At CES 2011 this year, I did something that I didn’t expect. I actually won the Build Your Own PC Race for Charity. Despite coming in second and fourth before in 2008 and 2007, I was never really a heavy weight contender to win. Nor did I feel that I would be able to repeat any of my past successes. It’s a very Canadian way to think about things isn’t it? But after thinking back to the things that transpired before the four minutes and nine seconds of racing, there were some key things that I did this year that might have created an opportunity for me to take the win this year.

No Pressure. No Panicking.

I arrived late to the event because I wasn’t even sure I was going to go because I wanted to go with the rest of the Futurelooks Team to go race go-karts at another event put on by MSI Computer. So I casually strolled in, and was the last one to grab my number. I had actually panicked the organizers because I didn’t correspond with them at all the week or so before the event. They even tried calling me minutes before I showed up right at the sign up. But of course, it was for charity and I had to make an appearance. I wasn’t expecting to win. I just wanted to see if I could finish up quick enough to get in a race at the Go Kart track before the other event closed up.

I Did What I Was Good At

As many of you know, I like to eat. So the first thing I did was hit the buffet and stuff my pie hole. I took so many portions of the beef tenderloin that the lady carving recognized me and loaded me up. I was literally “mooing” by the time we were called for the racers meeting. Of course, I took another new plate of food to the racers meeting. You know. Just in case I was hungry.

I Tried To Listen

At the race meeting, everyone had their notes out. I shoved them in my back pocket so I didn’t get au jus or lobster risotto on them. I also pocketed bread sticks and bread so that I could sop up the remaining au jus. Since this year’s racers uniforms were BBQ aprons, there were some great front pockets to hide food for mid race snacking. I didn’t hear a thing because I basically chewed through the whole meeting and the crunch of the bread sticks didn’t help.

iJustine was actually behind me busy studying her instruction sheet in the above picture. The race attracts media celebs from all mediums.

I Went Back For More Food

Before they started introducing the racers, I B-Lined back to the buffet table, got another plate of food, and shoved more bread sticks into my handy BBQ racing apron. The links to the videos I’ll be posting will show some strange lumps in my apron. No, it’s not because I was excited. That’s actually food

I Ate While Looking At The Instructions

The systems we were building were actually pretty decent for a charity event, sporting AMD Radeon HD 5830 video cards, 4GBs of DDR3 memory, a GIGABYTE AMD 880 series board, a Phenom X6 processor, and both an SSD and a platter based hard drive. In previous years, they used really crappy Thermaltake cases that must have been their bottom of the line because they were so thin. This year they used CoolerMaster HAF 912 cases and they were solid. Really enjoyed building in them and most importantly, everything fit properly inside and didn’t bend like those other cases.

Kevin Pollack did his thing for 20 minutes, and I had enough food for 20 minutes. WIN!

Think About The Food

Throughout the race, I couldn’t stop thinking about how good the beef tenderloin was and wondered if I would make it back to the buffet before they cleaned up. So naturally, I had to go as fast as I could and completed my build in four minutes and nine seconds. Second place was four forty four and it looked like my time was over two minutes faster than last year’s winners. When I’m hungry I have to eat!

Unfortunately, because I won, I had to hang out and get pictures taken, and get interviewed by the organizers, and by BBC, and by any other news outlet that needed a statement or a picture. Didn’t quite make it back to the buffet unfortunately.

What To Do For Next Year

So clearly, additional preparation and psyching myself out isn’t the way I roll. I seem to do best completely winging it and with a full stomach, while showing up as late as possible, deciding only to come an hour before the event starts. I guess this is horrible advice for people looking for a secret strategy but it seems to be one that works for me. I guess that’s why they had to make up a quote for me for the official press release:

“This was my third year participating in the race,” said Stephen Fung. “I came in with a strategy and was determined to build the computer in record time. I consider the Build Your Own PC Race a highlight at CES.”

I chuckle every time I read that. But I guess it sounds better than what I WOULD have told them

Here are a few videos that I found from the event including one from CMHD.TV, CoolerMaster’s own in house channel:

I guess I’ll be there again next year. But maybe I’ll show up a bit earlier just to get my eat on. I hope the money I won and the computer I built goes to good use helping out the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Part of my success this time around I think has to do with the fact that I am paying for my own education. Since I’m invested financially, I’m just stupid to waste my own money. Overcoming my propensity to procrastinate has also been quite the challenge and with the importance of group projects, keeping in contact with other people that may not share the strange Dot Com Lifestyle Schedule has been interesting. That prompted me to hunt for an online collaboration tool that would allow me to keep in touch with everyone in my group and to share work and collaborate all without having to physically meet up. That search led me to Glasscubes.

Introducing Glasscubes

Through the power of Twitter, I was approached, or rather, tweeted by Sophie Le Brozec of Glasscubes. I tweeted that I was looking for a web based CRM system that could support my group for collaborating on our term project for Marketing Strategy. She suggested that we try out their new online collaboration software that launched on October 13th of this year.

Glasscubes is an online collaboration tool that incorporates aspects of CRM and Intranet. The software is available exclusively on the web and unlike other more complex CRM solutions, does not require you to install it on a server, or download a client to access it. The clean and inviting interface encourages you to explore and become productive almost immediately.

Glasscubes has created a video that shows off the interface and some of the cool features…

After spending the last couple weeks using with one of my class project teams who is working on some marketing strategy for a winery, I’ve quickly fallen in love with this very useful and affordable tool. Here are few things that I love most about this online tool for sharing, communicating and collaborating.

Cubes for Collaboration

Glasscubes’ “Cubes” function provides for the ability to create workspaces for different projects that you’re working on. For example, I’m working on a project for Pacific Breeze Winery with my group and in order to organize our thoughts, documents and files, we’ve created this space to keep all of the related information together.

The beauty of the cubes is that each one is isolated from the others so that only the people that should be viewing the project can view it. This includes all the tasks, files and appointments related to a particular cube. The cubes also allow you to invite people that may not even be part of your organization to join in with the collaboration on each cube. For example, you can invite your professor in to view the progress of a project you are working on for the class without revealing any other projects you are working on.

Personally Accountable

One of the great features of Glasscubes is the ability for the system to help you see visually what tasks are related directly to you. The “Personal” tab allows you to keep track of all the items related to you, from tasks to current discussions to comments on files you’ve uploaded for further collaboration. If you’re using the CRM functions, you can even see cases and opportunities that are assigned directly to you. To the right, you can quickly see which “Cubes” you’re able to access or are a part of.

One of the things that I liked about the personal tab was the fact that you can schedule in all your availability. This allows your group to select the best times to schedule a meeting or conference call. I really liked the fact that I could also see when people were collaborating on documents and discussions you may have opened, giving you a timeline of all related collaboration.

Connecting With Others, Following Leads and Solving Problems

Glasscubes offers some basic CRM functionality that can be very useful to companies that don’t need a full blown solution. Clients and contacts are added through the “Connect” tab and from that one can effectively manage sales opportunities and even customer service issues. These opportunities or issues can then be assigned to the right person on staff to take care of and they’ll be able to see these assignments in their “Personal” tab when the login. Of course, from assignment to resolution, the steps can be tracked and shared with others in the company.

We never used the opportunities or leads functions on our project with the winery, but having used other more complex systems in the past, the Glasscubes approach is definitely more simple and I can see companies taking advantage of it simply because it is easy to use and understand.

Of course, Glasscubes does allow you to import your contacts from any number of contact management solutions such as Outlook or any other software that dumps to a CSV file. You can even export lists out to use for targeted marketing use.

Effective File Management

As I mentioned earlier, using the Cubes, you can upload files related to that Cube only keeping things private and allowing you an easy way to track what files belong with what project. While this in itself is pretty cool and Glasscubes allows you to upload pretty much anything you want, from MS Office Files, PDFs, to pictures and videos (it even labels the files as a DOC, XLS or IMG etc), the best part of this system is the fact that you can edit files like DOCs and XLS files right in Glasscubes.

After selecting the file and locking it for edits (so that no one else can alter the file while you’re working on it), Glasscubes will launch an editor allowing you to work on the file as if you were working on it in WORD or EXCEL. You can do your edits and then save it as a revision, allowing your group to keep track of versioning and changes. Like most areas of Glasscubes, members of your group can leave comments and suggested changes for you.

Other great features include a useful search function and the ability to label things so that they can be easily found. As you start to label more items, the the labels show up in a list in the right sidebar, and even show how many documents are related to that label.

Lots to Discuss

Like how documents, tasks and even schedules can be related strictly to a single cube, discussions can be related to specifically to a specific cube. We used this function a lot to discuss different aspects of our project from our presentation plans to what additional work and tasks needed to be undertaken to complete our project. This also helped cut down on ineffectual email traffic and allowed us to track our conversations so that we don’t keep repeating ourselves. You can even post polls to democratically decide the direction a project should take.

Outside of the Cubes, Glasscubes labelled the open discussion area as the “Coffee Break” where anyone can post a topic and get feedback on non cube specific items. The Glasscubes put in an example “Coffee Break” post asking about who would be running the NYC Marathon, for example.

What Does It Cost?

As I learned in my CRM class, there is a huge range of pricing for CRM solutions. Most of the time the cost is so high that most businesses that could benefit most from a CRM simply can’t afford it. The best part about Glasscubes is that depending on what your needs are, you start at FREE and can scale with the system as your business grows. The basic FREE account gives you a maximum of three users plus 2 cubes, up to 100 contacts and up to 100MB’s for storing your files: Perfect for most school project needs.

Their most popular account is the medium package ($64US per month) which gives you an unlimited amount of users, up to 20 cubes, 10GB’s of storage, up to 10,000 contacts. This package (along with the lower end small package – $25US per month) allow additional security enhancements including the ability to edit documents online: something that the FREE package does not have and is one of the coolest parts about Glasscubes as I noted. As you head up the product line, you get more storage, more cubes, and the ability to add more contacts.

All of Glasscubes products come with a 28 day free trial so if you’re sure the FREE product won’t work out for you, can take one of their larger packages for a whirl. You will have to enter in a credit card number though which can be a bit of a turn off for some.

Final Thoughts

After a solid two weeks using the system with my class project team, I’ve found this system to be a huge asset to any collaborative project. With everyone on different schedules, this system has been an effective hub of communication and collaboration for our team. We’re able to work when it is convenient and assign tasks as necessary to get the job done, while staying in contact offline, making our online meetings that much more effective. It has also cut down on the huge amount of email clutter we would have dealt with, emailing attachments back and forth and potentially repeating things that we’ve already gone over.

Since launch, Glasscubes has been continually improving their product offering and working out the bugs. You can keep track of all the new developments on their corporate blog. I was really impressed at how quickly an issue I was experiencing at the beginning of my trial was taken care of, even on a weekend. It’s clear that someone on the other end was using effective CRM to solve my problem lickety split.

Whether it’s for school, managing projects for your consulting practice or dealing with sales leads, Glasscubes seems to be a great alternative to more complex and more expensive systems on the market. The fact that it is completely hosted online and can be accessed anywhere by any of your team members is also a huge convenience. I definitely recommend it for anyone that wants to be more organized and more effective when dealing with any task requiring collaboration with others.

PS: We’re giving away an ULTRA Products 750 Watt Modular ATX Power Supply over at Futurelooks. Check out the contest details to find out how to win it!

Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been pretty busy in the last little while and now I’m at the E3 Expo in LA with the Futurelooks Team. The crew is staying at the Wilshire Plaza Hotel in LA and it was going great till we discovered that another media outlet, Area 5 (The CO-OP Video Game Show Guys on Revision3) decided to setup a Mac Pro in their room to upload their videos, sucking up all the available bandwidth. At one point, I saw about 10 MacBooks on the network, probably uploading and rendering video onto that thing. Luckily the connection is far better at the E3 Media Lounge.

Yesterday, we put together a quick video of the things we really want to see on the floor. Check it out:

As you can see, there’s going to be quite a bit more console coverage at Futurelooks at E3. It’s pretty much a Michael Kwan show at this point, but Jason Landals and Eric Garay are both doing their best to find stuff for PC Gamers. Definitely follow Futurelooks on Twitter to see what we’re up to. We’ll also be doing a daily wrap up video so keep an eye on our Fututurelooks YouTube Channel as well.

I gave our friends at Kingston Technology a shout to see if they could help us out. I totally expected to pay for the RAM since I would be getting some anyway. I was just hopping for a deal and a couple more gigabytes to keep the machine from dying. Our man over there, Dave, has always offered to help us out with whatever we needed. We’ve just never needed anything aside from the usual review products that we check out on occasion. Instead of giving us what we needed, he went above and beyond and made sure we’d never need RAM again…

So that means we’re going from a measly 2GB of ECC DDR2 to a whopping 12GB’s of ECC DDR2 RAM! Want to see what 12GB’s of RAM looks like going into our DELL PowerEdge 1850 Server? Check out the video below…

Wayne Au from Auphan Software gave me a hand with the upgrade. Despite the fact that he’s successful and busy as hell, he still took the time to help me out with the servers (at 1AM in the morning no less) so I’m really thankful for his generosity. His company builds some of the best restaurant software in the biz (way better than that expensive Squirrel or shady Profitek stuff). That’s why his company has been doing extremely well, converting some huge chains over to his system including Blenz Coffee.

Wayne’s a real standup guy and he only hires the best so if you’re looking for a kick ass POS system for your restaurant, cafe or major restaurant chain and you want something that saves you time and money and stays running 24/7, make sure you check out his company. Also, if you’re looking for some exceptional quality RAM, you have to give Kingston Technology a ring or just find it at your favourite store because it’s everywhere. It’s definitely good stuff and it wouldn’t be in our mission critical servers if it wasn’t. Big thanks to Dave at Kingston for the hook up once again. You guys rock!

Yesterday, I headed out to Richmond Center Mall with our favourite background extra, Leo Chiang for the Vancouver stop of the LG Canadian Texting Championships. This special event was put on for local media and a prize of $1000 was put up for grabs. The winner would get to donate it to a charity of their choice. Also competing was John Chow, Buzz Bishop from Virgin 953 and April Smith from Aha Media. Check out the video below for a taste of the excitement:

Our friend Buzz Bishop returned to win this year’s event with a time of 13:454. The fastest time in Canada was 5:67 so it’s like being the best of the worst. But then again, a win is a win and LG owes Buzz a 10 second car…or that check for $1000 to his charity which is Team Diabetes. Here are the official results from the Vancouver Stop…

As Leo said, he also came to challenge for a spot in the Kam Do Mixed Grill Challenge Hall of Fame. It is true, I am the only one of the Dot Com Pho Crew that has survived and conquered this meal not only once, but twice. Stay tuned for the video to find out whether or not Leo lives or dies.