At work we have been using a program (Mac) called SnapMail for a number of years. It worked very well as the program allowed us to send messages, files and notify people immediately about anything. You could be typing an email and up comes a small screen telling you your wife is on the line or the Revenue Canada agent has been waiting to see you for 30 minutes. But in the last little while it hasn’t been working very well. It doesn’t seem to work with Leopard and Intel machines on Tiger have problems. We needed something different.
We seem to have gravitated to Skype. It really is a pretty good program to communicate with in a small office setting. In fact it has a lot of potential because it incorporates just about every method to communicate with someone — text, video, or phone.
Now what if we can have the same conversation with our members? There will be some who use Skype and probably would prefer it. The possibilities of better and different dialogues are pretty far reaching. It would definitely be a new conversation method. And what about Board members who need to know and discuss information on a periodic basis? This could be a very genuine means to hear and be heard within various groups of a credit union.
WDC – San Francisco. Two staff members head out Sunday for the Apple WDC next week. The agenda is full of opportunities to learn about the inner workings of the iPhone which we have come to see as a means to have some real effect on retail banking. When you realize that this piece of hardware (or something similar) will give the member a truly portable banking facility it is something we need to learn and prepare for. The possibilities to retrieve relevant financial information at any time, anywhere, begins to expand the definition of mobile banking. And Rogers will soon be selling iPhones here in Canada. There should also be more information about the Mac OS server product which is turning out to be a very stable and robust system. Most of what we have built that surrounds the core banking system is Mac based so San Francisco is going to be more than just “wearing flowers in your hair”.
Tinfoiling 