Blog dedicado a la formación en todos sus ámbitos: presencial, online, a distancia
Hola:
Una infografía sobre atención al cliente 2.0.
Un saludo
Atención al cliente 2.0
Sure, sure, the bank. But who makes the physical cards and mails them to you on the bank’s behalf? Credit.com paid a visit to the new, mysterious facility that credit card manufacturer CPI Card Group has built near Denver, where payment cards are born.
Security is about as strict as you’d expect: the Credit.com writer had to wear a pocket-free lab coat, and no employee is allowed to be behind a closed door alone. (Except in the bathroom, we hope.)
In fact, your future card may already exist. This new facility was built specifically to make EMV cards, since they’ll have to crank out more than a billion cards in order to meet the deadline and replace all current magnetic strip card with chip ones by next year. CPI Card Group already has millions of EMV cards stockpiled and ready to go: they will simply need to be encoded with your name and card number when it’s time to upgrade America’s payment systems.
The Secret Facility Behind the Credit Card Revolution [Credit.com]
As many of you recall, TV’s Dr. Oz took a spanking last week before a Senate subcommittee that questioned his use of terms like “miracle” and “magic” in the description of unproven weight-loss products and treatments. And on HBO’s Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver suggested a better line of work for the pill-pushing physician, along with a more accurate title for his much-watched talk show.
After reviewing some of Oz’s most dubious decrees, like calling raspberry ketone, a “miracle flower” for fighting fat, Oliver asked, “Miracle flowers? Are you a doctor or an Old-West traveling salesman?”
He then suggested that Oz could sell his viewers “A monkey’s paw mixed with five petals of a rose in a thimble full of otter semen! Guaranteed to cure your lumbago!”
With regard to the so-called “Oz Effect,” in which the mere mention of a questionable weight-loss product on his shows results in scammers and sketchy marketers coming out of the woodwork to take advantage of desperate consumers, Oliver said, “The only problem with the Dr. Oz effect is that magic pills don’t technically exist, and Dr. Oz knows that.”
In his testimony before the subcommittee, Oz the Great and Doctorful said that while he believes in the stuff he pushes on his audience, he knows that some of it wouldn’t pass scientific muster.
“That’s the whole point!” interjected Oliver. “You’re presenting it as a doctor. If you want to keep spouting this bullsh*t, that’s fine. But don’t call your show Dr. Oz, call it ‘Check This Sh*t Out With Some Guy Named Mehmet.’”
You can watch the whole clip above, though not all the NSFW language is bleeped out, so keep your volume down if you’re at work.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera sent the letter today to MonkeyParking, telling the startup that it could face a lawsuit and that its business model is breaking all kinds of laws, reports the San Francisco Gate.
He says in the letter to CEO Paolo Dobrowolny that under city law, no one can buy or sell public street parking spaces, and that the company has until July 11 to stop doing so or face legal action.
Herrera issued a copy of the letter to Apple as well, asking it to remove the app from its App Store.
The idea of the haves and the have-nots has made for a tense situation recently in San Francisco, which some say is the root of the MonkeyParking situation — only those with the money to pay for a public resource are getting access to it, in this case.
“Technology has given rise to many laudable innovations in how we live and work,” Herrera said in a statement. “MonkeyParking is not one of them.”
Back when MonkeyParking launch last month, Dobrowolny explained that the company is just a middleman.
“It’s a fair business for anybody,” he said in May. “It’s not just for rich people. If you think you can get that money back when you leave that parking spot, you can earn back the money when you leave the spot.”
SF cracks down on ‘Monkey Parking’ mobile app [San Francisco Gate]
Hola:
Una infografía sobre El efecto en el alcance en FaceBook si pagas.
Un saludo
You will find more statistics at Statista
If you just can’t stomach the idea of waiting in line at McDonald’s during the lunch rush, the fast food joint has some (maybe) good news for you. It’s reportedly testing a super (not so) secret order-ahead and payment app.
According to a report from Business Insider, about 22 McDonald’s locations in the Columbus, GA, area are testing the new order-ahead and mobile payment app.
The McD Ordering app allows customers to place an order by smartphone before arriving at the restaurant. Upon arrival, the hungry patron scans a QR code located either at curbside pick-up or at the front door, at which time the credit or debit card linked to their account is charged. The phone then displays an order number and the customer waits.
Wait, what? You still have to wait? Shocking, we know.
Sure, you don’t necessarily have to talk to anyone or fully interact with McDonald’s employees, but really, what’s the point of this app? We already have the drive thru.
For example, you rolled out of bed and decided you just couldn’t go on without an Egg McMuffin, so you head on over the local McDonald’s. Since you just rolled out of bed you decide to do that order-ahead, pick-up at the curb option. There might be fewer people gawking at your bed-head, but someone still has to deliver you food, right? That’s pretty much the same number of people you’re going to see at the drive-thru window.
Or, let’s see, you’re in a rush and don’t feel like waiting in the lunch-time rush line. You walk in, scan the QR code, your food probably won’t just magically appear (although, that might be cool). Other people are still going to be ahead of you waiting for the order they placed five minutes ago.
Also, if you’re in a hurry and trying to cut down on time at the restaurant, wouldn’t searching for a QR code be counterintuitive? And if you’re in such a hurry to get your food, would the app entice customers to order while driving to the restaurant, because that would be dangerous.
Someone in the higher echelons of McDonald’s tells Business Insider the real purpose of the app is to streamline the customer experience by allowing diners to save customized orders and skip drive-thru and in-store lines.
That’s all well and good, but if you’re placing a customized order won’t that take longer anyway? Not to mention the fact that others are still going to be in line waiting to pick up their orders.
We could continue coming up with scenarios in which the McD Ordering app doesn’t actually seem to make things any easier, but that’s probably futile since the service is already getting good reviews – from one manager, anyway.
The manager of a Georgia restaurant testing the system says about 10 people use the app each day.
“We haven’t really advertised it yet, but once we do it’s going to get big,” he tells Business Insider.
Previously, McDonald’s has used mobile ordering and payment apps in foreign markets. The newest state-side venture, comes after several other fast-food or quick-service chains began experimenting with the option.
Back in March, Starbucks announced it was “actively working” on a mobile ordering function on its app. At the time, we laid out the pros and cons of such a service.
The McD Ordering app is currently available in the app store. Although, if you don’t live in Georgia, we’re not sure how good it will do you.
Exclusive: McDonald’s Is Secretly Testing Its Own Order-Ahead And Payments App [Business Insider]
Hola:
Una infografía sobre el Uso del smartphone en el Mundial del fútbol.
Un saludo
You will find more statistics at Statista
Join me in the Am I Being Punk’d? club, folks: State legislators in both houses have thus far approved a bill that bans people from posing with photos while snuggling, canoodling, hugging, or otherwise touching tigers in New York, reports the New York Post.
The NYP reports that Manhattan Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal says she started this bill to increase safety at traveling circuses or fairs, where people are given the chance to approach such big cats.
She notes that there have been seven instances in 15 years of big cats escaping or hurting New Yorkers, but the NYP points out that there have only been two maulings at traveling shows in the past 10 years. Either way, getting mauled is no fun.
The assemblywoman is well aware that if this thing makes it into law, she’ll be seriously messing with the game of online daters as part of a trend that I cannot grasp. Apparently it makes one look cuddly and/or brave?
“They can still pose with bears and monkeys,” she explained. “They just have to take big cats off their list.”
One more time: Yes, this is a real story, about a real thing that that people do, for reasons I cannot discern nor care to understand.
Why selfies with tigers may soon be illegal in New York [New York Post]
Well, let’s back up a little. The fried chicken isn’t breaded with cheese, exactly. Instead of standard breading, it’s coated with crumbs of Clover Chips, a snack made from tapioca flour that comes in a variety of flavors. One of them is cheese.
A commercial for Crispy Cheese Chicken shows someone pumping what looks like nacho cheese on the chicken, but turns out to be only “country gravy.”
However, our snack pals over at Brand eating point out that Clover Chips also come in barbecue and ham and cheese flavor, so those could be possible alternate flavors. KFC is part of Yum Brands, just like Doritos and Taco Bell, a corporate alliance that brought us Doritos Locos Tacos.
That brings us to the inevitable question:
Around the World: This KFC Fried Chicken is Marinated in Cheese?! [Brand Eating]
The woman shouting about Everest from a bridge is one of the more well-known ads that CCI uses to pitch its schools during daytime TV programming.
There are between 70,000 and 80,000 students enrolled at the various Corinthian schools around the country. Additionally, the company employs approximately 12,000 people. Rather than have the business collapse and leave all these students without classes and thousands of people jobless, Corinthian and the Dept. of Ed. folks have agreed that the company must develop a plan to sell some of its campuses and phase out programs over the next six months.
A federally approved independent monitor will oversee the company’s finances and the sales of the relevant properties.
If Corinthian comes up with this plan and agrees to the government’s terms, the Dept. of Ed. will release $16 million worth of federal student aid to students currently enrolled at Corinthian campuses… provided the school proves that all the people getting aid are actually enrolled at a Corinthian program.
Corinthian, which operates more than 100 campuses around the country and charges upwards of $40,000 a year in tuition to full-time students, has been heavily scrutinized for allegations of falsified job placement and other questionable practices.
Last fall, the California Attorney General sued CCI of knowingly inflating job placement stats to both applicants and to investors. The state also accused CCI of illegally using military seals in its ads to lure in members of the armed services.
Then in February of this year, CCI revealed that it was under investigation from the Dept. of Education for claims that it had falsified info about placement, attendance and/or grade information, and by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regarding the legality of its student loan practices.
The Dept. of Ed. says that it put CCI on heightened financial monitoring on June 12, which means a 21-day hold on federal funds. The company gets around $1.4 billion in student aid from the federal government every year.
The heightened financial monitoring remains in effect while CCI turns over the data that regulators have been requesting since the beginning of the years. This is not a settlement deal and does not put an end to federal and state regulations.
“Students and their interests have been at the heart of every decision the Department has made regarding Corinthian,” said U.S. Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell. “We will continue to closely monitor the teach-out or sale of Corinthian’s campuses to ensure that students are able to finish their education without interruption and that employees experience minimal disruption to their lives. The Department is committed to ensuring all students receive a quality education that leads to a well-paying job and a strong future.”
The Frenchman is riding from Paris to Warsaw, reports The Local, and says he’s found out a lot about how much good food Europe’s grocery stores, restaurants and other food outlets are tossing out.
“I really didn’t think we were wasting as much as we are,” he said. “Even when you know about it, it’s still surprising to open a garbage can and find so many potatoes, so much fruit, yogurt, sometimes 500-litre or 1000-litre bins are filled with things that are still good enough to eat.”
He started on April 15 and thus far has gone through Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic and all over Germany, with the goal of arriving in Warsaw in two weeks.
He’s using a couch surfing website to find places to crash, and checks out local stores when he gets into each town to see where there’s food ready to be given away or salvageable from the trash. Only about one in every 10 places he stops to ask actually give him anything.
“I have to find food fast because after all the cycling I am tired and I need the energy,” he said. “Is my stomach full or empty? That is the most important thing, not what I am eating.”
He uses a sign in each country’s language to explain what he’s doing with the project, dubbed La Faim du Monde or World Hunger, but that doesn’t always help.
“The Czech Republic was the hardest, people just didn’t understand the concept,” he said, noting it took 50 tries before anyone would give him a bite. “They associate taking trash with homeless people. Finally, I was given a lot of leftover bread from a bakery which I made last for five days.”
According to the 2013 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Hunger Report, 842 million people in the world are starving or undernourished, while about 25,000 die each day from starvation or hunger-related causes.
Those are some serious figures, especially considering that in this country alone, the United States Department of Agriculture says we waste 141 trillion calories of food per year. The FAO estimates that we waste or lose about one third of the world’s food produced for consumption every year.
The man’s effort coincides with the European Year against Food Waste, led by the European Parliament. That body’s goal is to halve food waste in the European Union by 2025.
“The project has been a way for me to protest,” he said. “If we produced less, food would become more precious to us.”
Frenchman eats from Europe’s bins in protest [The Local]
This is a screengrab of how the Chromebook Pixel was sold on the Google Play store in 2013. As you can see, it clearly states the price includes 2 free years of 100/MB of LTE data from Verizon.
According to ComputerWorld [via DSLreports.com], Pixel owners are being told that the 100MB offer was only good for one year, though the original announcement — seen in the screengrab above and in this archive of the page on Google Play — states that the computer “includes 100 MB/month of mobile broadband service from Verizon Wireless, free for 2 years.”
When ComputerWorld’s JR Raphael, himself a Pixel owner, tried to get confirmation about the data plan from a Verizon Wireless rep, he was told there was no record of a two-year promotion. Likewise, the folks at Google Play were only able to escalate his complaint without actually providing an answer or resolution.
He rightly points out that 100MB/month won’t get you very far in terms of browsing the web, but it is enough for a Pixel owner to bust out her Chromebook to send some e-mails or book plane tickets when stuck in the airport terminal. Regardless, the fact is that these people paid $1,450 for a computer with the understanding that this 100MB of data would be included every month for the next 24 months.
There’s more to this lawsuit than just not being made in Greece: the lead plaintiffs claim that the packaging of the yogurts’ containers claims health benefits that the products simply don’t have. “Defendants… prominently display the number zero (shown as “0%”) on the top and front of their Product packaging without providing any context as to what the 0% represents,” says their initial complaint against Chobani. “Defendants intend to create consumer confusion by causing purchasers to impute any meaning to the 0% that consumers wish, such as the Products lack sugar, carbohydrates, calories, or any other content which a consumer may believe is unhealthy.”
Chobani, meanwhile, counters that everyone knows that Greek yogurt is not from Greece, and the term is a description of the yogurt type, like an “English” muffin. “Chobani” itself is a Turkish word, and the company’s founder is from Turkey. In a statement to the New York Daily News, the company said:
Much like English muffins and French fries, our fans understand Greek yogurt to be a product description about how we authentically make our yogurt and not about where we make our yogurt in upstate New York and Idaho.
The pair are also suing Fage (pronounced “fah-yay,” before you ask), a company that really is based in Greece, but makes its yogurt in upstate New York.
Chobani Greek Yogurt accused in lawsuit of not being Greek and deceiving customers over its nutritional benefits [NY Daily News]
