Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

  • 16 Apr

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    Happy FourSquare Day!

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    Apparently 4/16 is unofficially FourSquare Day, a day celebrating the location-based service.  I’ve been playing with both FourSquare and GoWalla since January and have enjoyed it. It’s definitely interesting to see what places that you frequent, then compare it what your friends are doing.  While I’ve enjoyed using FourSquare, there have definitely been a few tips that I would offer to those who are thinking about using the App:

    • Don’t be lazy about new locations. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people create a new venue when one already exists.  The FourSquare App shoulders a lot of the blame, but users should try mixing in a search if they can’t find their venue.  I also wish that services like FourSquare and Gowalla had some kind of location reconciliation, where you could combine similar venues.
    • Don’t check in at work. The whole point of using FourSquare is to gage where you choose to hang out.  Hanging out at work and at home are not the same as hanging out at a place you socialize.  In some ways I think that checking-in at a place you work at is cheating, especially if you work at somewhere that people go to socialize. There’s a certain type of pride in being the person that chooses to go to a place – a shop, a bar or a gym – rather than someone who is forced to be there the most often.
      • In addition, don’t check in at home.  Even if you make it hidden, no one really cares if you’re “off the grid”.
    • Don’t simply befriend everyone. I must concede that in the wrong hands FourSquare is a stalker’s paradise. The degree of control, however is who you befriend.  Where I’m very caviler on Facebook & MySpace, I’m pretty reserved on FourSquare.

    Lastly, people joke about the PleaseRobMe web site, which pokes fun at the fact people broadcast when they’re not home. While there is a little validity to that, it’s easy for burglars to figure out whether you’re home.  For many it’s safe to assume that they won’t be home on weekdays between 9-5, and people probably can figure out you’re not home if there are no lights on in your house.  I think the risk of broadcasting not being home is relatively small, especially if you don’t list your address in Facebook.

    What are some other tips that you’d have for new FourSquare users?

  • 02 Apr

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    Who needs the time?

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    Just a quick hit: I’m really excited to go see Muse on Tuesday, but needed to figure out when we should probably head down to Broomfield. I figured I would go check out the show listing on Muse’s web site, but can you look at this page and tell me what time the show starts?

    muse

    Don’t get me wrong, this is a really cool design. Whoever’s doing their web work has some really cool things going on, but at what point was it a good idea to not list the start time?!? I thought this maybe was a fluke, but sure enough none of the other pages list their show times as well.

    Normally I would go home and look at my tickets, but these tickets were using this “Flash Seat” where I simply wave my credit card that I used, and we seemingly have seats – pretty hard to print the start time on that.

    It’s not like I’m squeezing the Muse concert between activities, but you’d think at some point it would be a good idea to tell people when they should make their way down.

  • 19 Mar

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    Motorola – how to screw with your customers

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    As you know I’m a Droid user, and for the most part am happy with my device.  Since the announcement of Android 2.1, us Droid users have been anxiously awaiting an update to our devices.  Google’s anointed phone, the Nexus One received the update back in February, and the Droid users have been anxiously awaiting news on when we will be updated.

    2010-03-15 12.17.04

    Out of the gate, Motorola said all the right things, issuing a post on their Facebook page on February 9th that the update was coming “this week”.  That was then met with refuting news a few days later on their forum.  After that. silence.  Motorola remained completely mum on the issue, both of their Facebook page, on the forum, through news sources – there was no word about when the update would happen. Motorola customers, including myself, have been complaining on their Facebook page about the lack of details.  I actually uploaded my own subtle protest on their “Motopic Monday” feature on Facebook. Finally Motorola shares the news: the upgrade will be rolled out on Thursday to a few test users, then will be going out to all customers over the new few days.

    Thursday comes. and goes. It turns out that Motorola delayed pushing out the update again, reported by Engadget. Of course, Motorola’s own Facebook page has been indirect and mum on the issue. Motorola never actually comes out and says the update has been delayed, yet they allude to it with their last two posts:

    Thanks for your continued patience. We aim to answer each and every question; if your post isn’t answered immediately, please know that we’re looking into your question so that we can provide the most up-to-date information as possible.
    Hi Everyone – We are looking into this new update and will definitely share with you what we find. Please patient with us! Thank you!

    Rightfully so, Motorola’s customers have been hammering their Facebook page non-stop with complaints and comments.  Motorola has just continued to botch this situation up – I can’t imagine how else they can screw this up from a PR front.

    Motorola, I understand these technical these technical issues come up and it’s completely fine – but be direct and transparent when you’re communicating this!  This business of putting out a statement, then letting weeks go by without any word – is completely unacceptable.  It’s great they’re using Facebook as a platform to put out this information, but by not following it up with any direct announcement or posts about the problems is only confusing people more.  Also when they try to be coy with the mistake with “How embarrassing! We jumped the gun” but then offer no additional information is only infuriating.  I’d much rather appreciate “We apologize, but we mistakenly communicated the wrong date. Please look for an announcement early next week” – then actually follow up like you promised!

    We’ll see how long it takes for the Motorola & Verizon to finally get their stuff together and actually be direct with their customers – it’s the least they could do.

  • 10 Mar

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    Done with Flickr [What I Use]

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    Well I’m trying to come back from the blogging hiatus that I’ve been on.  It seems that throughout my week all of these “That would be a great blog post” ideas pops into my head. I usually commit that idea to Twitter of simply let it evaporate – I’m trying to make an effort to get these back in the blog.  Thanks for bearing with me.

    I got an email the other day telling me that my Flickr Pro account is about to expire and that I need to pay the $25 to renew it yet again.  I’ve been a Flickr Pro user for 4 years, and $100 later I have decided to throw in the towel and push my chips toward Google.

    When I became a pro member in 2006, Flickr was one of the hottest sites around. Everyone was posting to Flickr, making it an awesome repository for photos. They released some pretty cool features to keep things interesting (I particularly loved their geo-tagging feature), but over the last couple of years Flickr has been pretty stagnant.  It’s funny because one of my RSS feeds I track is “Flickr News”, and my feed reader was telling me it was a “dinosaur feed” since it hasn’t been updated in so long. 

    Along came Picasa. When they released their latest version that enabled the Person-tagging and facial recognition, I was hooked. I migrated my personal collection for 40,000 photos and spent hours tagging faces.  In some ways it became an addictive game: see who Picasa thinks is who, see who has been tagged the most (me with 3,161), see how big your list of faces grows (263 people).  Picasa (Google) was really smart because now I’m seriously invested into their program. Sure I can take my pictures and move onto the next shiny object, but then I would lose all the work I put into getting these faces tagged.

    With Google enabling the people tagging into the web albums, the next logical step is to put my photos there. When you look at the storage options and see that 80GB of storage is $5 cheaper than a Flickr Pro account, the choice becomes clearer.

    So goodbye Flickr. It has definitely been fun, but I think it’s time to move on.  I’m going to keep my pictures on Flickr and will see about updating what I can with a free account, but I’m putting another one of my eggs into the Google basket. Scary and lemming-like? Yes, but can you blame me?

    Below I’ve embedded the first album I’ve uploaded to Picasa, our Valentine’s Day trip to Vegas.  It’s funny because I remember when Flickr wouldn’t allow embedding of slideshows for the longest time.

  • 25 Nov

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    Hate the BCS? Take out your frustrations on Twitter

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    Social media tools are changing the way that we communicate and interact.  Unfortunately for a much-despised BCS (College Football Bowl Championship Series), it makes it all the more easy of playoff fans to take swipes at their enemy.

    If you don’t follow college football, here summary: The BCS is a computer-based system that creates the official college football rankings based on a complex set of stats (# of wins, conference position, strength of schedule, etc).  The results are used to determine who will play in the national championship game.  The problem with this is that many times teams with 1 losses have been placed in the championship game, while undefeated teams get shut out.  This year is especially contentious, as there are 6 undefeated teams, but the BCS has pretty much come out and told TCU, Boise State and Cincinnati that they have no shot for the championship game.

    With the success of March Madness in College Basketball, combined with the fact that Division 2 & 3 football have a playoff, it’s puzzling why College Football hasn’t adopted a playoff system. One of the popular playoff alternatives is "the Wetzel plan", which puts together a criteria for a 16-team playoff.

    Earlier this week, I saw the story in Deadspin how the BCS has employed a new PR firm, whose first actions was to establish a Twitter and Facebook presence in this Social Web World.  This makes enough sense, but they’ve committed two serious errors in judgment: 1) Forgetting that they’re a controversial and much-despised, and would likely have more critics than fans; 2) Actually engaging their critics by baiting them into debate, without fully participating in the conversation.

    Hilarity ensues: For the past few days, it’s been a fun game to do a search by the BCS’s username: @InsideTheBCS and see them make a straw man claim, then watch their critics go to town on them without any response.  Check it out below:

    bcs

    What’s been great is that the critics have actually been presenting good arguments.  There are a few personal attacks here and there, but for the most part the responses have been well-reasoned (for as much as you can be in 140 characters or less).  The problem is that @InsideTheBCS doesn’t really respond to any of the valid points, it pretty much continues to make their contentious, canned responses that they’re given phrased differently.  They do respond to some users, but mainly when they have the canned answer in their wheelhouse.

    Let this be a social media lesson to brands/organizations, especially unpopular ones: Unless you’re willing to engage in an authentic conversation with your critics, then controversial groups should probably stay away from social media.  Having your PR Firm running this interference is only hurting you in the court of public opinion.  Worse yet, it’s banding your enemies together.  While I’ve always hated the BCS, I really didn’t care much about this issue until three days ago – when it became entertaining to have this conversation.  Something tells me that the people doing PR for the BCS are having a very lousy week.

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