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Are these the companies inside the next iPhone?
With the Pre's launch date looming it's nearly time for Apple to launch its counter-attack, and today we have what appears to be further confirmation of component orders for the so-called iPhone 3.0. DigiTimes is claiming to have a nearly comprehensive rundown of component suppliers for Apple's next-gen hotness, again indicating Samsung will be providing the memory, but also saying that a CSR chip will continue to handle Bluetooth duties, a 3.2 megapixel OmniVision sensor will tackle image-capture duties, and going on to list over a dozen other suppliers you may or may not have heard of -- though sadly failing to identify a CPU maker. All these companies are supposedly ramping up to begin shipments in May for a mid-2009 release, with a target of 5 million units for launch. However, while many of these names line up with rumors we've heard already, with no sources named and none of these suppliers able to comment, you might want to hit up your local source of salt for a grain or two.
CSR fits WiFi, Bluetooth, FM, and GPS into CSR9000 wireless chip
We don't know if CSR's latest all-in-one chip benefits from the recent acquisition of GPS chipmaker SiRF, but the CSR9000 does manage to bundle the location-based technology with WiFi, Bluetooth, and FM. It's also boasting low energy output and small form factor. The company says it's already sampled it for key, unnamed customers. Those canoodling in Barcelona can check out a live demonstration of the chip running on Android at the company's booth.
CSR gobbles up GPS chipmaker SiRF
Well, it looks like a few pesky patent issues weren't enough to keep CSR, mostly known for its Bluetooth chips, from snapping up omnipresent GPS chipmaker SiRF, with the two companies today announcing that they're set to fully combine their companies into one giant chipmaking operation. Under the all-share transaction valued at some $132.7 million, SiRF shareholders will get 27 percent of the newly formed company, to be known as CSR, while two SiRF directors will also get seats on the CSR board. Any further details are a bit hard to come by but, as CNET's Business Tech points out, CSR has increasingly been focusing on all-in-one solutions combining Bluetooth, WiFi, and whatnot, so it would stand to reason that SiRF's GPS know-how could be added to the mix.
IBM develops computerized voice that actually sounds human
If there's one thing that still grates our nerves, it's automated calling systems. Or, more specifically, the robotic beings that simply fail to understand our slang and incomprehensible rants. IBM's working hard and fast to change all that, with a team at the company's Thomas J Watson research division developing and patenting a computerized voice that can utter "um," "er" and "yes, we're dead serious." The sophisticated system adds in the minutiae that makes conversation believable to Earthlings, and it's even programmed to learn new nuances and react to phrases such as "shh." The technology has been difficulty coined "generating paralinguistic phenomena via markup in text-to-speech syntheses," and while exact end uses have yet to be discussed publicly, we can certainly imagine a brave new world of automated CSRs.
WAR Grab Bag No. 9: It's the CSRs time to shine
In stark contrast to the extremely in-game-oriented Grab Bag No. 8, Grab Bag No. 9, the "CS Special", focuses on interactions with the game's CSRs. The Customer Service team put together a list of some of the questions they see on the job and then answered them in detail, so that maybe, just maybe, a handful of players will find out what they needed to know and not have to bother them. Some of the answers are quite interesting. For example, did you know that you can't check whether a player you appealed for exploiting ended up getting banned, due to privacy policies? If you really hate them, perhaps you should send along some extra complaints to make sure your dirty work is carried out -- okay, that sort of goes against the spirit of the Grab Bag to make less work for the CSRs, so let's not do that. Only if you really really hate them. In all seriousness, the Grab Bag does give some good insight into exactly what the CS team can do for you, and how to approach certain issues. Make sure to check it out before you file your next appeal.
Breakfast Topic: Will work for Blizz
I've often thought I'd do just about anything to work at Blizzard. I mean, with offices that look like this, working on one of your favorite games - who wouldn't? But then I think about my many years spent in the trenches as both rep and management at various IT/Internet jobs, and I'm no longer sure that I'd do anything to work there. You see, the one group I don't envy are those on the front lines of customer service. Much like the story from Thursday in which we learned about a rep having to deal with a kid and his suicide threat when he ostensibly didn't get what he wanted, CSRs, GMs and CMs deal with very frustrating situations every day. But there again, it is Blizzard, and I'd be lying if I said most people I know wouldn't give their [insert requisite body part] to work there, just to experience the culture and be part of the company that makes some truly awesome games. The sheer coolness of the company and a lot of their outward facing policies seems like being part of that team would more than make up for any abuse you might get as a trade-off. How about you? Would you be willing to step onto the front lines, taking every nasty, mean comment you're dealt with a smile - or carefully constructed snark? Would you be willing to work at Blizzard on the front lines? Or is that a bit too much of a figurative bulls-eye than you'd want painted on yourself?
Teenager arrested for making suicide threat to Blizzard rep
In a sad bit of news to start the new year, it would appear that a teenager in Fairfield Township, Ohio, was taken into custody yesterday for falsely claiming that he would commit suicide if a Blizzard support representative did not give in to his request. The young man, who remains nameless due to being underage, was arrested for "inducing panic" which carries a first-degree misdemeanor charge according to the Middletown Journal. The young man was chatting with a Blizzard rep and made the statement that he was "suicidal and that the game was the only thing that he had to live for." Whether or not this was World of Warcraft or a Battle.net account was not disclosed, but even still, it has raised the question in a few circles if Blizzard was beyond the bounds in bringing the police into this situation - or why the police might arrest someone for it.
Why the industry should care about their customer service
One of the long standing traditions of the industry has been to look at MMOs from the perspective of every other game on the market. We treat our online worlds the same as we treat our single-player experiences, which means we seem to forget that the customer still exists after they have picked up the game and are now sitting down to play it.In a traditional "selling boxes" industry, where people can get away with selling a game and have that be the end of it, MMOs walk the path of a service rather than a product. Getting a user to buy the game isn't the goal, it's the beginning of the process. And to that end, one deparment can make or break a user's experiences with a game when troubles begin to come down the line -- customer service.Adam over at T=Machine has written an amazingly in-depth piece on why the MMO industry needs to change up their approach to this neglected department and how good customer service is basically an open path to free word-of-mouth marketing. It takes a great analysis of the current approach and remodifies it to better handle the service model of selling a game rather than the box pushing model. It's a long post, but close to mandatory reading if you're interested in the theory of business
Sprint's CSR response time skyrockets to first in recent survey
Last summer, Sprint was the laughing stock of the major US carriers in terms of customer service. Fast forward 15 months, and the very same carrier is now sitting atop the pile. A recent report compiled by Pali Research has found that Sprint's wireless customer care response times were best in class, and just 2.5 years ago in its first survey, Sprint was dead last. The carrier answered a whopping 91% of calls that researchers placed to the care center in under 30 seconds, while 99% of calls were answered within 2 minutes. If you're curious how the other guys did, try this: Verizon grabbed the silver with 85%, T-Mobile followed with 43% and AT&T took home the award of shame with just 33% of test calls answered within half a minute. So, the real question is: have you Sprint customers noticed an uptick in service levels? And are you AT&T subscribers growing increasingly impatient?[Via phoneArena]
T-Mobile attempts to mitigate customer service costs with Nuance Mobile Care
In a growing effort to keep costly CSRs from spending entirely too much time trying to explain how to activate a speakerphone over the, um, phone, T-Mobile has inked a deal with Nuance Communications to bring an on-device application to select mobiles. Essentially, the Mobile Care software will rear its head whenever someone with one of the aforementioned handsets dials up customer service; from there, an "intuitive, user-friendly" guide attempts to walk users through "issues such as diagnosing and repairing configuration problems as well as with making account and billing inquiries." T-Mobile asserts that trials of the service have shown that customers actually prefer this over a live human, which probably has everything to do with the wait times that invariably come with calling a fellow Earthling. Still, we can imagine quite a few smashed phones deriving from frustrations with this computerized service, at least one of which we hope to get captured on video for posting.[Via RCR Wireless News]
SRS Labs, CSR team up for better Bluetooth audio quality with PureSpeech
Getting Bluetooth headset voice quality good enough to prevent the occasional "come again?" is a never-ending challenge, giving rise to devices like the Jawbone and the perpetually-delayed Nextlink / Motorola Invisio Q7. Most headsets these days bundle some form of noise reduction and echo cancellation, but SRS Labs and chipset manufacturer CSR want to make it easier for companies to bundle the technologies out of the box (or out of the chip, as the case may be) with a minimum of fuss. The partnership has produced PureSpeech, which bundles SRS' VIP+ software for local voice quality with CSR's CVC technology for improving what your callee hears. The one-two combo will be available starting in the first quarter of next year as an option on CSR's BlueCore silicon.[Via Slashphone]
CSR demonstrates Bluetooth low energy transfer
We know you're not really down with digesting any more catchphrases, but the technology formerly known as Ultra Low Power Bluetooth / Wibree is now being dubbed Bluetooth low energy. Now that we're clear on nomenclature, you may be thrilled to know that CSR showcased its recently unveiled BlueCore7 dual mode (Bluetooth low energy and Bluetooth v2.1) chip at a Bluetooth SIG Medical Working Group meeting. According to onlookers, the handset was able to transfer data to another nearby mobile using just 3 frequencies rather than 32, resulting in an unquantifiable decrease in power consumption. Sounds like a winner on the surface, but we have this weird feeling that mass adoption of this tech is like, years away.
EA Mythic looking for WAR customer service monkeys
Are you a glutton for punishment? Do your friends and family often remark about how rewarding it is to berate you with insults and make nonsensical demands that far outstrip your capacities to fulfill? Do you have exceptional attention to detail, with encyclopedic knowledge of the proper bust sizes for a game's various races? If you answered yes to these questions, we might have a position for you!According to a message sent out via the Warhammer Herald, EA Mythic is looking to hire some trustworthy Warhammer Online CSRs to start working in the Fairfax, VA facility starting this August. The listing makes mention of benefits and opportunity for growth, which is frankly more than we were expecting from a company that was gobbled up by the EA monolith not long ago. (As you might remember, EA has a less than stellar reputation for treating its employees well.) In any case, if any of you Massively readers gets the job, be sure to regale us all with your tales misfortune and lunacy!
CSR crams Wibree, eGPS, and FM into BlueCore7 wireless chip
UK's CSR has been making waves in the Bluetooth and eGPS waters, so it's only fitting that it's the first to cram Bluetooth, eGPS, and FM all on one chip. The BlueCore7 silicon combines Bluetooth v2.1+EDR, ULP Bluetooth (or Wibree), eGPS (which they say works better in indoor and other non-GPS-friendly locales), and FM Tx and Rx in what they say is a major step in reducing the size, cost, and power needs of wireless devices. CSR boasts that this chip integrates "more wireless technologies on a single chip than any other product on the market." Who are we to argue? They expect to have BlueCore 7 to be available in volume starting in Q4 2008, when you'll be able to listen to FM radio on your Bluetooth headset while finding your satellite position indoors.[Via CustomPC]
CSR shows off dual-mode ULP Bluetooth radio
We haven't heard much about Wibree lately, but the next-gen Bluetooth standard looks to be humming along nicely, with a name change to ULP (Ultra Low Power Bluetooth) and now a dual-mode chip from CSR that supports Bluetooth 2.1 and ULP on the same silicon. The chip consumes 10 times less power than a standard Bluetooth unit while connecting, and 50 times less power during data transfer, as it's essentially a stripped down version of Bluetooth with way fewer frequencies to worry about. This dual-mode chips means we won't have to leave the superior bandwidth of Bluetooth 2.1 behind. The chip should be available in the market sometime in 2008.[Via The Inquirer]
CSR shows off eGPS, says it's superior to A-GPS
There's not too many deets on this just yet, but apparently, UK's CSR is getting set to showcase a technology known as eGPS (enhanced Global Positioning System, if you couldn't guess) at Mobile World Congress 2008. According to the firm, it delivers a "universal positioning capability that will not only work reliably indoors and in zero GPS signal conditions, but greatly speed time to fix in poor GPS reception areas where most handsets are used." More specifically, it can "exploit data available from the cellular network to speed GPS fixes and provide complementary, fast, and reliable location sensing when GPS signals are weak or unavailable." Best of all, the firm is hoping to add eGPS capabilities to handsets for under $1 per unit, and it's also using the stage in Barcelona to trumpet a single-chip GPS receiver with embedded Bluetooth and FM radio. Unfortunately, mum's the word on when this stuff will actually find its way into mobiles. [Via NaviGadget]
Intempo reveals kinda sexy Daisy portable internet radio
Last we heard from Intempo, it was busy grasping for business with a slew of ho hum iPod docks, but it's getting '08 started by offering up a slightly (keyword: slightly) more attractive item. The Daisy internet radio can access "thousands" of online and FM stations, and it can reportedly last for around 20 hours before needing a recharge. You'll also find a pretty basic LCD, but outside of that, we wouldn't expect a whole heap of extras. The Daisy is slated to hit production by next April and will land on store shelves with an admittedly steep £149 ($292) price tag shortly thereafter.[Via TechDigest]
CSR intros multi-microphone Bluetooth headset technology
The same folks bringing us the ultra sensitive Bluetooth / GPS hybrid chip are also looking to improve voice quality on vanilla Bluetooth headsets, and the firm has now collaborated with Dynamic Hearing to offer up a multi-microphone configuration. Available on the company's BlueCore-Multimedia platform, this VoiceField technology "uses two microphones to capture the speech of the headset user before it is lost amongst competing noise sources." Additionally, it was designed to suck down very little power and sport uber-low signal latency, and also includes acoustic echo suppression, automatic handsfree volume control, and programmable equalization in 33 frequency bands." Now, how's about making us look a bit less freakish while donning these things on our ear?[Via Inquirer]
What Apple CSRs see
Over at UneasySilence, Dan has discovered something interesting. Someone has apparently leaked a screenshot that shows a moment in an Apple customer rep's day. The screen shot includes a multi-person support session via AIM, and a customer search interface. Lou Wheeler, the CSR whose desktop was posted no longer works for Apple. I contact Lou on AIM, where he told me "With the exception of some of the sales management, it was a great work environment." If you're interested in working for Apple, check out their jobs page.
A heart-warming tale of Customer Service gone right
You know, it's so rare to hear about great customer service. It is, it really is. That's why this story of one individual's problem with the Wii's optical disc drive is such a great story to read, not only for us fanboys, but for anyone who's ever had a horrible time dealing with customer service. So what makes this story so special?Well, upon calling in with the problem, the Nintendo CSR (customer service rep) found out that the individual in question lived in Redmond and provided directions to Nintendo's local repair center to take the console. Upon arriving, it only took a mere 25 minutes for the individual's Miis, Wii Points and save data to be transferred over to a new Wii. Nice, pleasant customer service. Ain't it grand?[Thanks Kian!]
