I think Google’s suite of services offer more than Skype, but now that Skype is bulking up it has made some impressive strides. However, to me Google has an advantage because you have to download a client to use so you don’t have to deal with updates or having the program take up computer resources.
You don't need to be a gamer, to be able to appreciate that number of people that have adopted Steam as "the platform". In an earlier post you mentioned having to use several IM services to be able to contact with all your clients because they all prefer to use a specific one. Steam users are no different, since we all prefer to use different VoIP services (Skype, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Mumble), but the front-end communication is still through Steam. As mentioned repeatedly, IM's is a quick way to get short answers for short questions, and allows you to skip the etiquettes of a normal conversation. However, if more details is required, users can agree to talk over one of the aforementioned VoIP services, again using Steam to share details if they haven't already. What if, one user prefers a different VoiP service to the other, or hasn't got the same program installed? Well, Steam also has it's own inbuilt VoIP as well.
It's in dispensable in customer service. I don't know of any situation where I would want to sit waiting on a phone queue for a rep, rather than opening up a chat window and be able to cut and paste pertinent information. Only problem is when they ask you to reboot. I try and use two computers if that's a possibility...
It's surprising when games teach lessons for the workplace, but it's not unusual.
There are parallels. As Joi Ito pointed out: When a group of people work together to slay a dragon in World of Warcraft, the dragon is imaginary but the collaboration is real.
Agree. I user Google Chat in Gmail too. It is very efficient. Sometimes you really do not want to talk, just get an answer of a simple question. The same goes with Lync 2013, it is very efficient to use IM/Presence in todays' world.
I'm not a gamer (although I did like Centipede, way back when!), but from my limited knowledge players really know how to put software through its paces. If I was evaluating messaging software and knew that an IM tool was used by millions of gamers throughout the world, I'd definitely add it to my list of prospective candidates to review. After all, this is a vocal group of people who know what they want, know how software's supposed to perform, and are technologically astute. Can't really ask for a better group of real-world testers to put a communications solution through its paces!
Chat is an essential tool for business, @jabailo, and I don't know what I'd do without it. Whereas it's generally seen as rude to pick up a phone, simply ask a question and hang up without any social pleasantries, you can get away with that on IM--dramatically reducing the time spent to get a quick answer or pass along simple info! As you say, you can quickly include an additional person, too (which you can do with phones, of course). And with IM it's very easy to change your status so colleagues know whether you're available or not.
During my 12-year freelance career, I often gave clients my several IM IDs -- especially if I was working on a multi-person, complex whitepaper or marketing project -- in case they wanted to reach me quickly. In fact, I signed on to several IM tools expressly for particular ciients; I couldn't get onto their proprietary or VPN systems, but at least they could reach me via their preferred personal IM, such as Yahoo, AOL, or Gmail. It's a great asset.
I work for a company that standardized its email on GMail while I was there. I am the sort of person who fishes out functionality so when we started using the web browser as our client, I noted that I can now "IM" people while in Gmail. At first I don't think almost anyone was using it so when I made a chat window pop up on their email it was "Whoa!". Pretty soon more and more of my collegues started using it.
Chat is a good business tool and Google Chat is a great implementation. For example, I can set up conference chats with three people or more, and invite people on the fly. We all work in remote offices, and all communication is electronic. While there is the phone system, as anyone working in a technical field knows, at some point voice communications becomes cumberson when you are reading numbers or specifying key names. Google chat integrates well with mail as any chat can is saved in a Chats folder (if you configure it in Settings) and can subsequently be reviewed, copied from and emailed for follow up.
Of course the reverse can happen, as it recently did to me, where emails and chats went back and forth until someone finally said "call me" an we hashed out our problem in five minutes. Still having a chat to ask a quick direct question, or even do some water cooler talk where there is no water cooler, or lunch room or building even, fills in part of the work experience!
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Midsize businesses rarely achieve the same standards of security in their own datacenters as professional providers that specialize in delivering these services to organizations.
It was about 10 years ago when a new generation of software-as-a-service (SaaS) alternatives started to gain acceptance and adoption among organizations of all sizes. And it has only been about five years since Amazon Web Services captured the marketplace's attention with Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3, which opened the door to a vast array of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings. Now, the third piece of the cloud computing puzzle is beginning to win over organizations seeking to build their own apps: platform-as-a-service (PaaS).
Energy consumption is a primary contributor to global warming. At the end of 2012, 40 percent of energy consumption in the US came from commercial and residential buildings.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
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