If only…

guardedly optimistic: if taglines were honest

ING Direct Acquires ShareBuilder

So, I’ve been with Sharebuilder for months now as they’re the cheapest no frills trading site. And was kind of excited when I received an email that they’ve been acquired by ING Direct.

Great! I thought…

They did a good job announcing it to the world in the above press release, but did they stop and think about current customers? NO.

Does this mean I can use ING now? How can I login? WHAT’S THE PLAN? Where’s the transparency?

I feel left in the dark. Sharebuilder wants me to be excited, but for what? I don’t see it yet. And uncertainty pissed customers off because, well, we expect the worst when nobody is telling us everything. In other words, when will the costs go up…

Missed the forum last night? Here are the highlights from the three who matter most on their opinion about the top issue, gay marriage:

Hillary Clinton (see more highlights here):

Barack Obama (see more highlights here):

John Edwards (see more highlights here):

According to The Telegraph, Gordon Brown, the UK’s new Prime Minister, has had enough of paying the Ministry of Defense’s 1,000 PR practitioners an average annual salary of £39 thousand ($80 thousand—yes, I’m in the wrong country) to foster public support—or lack thereof—for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they can’t seem to figure out who these 1,000 practitioners are:

Yet in a striking admission, an internal Ministry of Defence (MoD) document reveals that senior officials have “no clear idea” of who they are, whether they are making an impact, or their actual cost to the country.

The document, The Defence Communications Strategy, also contains what is believed to be the first official admission by the Government that there is little or no support for the war in Iraq among the British public.

It looks as though Brown is trying to clean house but is a bit lost at the moment. However, he is taking the lead and trying to create change in a country where public opinion of its previous PM, Tony Blair, took a severe nose dive on issues like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even further for his alliance with the Bush administration on these and other sensitive international issues. In the meantime, Brown is listening to his people who are demanding change. Now let’s just wait and see if he can pull it off.

Missing: MoD’s army of 1,000 press officers [via Strumpette]

Seth Godin talks about how important good service is online because, well, that’s one of the most important factors of ensuring success. Taking this into consideration, you can’t ever turn your back on customers, even when there are a few bad apples who abuse your services:

The temptation is to embrace only the advantages of the web and insist on eternal vigilance against the possibility of getting ripped off. To act as if everyone online is a criminal. To assume that the moment you are generous or trusting, squadrons of bad actors will exploit your generosity. I don’t think that’s the answer. If you treat people like criminals, the good ones will leave, because people have a choice.

The honor system [via Seth's Blog]

Over at the University of Maryland, the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda have compiled a list of the most transparent newspapers in the world:

This study investigated 25 of the world’s top news sites to evaluate which of them open up their newsrooms to public scrutiny and comment:

1. Which outlets post corrections to their stories?
2. Which ones provide details about their owners and offer information about any other media and non-media holdings of those owners?
3. Which ones publish their internal guidelines for reporters (such as how potential conflicts of interest by reporters or editors are handled)?
4. Which ones publish their internal standards for stories (such as how anonymous sources are handled or how politicized language is identified)?
5. Which ones actively seek readers’ comments and complaints?

The New York Times comes in second, trailing behind the UK’s The Guardian.

Openness & Accountability: A Study of Transparency in Global Media Outlets [ICMPA]

The best part about Vitalist is the fact that they are listening to their customers. With the combination of their blog, contact page, and knowledge base full of previously answered questions presented in rank-order, they have the appearance of addressing users’ problems and needs as quickly as possible.

I complained in a few emails that their mobile version (www.vitalist.mobi) wasn’t working correctly on my new Verizon LG VX8600 and within a week they had set up a new version of their mobile page (m.vitaist.mobi) specifically for Verizon users like me. Yes, it was my phone that had the issue. But they discovered a way to work around Verizon’s problem. Flawless. Vitalist has an A++ in my book:

Sorry to not get back to you sooner on this. We believe the issue is with the Openwave browser on many Verizon phones. It only accepts cookies from a .com domain. We have created an alternate url for the mobile app at m.vitalist.com. Please try this address and let us know if it is working for you.

Thank you

Robert Walker
robert@vitalist.com

I know I’ve written about it before, but I just gotta say it again: Vitalist is my solution for keeping my ADD mind under control (or at least manageable). I’ve used other systems before my attempts to find a replacement for the executive function part of me that doesn’t work right—the control room or CEO of thought processes that involve organizing, prioritizing, and utilizing cognitive functions of the brain for important work tasks.

Well, I’m still using Vitalist as a GTD system that, well, just works. All my todos are organized by project and context (where I need to be to do them), and anything with a due date is automatically fed into my Google calendar, which then emails and txts me when it’s due. Vitalist also sends me a daily email as a teaser of things on my todo list. Love it.