Mojo Helpdesk website has got a face lift

The Mojo Helpdesk website has a new skin! The new design conveys more clearly what the Mojo Helpdesk is about: simple ticket tracking that helps organizations efficiently manage customer and employee requests. In Mojo Helpdesk requests are centralized and assigned, therefore nothing is dropped and customers have their requests answered. They are happy. Your staff is happy. This is what "getting your Mojo back" is about.

Recession Sing-A-Long by prize-winning polical cartoonist

Some of us love one of the main virtues of open source software during this cash-strapped depression recession time, namely its free nature. If you are part of the too-big-to-fail companies then you can use bailout money to buy expensive software but if you not receiving tax payer money to run your business, then free open source software and inexpensive online apps can help decrease the cost of your IT.

Try out Ubuntu Linux for your servers and workstations, Metadot Portal Server for your intranet needs, Mojo Helpdesk for your customer support needs and Montastic to monitor the up-time your web sites. If you want to be more efficient and go home work earlier every day, learn how to type twice as fast (literally) using Das Keyboard Ultimate.

These hard times are best described by Walt Handelsman, Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist and animator here.

Windows 7 RC – First Impressions

In one word: Great.

Windows 7 has been available in its pre-release form (called RC: release candidate). After few days of test we can say that Windows 7 is a huge improvement for people running Vista and a great one for those running XP. The installation is a breeze, everything works right away. Things you will first notice when you run Windows 7:

• Windows 7 is very stable and fast even on old hardware.
• The interface is clean and elegant.
• Windows 7 in non intrusive. The OS stays where it should be: in the background, leaving the user in a one to one relationship with their work.
• The Windows Live apps are, partly, Microsoft’s answer to Apple iLife.

If you have the opportunity to get your hands on Windows 7 RC it is worth a try.

Mojo Helpdesk April Update

Thank you to our customers for their input. Here are the improvements we did based on your feedback.

New features

• Added Email templates to allow customization of outgoing emails.
• Added role admin with privileges same as owner.
• Centralized most email settings into a new view “Configure Emails” located in the ‘Manage your help desk’ view (owner and admins only).
• Added a flag for private messages. Private messages replace ticket notes. Private messages are visible by help desk staff only.
• Added customizable ticket types (question, incident, task, etc...) in the ticket form.

Changes & Improvements

• Improved ticket display response time.
• Tickets notes have been replaced by private messages.
• All ticket form fields can now be reordered.
• Redesigned ticket view for better speed and improved user experience.
• Closed tickets can be reopened by helpdesk staff.
• Redesigned rating interface in user portal view to make rating mandatory when closing tickets.
• Added attachment icon and number of comments in ticket list views.
• Users (people with user role) are no longer listed in the help desk staff view.
• Removed display of priority and queue name in the user portal views.
• Improved payment receipt information.

If you want to try the new version you can try for free it at www.mojohelpdesk.com.

Exponential times: IT is just at the beginning

Reed Overfelt, CEO at www.OptimizedNow.com, pointed this video out.  It shows the exponential growth of IT and how mind boggling the numbers are. For example, this year alone, we are going to produce 4 exabytes (4x10^19) of unique information. This is more the previous 5,000 years.

Launch: a blog about typing productivity

Das Keyboard blog has always been part of the Metadot blog and the rising success of Das Keyboard as a product and the enthousiasm of our user community have created the need to have a blog specific to the topic of typing, and more generally about input devices and how they affect our daily productivity. So visit Das Keyboard blog, the blog about keyboards, typing productivity, and efficiency.

It's The Click

Zachary Gasiorowski, MyGamer.com, reviewed the Das Keyboard Professional and says: "Until I typed on a Das Keyboard keyboard, I didn't realize how satisfying hitting keys can be. With an incredibly satisfying "click" noise with every key tap, this keyboard is bound to make typing more accurate… and entertaining."

Fight: Das Keyboard versus IBM Model M

Cyril Kowaliski at The Tech Reports has a review on Das Keyboard Professional and compares it to the IBM Model M. They are both mechanical keyboards, they both focus on great tactile feedback and typing efficiency. Who wins? Could that be both keyboards? Read the review at www.techreport.com.

New musical instrument: The Wii Theremin

The Theremin, invented in 1920 by Russian physicist Léon Theremin, was one of the world's first electronic instruments. It's the only instrument that is played without being touched.

Ken Moore got a Wii for Christmas and did this:



Thank you to our Metadot customer www.noeq.net for pointing great project out.

Mojo Helpdesk site updated with new look and videos

Mojo Helpdesk gets an updated website and some videos showing the application. Check it out at  www.mojohelpdesk.com.

Here is an overview of Mojo Helpdesk:

Happy Holidays!

On behalft of the Metadot team I wish you a Merry Christmas and a fantastic new year.  Everything has been great in 2008 (minus this little thing called the economy) and we are preparing some great things to make 2009 an equally exciting year. We thank you for your ongoing support. 

Watch this: a computer-controlled Christmas light arrangement of 70 thousand bulbs!

Metadot Rails December update

We are glad to release Metadot Rails 7.4.0. The update includes an up-to-ten times increase page rendering speed as well as other goodies such as an upgraded image library that allows registered users to upload images, a setting to prevent oversized image upload, and a 'send this page to a friend' liquid tag.

Check Metadot out at www.metadot.com or wiki.metadot.net.

Mojo Helpdesk December upgrade

We are glad to announce the upgrade of our Mojo Helpdesk application.

There has been a lot of work put into this new release and we hope you 
are going to like it as much as we do.

We created a video to summarize all the changes: 

• http://mojowiki.metadot.net/whats-new 
  

Here are the improvements: 


Redesigned user interface

Smarter use of screen space and less clicks to achieve most tasks

• Revamp of unassigned ticket screen
  
• Redesigned helpdesk management screen
  
• Revamp of ticket listings
  
• Reassigning a ticket can now be done in the ticket view
  
• The search is now available on every page 
  

A new customer portal

The helpdesk landing page is now The Customer Portal that includes a 
customizable home page. Go to manage> Configure Mojo Helpdesk to 
change it. 


Improved branding customization

Mojo Helpdesk now also all plans to customize logos and helpdesk pages. 


Guest request revamp

• Unregistered users can create new tickets w/o you having to create accounts. We removed the 'request and account' feature since user accounts are created automatically when an unregistered user create a request.
• Custom ticket fields are now present in the guest request 

We also fixed few annoying bugs.

As we develop most features based on customer input please don't
hesitate to contact us with your suggestions.

You can  Mojo Helpdesk for free at 

 www.mojohelpdesk.com

More great awards and press for Das Keyboard

We are glad to announce more press coverage and awards for our keyboard. The one thing most people seem to agree on is the addictive nature of the Das Keyboard tactile feedback. Check that out.

• Businesss Week: Das Keyboard Ultimate
• Wired: hands-on with the Das Keybaord III
• The Tech Loung: must-have hardward award
• Computer times: Editor's Choice Award

Read more buzz here.

Keyboard not found, press F1 to continue.

The other day we got a message from a Das Keyboard customer saying that his PC did not recognize the keyboard. The error message was 

• "Keyboard not found, press F1 to continue" 
  

Seriously, who is in charge of writing this stuff? Is this an official body governing the BIOS specifications? Can any one ping them about this?

3G iPhone: The ideal product for math idiots

Chip Rosenthal who helped develop MojoHelpdesk says on his Twitter: "3G iPhone. $100 cheaper up front. $10 more expensive/month. It's the ideal product for math idiots".  

Introducting Das Keyboard Professional and Ultimate

It's official! The third generation of Das Keyboard is now available for pre-order at www.daskeyboard.com. The new Das Keyboard is a complete redesign that focuses on providing the best typing experience. I think we succeeded but our users will have the final word on this.

The new Das keyboard comes in two models:

• Das Keyboard Ultimate: the blank mechanical keyboard
• Das Keyboard Professional: with inscriptions

Here are some feature highlights:

• Mechanical key switches
• USB hub
• Blue LEDs
• Glossy black enclosure
• extra long USB cable

Check it out at www.daskeyboard.com.

Google is the new IBM.

After few weeks of beta testing, Google App Engine has opened their signup to everyone. This is significant for several reasons: It makes hosting your web app really simple, cheap and scalable.

If you think at all the steps it takes to host a web app and all the knowledge required to make it work, it is a fairly complicated and slow process.

What we need from a hosting company to host a database backed website:

• Simple, affordable and quick setup
• Enough CPU cycle when the app needs it
• Good tech support

The painful reality includes the following steps:

• Buy a domain name
• Choose a hosting company
• Log in using the web hosting proprietary and sometimes not easy-to-use control panel
• Setup users, passwords
• Create a database
• Zip your web app on your PC and upload it on your server via FTP
• Transfer the domain name to point to your hosted server
• getting upset with the bad support of your hosting company
  
• get enough CPU cycles for your app to run smoothly

With Google App Engine it’s incredibly easy:

• Register your app
• Run the deploy script from your development environment (yes, this is the only step!)

Done(!)

What you get on top of it:

• Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
• Persistent storage (powered by Bigtable and GFS with queries, sorting, and transactions)
• Automatic scaling and load balancing
• Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email

and also...

• It’s free for small scale hosting and reasonably cheap for bigger scale requirements.
• The application life cycle management is included: Google App Engine allows you to roll back to any previous version of your app at any time.
• Automatic database schema update: no need to mess with phpMyAdmin. Your app will talk to Google and the database schema is managed automatically.

Google App Engine provides an ultra simple web app hosting solution that is more efficient, cheaper and dead easy to us. It’s only available in the Python language at this point but Google plans to rollout other languages shortly. This means 90% of all standard web apps could use this service and they probably will because it only requires running the ‘deploy’ command to send your app to Google.

Did you hear about the computing grid that is as pervasive and invisible as the electricity grid? I thought IBM would make it available to the world like they did it for the Personal Computer but Google made it a reality for all of us.

Google is the new IBM.

Pre-announcing Das Keyboard III

We are glad to pre-announce the all new Das Keyboard III. It is a entire new design, slick and shiny. The Das Keyboard III sports mechanical key switches, a USB hub, and blue LEDs and n-key rollover. The tactile feel of Das Keyboard III is just incredible. It is not available for sale at this point and we hope it will be in few weeks. We'll be show some pictures shortly so stay tuned.

Please call the helpdesk

IT support at its best...

How do you know your tech staff is not acting like this? With Mojo Helpdesk, each ticket is rated by your customers, so you know if your tech staff is doing a good job or not!.

Handy gadget for Das Keyboard users

The world typing speed record is 212 wpm (words per minute). A fast hunt-and-peck typist will be at 25 wpm, a slow touch-typist at 50 wpm. Most Das Keyboard users are above 50 wpm. How fast can you type? Check your speed and monitor your touch-typing daily work out with this USB speedometer.

Be dense: Edward Tufte about the iPhone interface

"Pack it to the max" would be a good summary of the iPhone efficient interface. But it could be better according to Edward Tufte. Watch the iPhone interface explained in this video.

"The iPhone platform elegantly solves the design problem of small screens by greatly intensifying the information resolution of each displayed page. Small screens, as on traditional cell phones, show very little information per screen, which in turn leads to deep hierarchies of stacked-up thin information--too often leaving users with "Where am I?" puzzles. Better to have users looking over material adjacent in space rather than stacked in time."

Rackspace fanatical support dropped below four nines

As many other companies offering high availability online applications to their customers, we provide Mojo Helpdesk and Montastic to tens of thousands organizations around the world. And since we want the best hosting experience we host our production servers at Rackspace. It has been a great experience until the last 2 years. Finally, Rackspace recent outages in November and December have propelled them below the 99.99% of availability, which is, by today's standards, just terrible. Here is a table showing what downtime percentages truly means:

Availability %	Downtime per year	Downtime per month*	Downtime per week
90%	36.5 days	72 hours	16.8 hours
95%	18.25 days	36 hours	8.4 hours
98%	7.30 days	14.4 hours	3.36 hours
99%	3.65 days	7.20 hours	1.68 hours
99.5%	1.83 days	3.60 hours	50.4 min
99.8%	17.52 hours	86.23 min	20.16 min
99.9%	8.76 hours	43.2 min	10.1 min
99.95%	4.38 hours	21.56 min	5.04 min
99.99%	52.6 min	4.32 min	1.01 min
99.999%	5.26 min	25.9 s	6.05 s
99.9999%	31.5 s	2.59 s	0.605 s

I am pretty sure I could host some server under my own desk and achieve a decent four nines with a little UPS. Rackpace downtimes, which the longest was 2 hours 30 minutes (!!!) place them below four nines. Interestingly enough their web states: "100% Network Uptime Isn't Wishful Thinking, It's A Guaranteed Reality". And... that's more nines they can afford.

The history of operating systems powered by Metadot!

Reading Wikipedia's article on the history of computer operating system is fascinating, but a picture is worth a 1000 words. Here is it, in picture, on a site powered by Metadot Portal Server:

• www.oshistory.net
  

How-to: DIY Das Keyboard for free

If you haven't got a Das Keyboard II with mechanical key switches for Christmans, don't be discouraged: you can have one for free (excluding sweat) if you dedicate a weekend building it:
Here is how from SaneAsylum.com:

• How-to: DIY Das Keyboard from SaneAsylum.com
  

Mojo Helpdesk 1.3.0

We have done more improvements for our favorite online ticket tracking service: the API has now the facility to create tickets and comments, the search facility has been greatly improved as well. For more information about Mojo Helpdesk 1.3.0 visit the wiki. For a free Mojo Helpdesk account, sign up at www.mojohelpdesk.com.

Metadot 7: The Last Touches

We have been collecting the feedback from our first distribution of Metadot 7 based on Ruby on Rails. So far so good: we have found no major issues, just tweaks to be done in the installation scripts. For those who want to get their hands on Metadot 7, go to www.metadot.com and sign up to the Metadot Rails forum.

Time Tracking For Mojo Helpdesk

We added a time tracking feature to Mojo Helpdesk, our hosted ticket tracking service. You can now track how much time your tech staff spends helping customers and get statistics per tech, customers, queues, so you know where the real costs are spent. This feature is available for the Enterprise plan customers.

We have also rolled out our a new documentation site, Mojo Helpdesk wiki, that provides our Mojo Helpdesk users not only the online doc, but also the latest news and notices for planned maintenance. Check it out:

• Time tracking information: mojowiki.metadot.net/faqs/time-tracking
• Mojo Helpdesk wiki: mojowiki.metadot.net

If you don't have a Mojo Helpdesk account, get one for free at www.mojohelpdesk.com.

ABC News: Das Keyboard, The Reason Why

According to Richard Hart, ABC journalist:

"Das Keyboard has a great feel, because it uses classic mechanical switches. No labels on the keys. Why? To force you to learn to touch type, das why."

• Full article here.

All-you-can-eat Das Keyboard

For the culinary demanding users, we have now an answer. Scott Thomsen from Agave Design sent us a pointer to the waffle keyboard.

Useful Web: Try This On The New York Times.

Go to the New York Times and double click on any words. You'll see a pop up windows with its definition! Quite handy.

Watch & Listen to Das Keyboard II

Das Keyboard II: the keyboard that clicks. Watch and listen to this YouTube video from modology. It seems that mechanical key switches are addictive to many users...

For more information go to www.daskeyboard.com.

New: Montastic Mac Widget

Thanks to Jim Menard, Montastic now have its Apple Mac OS X widget.

Announcing Metadot 7

Over the last months, we worked very hard to develop Metadot 7. We are pleased to announce that it is finally around the corner.

Metadot 7 is the easiest-to-use, most intuitive content management system, portal server, wiki or site builder that you can find (or whatever the latest name is) and also the most fit for work group collaboration and organizations of all sizes.

Some of the things we focused on:
• Clean and clear interface
• Content drag and drop
• Easy theme (skin) editing for professional looking web sites
• Powerful permission system
• Search engine friendliness
• RSS for most functionalities

Metadot 7 is about keeping what was good in the previous versions and adjusting or eliminating some features that did not age gracefully.

Metadot 7 is written in Ruby on Rails. We are now very versatile with RoR (we also released Mojo Helpdesk and Montastic using Ruby on Rails) and our conclusion is that it is a great web development framework. It provides a clear MVC structure, AJAX goodies and all the tools for professional software application life cycle management such as testing, debugging, database migrations and production environment upgrades.

Metadot 7 is open source as before and will be available to download in the near future. At first we are going to release our hosted version so you can experience it online. It has been in production mode for beta users for the past 2 months and the feedback has been outstanding.

We are also going to provide migration tools so existing Metadot sites will be able to upgrade to Metadot 7 easily.

Not only have we revamped the Metadot software from A to Z but we also took a hard look at our open source model and user community. We decided to improve the contribution process, feedback input, and code exchange. So we are going to setup a download/exchange place for gizmos and themes.

We hope you’ll like it.

Stay tuned for the latest posts on Metadot 7.

Metadot.com fighting back against spammers

Spam is a growing problem for blogs, open discussions, wikis, and also our Metadot.com site. We recently got hit pretty badly.

Metadot.com has been providing a free web space to all registered users for years. Everything was great and some 7000 people were able to share information with others via our reliable portal service.

Unfortunately some 'users' have used their 'my website' space to upload inappropriate material. Search engines doing their job, found and indexed their content. When search engines compiled and ranked our site, Metadot became listed as an adult site (which is not really this year marketing direction). This resulted in being removed for major search engines like Google. As a consequence, we disabled all my website spaces. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused but we had no other choices.

This also happened to other Metadot sites whose owners were nice enough to provide 'my website' to the public. They are taking similar steps.

Now the good part: we will be providing an alternative way to use a free web space and test drive our new software version in a short while. So stay tuned.

MTV goes blank with Das Keyboard II

If your are looking for a nice gift for yourself, your friends or your kids, check out the MTV Christmas PC product guide that includes our high end mechanical keyboard, the Das Keyboard II. Also they have a pretty funny product description check it out.

• MTV PC product guide showing Das Keyboard II
• Das Keyboard website

The Das Keyboard II has received outstanding feedback from our user base. Once you put your hands on one, there is no coming back to the low end keyboard technology. It is addictive more than you can imagine.

New Mojo Helpdesk Release

This version provides the capability create tickets from emails. It is available for all non-free plans. If you have a Mojo Helpdesk account, you can enable it in the Helpdesk Setting page.

We also reformatted the email notification messages to allow a better fit on small-screen devices like pagers, phones and other SMS capable devices.

Announcing Mojo Helpdesk reporting API

We are pleased to release the first version of Mojo Helpdesk API. It is implemented with web services and SOAP. The API allows programmers to access the ticket information and create custom reports.

The API is available to all Mojo Helpdesk customers, from the free plan to the enterprise one. Thank to all for their feedback and suggestions.

For more information about Mojo Helpdesk:

• www.mojohelpdesk.com
• Mojo Helpdesk help site
  

How not to make money on the web...

An interesting article from Chad L Perrin that talks about Web 2.0 business models and takes Montastic, our free website monitoring service as an example.

http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=129

GWT: The end of HTML for web applications

For those who have missed the start of this quiet revolution, Google is changing the way web applications are developed.
After rolling out Google maps, Gmail and Google spreadsheet (among many other tools), Google has released its secret sauce: the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). It is a Java development framework that makes writing Rich Internet Applications (understand Ajax applications) a breeze. Best of all it is open source.

It was the missing link. Now we can create web applications that are as powerful as the desktop ones.

We decided to invest some time to explore the advantages and challenges of this framework. The results of our experiment will be posted soon. Let the fun begin.

• Google Web Toolkit - Build AJAX apps in the Java language

Das Keyboard II - 105 keys for accent users

Good news for our non-US users: Das Keyboard II, the ultimate typing machine that sports mechanical key switches is now available with a 105-key layout. So if you are writting in non-US English like Spanish, Danish, Germany or even French, you now can feel right at home.

• More info: http://www.daskeyboard.com/

Reid Levy Interviews Mojo HelpDesk

Reid Levy referred to Mojo Helpdesk as 'the king of the helpdesk' and has interviewed us. Listen to the podcast on his site, here: Reid Levy Interviews Mojo HelpDesk.

Microsoft won't take your money if you don't use IE!

If you are using Firefox or Safari and want to create online ad campaigns, don't waste your time on the new Microsoft Adcenter:

We gave copious feedback.

LAUNCH: Mojo Helpdesk

We are happy to announce our new online service MojoHelpdesk. Mojo Helpdesk is a simple ticket tracking service that allows your organization to manage customer requests and get satisfaction ratings so you know how good your customer service is (or is not).


There is a forever-free plan. Check it out at www.mojohelpdesk.com

LAUNCH: Das Keyboard II - the ultimate typing machine

Typing on a keyboard with mechanical key switches is like driving a BMW. Das Keyboard II, our new product is the ultimate typing machine. With gold-plated mechinical key switches it is simply the most comfortable and precise keyboard you can buy today. A must for the real programmers.

• www.daskeyboard.com
  

Moved to blogger.com

We moved our blog to blogger.com. Nice, easy slick interface.

Montastic upgrade

We have been busy upgrading our monitoring service. Due to the success of our free monitoring service, we had to do some changes the core of our application so we can handle the growing load. We had some downtime but the result is worth it.

Furthermore, we are happy to release these new features:

• Yahoo widget:
• so you can keep an eye on your servers while doing other things
  
• Capability to add several alert notification email addresses
• so you can get them on your pager or cell phone
  
• opt-in / opt-out newsletter:
• so you can subscribe to our low traffic email newsletter (see your profile) so next time we upgrade you know about it
  

Pre-announcing Mojo Helpdesk

Do you really know how your company is doing with customer support? We thought we did. At Metadot, we always wanted to do a good job. We use a ticket tracking system to manage customer requests and we answer the cases as fast as we can. We thought we did a good job until the day we started getting calls from unhappy customers: you close my tickets and it’s not solved, my ticket has been on hold forever, etc… Obviously, our customer support was not where we wanted it to be and we did not know some of our customers were not getting what they expected.

Companies are always trying to do a good job, or at least some folks in most companies try:

• Your call is very important to us
• We are customer-focused
• Customer first
• Our company is customer centric

Take this to the airliners:

• Northwest Airlines - “Customers First” Customer Guide

• Continental Airlines - Customer First

Looks good on paper, but the reality is that traveling by air is one of the most unpleasant pastimes one can have unless they fly business or first-class. Can you image that the food they serve you in planes is so bad that even the crew does not eat what they serve you?!! That is what “customer first” means in some companies, just hot air.

Now back to us (and you). How to make sure our customers are delighted with our service and that we really know about that?

Enter Mojo Helpdesk, our upcoming helpdesk service we designed from the ground up. It is an attempt to track customer requests and get instant satisfaction feedback. If we missed something we’ll know it quickly. With Mojo Helpdesk you (and your company) know how you are doing at all times.

Mojo Helpdesk is developed with Ruby on Rails. It will be an online service, no download, no software to install. We are looking for beta testers. If you are interested please email me at supercobra_at_metadot.com.

LAUNCH: Montastic: the free website monitoring service that doesn't suck.

We are proud to release this free website monitoring service to the world.

Montastic will alert you by email if your website goes down, so you know about it before your customers call you.

It is built with Ajax and Ruby on Rails. Check it out, it is really useful and it is the sexiest monitoring service available :)

• Visit it at www.montastic.com

BBC on Das Keyboard: fat finegrs

A simple typing error has triggered mayhem on the Tokyo stock exchange and cost one bank £190m. But in a world where almost everyone now is expected to type, how many of us really can?

• BBC article
• Das Keyboard – the blank keyboard

How to tell the difference between web 1.0 and 2.0?

• Difference between web 1.0 and 2.0

Training

By popular demand we released our 1-hour telephone training. It’s quick, easy and cost effective. The nice part is that we can do the training on the customer portal, thus not only we train our users, but we also do some real work.

Learn more on our Training page.

2006 Resolutions

Finally we succumbed to the blog virus. Blog is mode? Certainly. But we also see that as a great way to keep our user base in touch with us.

So, for our first blog article I am going to publish the company resolutions along with mine.

Publishing them online put some pressure on us to make them happen. Once we brag about things it is difficult just to retract them. So here we go:

1. stay hungry, stay foolish (adopted from Steve Jobs’ advise to Stanford graduates
2. start a company blog :)
3. release great and useful online tools and services
4. micro manage pixels: make the above services enjoyable to use
5. try to become an important player in online services
6. stop using the laptop at night in the bed