I have spent a couple of nights behind the “velvet rope” waiting for access into an exclusive club or two. Never so much as when I had just turned 21 and was living in Miami. It seemed like a rite of passage almost. There just something so special about that VIP status. Perhaps it is the exclusivity of it and the ability to be one of the “chosen”. Well, my friends in the Tech world we have been given than VIP status.

Our friend at Skype, Peter Kalmström, has invited us to test out the yet-to-be-released Skype Toolbar that boasts a new feature to be included in the next version of the Skype Web add-ons. The new feature shows your Skype online status everywhere on the web. In other words, if I am browsing a web page and your name should happen to be on that page and you are one of my Skype contacts, your name will be a quicklink that when clicked will immediately engage my Skype to call you. How cool is that?

I encourage you to read Peter’s blogpost here as well as downloading the Skype toolbar here. Please note, however, that you are looking for the download at the bottom of the page. It should be SkypeIEPlugin.2.3.0.9.PamFax.exe

If you have any questions for Peter or you just want to tell him how awesome it is to be working with Skype in this capacity or really anything else, you can find him on our Ning community.

technicians. That’s right. 100 technicians. At 8:33am EST today we welcomed the 100th Certified MinuteFix Technician to the team. Welcome Aaron Parsley. It’s great to have you in addition to our other amazing technicians. Thank you all for you hard work and dedication to revolutionizing customer service and tech support.

When we woke up yesterday we should have all had an email in our inbox giving us an idea of where we stand. Today is March 15 and the day we have been amping up for for sometime. We were to open our doors to a paying public today. That hope was setback by two days when we received word late Wednesday that our payment system would not be supported until Monday March 17. Not a huge setback though, I don’t feel. It gives us two more days to really get siked about our positioning as the best customer service and top online PC repair company in the world. We will, indeed, revolutionize the way business is done. Neither Diego nor I will rest until we are confident that we have achieved such.

Below is the exact email I sent out in case it got filtered into trash or something. Before I close this post though I just want to thank everyone again for your hard, hard work, your dedication and your amazing and inspiring enthusiasm. Thank you so much!

I will keep this short. As you know today has been advertised as the day we open the doors to paying customers. We have been committed to this date for some time and we thank you for working so hard in preparation for such.

We, unfortunately, received word from Litle, our payment processing company, that they cannot begin our partnership until Monday March 17 as the 15th is a Saturday and they are unavailable on the weekends.

I apologize for this inconvenience and as we have promised to be honest and transparent to the entire community, I wanted to communicate this minor setback to you. I do hope you understand and will still be joining us Monday when we throw open those doors.

If you have any questions or concerns you are always welcome to email me directly or call me. Thank you again for your patience and
understanding.

Regards,
Drew
Community Manager, MinuteFix

Thank you so much for your patience during this Beta time. It is not always the easiest time and is often filled with changes, transitions and fixes that are sometimes obvious and sometimes not so visible. Whatever the case, I think it is important to communicate what changes have gone into effect. Off the top of my head….

• You can now “Tell a friend” from a link at the top of all the pages.
• We increased our SEO (search engine optimization) in order to increase customer traffic.
• The SSL (security warnings) are gone.
• There is a new section on your technician page where you can immediately see the last 3 blog posts, the last 5 forum posts, as well as links to the forum, our wiki and our Ning community.

Again, thank you for your patience and stay tuned for more exciting updates!

I thought it would be important to show how the blogosphere is picking us up. I personally have entertained three chat sessions this morning and expect a few more before I leave queue. It is important for us to get this sort of recognition as even 1% of blog readers would be better than 0% in terms of becoming customers. Below is a list of what I know is out there now. If you know more, post ‘em as we would love to check them out.

I started out with Blogsavannah.

Then Phil talked about us in this post.

That inspired Neat & Simple Living and ElementalTruths.

Then our own Certified MinuteFix Technician James Connors added post #1, post #2, post #3 and a DIGG article.

Following him the site went all legal on us with Andrew in order to expose the Elemental Truths on blogspot too!

All done with PersistenceUnlimited, to say the least. You know, kind of MindingTheGap; perhaps The View from My Chair.

Have I missed any? Let me know.

We’re updating the production server releasing fixes for some bugs that were keeping the site from running smoothly. This should last no more than 30 minutes, and will take place today, at 8 pm Eastern Standard Time.

Certified MinuteFix Technician Doug Wong has a strong idea. He would like to see us, the tech community, build up a bit of a “Best Practices” or small FAQ for our customers that we can either refer them to for downloads and such or that we can allow them to view and then (we hope) decided, “I can’t do that. That is too hard. I should get a tech to do it.”. It really is a good idea and one that we can develop as a community.

Therefore I have started a topic under Tech Conversation on the forum where we can begin that dialogue. The most conversation and input we have, the better. What may be a weakness of one is sure to be a strength of another!

By now you are aware that we launched our Private Beta yesterday. Things are going great! Diego and I are both quite pleased with the results from the chat sessions yesterday. Customer service was exceptional and tech support was top notch. We did notice a few little things that may help with chat communication. Ok, correction. I noticed a few things that I think might help. You see, I always think of my folks and how they would react to certain words or certain computer terms.

• So I have come up with a little list for us all to think about (and add to in the comments section).
• Start Menu may be confusing. Try saying something like Start button or Start icon. (use visual terms)
• Folder direction can be abbreviated by using alligators. For instance, Start > Control Panel > Display > Desktop Tab
• Spell out acronyms like SP. Not everyone knows it stand for Service Pack

Can anyone think of any others?

After much anticipation we are ready to launch our private beta site. During this period of 5 days we will be entertaining the questions and concerns of invited guests to MinuteFix.

This is such a milestone for us all. After weeks of questioning and testing and speculating it is now time to unveil the actual product. Granted there are still a few small bugs, I feel certain we can work around them and really get a feel for the application. You will find more instruction on the forum as well as receiving a few emails from us today.

I know a lot of times when products are launched there are the typical comparisons to giving birth or something of that nature. I prefer to see it as Zeus splitting his skull to allow his daughter, Athena, to enter the world. That must have been such a release of stress and anxiety for the good of something so beautiful. These past couple of weeks for us have been loaded with different stresses and anxieties that now we get to release while we watch beauty ascending.

We are not naive though. Diego, Phil, Oscar, Gil and I know that without each one of you we would have nothing more than a lot of great ideas and a lot more speculation. So thank you very much for your enthusiasm, dedication, discipline and excitement along the way.

And now, may I present……MinuteFix!

I just got word from Chris (or Lead Developer) that we’ll go into full-blown testing tomorrow, Tuesday. That means that if all goes well, we’ll be letting you all play with the chat interaction and working with some test customers by mid-week…

Would you believe I haven’t received an email in my box yet concerning the first to get registered? I know some of you are already registered. I have seen your tests. Which, by the way, might I add are looking really good. We are certainly going to have no problem claiming the spot of best tech support out there. Thank you so much for your excitement and your participation. If you haven’t taken your tests yet…no worries. Take your time. Especially on the Customer Service test. Make sure to read the session manual provided for you before you even consider taking the test. Customer service doesn’t seem too difficult but it is generally what separates good tech support from those guys at the computer store that drive around little PT Cruisers or whatever.

I would also like to encourage each of you look at our Forums and participate. I love chatting with each of you and hearing what you have to say. That page can be found here. So,tomorrow I am going to be flying almost all day so my correspondance will be limited. That will be a great time for us all to get certified, no? If you have questions don’t hesitate to email us. We want to serve you and we are asking you to serve others!

Upon reading this post you are now in one of two categories. The first is those who are not yet certified but are curious about this MinuteFix thing. The second is those who are certified and are siked to have a contest like this thrown their way. Starting today and ending on the last day of our BETA period we are running a contest to see which Certified MinuteFix Technician can achieve the most impressive feedback rating. You see, even though we are serving customers by invite and they are not paying a penny to use our services they are still encouraged to respond to our feedback questions so we can get an accurate view of where we stand in tech support and in customer service. But, what is the prize? The prize is a Timbuk2 ‘Bag In A Box’ valued at $125.

The Timbuk2 ‘Bag in a Box’ is actually a $125 gift card that can be redeemed at www.timbuk2.com for a Custom Messenger Bag or any other product of your liking including the color and style. Now, I personally own a Timbuk2 and I have for about three years now. I love it. It is rugged. It is slick looking. (Even though I get accused of having a man purse, or ‘murse’ for all you Friends fans.) It holds all of my stuff. So, take all of those things plus the fact that you can win it for free and you should have plenty of motivation to sign up, take the certification tests and start serving the confused public.

So, let’s review real quick. What is feedback and how does it work? Well, your feedback is one of the most important pieces of the MinuteFix service. Each time a successful session ends, the customer will be asked to provide a rating for the session. The options are Positive, Neutral, Negative. The ratings are used to determine your feedback score.

• A positive rating increases your score by one
• A neutral rating leaves the score the same
• A negative rating decreases the rating by one

Your feedback score is calculated by adding the number of positive ratings and then subtracting the total negative ratings. Your rating is calculated by dividing the number of positive ratings by your total ratings.
Furthermore, you get positive feedback when a customer is satisfied with the session and gives you a positive mark. The more positive ratings you get, the more money you will ultimately make. In the case of this contest, the more positive ratings you get, the better your chances of winning the bag are. After rating the session, the customer will be able to rate you in these unique areas: speed, communication, technical knowledge and value. They will also be able to leave a written review. The feedback and rating system helps us reward our best technicians with a higher pay scale, and will allow us to send more sessions to the best performers.

Since announcing the beginning of our private BETA I have been asked about places on the web where one can brush up their XP skills and even pick up some new ones. I have looked and looked and solicited some info. from others. Armed with this information I have been able to compile a decent list of places you can visit to reinforce even the most simple of fixes.

I’ve also been asked when the tests will be ready. It seems like December 1 will be the day when we can all sign on, take our tests and become official Certified MinuteFix Technicians. To be honest, I can’t wait! In the meantime, I encourage you to pass on the MinuteFix opportunity to other tech folks you may know and help our community grow even stronger than it already is.

Online Resources for MinuteFix Certification

Windows XP

• theeldergeek.com
• c|net forums
• The Expert Zone

Antivirus

• Hoax Busters
• McAfee
• Bullguard

PC Hardware Issues

• TechNet
• Hot Hardware

Ok, so maybe the title is corny. But you gotta admit. BETA sounds like better…at least if you live in the South….you know, drop the ‘R’ sound? Oh well. So my jokes are horrible. It is still an exciting day. Today we our launching our private BETA. This means that 100 of the world’s best PC technicians are getting the first glimpse at MinuteFix. If you reading this post you are probably even one of them. So? Congratulations! It is going to be such an exciting time. There is so much ahead of us. In a little over a month we are going to open our doors to customers all over the globe that have had it with the 3am printer headaches and the hidden preference panes in their favorite word processing app. So, enjoy the day. I know we are.

Oh, and don’t forget to invite others to join us. Send your friends to the MinuteFix homepage where they too can sign up to become a Certified MinuteFix Technician.