Boring video, but they’re right on.

Using the Gmail interface for email (while keeping you@yourdomain.com) is smart. So is using Google Calendar (gCal) as a shared calendar application. There are other great capabilites as well.

The best part: you don’t need to spend money on IT to keep your email working right.

If you need help using Google Apps to improve your organization’s workflow, Wordswell can help.

But that’s not the point of this post.

The point is what’s happening in response to this: http://www.fixoutlook.org.

This site simply explains the Outlook problem, and then provides a link so that Twitter users can tweet: “Help tell @msofficeus that using Word to render HTML emails in Outlook is a dumb idea. See http://fixoutlook.org and RT”

Within 24 hours of starting the campaign, there have already been over 17,000 folks who have tweeted this message. And because “@msofficeus” is part of the message, Microsoft’s Twitter admin will see all of them.

This is the first best crowdsourced petition – and it’s prone to change the way a behemoth company makes decisions. You think Microsoft isn’t listening to this? I bet they are – and if they’re not, then they certainly should be.

But there’s another interesting thing. When you go to fixoutlook.org, it shows the avatar icons of the Twitter users who have sent that specific tweet. You’ll notice that a lot of them are shaded green. What’s up with that? It’s a simple idea that started here: http://helpiranelection.com/. It caught on like wildfire.

Folks, word-of-mouth, mutual influence, the sharing of ideas – these are winning. If you don’t have a voice in the ever-expanding conversation, you’re missing out.

Don’t pay for great media space. Pay for great ideas. Pay to figure out how to get ideas out to the people that matter.

The “people that matter” these days? Everyone.

UPDATE: if you can find the Brody Bond or the Wordswell avatar in the mosaic at fixoutlook.org, please send me a screenshot, and you’ll win a prize (prize = any drink you want at Starbucks)!

UPDATE (6/24/09 5:07 pm): Microsoft has already offered a reply in direct response from the fixoutlook.org campaign. As of now, they aren’t budging. But, good for them for the reply! Moreover – wow! – Microsoft just responded to a day-old, viral, grassroots campaign that happened through Twitter.

It’s an idea that would help people remember you, and it’s an idea that would encourage me to eat at your place more often. Read for it? Here it is:

Below the sign that says “All employees must wash their hands before returning to work” you should install another sign. This sign would say “… Not that we would hire anyone who needs to be reminded of this.”

Everytime I see a “wash your hands sign” I’m not thinking, “Sweet! The people here are clean!” I’m thinking “Crap! The people here are idiots.” Yes, I know the sign is required by law, but still… it’s gives me the creeps.

Focusing on something you don’t have (but think you need) can be a dangerous, common pattern. The pattern is to identify something you lack and use that as an obstacle that prevents you from doing what you really want.

With an obstacle identified, we feel better. No harm done, right? No harm except that nagging sense in the back of our brain that we really should be doing something differently. Not to worry: most people come to terms with it over time.

I do this. I let obstacles to a task, a passion, or a goal serve as excuses to not attempt them. It’s not a fear of failure. It’s a fear of not having a perfect process.

This is stupid.

Chris continues:

Fortunately, many of the obstacles we perceive are not really obstacles. Many of the things we think we need are unnecessary.

Isn’t that true?

Some of this is tied to thankfulness. If I were to be more thankful for what I have, I’d be more prone to go do something with it. Instead, I wait for something – often the perfect, measurable, replicable, neatly-wrapped, guaranteed-outcome process – and I have an excuse for inaction.

What obstacles do you use as excuses?