Announcements

‘Tis the season to be jolly, and things just got a lot jollier for the winners of Fixya’s Holiday Bonus Cash Prize Giveaway!

Congratulations to our winning Experts, who wowed us with their amazing assistance, commitment to customer service, and contributions to the community.

First off, our $500 first prize winner, welcomejee! Welcomejee is one of FixYa’s most respected Experts, consistently setting the standard with his first rate Premium Assistance. He owns a successful business, but still finds time to share his years of expertise with people on FixYa. Way to go, welcomejee!

Our $250 second place winner, rulds2008 is unmatched in his enthusiasm for helping people. He takes pains to ensure that each person he assists leaves as a satisfied customer. Congratulations, rulds2008!

The winner of our $100 third place prize is the inimitable emissionwiz. This veteran of all things vehicular is a legend here at FixYa, and has helped more people than any other Expert. Thanks, emissionwiz!

Even in paradise, things don’t always run smoothly. That’s what captal413, a resident of Kihei, Hawaii discovered when his oven timer started going off incessantly and couldn’t be silenced. Kihei is a small town of about 16,000 residents on the island of Maui. There’s an active tourism industry, hundreds of hotels, and dozens of surf shops, but not a lot of appliance repair centers.

A professional repairman, total tech, faced a similar dilemma. In a town full of tourists, how was he to reach out to the actual residents who needed his services? How was he supposed to attract attention to his business on an island where almost everyone was more interested in riding waves than microwaves?

Luckily, captal413 and total tech found FixYa, and through FixYa, they found each other. FixYa’s new Local Repair enabled captal413 to post a request to local repair pros, and allowed total tech to respond, connecting with this potential customer right in his own backyard! Now captal413 can consult with top tech through the request he posted, can get total tech’s contact info from his Repair Directory listing, and total tech can get to work repairing that broken timer!

I’m reading Donald A. Norman’s The Design of Future Things and in the first 30 pages I’ve already found a literary gem:
“As technology became more powerful and complex, we became less able to understand how it worked, less able to predict its actions…Now our machines are taking over. They act as if they have intelligence and volition, even though they don’t. “

The author came to this conclusion after his friend retold a story about forgetting to turn off cruise control and speeding up on a highway exit ramp. Naturally, as we become used to trusting in machines, we are more likely to fail to give direction. And here’s the problem…why is it our failure to give the direction?

After waiting on hold for 40 min, why does a condescending kid on the other end of the line get to make me feel like a moron for a “mistake” that hundreds of thousands of other people have also made?

Hey Folks! We’ve noticed that a few of you have created videos to help in explaining various repairs to our members. We thought we’d upload a video of our own to explain FixYa to the YouTube, Vimeo and video community. (Feel free to embed or spread the link) If you’ve got videos regarding FixYa repairs, let us know in the experts lounge or in the comment section below. Thanks and keep the great solutions coming!

FixYa participated on Jan 10 as a judge for CES’ Last Gadget Standing Super Session. Narrowed down to 10 finalists, the people chose:

The Eye-Fi Explore Video Card. On stage, the Eye-Fi demo was amazing. Eye-Fi is a wifi video card with instant video uploading ability. These guys have partnered with YouTube and allow for instantaneous uploading of videos as they’re being taken. In fact, they put a Johnny Cash tribute singer onstage and uploaded it on the spot. Obviously they earned some serious style points with the audience, and the instant uploading capabilities of the product mean that with this card, what happens in Vegas is not likely to stay in Vegas.