I received an interesting comment today on a blog post from back in March. Ellen from Illium Software found my post mentioning the problems I had experienced with their product, NewsBreak, which is a Pocket PC RSS aggregator. She posted a comment, asking if I could help them to reproduce this problem:

Jason, we’re trying hard to reproduce the hanging problem you point out, and just have not been able to. Can I get some more information from you about your Pocket PC model, and what other third-party software you have installed? I’d also like to send you a newer version of NewsBreak to try. Can you contact me at the email address I’m including? I’d really like to find out what’s causing what you’re seeing. Thank you.

I was happy to send along as much information as I can recall, as I really like seeing this proactive approach to product support. Unfortunately, my Pocket PCs (yes, that’s a plural… sigh) both died over a month ago, so I can’t be of much help for testing this issue.

I think it’s pretty cool that blogs are giving smaller companies new ways of reaching out to their users and working with them to improve their products. Even cooler, the post that Ellen commented on was about a competing Pocket PC RSS aggregator that I had chosen to move to, due to the problem I was experiencing with NewsBreak. My hat’s off to Ellen for having the moxie to post her request in what would otherwise appear to be a hostile environment.

Link: Ellen’s Comment

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