technology

Somewhere, a few weeks ago, I looked at some stats about our little blog and realized that if we had advertising, we could cover the cost of our site (and the domain and the email accounts and all the other stuff that comes with it). So, today, I placed an ad spot in the sidebar of our site. I also allowed some to appear in the RSS feeds, so you’ll see something either way you view our blog.

• We can’t, yet, control which ad types appear or don’t. I’ve requested that service, but I don’t know if we’ll qualify. I think it’s funny that the first ad I saw was for children’s clothing!
• Dear readers, you’ll have to let me know if they are too annoying or disruptive. I “watch” our posts, too. But, I get a lot of adds in other sites I read via RSS, so the ads are easy for me to ignore.
• Please, please, please when you are feeling generous, click an ad or two here or there. I want to see if our projected traffic is really as high as they showed me.

Thanks, family/friends!

You aren’t anonymous on the Internet. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever used Google or facebook.

• If you comment on my blog, I can see what city you are in. I even have a vague-to-accurate address (depending upon several things).
• If you ask me for help with something and then undo all the work I did with your blessing, I’ll know. Guess what? I follow the projects I’ve worked on.
• If you read most of the (infrequent) emails my business sends over the course of a few years but then suddenly mark one as spam a) I’ll know you did that and b) you’ll jeopardize your reputation as a savvy Internet user. Clearly you were interested enough to read some of them. Just don’t be a dick about it. Unsubscribe if you are no longer interested.
  And if you are family, it’s just makes you look even worse.

I’m tired of bad “sportsmanship” to use the term more globally. It’s just not that hard to be nice. It’s even easier to not be a jerk; ha, for that, you don’t have to do ANYthing!

Thank you, The Oatmeal, for many LOLs!

What will the Autobots think of next?

Thanks @ATasteForTea, for posting this.

When we bought our car, we left a $500 check so they could order it. Once the car arrived and we officially made the purchase, they were supposed to process the check with all the final paperwork. They didn’t but said they would issue us a check. We didn’t notice that we never got it. We got a letter from them saying we’d never cashed the check. They are right on top of it.

But their communication is like that of the dinosaur age.

• The letter is a form, written in all caps, with the date, our name, and the check number, date, and amount written in by hand.
• The only communication option (except for the website with no staff directory) is a phone number, answered by a human, with a 4 digit extension. While the receptionist has a sweet voice and is happy to connect me to x4510, it would be easier/faster for her and me if I could just type that myself.
• The woman who process these things is very busy and (surprise) always on the phone. So, all I get when I call is her voice mail. I have my phone set up to give preference to voice mail, too. Even when I changed it for her, I didn’t hear it ring in the next room. Luckily, she knows how to use voice mail correctly. But, since we can’t reach one another, we are still “playing voice mail tag”.

Had this been handled by email, instead, it would have been a quick exchange and then done. Just the time saved to “log” into voicemail for each group of calls and listen to the message(s) would be worth it.

I don’t know why some industries (and car sales certainly seem to be one of them) are still so old-fashioned when it comes to technology. Don’t they use email in their personal lives? Don’t all their friends/family use email (and facebook and twitter)? Don’t they wonder why their jobs are still making such heavy use of an older technology?

…maybe this is why their industry is suffering in spite of more people in our country and the desire/”need” for more cars?

Prior to the sale of the house, we’d have been calling every day to see where that money was. But, since the house sold and our budget could breathe again, it was a lot less important. Plus, I know that deep down we trust the dealership. And, we were right to do so.
“Hi this is Sally from Scion. Please call me at 512.555.1111.” is not the correct way to use voice mail. I don’t usually return those calls. It is important to state the purpose of the call and mention any deadlines or urgencies. Our dealership contact confirmed my mailing address via the message and even said something like, “I think this must be right since that’s where I sent the letter.” I guess since she uses the phone so much, she knows the right way to do it.

So, today on Twitter (and through either Foursquare which I play or Gowalla which I’d play except it crashes my phone), a guy I’ve met like-two-times-in-really-crowded-environments-&-he’d-never-remember-me situations posted where he was. He was Black Friday shopping at Toy Joy.

What? Did I read that right? Toy JOY? TOY Joy?

Did he just say that out loud? Does his mom read his Tweets?

Tweet

If you aren’t on Twitter, don’t whine about how you don’t have time for it. It’s the fastest way to share information with friends and colleagues. Furthermore, you have no right to kvetch about that which you have not yet used. Setup can be as easy as a single text message.

If you have a Twitter account, Tweet once in a while. If all you use your account for is to read other people’s Tweets, then you might be an Internet Stalker.

Blurring the Line Between Personal and Professional

Most people have one account. Most people Tweet about their work and their weekends. Most people do a good job of never Tweeting anything that would jeopardize either of these personas. Please do not Tweet anything inappropriate for the audience you have and/or the one you desire.

Use decent grammar and spelling. It doesn’t have to be perfect; in fact, it’s proven better if it’s not. However, everyone needs to be able to understand you. (Mistakes are endearing. Really. Don’t feel you have to correct every typo in your Tweets.)

If you want to be more, um, colorful in your Tweets, then consider opening a separate Twitter account (maybe without your name/town on it; locked for privacy). Just be very careful not to send any private or R-rated information out on your public or G-rated account.

120 not 140

If you have any hopes that anyone will Re-Tweet your content, then keep your messages down to ~120 characters. You need to leave room for “RT @username ” before your Tweet so the person who sends it out next can give you credit.

Following

Personal

If someone you know, personally, follows you, then you should follow them back.

If someone you don’t know, but like (who they are, what they have to say, what they represent) follows you, then you should follow them back.

Professional

If your client or potential client or vendor or colleague follows you, then you should follow them back.

If you can find professional associations and organizations in your field, you should follow them.

If you are a professional associations/organization, follow your members. How else are you going to know what they need from you?

Exceptions

If you are a celebrity with thousands of followers, you don’t have to follow back. It would be a good idea since your celebrity status is probably predicated on you having fans, but anyone with that many followers may not have the ability to keep up.

Blocking

If someone creeps you out, block them.

If someone you have blocked on other social media sites (facebook, etc.) tries to follow you, block them, and then also report them as spam. It’s not like they didn’t know.

If anyone you blocked uses your name or id in their Tweets, report them as spam. Again, they already knew the boundaries.

Reporting Spam

Report all spam you receive. Yes, it’s super-time consuming (green italics indicates sarcasm) to click that little spam button or to send their username to @spam. For the love of Twitter, just do it.

Irony Defined

As I’m writing this, Twitter is over capacity. I guess that explains why I didn’t get all the stuff @emil285 said today.

AT&T—or CinguATT as I like to call them—is the reason I don’t have an iPhone. I don’t know what Apple was thinking when they signed an exclusive deal. If you’re going to sign exclusive, be sure it is with a company that represents your same values of quality and customer service. Really! After all, any other wedding vendor would have to be utterly perfect for me to sign an exclusive deal with them. How is this any different?

So, I still don’t have an iPhone. Even when we got to leave/renew contracts in September, I went with the Samsung Rogue on Verizon. Emil did the same. Even the almighty iPhone could not sway either of us  to the evils of AT&T.

I thought I was the Lone Ranger fighting the good fight…until my friend Justin posted on his blog this week. Not only does he not have an iPhone. He had one and ditched it because of AT&T’s crappy service.

So, I no longer feel so lame. And, I hope the rest of you who are suffering with crappy service to keep a cool device will also stand up to “the man”.

We were due for new phones on the New-in-Two program from Verizon. We did a bunch of research and Emil wasted no time in getting them delivered on our exact contract anniversary.

We both chose the Samsung Rogue. We’ve never had the same phone before, so this should be interesting. It’s a little iPhone-ish with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It’s nice. I really, really, really like the device.

…but…

During my first two phone calls, I kept hearing this awful beeping during the call. From the sound, you’d there it was some kind of super-emergency broadcast warning. But when I look at the screen it’s blank (presumably because I’m on the phone.)

OMG how BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP utterly annoying!! Am BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP I not going BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP to be able to BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP be on a call be- BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-cause of the BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-ing going on?????

Apparently, that’s the sound of a text message coming in. What the BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP??? And why is it so BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-ing loud??? It’s really piercing.

If I’m on the phone, I’m probably not texting, so why does the sound have to be so intrusive? In the past with my (Samsung Alias), a very subtle “blip” would alert me to a new text message. but at least that sound was somewhat “ignorable”.

In the day-and-age of Twitter and all the tools it provides (timers, package tracking, alarms, weather alerts, missing kids, recipes, stories, humor, etc.), text messages and their alerts need to be treated as a normal/usual operation. Severe interruptions to a phone call in favor of the next Tweet are not acceptable.

And, while we’re at it, how can I turn off the pop-up that alerts me to a NEW text message? I can see the icon, #thankyouverymuch. I don’t need a whole other alert for this, either. It just interrupts whatever I’m doing and makes me far less efficient…and it’s annoying.

So, how the BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP do we BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-ing turn off the BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP-ing sound? Oh, yeah, you can’t. It’s built into the operating system for the phone or something. And changing phones wouldn’t matter because they all do it, now. Apparently, that’s the new way it’s done.

Mantra: It’s not a “feature” if I can’t turn it off (just like the doors that automatically lock on Emil’s car, making it very easy to lock the key in the car with it running)!

And when, exactly, are they going to put high-traffic users like me in their beta test groups before the new “feature” goes live???