Hangouts

Awesome People Hanging Out

Go visit the amazing Tumblr Awesome People Hanging Out Together. Some fantastic photos of very random famous folks together. For the above image, I got my architecture/arts geek out, even though I was never a big fan of Bauhaus:

Josef Albers, Marcel Breuer, Gunta Stolzl, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, Walter Gropius, Herbert Bayer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Hinnerk Scheper on the roof of the Bauhaus Building, Dessau, 1928

Other random but awesome ones include Kanye West and Evel Knievel, The Who and Jimi Hendrix and this epic side eye shot

Hangout With Customer Service

Michael Dell posted that he was intrigued and interested in having Dell try to use Google+ Hangouts for customer service.

The reaction to his post was overwhelmingly positive, with hundreds of comments agreeing that this would be a good idea for Dell. And the idea is indeed intriguing: Some customer service needs are very similar, so having a service representative talk to a small group of customers at the same time could be more economical than the traditional one-on-one call. Using video could also humanize tech support, and group settings could even initiate self-help between customers.

I think the service that could be delivered by features like Google Hangouts is very interesting, however I’m really not sure if I’m prepared to see a video of the service rep staring at me from my desktop. I don’t mind them taking over my desktop (a la GoToMyPC) to solve the problem but video seems a little too personal in this situation/user experience.