ReadWriteWeb

From someone who did IT support back in the mid 1980s, it is amusing to hear that bringing your own device has been elevated to a "trend." Back in the days of DOS, we all had to contend with end users bringing in their own gear. Of course, the gear cost five large and didn't connect to the corporate network (there wasn't any back then other than for the mainframes).

Speaking of amusing, here is a slightly different take on the BYOD trend. What has been your most oddball device that your user population has asked you to support? (click to enlarge)

CA Technologies' CHIEF & CHUCK is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work here at CA.

Stuck on a Ruby on Rails problem? Call Rails Hotline, a free helpline staffed by volunteer Rails developers, at (877) 817-4190.

Rails Hotline, which was just launched this morning, is powered by Pocket Hotline, a platform designed for companies to crowdsource technical support.

Whether we are biting off more than we chew or our eyes are too big for our stomachs, we as humans often find ourselves underestimating the total of the requirements to complete a specific goal. In startup culture, this kind of mistake can be fatal to a young business, so before you find yourself unexpectedly overwhelmed, make sure you investigate the different ways to make life easier on your fledgling company. One of the largest headaches that comes with launching a Web startup is managing servers and ensuring the smooth sailing of the back-end, and RoundHouse - a brand new managed server support solution - wants to take these worries away for startups.

Earlier in the week, we profiled Concept Feedback, a community that helps site designers and developers get quick constructive criticism on their various projects, and in the article we stressed the importance for young companies to collect and analyze user feedback. Another part of this type of site analysis is tracking bugs, and TechStars graduate SnapABug provides an innovative way to do this via live instant message sessions. Early next week, however, SnapABug will take this feature one step further by adding a pro-active chat feature which will allow companies to both help wayward visitors and capitalize on possible sales opportunities.

As we've covered in the past, the cost of engaging and keeping great employees can be high. You can pay an intelligent employee to stay late, or placate them with a posh office environment, but one way to keep an innovator in their chair is to challenge their problem solving skills. Instead of hiring sub-par developers or trusting code to rogue contractors, below are two case studies that may make you consider creating competition to meet aggressive goals.

Few companies put as much effort into customer service as they do into member acquisition. However, in order to retain members, community-driven startups need to be conscious of the entire customer experience. No stranger to support techniques, Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane spends most of his time perfecting the end-user experience for his clients. Best known for its web-based help desk services, Zendesk launched in 2008 and even then ReadWriteWeb gave the company a favorable review. In 2009, Zendesk continues to establish itself as a great alternative to the traditional call center experience. Svane offers some helpful tips for our ReadWriteStart readers.

Customer service reps, it's your lucky day. It just so happens that three of the top Web-based support applications — ticketing system Zendesk, issue tracker JIRA, and customer service platform Get Satisfaction — are now integrated.

Though much of this functionality was created independently by each of these three vendors, the result is a smooth connection between a public support tool, an individualized helpdesk, and an enterprise issue tracker. Together, the trio makes up a powerful set of tools for responding to customers in either a public or private forum.

Don't you hate it when someone attractive asks you for an imaginary light, and your iPhone Zippo crashes? ZenDesk is offering a new embeddable drop box solution to give iPhone and Android developers customer support directly in their apps. With the current influx of application development, and the need to serve international mobile audiences, subscription-based service ZenDesk is providing another pipeline for company support. And the demand it certainly there as support sites like JustAnswer and FixYa move increasingly into servicing users in the mobile space.

Amazon today announced premium for-pay support packages for some of its core infrastructure services. The Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and Simple Queue Service (SQS) each received the gold and silver level support treatment. The new support packages provide one-on-one support for AWS customers (24/7 via phone for gold level) as well as a guaranteed 1 hour response time and new client-side diagnostic tools.