One of the things that I spend my time doing is designing websites. I try and get inspiration from other sites and follow some of the techniques of the most popular sites, whether that inspiration be with menu design, layout, or even color choices. Despite getting inspiration there is also a significant number of poor choices when it comes to web design. These example are even easier to learn from, because it’s things to avoid. Below is a prime example of something to avoid.

I have blocked out the name of the company, just to be nice. What is wrong with this picture? First and foremost it’s grey text boxes with white text. How the hell is anybody supposed to be able to read that? I don’t care if it is part of your overall color scheme, a light text should never be on a light background. The text should be black so somebody can actually read the screen.

If you are designing a website, you should make sure that people can actually read what they are typing, nobody is perfect on a keyboard and most users are not going to type out their comments in another editor then copy and paste. So it appears that this company is trying not to solicit feedback from it’s customers because it is not making it easy enough for users to be able to see what they are typing.

In addition to not being able to easily see what is being typed, the entire site does not work on a mobile device. You cannot move up and down the drop-down lists as demonstrated below.

On iOS devices the drop-down should automatically change to a picker that allows you to scroll through the list of options. This is not the case with this company. If you are designing a website, mobile should be included as part of the strategy. If you are going to go through a re-design, mobile should be taken into considering from the beginning, not be an afterthought. That’s another rant for another day.

Tags: colors, design, mobile, Rant, textboxes, website

I generally do not put my thoughts on politics on my blog, but today’s shooting and assassinations, yes they fucking assassinations, bother me. Why you may ask. Well, we’ll get into that in a minute. First a bit of a background, as it stands now.

Arizona 8th District Representative gabrielle Giffords was attending a meet and greet, called ‘Congress on Your Corner’, in her own district where constituents can get real face to face time with their repesentative. This, in among itself, should be required for ALL members of congress regardless of longevity. Getting actual representatives to voice their complaints and actually be able to express their wishes and feel as though they are actually making a difference.

Approximately 10 minutes into the meet and greet the suspected gunman, Jared Loughner, began opening fire on the crowd. According to reports he was using a 9mm glock pistol with a clip that could hold 30 shells. He struck Representative Giffords in the head and killed several others.

Congresswoman Giffords has several things going for her. First she is the only congressperson married to an Military person who is on active duty. Secondly, she managed to win as a Democrat within a Conservative district.

Now, I’m not sure if this has anything to do with it but it is rather suspicious. Representative Giffords is on a list of 20 individuals who voted for the Health Care bill that are in districts that were carried in 2008 by Senator John McCain. Below is the graphic of the other 19 individuals on the list.

The title is “It’s Time to Take A Stand”. This in itself is harmless. However, if you look at the graphic you will see that each person on the list is represented by a bulls-eye with a cross through it, just like on a scope.

This could just be a coincidence, however given the stance of the Republicans and Tea Party regarding the National Rifle Association it makes perfect sense. The second portion is a quote by Palin

Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!”…

Here is an image of the Twitter Post, which has since been removed. However, due to the nature of the Internet it will live on forever.

Don’t Retreat, Instead Reload. Hmm… does that mean take up arms and take vigilante justice into your own hands? Again, look at the link between The Conservatives and Tea Party and the NRA. Again, Coincidence? Possibly.

I am all for allowing somebody to express their own opinions and beliefs. I have no problem with people doing this in a peaceful, even if argumentative, manner. What one says is protected by the First Amendment. Nobody can silence what one says, at least not legally.

Despite this legal right, I do not believe as though Violence should ever be considered an ‘Answer’ for anything. Sorry, I am a pacifist. Fuck it, I’m not sorry. I am a pacifist. I believe as though diplomacy can be used for any situation. I do not believe in violence. In spite of this belief, if somebody were to attack me on my land you damn well better believe I would defend myself and stand and take any punishment. I do not actively go out and seek violence for violence sake. Nor do I go out and seek violence to make a point. To me, violence is just a mechanism of last resort that the uncontrolled resort to because they do not know what else to do to release their anger.

On the subject of opinions. Everybody is entitled to one. However, do not give me a load of bullshit and tell me it’s roses. Do not come up with your idea and finding justification to support your idea all the while ignoring FACT. Facts ALWAYS win. Belief is not enough when there are facts to support your cause.

Many people can be swayed on topics if presented with facts and evidence to back up said topic/argument. This is the way to win people over, not by forcing violence on them.

What does today’s incident mean in the long run. Well, first off a Federal Judge was killed. Whether it was intended or not, it has occurred. Initial reports pointed to Representative Giffords being killed, however these turned out to be false and she was just in critical condition undergoing surgery to remove the bullet in her head. So, there has not been an assassination of a Representative or Senator since 1968 when Robert F. Kennedy was killed.

I believe due to the association with Representative Giffords with the Palin ‘Target list’ that Palin’s chances of being included on the primary ballot or even the actual ballot for next year is drastically reduced to the point of almost Zero. Why you may wonder. Quite simple, nobody, not even the Republicans will support a candidate that could even remotely be tied to such an incident as today’s. This may ultimately be the end of the road for Palin’s Political Career in the United States, but only time can ultimately tell what will occur regarding Palin’s future. Let us all hope it does not include more reality shows, we sure don’t need those.

This incident has also shattered the political world. Many politicians are wondering if they will be safe enough to back to their home districts to attend their meet and greets. This is truly a sad day for US Politics.

The one thing that I do believe is that this incident has forever changed America. This is not on par with the Incidents of 9/11, however this is nothing less than Terrorism, and on our own home soil. This is truly a sad day for America and our requirement for taking action instead of realizing that we are all fallible and are not perfect. Our arrogant thoughts that “I don’t need help” will ultimately be our society’s downfall.

If you have any thoughts regarding today’s incident or the current state of United States Politics please leave them in the comments below.

Tags: Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords, Palin, representative, shooting, thoughts

The Radio industry, much like the RIAA and MPAA has shot itself in the foot. Today 103.5 in Chicago announced their replacement of Drex who was abruptly removed from the station on Tuesday. Drex was one of the most popular shows in the 18 to 34 Chicago market. This is just Radio’s way of shooting itself in the foot. I refuse to listen to 103.5 anymore. This is what I sent to 103.5

After the abrupt cancellation of the DreX morning show, I refuse to listen to or even recommend 103.5 to anybody. Drex was the only reason I would even remotely begin listening to 103.5, or even listen to the radio at all. The removal of the only successful Chicago radio host for the 18-34 market segment is a big mistake. The alienation of the most important segment will be the ultimate demise of 103.5. Drex was one of the few programs that would have talked about real topics that affect the lives of listeners. The removal of Drex has caused at least 6 people I know to stop listening to 103.5 for any reason. You have disappointed quite a few listeners and lost many more.

Where ever Drex does end up next he will find a loyal following and I know I’ll be waiting to hear from him again.

Removal of the Drex morning show has only hastened the demise of traditional radio. The sour taste will lead many to head to alternative mediums, like Podcasts, instead of listening to traditional radio.

Your lost ad revenue and former listener.

I hope Drex does a podcast, I’ll sign up in a heartbeat with no qualms about doing so. If he’s picked up elsewhere I’ll listen to that station. The loss of Drex in the morning is a big loss for the Chicago 18 to 34 market. In protest I have removed 103.5 from my presets. The only reason it was on there was because of Drex. Drex, do a podcast, or see if another station in Chicago will hire you. I know you’ll have at least two listeners…

Tags: Chicago, death, Drex, Radio

I have not been having very good ‘Customer Service’ year from many companies. Let me explain…

We purchased our house last year. One of the ‘fun’ things is transferring over your cable and other utilities. This is where the first nightmare comes in.

Incident Number 1: Comcast

Let me start off by stating, I love Comcast’s twitter support, much thanks to @FrankEliason‘s work while he was at Comcast. He is not the only one on this team, but he was the first to really reach out to Comcast customers via twitter. Despite good twitter support, Comcast’s installation guys can be useless.

My fiancé had her Comcast transferred over to our house when we moved in. We schedule the appointment, which was a Monday, and I took a half day off of work in order to wait for the guy to arrive.

When he arrived he began setting everything up. He hooked up the outside lines and made sure that was installed properly. He moved the outlet from one side of the room to the other (where there had been one previously, so it wasn’t too difficult). This included heading down to the crawl space and restringing some wire, which went through the vent instead of through the house like it should have.

When I have a service person in the house, I tend to check on what they’re doing and help as much as I can. So, Imagine my surprise when after 3 hours the tech was not able to get anything, not even internet working. He had to go and re-schedule it for another day because he didn’t want to miss his next appointment instead of making sure that I was satisfied. I was miffed to say the least.

So the appointment was rescheduled for Friday. I have to take another day off in order to accommodate this change. It’s not the end of the world, but just the idea.

So I wait for the next Comcast guy to arrive. Once he arrives, he started by looking at the connections outside the house. He finds that these are not fitted properly and have to be redone. This was the primary issue to the whole reason why the first guy couldn’t get the Internet and Television working. This tech spent the next couple hours making sure everything was working, including the Tivo and a Cablecard installation. It took two calls to get the issue resolved. That’s definitely one more than necessary given the inability for the first technician to fully do the job.

Incident Number 2: American Home Shield (AHS)

We purchased our house about a year ago, like I stated earlier. With a new home purchase comes a one year warranty. We’ve only used it twice. The first incident stems from this.

Our tub was leaking so we called the home warranty place and asked for service. When I talked to the customer service agent, Tony, he verified that it would be covered and we scheduled an appointment. I was informed that the tech would arrive between 8:00am and 12:00pm. Standard window of time for service calls, 4 hours. I figure ok, cool, I’ll wait. I waited, and waited, and waited. After the tech did not arrive by 1pm I called the dispatch office, he’s running late, he’ll be there by 3. Annoyed, I waited some more.

He wasn’t there by 3:00pm, I called back again inquiring where the technician was. I was told by 5:00pm and again he didn’t arrive. I was absolutely furious by this point. I had waited for 9 hours for the tech to arrive. He finally arrived at 5:50pm.

Once he arrived, it took him a whole 10 minutes to diagnose and fix the issue. I paid the deductible and went on my way, still quite irritated with the lack of service and inability for the dispatch company to send out another tech to look into the issue, instead making me wait at home all day when I had other errands to run and attend to.

Incident Number 3: Friaco’s Tacos

One day my fiancé and I wanted some Mexican tacos. Not having a La Mex or Pepe’s readily available we went to a place called Friaco’s. This has to be the absolute worst dining environment known to man. First off, we were seated right away, which was good, so far so good but that’s where it ended.

It took our waitress 15 minutes to get to our table. During this wait we were brought our chips and salsa. Normally this is a good thing. Not this time. The food was alright, no qualms with that. The issue is that the salsa bowl, since they’re individual, had a layer of white gunk on the bottom. Needless to say we didn’t use that one.

Once she did get to our table, it took her 10 minutes to get our drinks to us, and another 20 minutes to get our food. She swung by once and asked if we needed anything, naturally I needed a refill on my sprite. She never came back with my refill.

The restaurant wasn’t busy, there were maybe 15 tables occupied with 3 waiters and waitresses. So there is no excuse as to why our service was so lousy. She did not receive a very big tip, maybe $0.36 if that, whatever rounded it up to the next dollar was her tip. Irregardless we have not been back to this restaurant since and have no plans on returning. Vote with your dollar people.

Incident Number 4: American Home Shield (AHS) again

After our first incident with American Home Shield I was not left with a very good feeling regarding them, but we had a leak in our tub that was dripping down to our kitchen.

So, I went through the routine of calling them, explaining the situation and awaiting a call back to schedule an appointment. All of this is standard. I did receive a call within the next couple of days, an appointment was scheduled and the tech arrived on time, by 8:15am, as scheduled.

He diagnosed the issue as the bathtub needing re-caulking, which isn’t covered by our warranty, so I paid the deductible and went out to get caulk. In order to full test everything the gentleman had to remove a square of tile in order to verify the leak. Upon leaving he mentioned that he would call it in and report that it needed to be patched and that I would be receive a call within a few days. I was thinking, good, service has been good. That was not the case.

I never did receive a call back from anybody to patch the hole. So it sat there until after our trip overseas when I called back to complain that it had not been taken care of. Once I did hear back from the person who was going to patch the hole we set an appointment, he arrived right on time and it was taken care of. Again, it took two calls to get something done that should have been taken care of in one.

Incident Number 5: Juniper Networks

Just over two years ago we switched from Cisco Routers and Switches to Juniper products, why? Cost. Cisco charges exorbitant prices for both their hardware and support. For a bit more than what we would have paid for the Cisco SmartNET renewal that year, we purchased Juniper Switches and got support for two years.

Ah, support. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, there’s a theme to this post. So back in July we switched from T1s to a Fiber connection for our Internet access. We are still using the same ISP, but we thought 12Mbps would be faster than 3Mbps, so we opted to go this route.

Previously we had an old Cisco router handling the Point-to-Point connections and that router was handling the routing. Well with the fiber some networking changes needed to be made and I was unsure of how to rectify this so I called up Juniper Support.

I explain the situation, the gentleman on the phone, who is hard to understand, tries a few things and consults with his colleague. We spent an hour and a half on the phone when he stated that he had to get back to me the next day because it was the end of his work day.

I explained to him that at that moment we did not have access to our most vital resources, like Online databases, because the IP address was being incorrectly identified. And he said he could pass it off or he could get back to me tomorrow. I didn’t have a choice, I told him to get back to me and so I did the only thing I know how. I fixed it my damn self.

I had to be the one to find the answer to the problem, I had to be the one to fix it and verify that the fix worked. I had to be the one to do the job of the support person.

This is not what you tell customers. You do not tell them that you have to stop helping them because it’s the end of your shift. You explain that you have to go and you will get another engineer to assist you further. You do not push them off into a corner and expect the problem to go away.

After I fixed the issue, I called their help line back and asked them to close the ticket due to their engineer being unable to assist me and I had to fix the issue myself.

Guess which company I refuse to by any personal products from in the future. That’s right, both Cisco and Juniper due to the lack of support. Guess I’ll vote with my money, as you should.

Incident Number 6: Ensenda (Amazon Shipper)

I love Amazon and their customer service is awesome. However, their local shipping partners are far from it.

I, like many, have been eagerly awaiting Mafia II’s release. I mean, it’s only been 10 years since the original. So I decided I wanted to go with two-day shipping in order to get it sooner rather than later and with no tax, it was still cheaper than going out and buying the game locally. I figured, it’s Amazon, it’ll arrive in two days. Boy, was I wrong.

One of Amazon’s shipping Partners, Ensenda, delivers in the Indiana and Illinois area. Being in Illinois it only makes sense that it would arrive on release day. It didn’t. So I called Amazon the day it didn’t arrive. I spoke to a customer service agent and explained the situation. They refunded me my two-day shipping and had me call the shipper directly. Which I did, and the shipper called their facility and inquired and said it would be delivered the next day. Again, it wasn’t. So I called them back and they said that they could no locate the package.

I called Amazon back. Amazon immediately sent out another order at no charge with two-day shipping again. This time it did arrive on time.

How can a shipper ‘lose’ a package, I mean seriously, this does not make any sense what-so-ever. That’s your job, to track packages and deliver them.

Incident Number 7: Ensenda (Amazon Shipper) Again

As stated in Incident Number 5, I love Amazon. And I’m not too found of Ensenda. But I needed something from Amazon again. This time it was a replacement air filter for an air purifier we have. I, dumbly, tried two-day shipping again. And again Ensenda was the courier. And again they failed to deliver.

The ‘excuse’ this time was due to the package being damaged in shipment. Let me reiterate my earlier point. A courier’s job it to take a package and deliver it. How can you ruin something in a gigantic box? It’s not even a heavy object, it is a rather light object at that. This doesn’t make any sense either.

Again I called Amazon, they refunded my shipping, like usual. The Amazon representative I talked to emailed me a form to fill out regarding the shipper. You can guess I was quite pleasant regarding my disdain regarding Ensenda.

When Amazon got the package back, they instantly sent out another filter this time with One-day shipping. And delivery date: Saturday. Yes, Amazon does know what they are doing. And it was delivered on Saturday while we were out shopping.

Incident Number 8: AT&T Wireless

We went on an overseas trip in August and I wanted to add the international calling (which was a waste) just in case we made any phone calls while we were over there. So, I waited for 45 minutes to be helped, yes I waited in the store. When I finally was assisted I asked the service agent, who happened to be the store manager if I would be able to keep these. He said it wouldn’t be a problem, it would be a manual process and they might disappear for a few days. So I thought, sweet, I’ll be able to keep my minutes that I’ve already paid for but haven’t expired. (that’s a whole other rant…) So I waited until my billing cycle had gone through. The change was set to go into effect during the next cycle.

I saw my bill for September and noticed I didn’t have any of my rollover minutes, so I called AT&T on October 3rd and wanted this issue resolved. After getting lectured to like I was a 2 year old by AT&T’s customer service agent I asked, rather tersely and had to basically yell, to talk to this agent’s manager. After explaining the situation to the manager I was informed that she couldn’t put back that many minutes and an Area manager would have to do so. I requested that they send an email when this was accomplished.

I waited, and waited, with no change. So after I got October’s bill, I called back again today. Today was a different story, instead of a hostile agent I got a very polite lady who was adamant about getting this issue resolved today. I received a text message saying that a vast majority, 5000, of my 8118 rollover minutes have been restored to my account. My guess is that 5000 was the limit the manager could do. This is a good customer service experience, today’s not overall. The agent went out of her way to make sure it was taken care of. I do not consider the issue fully resolved yet, not until they re-appear in my account.

Incident Number 9: Twitter

I have been an avid Twitter user since February of 2007, yes over 3 1/2 years. I’ve been using Twitter longer than I have known my fiancé, and guess which one hasn’t let me down yet, no, not Twitter.

One of the most famous aspects of Twitter is the ‘Fail Whale’. It’s now so well known that a general fail on anything is a fail whale. This is generally quite apparent during SXSW and any Apple announcement. Well, last week I started experiencing the fail whale to the point where I couldn’t see my timeline of posts by those I follow. I thought, oh, it’s just Twitter, they’re having issues I’ll try tomorrow. Tomorrow came, same issue, so I submitted a help request. No response after day one, I figure ok, I’ll look again tomorrow (being Friday), no response, same thing Saturday and Sunday and most of Monday.

Now, throughout this whole time I was tweeting my lack of response and updating the post giving information that it was 48, 96, 120 hours with no change. I was quite irritated, not just that the timeline was broken but also the lack of response from Twitter regarding the ticket.

So I took the offensive and starting mentioning it, sending reply messages to support, and I included @DickC and @Ev to see if I could illicit a response and I think that is what finally got me my response. Now, I’m beginning to think that the response was just to shut me up. Here is what they had to say

This issue has been assigned internally and we are actively working on it. Once we fix it, your account should be affected automatically, so there’s no need for you to check back. While we are closing this ticket, we have not forgotten about your issue and hope to have a fix out in the next few weeks. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

NEXT FEW WEEKS Excuse me… few weeks, that is completely unacceptable. First off, it takes you five days to respond to a support request, take some of the $40 million you receive in your last round of funding and hire some more help personnel. And now the fix isn’t occurring for a few weeks, how in the world do you expect anybody to deal with not being able to use the biggest aspect of twitter, those you follow, for a few weeks. This is just not allowed. The whole point of your service is to be social, how can I be social if I’m not hearing the conversation. If Facebook were down for a few weeks half a billion people would let them know about it and it would get fixed rather quickly.

Here is what I added as a comment to the problem…

Thanks for the reply. A couple of things…

First off, I understand technical issues and can fully relate the things taking a while to fully flush out and get to the bottom of in order to fully solve.

However, 5 days to reply back to a support request is ludicrous. A simple acknowledgement saying ‘Hey, we saw your request, we’re super busy right now, but we will get back to it shortly’ or something along those lines would go a long way to easing the angst and irritation of users who may never hear back nor reach out to those who matter in order to get their issues resolved.

Secondly, Twitter is meant as a social network. Keyword, Social. If I am unable to utilize the service for it’s primary purpose, what is the point of even being on the service? Twitter is about communication, meaning back and forth dialog between users who may never have interacted by any other means. How can one be part of this back and forth if they cannot see what news items are being commented on, or even just what information and ideas are being exchanged.

Please forward these comments on to whomever may do the most good with them.

So that concludes my horrendous experiences, thus far, for the last year. Now, I haven’t had entirely bad experiences with companies, quite the contrary. I have had some rather good experiences. The best one, no surprise, coming from Apple. The entire ordeal is documented at Macgasm.net. And obviously the support I got from Amazon was fantastic, and the AT&T customer service representative I dealt with on the phone, the second phone call (ugh), made it easy.

If you’ve made it this far, You’re thinking, so what all companies have bad service experiences, you’re not at these companies and you do not have to deal with support requests. Well, in a sense you would be correct, I’m not at these companies.

Only half correct, however. I do have to deal with support requests. I have two Applications in Apple’s iOS App Store. When I get a support request, I try to reply, within an hour, to that person with an answer to their issue or in order to address their question. Granted, I do not have nearly as many customers nor support requests as many of these companies mentioned above but I value my customers more than these companies.

Why value somebody so much if you don’t know that well and they may never buy your application? The answer is quite simple, trust. I plan on being around for quite a while yet and I plan on making applications for a while.
If I can give a single customer a good experience they may start looking for any new applications that I create and decide to purchase them or at least keep them in mind for others to recommend to others. And hey maybe at some point they will have an issue and I’ll respond and they’ll explain to their friends how quickly I responded to their problem and was able to help them with it. And their friend buys my applications and the cycle repeats over and over. That is the hope anyway.

I have some ideas on how to mitigate the bad experiences explained above. Here what I am thinking:

One thing that companies need to do is invest heavily in your Customer service representative’s well being. If they’re not happy with something then they are going to reflect that towards the customers who will only think that much worse of your company.

In order to facilitate the dialog between your customer service representatives and customers you need to allow your customer service representatives to be open with management. Fostering an environment where the employee feels as though they will be chastised, belittled, or even disciplined for speaking their mind is not a positive way to gain the trust of your employees. Your employees are your number one asset to fostere a positive environment for your customers. If they leave, you’re spending more time, effort and money training their replacements and losing valuable entities that know some of the

First, companies should put quality ahead of quantity, but demand both. By this I mean do not reward representatives who handle the most calls, reward those that have the least problems and requests to ‘speak to a manager’. Make it a competition to create customer loyalty. Demand quantity out of your employees to accomplish quality work.

Second, Take the most problematic employees aside and determine why they’re so problematic. Ask them if there is something that is not working within their job, or the company at large. I cannot stress the following two things enough. Truly listen to their concerns, take it to whichever management team or person who can possibly facilitate change and report back to the employee the findings, one way or another and give it to them in writing. If their suggestion is definitely not feasible, then say so, and do so with reasoning. They may not like it, but getting feedback and true reasoning, not some management bullshit, will go a long way to gaining the employee’s trust. The employee may still be resentful if they begin to sabotage the entire environment, that is when you begin to either find a better fit for them, or remove them entirely.

Third, Be willing to adapt and change. Your customers are your driving force, they are the ones who truly determine where your project and company goes. They are the ones who will reap the biggest benefit with the companies’ flexibility and willingness to take the customer’s opinion and utilize it. By doing this you will only further strengthen the trust that your customers have with your company.

These are no by the only things that companies must do to foster the best environment possible and create the best customer service experiences for their customers. But it’s a damn good start.

I implore every company to really look hard at their customer service workflows, policies and overall customer satisfaction and do everything that they can in order to gain their customer’s trust. Gaining their trust will take time and hard work, but once you do this the customer can be your biggest asset in advertising your company and brand. However, once you give them a truly bad experience you may lose them as a customer and gaining their trust again will take twice as long due to their skepticism and remembering of their displeasure and dissatisfaction with your company.

If you have any of your own experiences or suggestions please add to the comments.

Tags: advice, AHS, Amazon, American Home Shield, AT&T, Companies, customer service, Ensenda, horror, horror stories, Juniper Networks, Rant, story, twitter

The following is my reaction to TVSeriesFinale’s post on replacing My Generation with re-runs of Grey’s Anatomy. This is the same commented I posted on the site.

As the target demographic, I’m not surprised that ABC would cancel the show. I was enjoying it, and I only know of two other people who watched it. Since we are the transitional group from watching a show at a certain time on a certain day to watching shows when we want, Television studios are continuing to alienate us and at some point they will not be able to win us back.

I’m one who finds entertainment outside of Television, I’m down to only watching a handful (House Hunters, Design Star, Project Runway) of shows, plus the History Channel, and the rest I get via Netflix. If it wasn’t for my fiance I wouldn’t subscribe to cable television at all.

Each of the major three has disappointed me by canceling, prematurely, the shows I wanted to watch (Life, Studio 60, My Generation). There will be a time when I refuse to watch any television at all, and I will just be the beginning of the ever growing decline of viewers, but the television distributors can’t see this trend occurring.

Once this happens, advertisers will be, and already have begun, going to other non-traditional mediums. Gotta love podcasts. I’ve purchased more items due to podcast advertising than I have traditional television, Traditional TV studios are just shooting themselves in the foot by focusing on short-term gains versus long-term viability.

Tags: advertising, cancelled, My Generation, Netflix, Podcasts, Rant, studios, Television

This first one was in my google reader. The second one was what I found on the website.

Is there no editing going on at the Chicago Sun Times?

I have been hearing more and more about the ACTA treaty and the outrageous 3 strikes law that it imposes upon citizens. I for one do not stand for the law at all, and in particular the ’3 strikes provision’. I do not believe as though any user should be banned from the internet because they were merely ACCUSED of committing copyright, without any actual trial to prove guilt. I do not feel as though this is a precedent that the government should even agree to.

The entire ACTA treaty being ‘negotiated’ in secret is a tremendous blunder on the part of the government. If this is how items are going to be negotiated, then I fear there may eventually be an uprising and revolt against the government with anarchy and rioting. It may not happen with this treaty, but it will eventually come to that. This act needs to be open to the public, allowing citizens of Illinois and the United states to voice their opinions and oppositions for or against items within the treaty. This should be the highest priority for any representative for the Citizens.

As technologist Molly Wood puts it in her post (available here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-20000480-256.html) on CBS Interactive’s Cnet.com, if this treaty goes through Citizens cannot do anything digitally without fear that they are somehow violating a treaty, which is not entirely enforceable. In my opinion, this is not acceptable and completely reprehensible. There is no reason why I should not be able to make a copy and use my media however I deem fit. No, I understand that I do not have a right to re-sell the digital formats, but I should be legally allowed to put a copy of a DVD or even a Music CD on my iPhone, Zune, desktop computer, laptop or any other digital device I see fit and consume that media in whatever way I wish.

In addition to the ACTA treaty the DMCA law that was enacted by congress does not allow users to use their rightfully purchased media for anything except how it packaged. I am not allowed to take a cell phone that I have legally purchased and ‘unlock’ the software because it would violate a provision within the DMCA. Because of the DMCA I am being told that an item that I cannot do what I want with this legally purchased item. This equates to somebody stating ‘Sure, we will let you purchase this t-shirt, but as long as you agree to the following terms:

1. You will not allow anybody under the age of 20, yet not above the age of 28 wear this t-shirt.

2. You cannot wash this t-shirt, except with appropriate detergent, and it must be of Brand-X, and if it is not, we are going to sue you because you violated our terms of agreement.’

This type of archaic law needs to be modified to allow individual users the right to use products, within reason, how they see fit; and to be able to do so without fear of prosecution. No, somebody cannot use a copyrighted song (which is the next topic) as background music for their movie without getting the rights, but if they want to be able to put it as a background to a montage of pictures it should be fully within their rights to do so without the fear of persecution or prosecution and jail time.

On the topic of copyright, Copyright laws in the United States have gotten out of hand. How is it that an entity can effectively hold all restrictions on an idea in perpetuity? Take any song written before 1930. Sure those are now part of the public domain, but any Beatles song, any Elton John song, any song by any artist that was recorded during recent memory still retains the copyright on that song. How is this even remotely reasonable? This includes songs from the 1970s, yes, some of these songs may be popular, but their viability within the market to generate a significant revenue is very limited. I cannot fathom the extent that the United States Congress has become so beholden to the Recording Industry, Hollywood, and everybody who has money that they are willing to put he freedoms and rights of the citizens behind the desires of a company. How is it that the United States congress has lost their way and has allowed themselves to be in the back pockets of an industry that continues to ‘claim’ failure, yet somehow manages to have ‘record’ profits for the year before. How is it that the representatives of the citizens allows the needs and freedoms, that the US was founded on, to be trampled by an entity?

I do not feel as though those with money should be able to control anything. It should be those without money who end up controlling something. It should be that the majority of what is wanted is what is passed into law, not what whims a corporation has to continue it’s antiquated business model should come at the expense of an individual. We in the Untied states have put more emphasis on the rights of companies, big corporations and have used the “law” (read ability for those companies to grease the palms of the politicos) to allow companies, like The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry of America (RIAA), to stifle innovation and creativity. All because users are afraid of being indebted, for life, because all they wanted was to put a song on a cat video and upload it to video sharing sites like YouTube.com; however they are not allowed to because the copyright holders (who are greedy) say they are not allowed to do so.

I believe as though copyright should be completely reformed. According to research by Cambridge Professor Rufus Pollock (paper is at http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/papers/optimal_copyright.pdf), the optimal copyright is approximately 14 years. This would give the copyright owners the ability to monetize their works in whatever way they see fit, yet, once it goes out of the collective conscious and becomes a thought in the back of their minds, other can then use the original work for their own projects. This would allow the original artist to possibly, once again, come into the collective mind of society If 14 years is too difficult for some to calculate then make the term 15 years. The effective copyright now is 99 years. How is that any individual should be allowed to retain a copyright well past the time that they are deceased. This makes no logical sense.

The United States government is failing it’s citizens, and by taking action against the big companies we can make the US a better place for all. This can mean a return to the top of success, innovation, education and creativity. If we fail to do so, the US will only become a former power who will end up bowing the will of a greater power and what kind of life is that. If I say so, it’s not a life at all.

Tags: ACTA, America, failure, negotiation, treaty, United States

I don’t watch much television. Period, I just don’t. The only time I tend to watch any television is when my girlfriend wants to watch something, or if there really is not anything I want to do on my computer.

There are only a handful of channels that I will watch. They are HGTV, History Channel, Food Network (If some actual information, not reality show is on), Discovery, and others that I can’t think of right now. Some might ask why I don’t watch CNN, MSNBC, or any other news channel. You want to know why, here’s why. All you hear about is the fucking elections, which natural disaster is happening now, and the most recent tragedy has occurred. I don’t hear anything about the conflict in Georgia, news around the United States or anything else.

I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE FUCKING ELECTION. If there were news about NASA, or anything but the fucking elections I’d be happy to sit and watch Mainstream news stations. But, the three current stories are the upcoming elections (which they’ve been covering for the past 18 months already), the weather, and the olympics. Now, I understand that the Olympics only come around every 2 years, but still, do we need 24 hour coverage of the Election? No, why not, because as soon as the election occurs that’s all they’ll be talking about then as well.

Don’t get me wrong, I am going to vote, and I know who I’m voting for, however I do not need to hear the same story regurgitated ever 20 minutes. Has the American society become so dumb that we cannot have 20 stories within a 60 minute period? I think that Mainstream media is beginning to shoot themselves in the foot.

If I were to not watch television and only watch television on the internet using sites like Hulu, or Abc.com that would be perfectly fine with me. I do not think that mainstream media is understanding that the majority of viewers do not want to hear the same story over and over and over again. It’s just fucking ridiculous.

One thing that I know mainstream is consciously aware of is the fact that the upcoming generations will not be watching traditional television and will be time-shifting everything. So at least they’re not completely oblivious.

My suggestion to mainstream media is to actual see what the viewers want, not what you think they want. Try polling them, and asking them what content that they would like to see appear on the station. Guess what might actual happen, you might actually get more viewers instead of fewer. Just my rant and thoughts on mainstream media.

Tags: Mainstream Media

This is just a quick rant on how Mobile me is definitely not something that most users who want schedule backups, that actually work, to be using. Why, well I have SuperDuper! all set to backup my Documents, Photos, and Amazon purchased music every two hours, since I know it won’t change that often.

While this SHOULD work, it is still syncing it’s initial attempt to copy those items. Now, granted, there are 8200 items, and it does total to just over 4GB, but still, the initial sync should have been completed by now. I did this about 24 hours ago, and it’s still not done, this is just too fucking ridiculous for me.

I’ll probably post over at macgasm a more extensive rant/review of Mobile me, but that will be forthcoming. I want to see how long this initial backup and several syncs end up working in the long run. So, if you’re looking for an affordable backup solution you might want to look at Amazon’s S3, if available. It’s roughly the same cost and it actually works with JungleDisk for automated backups.

Tags: Amazon S3, iDisk, Mobile Me, Rant

Ok, so I want to build a webapp… while for most things the stock apache / php / mysql installs on Leopard are great… but not if you want extensions… I need to be able to create PDFs… and so I need to build all of the stuff from source… Let’s see exactly how well that went..

Here are the basics…
Step One… obtain Apache source
Step Two… ./configure apache2 with the necessary options
Step Three install apache2 using the sudo make install command

This went well…. Next Thing to install… PHP
Get Source … do ./configure then sudo make install
That went well… Except for the 4 hours spent trying to get everything needed in order to actually compile the damn thing… but I finally got it working this morning

Mysql…. actually went well…

Now in order to create PDF files I need PDFLib… which will require a rebuild of PHP… I also need to make sure that the ldap extension works for my webapp… and lo and behold… it’s not installed… so now I have to find it…

Find Ldap source… using openldap… And I try and compile that and guess what… it requires Berkeley DB, which is installed on mac by default.. but it’s the wrong version… guess I’ll go and build that… There were well written instructions on how to do that…

download source
decompress
cd build_unix
../dist/configure
sudo make
sudo install

That’s compiling as I write this… I just hope that this works so I can have PDFLib on my server…

With the 10+ hours spent thus far just compiling things I wonder if Leopard server would’ve had any of these issues…

oh well… just the way it goes… I wonder if doing this on a linux box would be any easier…

I’ll keep everybody posted…

Tags: Apache, Leopard, Mac, PDFLib, Source, sudo