Have I ever told you about that crazy day when a friend of mine made it onto slashdot (with a news submitted by me)? It is all about a modified X server implementation on which who-t is working for years already. Basically his version of the X server supports multiple input devices interacting at the same time. That alone was worthy the news but today he pointed me on the current state of development:

MPX now supports Multi-Touch! Watch this video and see what he means…

I can’t wait until the new features have found their way into the core X server. It might take some more months but I think they are already working on that. Let’s hope for the best.

As a sidenote: This piece of software was developed on a Ubuntu machine but I know that he also likes to work on MacBooks. Maybe we will see some Mac OS or Windows port some day too. I myself currently operate on three different platforms (windows sometimes for work, mac and gnu/linux at work and home) and it is so great to have most of the everyday applications on all of the three platforms. That is why I want to thank all those ingenious developers out there who make such great software which enables us (the not so ingenious people) to focus on our tasks in our convenient working environments.

Update: …and he did it again. This time right at the front page (and on digg and gizmodo and …..).

As you can read on playogg.org:

Ogg Vorbis is a professional-grade media format. It’s like MP3 but better—and it respects your freedom. When you see a file with the Ogg extension – musicfile.ogg – Play it!

Now you might think why should you switch to Ogg Vorbis if you are already so familiar with MP3?

The use of MP3 is restricted by patents, while Ogg Vorbis is not. Unlike MP3, there are never any licensing costs for using Ogg Vorbis, and you do not have to worry about anyone suing you for using it without a license. You might have heard about Microsoft’s recent loss in a $1.5 billion suit over their use of MP3.

These patent lawsuits might never affect you directly, but they create a culture where creative and skilled individuals cannot develop multimedia software without fear of being legally attacked. Using Ogg is one way to support them in their efforts and to encourage a better culture.

Most of my digital music files are in the MP3 format at the moment but I can assure you that the usage of Ogg is not different than using MP3. You simply use your favourite music player and add the files to your playlists. The difference for you is that the file does not end with .mp3 but with .ogg.
On my GNU/Linux system Ogg-Support is already pre-installed so I simply can play the files without any additional effort. On older Windows Systems you might want to go to playogg.org and download the VLC mediaplayer which is able to play Ogg files. Or you might download a plugin for your favourite mediaplayer software (e.g. a Plugin for WinAmp mediaplayer).
Eventually you have done a similar procedure already when you taught your workstation to play DIVx video files. After installing the Plugin/Codec you enabled your PC to play Ogg Vorbis constantly.

This is also a way to contribute to the open source community. You do not have to be a programmer or experienced PC user. It is enough if you demand open source alternatives to be used in standard products. That is already enough. Every additional help is very appreciated but this supports already a change. If you are ready to try something new you also can look out for music devices which are Ogg enabled. There are lots of them out there and they are not more or less expensive than anything else. It also is OK if the device play MP3 and OGG. That way it is an easy transition which does not force you to convert your existing music collection to the free standard.

Everyday my frustration as a customer increases. The quality of many products gets worse. Corporations and companies take their customers as granted and heave like they do not depend on us. We are not treated like kings anymore. Business (at least in Europe) is changing into a market place which does not take its customers serious any more.

Some weeks ago I attended a presentation about Kaizen (held by Mr. Minoru Tominaga, a recognized expert about Kaizen) which gave me back my hopes. Hopes about a better world. Kaizen is a Japanese concept which has spread to many companies all around the world. It literally means “constant improvement” and can be applied to many different aspects of business (or even life). Since it’s development the concept naturally experienced continually changes on itself and at the moment Kaizen often focuses on customer relationship and customer care. In Japan customers are called “honorable guests” and that already describes it perfectly. The customer is “king” and should at least be treated with the greatest respect possible. I do not want to go into detail about this topic but there are many companies (even in the western world) which try to improve their relationship to their customers. I too think that in the near future it will be an important factor to survive the tough business battles. In the last years company were trying to achieve the best quality to keep their position on top. As many competitors forced themselves to increase quality the level is almost the same. But one thing which can still distinguish one company from the other is indeed their way of treating their customers. I do not demand to get any presents or anything for free from companies. But I demand respect. The same respect I would give to other humans.

Lately I got the impression more and more that companies try to get their advantage at any cost (even with dubious methods). If you pick up your phone or start your email client and tell customer care about any problem there is a hight chance that they tell you without any hesitation that you are right and that they will solve the problem immediately. If you are confused now and do not know what I mean then I have a short example story which occurred some weeks ago. We went on a holiday to Portugal and decided beforehand that we will need a rental car. So we booked an Avis car as they were the cheapest (after some price comparison). We received a coupon which covered all the costs in Portugal. By showing the coupon to the Avis branch office they would give us the car and there would not be any extra costs (except some local insurance which had to be paid at the office). Everything went like planned except that when returning the car the clerk charged us a much higher one way fee than covered by the coupon. We did not argue but simply paid the difference. Back home after some days I decided to tell Avis customer care about the incident. Avis customer care checked all the facts and decided that they would give us back our money within the next days. No arguing, nothing. Of course I only told the very short version of this story and I maybe will again choose Avis as their customer support was really cooperative and nice. But the overall impression is that those things might occur not by accident but on purpose. In that case it really might have been a small mistake but there are more cases like that. First you are cheated and if you complain they will correct their fault like nothing happened.

That should not be. You should not be cheated in the first place.

Now after all that complaining we finally have reached the main story. A story about my heroes. A company in Spain which produces olives. The company I am talking about is HUTESA Agroalimentaria, S.A.. Some days ago I bought (like many times before) three glasses of olives. The olives themselves are filled with almonds and I pretty like them. When arriving at home I realized that something was different with the olives. Instead of whole almonds I only found olives stuffed with almond halves. If it would have been like that from the beginning I would not have bothered but I thought it must be some kind of silly joke. How could someone reduce the quality of a product just to earn some more money. I know that happened many times before to other products but this is terrible. Stuffing olives with only almond halves. I really felt miserably tricked. The next day I decided to send some feedback to Hutesa. No complaint or anything mean… just saying that I am not happy with their product and that I will not buy their olives anymore.

Sure not to have made any difference but with a great relief I went on to life my usual life. To my great surprise I received a very nice answer on the very same day. They said they are sorry to loose me as their customer and that the cause of the measurement was the pressure by a very big client of theirs. They decided to use almond halves to stay competitive. I did not answer immediately and the next day I received the same message in Spanish (they must have thought that I could not read their first email and tried to reach me again). This time I replied immediately.

Again I received a reply saying that they wanted to inform me that due to my claim they will put whole almonds inside again. Now I got really happy on one hand as I caused a change (Yes!! It still is able to change the system!). But on the other hand now I am very worried that they might not be competitive enough with other olive companies. I do not want my claim to cause any layoffs or other social dramas. I wrote the same to them and that is where we are now. As soon as there are any news I will keep you updated.

One thing I also promised is to write about this on my blog (although there are not many readers) I wanted to tell everybody about this very nice company. And I really do not know what is wrong with our global market. Who are the bad guys? First for me it was the company producing the products. Then after telling me the horrible truth it seems to be the food trade. But if you ask them I am pretty sure they are not the root cause either. They also might suffer from mean competition. Is this true capitalism? Will it get worse? Has it just started in Europe?

Now I seem to look very stupid. The little boy discovering the “evil” face of capitalism. Running my own business together with two partners I hope we will do well in the long run. But I am optimistic that even companies with a heart can be successful. For me Hutesa will be my first choice olive company (because they care about their customers). And I hope other customers will also show initiative and take actions when they are not happy with any product. Do not make it your goal to change anything immediately but if enough people give feedback there has to be a change. You have the right to let anybody know how you feel. You do not have to insult anybody but you can express your unhappiness. Corporations and companies might one day realize that real and honest respect towards their customers and clients is increasing their competitiveness.

HUTESA Agroalimentaria, S.A.

No update for a long time. Still busy at work. But business is running fine. And we managed to almost finish our website. Should be online within the next week.

Between meetings and tasks I have been spending all my spare time with getting to know the pre alpine region not far away. Luckily I was carrying a camera with me and so I can provide you with some expressions from the trips:

On Friday we will go to Portugal. Starting from Lisbon we will drive all the way to Porto and be back in about one week. I am very happy my wife managed to plan the whole trip and I am really looking forward to one week without any computer near me. We also booked our big spontaneous trip to Tokyo, Japan in autumn. Three weeks of Tokyo. That is going to be “legendary”.