prevent this from happening again.

Now for the good news - the cause is CrossLoop's growing popularity! As hard as our engineers always work to ensure that we have a scalable and reliable uptime environment, our new and existing users continue to surprise us.

In my humble opinion, for a small company - we are doing something right!

There were two observations from our logs that might caused this:

1. A huge influx of new users from Brazil and
2. An excellent coverage on Scoble Show of CrossLoop. I really like this video below - it is an  excellent introduction of CrossLoop, and the person who built it, to our new users. It is more powerful than a screen cast since Tom brings an excellent personal touch to our new users.

Good Afternoon, Good Luck and Have a Fun Weekend!

Thanks to CrossLoop Users and LifeHacker Readers

We were fortunate to have been written up by Lifehacker (Rick Broida) some time ago - here is my post on it.

On one of their posts today - "Tech Support with VNC reverse connections" - here, we were just stunned to see how many of those who left comments recommended CrossLoop.

I left a thank you note for them in the comments section but I can't stop - thanks once again to DeaconSune, MechMike, xrobevansx, stopsucking, idjpg85.

There is nothing more organic and rich than happy users recommending us! I also do know that many of you are also doing so 'behind the scenes', so big hugs!

Can I jump?

Good Afternoon and Good Luck!

CrossLoop Servers Slow

Some of you may have experienced this, but our servers have been slow the last day or two. You may have felt like this on an autobahn with that sign up. 

It is back up to speed now though.

This is not normal as we are very geared to scale easily, which we are having to do since we are seeing many many users from all over the world - 100 countries at my last count recently. Our technology depends on a p2p connection and our servers are not involved in the session at all. Nevertheless, our servers have been slow since the last day or two since our hosting service provider was undergoing network maintenance that really slowed things down.

Unacceptable to us, we are in the process of transitioning over to another service provider that is more reliable and robust. Turtle crossings are henceforth banned!

Good Morning and Good Luck

CrossLoop's del.icio.us Bookmarks

We are always looking for a way to appreciate the support people are giving us. You support us through emails, addictive enthusiasm in surveys and very strongly through a blog post on your experience after using CrossLoop!

Bloggers were instrumental in taking us to the home page of Digg, they gave a great review on LifeHacker and they have taken us to Italy here and here, Greece, Netherlands, France and Japan amongst users now in 94 countries and spreading quickly! Wheeeee! You don't see what this means to us except through this blog but we are loving it. It means a lot to a small company like ours!

I started the BloggerLoop a few weeks ago - they were a collection of screen shots, on Flickr, of the reviews with a link to the blogs. I wasn't really satisfied - you couldn't see/read much, people couldnt get to your site right away and scaling that was not easy for me.

So now I am really excited about my spanking new widget - the 'del.icio.us bloggers' on the right. These are a collection of CrossLoop del.icio.us bookmarks of your experience.
Why do I like it so much?

• Its on top of every page/post - no scrolling 
• We are going to share this with everyone - on this blog and on del.icio.us
• I also like the fact that the widget allows us to communicate a little more in the 'notes' about what you you have written, practice my foreign languages (through online translators!)
• It is a click straight to your site
• Any one can get an RSS Feed (orange button) of the bookmarks and keep track of new reviews about CrossLoop
• Furthermore, CrossLoop has been bookmarked there often by many of our users to take us to the homepage/hitlist of del.icio.us twice - so I am hoping far more people will discover your site, your reviews totally independent of this blog!

I haven't seen this widget used a lot so lets hope more and more people take this up over time!

I may have missed you site since there are many out there. If you notice it, please let me know through an email at mrinald@crossloop.com. I will try my best to get these links up as soon as I spot them.

I am very very excited about this - are you?

Good Night and Good Luck!

CrossLoop's Business Model and Team

Since we have had many new users come on board and many have asked questions related to our business model, I thought I would be address it again and also refer to the post about the team:

Currently, the product, as is, for consumers and businesses, is AND will always be free!

As a company we want to build relationships with our users - YOU! Listen, learn and interact with you. This will give us some really good feedback on the needs of the majority of our users and for what you want to pay. We do realize to continue making a difference, we have to sustain ourselves financially and hence at some point in the future, we will add features that will be premium in nature.

There is NO FINE PRINT!

If you have thoughts, ideas or requests, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@crossloop.com or send an email to Mrinal at mrinald@crossloop.com ooooor leave a comment on this post.

About the Team
Finally since our product is all about trust and security, we believe knowing genesis of the company/ the product and the people behind it is very important. Here is the post on the people that are working towards bringing CrossLoop to you - a very happy bunch!

Good Afternoon and Good Luck!

Free Hugs from CrossLoop to the many new users

My previous post was about how our users dugg us to the home page of Digg and just two days ago, we were reviewed by LifeHacker. Life Hacker found it through Dave Austin's post and recommendation of CrossLoop here for businesses. This has been very inspirational for a small team and we looove Rick Broida of LifeHacker) and Dave Austin of AllBusiness.com. Thanks guys.

If you have liked what we have built, don't hesitate to support us with a comment on LifeHacker :) - we love compliments!

We gave "free hugs" before to CrossLoop users and it is time for them again for the many new ones and celebrate Juan Mann's initiative. We love giving hugs so you will see this often :)