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WhiteBox provides technology enabled finance and collection products for the automotive industry. Our customized solutions provide warranty providers the ability to offer car dealers products such as new and used warranties, gap protection and after market to consumers who do not qualify for traditional finance products.
Our ACH collection system, married to our state-of-the-art web interface and electronic signature collection technology create a seamless finance solution. Our software engineers work closely with our clients to customize our offerings to meet the specific needs of each product.
By combining our robust banking interface and our hosted web application, car dealers are able to generate significant profits without extensive training and related overhead.
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One of our favorite clients, LEGO, keystone toy the ‘Brick’ turns 50 today! What a legacy. Two weeks ago several LEGO employees came to Dallas to check on our progress and to give us a sneak peek into LEGO. Their corporate overview had some fascinating information, including today’s anniversary of the Lego Brick. Of course, Gizmodo scooped me on this one ~ way to go guys! Here are some fun facts (via Gizmodo):
LEGO brick curiosities
Thanks LEGO!!!
]]>Late last year I decided to ‘merchandise’ the value of the site by creating a homepage that was organized based on subject matter topical to entrepreneurs. I would keep blogging as usual, but first time visitors would see a broad set of material relevant to them. My old readers could still see my chronological blog.
This weekend the experiment began as I launched the ‘beta’ version of the site. We are still working out the kinks, but it is pretty close to being finished. Let me know what you think. The site is based on WordPress and uses categories to organize the display of posts.
Since early August Mike has made 27 major upgrades (some might be better termed bug fixes) to the system. The final items include some goofy things like allowing users to reset/retrieve their password, providing a method for news/announcements to users and finally an upgrade to the user profile pages. Once these last seven to-dos are finished Mike will be turning over day-to-day management/tweaking to Francis. Mike will be starting another pretty cool project that involves ACH, USB signature pads and data warehousing.
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The FX team called us (Big in Japan) late Friday afternoon with an idea. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could have a phone at the new McNamara / Troy location in Hollywood? The Nip/Tuck team is moving to LA this year and to promote the move they created a ’simulated’ office in the Hollywood and Highland outdoor mall. The office has some very cool holographic videos of the doctors (so you can see them at work) as well as real live models waiting for the doctors. The only problem? You can’t get in.
The phone would allow people passing by to interact with the promotion. When FX told us about the idea I said, “sound great, when do you need it up and running?” The answer was, “within a week!” I thought to myseld, “OMG, we will never get it done within a week!” Of course we agreed to do it. Within a week we shipped a pre-configured Cisco ATA to the team building the storefront. We then connected it to our FanPodCast system. When you pick up the phone it auto-dials our switch in Dallas and you get the ‘doctors’ IVR. You can leave a message for the doctors if you like: 310.747.3447
If you are in Hollywood, stop by the store and check out those holograms:
ServiceGuy is a new service the Big in Japan team has been rolling out over the past couple of months. What is ServiceGuy? I wrote about it back in May in a post titled, “Quick Project: ServiceGuy Referral Network” when I was having trouble finding a pool guy. The idea is simple: You need help now. You don’t want to wait to receive a call back. You don’t want to wait for an email response. You don’t want to create an account or provide demographic data. You want to talk to a service provider in your area right NOW! Just call the ServiceGuy number for your area and the service you need. Your call is then connected to a service provider. No voicemail. No email. No accounts. Just a direct connect to someone who can help you right NOW!
Phase one of our launch is focused on seeding each service with providers. We need to find a minimum of 25 providers in each category before phase two can begin. Phase two of our launch is focused on getting consumers to call our providers.
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The Big in Japan team develops intellectual property to allow brands to create unique interactions with their customers. Our clients include FOX Television, LEGO, TechData, The United States Postal Service and The Federal Reserve to name a few.
Our latest development, ServiceGuy, utilizes patent pending technology to allow for ‘live connections’ between homeowners and service providers. ServiceGuy is a real world example (visit http://serviceguy.org) of the type of interaction that is possible utilizing our technology. Our team is prepared to implement our technology within your brand’s internet presence, allowing for a private label experience for your customers.
Typical referral systems focus on demographic matching, while ServiceGuy allows for ‘availability matching.’ Combined with your existing referral system (or a new system we implement), the underlying ServiceGuy technology will allow you to provide immediate ‘live connections’ between homeowners (users) and contractors (service providers). In many cases an immediate connection is more valuable than a perfect connection. What if you could offer users the ability immediately talk to a service provider 24/7? The ServiceGuy call engine can call 25-250 service providers at the same time, ensuring at least one provider is available to take the user’s call. For example:
Each service provider who accepts the call from the ServiceGuy call engine is prompted to press a key to indicate their availability. The first provider to do so is given answering instructions and is connected to the user. The call is recorded for the service provider’s records.
The system can call the user at a later date (1 day, 1 week or 1 month) and request feedback about the service provider. Feedback can then be used to increase or decrease a providers position in the call queue.
For more information please contact:
Alexander Muse
amuse@biggu.com
1+214.558.1079
Almost eight months ago we wrote a post titled, “The eSports Partners Comment Debacle.” The post detailed how I had written a short post indicating that eSports had raised money (actually debt). The post was short and positive. Several disgruntled employees (former I assume) commented on the post indicating linking to lawsuits filed by various governmental organizations. According to the suits, the company didn’t seem to treat their workers fairly. Truth be told, the comments seemed a little like sour grapes and I didn’t really give them a second thought.
Almost a year later lawyers from eSports Partners contacted me and demanded that I remove the post and comments as well as provide the identities of the employees who made the comments. After a few conversations I decided to comply with their request and remove the post and comments, but I replaced it with a scanned copy of the demand letter. The lawyers contacted me once again and threatened to sue me if I didn’t remove their letter. I refused.
So what is new? If you Google eSport Partners the third result is my post containing the letter from their lawyers. So what? Almost monthly I get emails from potential employees asking for more information about the company. Here is an example message (some details changed to protect the identity of the person):
> —– Original Message —–
> From: /redacted /
> To: /redacted/
> Sent: August 3, 2007 4:49:44 PM GMT-0600
> Subject: ESports Partners
>
> Hey Alex,
> I saw your retracted post on Esports and I’m going in
> there on Thursday for an interview. Can’t find any
> web history on the posting you had on them and was
> hoping you would fill me in on any information that would
> be helpful to me.
>
> I have a kid and a husband, so I take my career
> considerations seriously. Any way you could fill me
> in on what the context was on the post?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> /redacted/
Of course I can’t say much, other than explain the situation because I don’t know much. I do know that the company really mishandled the response. In this case I believe eSports Partners should have left well enough alone and ignored the comments.
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I started playing with YouTube back in 2005 and didn’t really get it. I posted a couple of videos, but I wasn’t a consumer (i.e. I didn’t watch other people’s videos unless someone blogged about one). Fast forward to this year and add the Apple TV to the mix. I bought Apple TVs for the office and the house and found myself showing off the Apple TV by playing videos from YouTube.
Soon we started turning on YouTube (via Apple TV) any time we had a few people over. We would each pick a couple of ‘funny’ videos to play and let the system rip. It wasn’t like watching traditional TV, something we would never consider doing with guests, instead it was a different experience. The clips are short. The content is kitsch. The experience in a word is casual. It didn’t hamper our conversation, it enriched the content. YouTube + AppleTV = Great for Small Parties.
Now with my iPhone I find myself doing the same thing. People want to see how it works and after I show them the visual voice mail I show off YouTube. People are amazed. YouTube finally makes sense for me. Will I watch hours of YouTube? Never. Will I watch 2-3 three minute clips per week? Definitely.
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You can get the benefits of microformats for your own maps applications if you change your HTML to contain the necessary hcard classes. In this simple example, we’ve changed the infowindow to contain an hCard formatted address. The code for that is below:
var html = '<div class="vcard"> <span class="adr">'
+ '<span class="fn n">Googleplex<br />'
+ '<span class="street-address">1300 Amphitheatre Parkway</span><br />'
+ '<span class="locality">Mountain View</span>, '
+ '<abbr class="region" title="California">CA</abbr>'
+ '<span class="postal-code">94043</span>'
+ '</span> </div>';
map.openInfoWindowHtml(map.getCenter(), html);
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“Damages,” making a sensational premiere tonight on the FX network, thoroughly justifies adding yet another high-powered law firm to the prime-time population. The firm is not only high-powered but it’s also “high-stakes,” we keep being told — and so is the show. “Damages” is also emphatically, and almost tortuously, high-tension, and the pilot script is one of the most artfully crafted since the debut back in the 20th century of “The Sopranos.”
FX decided to include our social podcasting application, FanPodCast (via API, design by Big Interactive), for the launch. Check it out here.
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Just because you have a blog, a twitter account, a Facebook page, a MySpace page and an official YouTube page doesn’t mean you understand social media. I figured that out first hand. You would think by 2007 political campaigns would take bloggers seriously. Here is my story:
This afternoon I ran over to Love Field to cover Fred Thompson’s visit to Dallas for my blog. He is ‘considering‘ running for President in 2008. Who is Fred? You might have seen him in Top Gun, No Way Out, The Hunt for Red October, Days of Thunder or Die Hard 2. I have been a fan of Senator Thompsons for quite some time.
I grabbed my Nikon (with the big fat telephoto lens) and headed over to the private jet area. Three photographers were huddled together along with quite a few supporters waiting for the Senator. I started chatting with the camera guys since I was carrying a camera every bit as big and cumbersome as theirs. The guy to the right (he didn’t give me his name) came over and told the photographers that he had a special place for them. He looked at me and asked, “Who are you with?” I explained I was a blogger covering the campaign. He said, “Oh, BLOGs… Nope, you don’t get in.” He then ushered the ‘real’ photographers from the ‘traditional media’ to an honored spot in front of the supporters. The TV guys were next and in the end you had five SLRs and two video cameras pointed at the senator (see photo below) while my camera shot photos from 100 yards away.
The guy who wouldn’t let me in then came back and I snapped his photo (i.e. the photo in the upper right). He was bothered that I took his photo so he confronted me and asked me to spell the URL of my blog. His attitude was generally suspicious, condescending and dismissive. I couldn’t help but realize that he just doesn’t get it.
Citizen journalism (i.e. what I was/am doing) can be very powerful for candidates. Just ask Howard Dean. Don’t dismiss the guy wearing a “I’m with Fred” badge and a camera as “one of those Blogger types!” Instead embrace them, treat them just like you treat traditional media types (i.e. the ones that typically do not support GOP candidates). In any event, I decided not to let that ‘old fart‘ taint my support for Senator Thompson and I even got a few pictures of the senator as seen in my Flickrstream here or below:
In your online and offline life you will have positive and negative relationships. My suggestion, if you can’t have a positive relationship online don’t have one at all. Whenever I start an online relationship I select the DO NOT SEND ME PROMO EMAILS option (if available). In this way I help my vendor understand what sort of relationship I want to have (don’t call me, I’ll call you). However this morning, I got an email that appeared to be from Craig Strong at Lensbaby (he makes very cool selective focus lenses). From the subject it appeared to me that he might want me to show off some of the pictures I have taken with my Lensbaby, but as soon as I opened the email I realized it was a ‘form email’. Lots of pictures, links and an utter lack of a personal message were my first clue.
Had the email been from Craig to me and been more personal I would have been very interested in participating. How hard would it have been for Craig to write a simple email and send it to people who have purchased his lenses? How many emails can one person handle? Perhaps he should have sent out 100 and waited for the response. What is the response rate for personal email? I suspect it is fairly good, perhaps 20%. Assuming 20 people emailed him and half of those who responded were interested in participating he could easily call them. In less than a day Craig might have engaged 10 fans willing to help promote his product and in the process become even more connected to him and his brand. What if Craig did this sort of relationship building once a week for a year? It is possible that he would have formed a positive and direct relationship with as many as 500 of his customers. Oh and Craig doesn’t have to be the only person at Lensbaby building relationships, he could enlist other people to start a direct conversation with customers as well.
But I know, it is much easier to email 10,000 people than it is to call 100 people. But what have you gained? Have you built a positive relationship? Maybe, but I suspect for every positive relationship you form from SPAM, you lose the possibility for forming a relationship with 100 people FOREVER. Just my two cents…
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We are playing with the latest IM solution for the iPhone - FlickIM. Jury is still out, but it works…
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Turns out lots of folks are dumping LinkedIn in favor of Facebook. Jeff Pulver actually wrote a post today titled, “Goodbye LinkedIn. Hello Facebook.“ Interesting post, check it out. Why the switch? Jeff explains,
]]>I find that the interactions I have through Facebook are at once more rewarding and more nuanced and meaningful than what I experienced on LinkedIn. And in fact, in many cases it is easier to communicate with someone on Facebook than on email. Facebook IS the internet portal of 2007. And it is where you will find me.
Just a quick programming note here at Big in Japan. Jake McKee has been with the company as Lead Samurai for almost a year. He has been deeply involved with almost every project since joining Big in Japan and has made a huge impact on our business. Starting this week, Jake’s role within Big in Japan will be significantly scaled back allowing him to focus on his own speaking and writing efforts outside of the company. Jake will continue his work managing and supporting both the LEGO and TechData accounts for Big in Japan. Scott Bauer will take over his role with our other clients. We wish Jake the best of luck on his book and encourage anyone looking for a great speaker to give him a call!
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Other cool applications included: AppMarks, PickleView, Fluther, The Pool, itunes Remote-o-Matic, Tilt and moPhaic (read about them here). The coolest hack from the event was called the Fluid Navigation Hack as described by Andrew:
