Kudos again to Dell for their latest customer-facing innovation.

Last week, the computing giant launched Dell Ideastorm - a site that invites the public to post their thoughts, ideas, comments, critiques and suggestions about any and every -thing Dell - out in the open for everyone to see. Once posted, the community then votes ideas Digg-style, enabling the most popular of the bunch to float to the top.

The potential benefits for Dell: priceless! In one fell swoop, the company sent another loud and clear message to consumers that it is actively listening to them; and, at the same time, implemented a crowdsourcing mechanism that will undoubtedly enable it to float new products and services to market more effortlessly in the future.

Super fun to watch!

Talk about a meaningful turn of events.

In the summer of 2005, Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine began the now famous Dell Hell thread; where he relentlessly (tho deservingly) attacked Dell for its then abominable approach to customer service.

Cut.

A year-and-a-half later, on its Direct 2 Dell blog - Dell offered these words to their customers:

We are making efforts to be more forthcoming. We entered the blogosphere in part to take on negative issues. Will we make more mistakes along the way? Sure, but we are listening and learning as we go. In fact, the blog is all about those conversations, and it's why I'm recognizing this debate that goes on about and around us.