Saturday, October 31, 2009

Actionable news

News sites can make news items more actionable, not passive.

Wrote to Economic times:
Dear Sir, We do not see hyperlinks in your articles for example at http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/Google-unveils-new-look-for-Orkut/articleshow/5181314.cms
for example it has a statement "The new version would be initially available through invitation only ". This should hyperlink to http://en.blog.orkut.com/ on how to get the invitation etc that has details on that. Also more hyperlinks are needed in general in news sites, so that news is actionable, not passive.

Wrote:

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Here's how Google could increase Google voice and Android adoption


Please forward to HTC/Motorola/Palm headquarters:
Here's how Google could increase Google voice and Android adoption : Can google voice work with HTC/Motorola  to provide user's Google voice number as default HTC/Motorola/Palm  mobile number and a cheaper Android smartphone in the process ? Currently, lots of my friends have Google voice number and if they can have an HTC/Motorola phone that is using their Google voice number, it would be more cost effective for everyone. 

Wrote:
HTC http://www.htc.com/us/about_htc_bymail.aspx
Motorola https://www.motorola.com/feedback.jsp
Palm : volumepurchases@store.palm.com

Internet-based kiosks for web Photo printing etc

Dear Sir, Visiting a Walmart/Walgreen yesterday to print out some color photos, they have kiosks, but such kiosks do not have Internet capability to print photos directly from Flickr or Google Picasaweb account, etc. Instead the kiosks use flash drive etc, which is inconvenient. Please provide at Walmart/Walgreen etc, such Internet-based kiosks fr web Photo printing etc.
Thanking you.

Wrote:
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/email/hurd/index.html
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/contactKodak/email/consumerDigital_contact.jhtml?pq-path=13452


From http://people20.blogspot.com/2009/08/internet-based-kiosks-for-web-photo.html

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Click-to-call from Internet/netbook/iphone or other smartphone: enhancements

Click to call, from computer/netbook/iphone : enhancements:
Please forward to corporate headquarters:
Please enhance Click 2 call so that:
a) Click-to-call should provide productivity over phone calls for menu navigation: If I go to site like bankofamerica.com, and press Click 2 call, I should see, listed on my netbook/iphone screen, the different menu options, like "Press 1 for banking", "Press 2 for credit card", "Press 3 for mortgage", etc. Since this can be minutes of time wasted waiting on the phone listening to the menu options, such push-button menu choices will save huge time, if Click2call is done from netbook/smartphone, etc. Also, the time savings are even more, when a selection from a choice menu, leads to new menus, for example "If I press mortgate", then new menu options would be "Press 1 for new mortgage","Press 2 for existing mortgage", etc.
b) Click-to-call should take the callback phone number (and other information like name, email , etc) saved in my google chrome/facebook profile, and not keep asking me for this information or a callback phone number every time one presses Click2call. In fact, there should be no need for a callback phone number, as Click-to-call should connect directly from the computer/netbook/iphone that has been used to make the call request. Similarly, On smartphone, like iphone, etc, If someone would like to book a flight or taxi using iphone, or even open a new bank account, then they should not have to enter their home address/email address etc when voice chatting with customer service representative; the customer service representative on other side should be able to read-in automatically suggested address/email address , etc from my click2call client.
c) If I use Click-to-call for someone frequently, like a pizza store etc, to order a specific item or set of items mostly, then Click-2-call should remember those menu choices etc and automatically make those orders for me. "When you order with Click-to-call automatic ordering and online choice selection, you never have to hear that impatient, irritated tone of a teen-ager taking your order who doesn't understand the specials and just wants to be somewhere else, talking with anyone else but you. And the constant ringing of the phones in the background."
d) LivePerson online chat should include voice chat, besides text chat: I logged into Bank of America and was doing LivePerson chat with banking specialist, and wrote in text about my credit card request, and explained in detail, they then asked me to call up separate 1-800 number for credit card. So this is painful process, and timeconsuming. Please have LivePerson to accept voice calls using LivePerson, besides text chat. Then Bank of America should be able to transfer my voice call to appropriate department, online, without customer having to worry about calling another 1-800 number for a different department.
Here is chat transcript:
You: yes, I wanted to do transaction X on my credit card
Bank of America : I will be happy to assist you!
You: I wanted to do transaction X on my credit card
Bank of America:  This needs to be done by department Z Please give us a call at 800.XXX.YYYY

e) Not needing to re-verify customer, and authentication : Right now, when we call up a customer service representation(CSR) using the click2call after logging in to their online account, then the CSR has to re-verify all the information about the customer, especially if the click2call happens after the customer has logged in. This is a big time-waste for CSR and also the customer. for example, if I call up HSBC bank after logging in to my online HSBC account, I should not have to reverify all my personal information with HSBC CSR ; they should know that I have already been authenticated and should be able to get on with the task at hand
f) After logging in at say above online bank account etc, click2call should provide me ability to leave a secure voicemail also (besides options to call up CSR , etc) : that way, as customer, I should be able to leave voice instructions on what is needed. This helps avoid the waiting process when the bank has to locate a CSR to answer me and I am put on hold. Leaving voicemail, I can simply leave instructions knowing that they will be answered. 
g) When I call up Bank of America using the Click2call, after logging onto  Bank of America account, it asks me, before connection to enter my name, phone number etc. These should be auto-saved so I dont have to re-enter this info again and again. Also preferably, Click2call should pick up these fields like name, phone number, etc from my online Bank of America account.



Published at :http://people20.blogspot.com/2009/05/click-to-call-from-websitesiphone.html


Wrote:
support@my1voice.com
info@boldchat.com
http://www.atg.com/en/company/contact.jhtml
support@zifftalk.com
info@upaypercall.com
http://www.bellmedia.com/index.php?page=contact-bellmedia&flv=bellme.contactus.flv
support@halloo.com
http://www.liveperson.com/help/help-content.aspx?ID=806# , pr@liveperson.com , 
http://www.ringcentral.com/feedback/sales-contact.html
http://www.ideaover10.com/page/contactUs.htm
http://www.contactatonce.com/aboutus/contactus.html
http://cim.ngenera.com/tal_about/contact_form.aspx

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Kuwait wellness

Dear Sir, Hoping this email finds you in the best of health and spirits. I wanted to share that breathing techniques/Yoga/meditation help greatly in preventing cancers and smoking issues. For this, you can kindly check out our courses in Kuwait at http://us.artofliving.org/art-of-living-course/index.html and our phone numbers are at : http://www.aolkuwait.org/Contactus.htm
Please let me know if you would like a demo.
Thanking you, Avinash Agrawal.

Wrote to :
futureks@qulitynet.net, Anwar@burahmah.com, contact@antismokingku.com

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Business Owners: Salary cuts instead of layoffs

SALARY CUTS INSTEAD OF LAYOFFS:

Monday, March 9, 2009

Adobe to help automate table lookup/formula calculations, etc in a pdf file

Please forward to Adobe corporate headquarters:
I was trying to do my taxes. The IRS/Franchise tax board of California, provide fill-in adobe pdf files , but one still has to look up tax tables and do calculations separately in a calculator, etc. Can Adobe provide such tables/formulas as part of Adobe product, so that a tax filer can simply enter as tax information in the Adobe pdf file and the Adobe software will take care of doing the calculations and update the pdf file with results ? There are more such applications where such formulas/tables will help. Thanking you, Avinash

Published at : http://people20.blogspot.com/2009/03/adobe-to-help-automate-table.html

Wrote:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/contact.html

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

PG&E : energy usage monitoring

Please forward to PG&E headquarters:
Dear Sir/Madam, I would like to request that I be able to monitor daily costs of my electricity usage in real time, on your website or an igoogle.com gadget, so that I can understand what factors might be contributing most to my electricity usage and cut down on some of those. This will help save energy and cut costs. This does not need to be detailed appliance-by-appliance energy usage that Google written about : http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/power-to-people.html
but at least a daily energy usage trend, that will help me deduce what factors might be contributing most to my electricity usage, will help.

Published at :http://people20.blogspot.com/2009/02/pg-energy-usage-monitoring.html

Wrote:
http://www.pge.com/myhome/customerservice/contact/

Sunday, February 1, 2009

FCC can help provide 100000 jobs

The FCC can help provide 100000 jobs and increased US productivity, by following S. Korea as per :
Currently, as an Internet based worker, there is little motivation to stay in the US if Internet speeds are low. Also, having higher internet speeds will spur investment in Internet technologies/applications and in turn create jobs.
Published at :


Audio/video content sites to take full advantage of PC or smartphone memory and resources

a) Audio/video content sites to take full advantage of PC or smartphone memory and resources. Right now, my internet connection is DSL but low-speed (150kbps in Kuwait), so playing fully streaming songs/videos from internet, causes gaps in loading content. Since the music/video that I am playing from your site is the same, can you enhance your technology so as to be able to store any song after it is played once in my PC/smartphone, so it can be re-used later again, and this will also put less strain on your application servers. Something of the order of Google gears/native code might be needed here.
b) Ability needed to be able to surf a video/audio content site, without having to open up a new browser page : Currently, when I am watching an online video/audio at your site and want to look for more video/audio content at that site, I have to open up a new browser page, since if I attempt to surf the site on the same browser page, then another page loads that has the search results and the video/audio stream terminates. But website like www.playlist.com has provided a cool feature that allows one to be listening to music etc and if the user intends to surf the site, then even though new pages will open up, but the music player remains as it is and does not terminate the currently playing content.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

California libraries can help boost education in the state

California libraries can help foster education for everyone, and also cut costs in following way. Currently, people order books using inter-library loans , which costs resources in terms of gas, transportation, manpower, etc. But by digitizing all library books, libraries can not only cut costs for themselves and taxpayers, but also help boost education efforts.

Thanks, Avinash

Wrote:
cslinfo@library.ca.gov
http://gov.ca.gov/interact

Middle-East Broadband, Phone services enhancements

Middle-East Broadband, Phone services: need major upgrade, including countries like Kuwait, UAE(Dubai), etc. Here are some problems, for example, in Kuwait:
a) DSL service is expensive, ie $100 per month, whereas in USA, it is around $30 per month
b) Phone calls too expensive: For example, for calling from Kuwait to India, it costs $1.00 per minute.

Also, better and cheaper Internet, phone services, etc will have huge benefits for middle-east countries and reduce pollution, etc, as per http://gigaom.com/2008/12/03/why-government-should-meddle-in-broadband/

Wrote:
http://www.corp.att.com/emea/contact/

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Cakefinancial.com enhancements

Cakefinancial.com should allow an investor to provide ability for anyone who wishes, to mirror automatically his portfolio (with appropriate position scaling). For example, if there is a super investment manager, then he can, for a fee, provide the service to other investors to have their portfolio automatically be mirrored to his portfolio, and be compensated in some way. That way, he does not need to open up a hedge fund or mutual fund, but can manage money for other investors easily. This is like bringing full Web2.0 to the investing world.

Thanks, Avinash
Wrote : feedback@cakefinancial.com

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

LinkedIn

LinkedIn can provide complete solution for an expert of his subject matter, to not just network, but also publish commentary etc, receive donations/subscription revenue, etc, easily. Simply being able to network is not bad, but actually being able to collect donations/subscription revenue etc is also important for any expert in a particular subject matter.

Monday, November 24, 2008

CRM 2.0

Please forward to Corporate headquarters:
Hello, for CRM, can you please address how customer support representative at a company, should handle incoming queries ? At least two things are needed :
a) Ability for a customer support representative to atutomatically find what maybe related documents in internal documentation/knowledge base search (upon receiving customer query), and the person should also be able rank/vote for the search results, so other customer support representatives can leverage that data in the future, and highly-ranked information should appear first in the search results.
b) Customer support enhancement :Ability to manually come up with and setup contact groups (ie groups of email addresses) of other customer support representatives who are experts in certain topics, and who can be instant messaged ALL at once, with minimum effort, to find resolution to customer issue. For example, we would like to be able to set up expert groups for different areas (and share those expert groups, essentially group of email addresses, with everyone in the company), and we should be able to instant-message that group for any question one has that that group can help with. And such expert groups should be sharable and made available to all folks in the company, for edits or  view, etc.
Wrote:

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Appjet.com enhancements

Appjet.com is great. Some enhancements would help though:
a) Ability to extract financial data : For example, I would like to parse the page http://finance.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&q=NASDAQ:GOOG and store the data in my appjet storage database. And then do my own calculations etc on this. Can appjet provide an example on this ?
b) Ability to search code is neede : For example, how does one search for code, say "var within a function" . This should return code from  http://appjet.com/learn-to-program/lessons/programming_together

Thanking you.
Published:

Friday, October 31, 2008

Banks should move online only, to reduce real-estate and other costs and pass savings to consumers

Please forward to corporate headquarters:
Banks should move online more and more (ie have customers use Internet more and more for banking needs) , to reduce costs and pass on the savings to consumers. Having less real estate needs for banks (ie going through more online transactions) , not only reduces banks' costs and ours, but also helps keep environment green. ING Direct has made good advances here.
Also details on Banks online requirements are in http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dthcr25_139fjrbbb

Wrote:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/feedbak.html
Websupport@service.discovercard.com,
https://www1.citibank.com/domain/contact/visitor_email/form.htm
http://www.chase.com/cm/shared/crb/page/general.html
http://www.hsbcusa.com/hsbcusa/abouthsbc/contacthsbc.html?WT.svl=900
http://www.usbank.com/cgi_w/cfm/personal/sub_global/personal_cu.cfm
https://www.wellsfargo.com/contactus
http://www.bankofamerica.com/contact/data/contact.cfm?lob=general&state=CA
https://customercare.suntrust.com/guides/contact_us_form.asp?continueButton=Continue
http://www.regions.com/Contact.rf
http://www.rbs.co.uk/global/h/contact-us/personal-banking/feedback.ashx
http://www.nationalcity.com/about/contactus/personal/default.asp
https://www.worldsavings.com/checking_contact_us
https://www.schwabat.com/Contact/ContactEmailStep1.aspx?s=1
https://www.key.com/html/A-10.4.html
http://www.firsthorizon.com/Home.ContactUs.cfm
https://www.bnymellon.com/contact/index.cfm
https://www.contactus.cnb.com/contactcnb.aspx
customercare@countrywidebank.com , directbank@us.hsbc.com , Customercare@ecare.SunTrust.com,directbanking@capitalone.com,webinfo@capitalone.cominfo@bancwestcorp.com


Wednesday, October 29, 2008

ebookers.com to show fares in USDollars(besides the British pound)

Please forward to ebookers.com headquarters:
This is to request ebookers.com to show fares in USDollars(besides the British pound) and in other currencies too, so that folks from USA and other countries can understand exactly how much they are paying for the ticket.

Thanks, Avinash

Wrote:
partner.marketing@ebookers.com
http://www.ebookers.com/info/page?id=ContactUs



Monday, October 27, 2008

FNBO , HSBC have extremely slow ACH transfer times

Wrote to banks:
FNBO direct, HSBC direct have extremely slow ACH transfer times as per :
http://bankdeals.blogspot.com/2008/10/inside-look-at-ach-transfer-speeds-at.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122463632484157009.html
But etrade, ingdirect etc are fast.
Please correct this.

Published at :
Wrote: http://people20.blogspot.com/2008/10/fnbo-hsbc-have-extremely-slow-ach.html

FNBO Direct: https://www.fnbodirect.com/welcome/MarketingDropDownProdList,,service@fnbodirect.com
HSBC direct : https://www.hsbcdirect.com/1/2/1/default/contact?code=MIW0000155

Saturday, October 25, 2008

SmartVoip/Intervoip.com/Webcalldirect.com enhancements:

Please forward to Betamax headquarters.
Smartvoip/Webcalldirect/Intervoip.com is really GREAT for VOIP quality and costs. Some enhancements will help :
a) Please make recharge of account funds easy : Right now, since I dont have mobile phone, even though I have an existing account with webcalldirect, I have to go through tedious process of adding funds by getting verification code sent to some friends mobile. Since my account already exists and has been funded before, I should not require re-verification to add new funds to webcalldirect etc.
a) Please have verification of new accounts and recharge of account funds, not just by sending code to mobile phone, but by simple email, or there should be option of calling home phone and entering verification code on home phone. For example, I have home phone but no mobile phone, so verification using home phone will help. Yahoo messenger phone- out has easy verification, ie does not send code to mobile phone.
b) make it easy to save phone numbers of frequently called folks, by attaching a name to the phone number
c) provide a web-based interface to place calls, instead of having to download intervoip gadget
d) In call history, the per minute rate for that country should be provided too, along with the number of minutes, and the total charge for the call
e) Also, while I am in the middle of PC-to-phone call, a window pops up asking to enter name and other details of called person. This is annoying, and there is no easy way to close that window. Such window should not pop up, especially since user thinks that voice call is over but the phone call is still on and user is still being charged.
f) If I see a phone number in browser, somewhere on Internet, I should be able to right click on the number and have webcalldirect dial that number for me; that way I will not have to retype that number in webcalldirect.
g) Ability to use webcalldirect on mobile phones or smartphones like iPhone, blackberry, HTC Google Android phone, etc, to make VOIP calls from mobile phone. Also facebook application will help
h) I should be able to import my friends phone numbers from Facebook/gmail etc, and populate my contacts list easily. Right now, I have to manually populate my contacts list for Facebook/gmail friends.
i) A browser toolbar for webcalldirect/intervoip : So I can easily make phone calls from browser
j) If a person has a mobile and home and work number, I would like to make a call to that person at once on ALL their numbers, so that wherever they are, they should be able to pick up that particular phone, upon which remaining phone calls to that person on other lines, get dropped. That is much more productive for me, otherwise I have to manually try for that person, at their different numbers one-by-one.
k) Ability to have multiple family members to use my account at the same time : Since I have family in different parts of the world and I would like to share my voip account (so they can make pc-to-phone calls) with them all simultaneously(since some of them do not have credit cards). Right now, when one logs in, the other one gets logged out; this should not happen, they should be able to make calls simultaneously, using the credit in my voip account.