Tag Archives: Business

Young, Pretty Texas Girl Reminds Us All That Sometimes People are Greedy Sh**heads

Business, News, Social Networking, , , , , , , ,

When I heard about this story, I was both shocked and awed, even though I keep telling myself over and over that nothing really can shock and awe me anymore. Well, I was wrong.

Young teen, Angie Ramirez, galvanized support for her battle with leukemia that she’s been struggling with most of her life. With only six months to live, she put out a call for help from all of the rest of us, and respond we did (with about $17,000 of supported donations). Well, as it turns out, a funny thing happened on the way to leukemia. You see, little Angie Ramirez, who is 18 years old now, doesn’t actually have leukemia. Her charity she created, The Dream Foundation, really only had one dream being fulfilled, and it appears that dream was to help a young, attractive girl make a shitload of money off of gullible people.

Now, having said all that, maybe she has leukemia, but detectives in Texas certainly don’t think so. And neither does the hospital where she claims she lived most of her sick childhood (turns out, they never heard of her). Maybe it’s all a paperwork mix-up. I don’t know. But it doesn’t sound very good from what I’ve read and heard so far.

But look at her picture. She’s cute. And I’m sure a whole lot of people saw a cute little girl who was suffering and really felt she was worth trying to help. But because of her, how many people who might have helped other people are probably going to think it’s not worth it because if they were fooled once, they figure they’re probably being lied to again.

In this country, we have Ponzi schemers who completely get away with their crimes, go to prison for a few years, and then come out richer than God. When you’ve got guys like Bernie Madoff, whose family then argues that it “deserves” some of the money that he bilked people out of because they have mouths to feed, you just shake your head and realize that there has to be a reason people feel they can, and should, get away with this kind of crap. Whether it’s bad rearing or a society that believes that winning is more important than anything else, including morals and laws, this kind of stuff is happening way too often. It’s getting to the point where whenever I hear a sob story about how someone is suffering for some reason, my spidey senses start tingling, and I figure that they’re probably full of crap.

The other day, I was reading a forum posting on a community site I have been part of for over a decade now, and a known person talked about some horrific things that have happened in her life recently, and she was asking for the community’s support. Now, I’ve known of this person for a very long time, and instead of immediately think “wow, let’s try to help her”, I started thinking of people like Madoff and this scum teen who cheated people out of their charity, and I immediately don’t want to help her. And there’s probably no reason to suspect a scam, yet the incidents of this nature make it so that I don’t trust anyone any longer.

That’s what this kind of stuff leads to, and it bothers me a lot because I’m still naive enough to believe that people should help people whenever they can. But when charity is treated as another income source, what future is there for people who hold out hope for humanity?

(Picture attributed to Ruben Ramirez/AP)

Facebook Offers Brand New Stalker Feature

Business, Economics, News, Relationships, Social Networking, Technology, , , , ,

I figured it was only a matter of time. One of the things that Facebook had going for it was that all other things considered, that crazy ex of yours wasn’t going to be able to follow your updates because you were way too smart to ever accept his or her Facebook friend request. Now, Facebook has decided, most likely because Zucker-dude probably likes to stalk cute females who think he’s kind of creepy, that even if you’re not friends with someone, they can still get updates to your status.

The reason behind this, according to Facebook’s PR, is that now celebrities can use Facebook like they’re supposedly able to use Google +, even if they’re not really using Google + because it’s not popular enough yet. However, the main benefactors of this sort of thing is anyone who has wanted to friend someone they want to get close to but that other person thinks you’re just a bit too creepy to be following them. Now, you and your creepy self can follow her no matter how many restraining orders have been issued. Facebook feels that getting you closer to that crazy guy is a feature that you really shouldn’t be able to opt out of.

Oh, I’m sure you’ll be able to opt out of it (if you can figure out how), but a few weeks into it, once Zucker-dude realizes that he’s not getting enough money from ad revenue to build another island to house his army of fembots, they’ll make it mandatory, because Facebook really knows better about what you want than you do. You just don’t know it yet. It’s kind of like the whole, “please post your pictures on Facebook because then we kind of own it, even though we don’t really own it, but we’re going to use it regardless of what you think cause we’re richer than God, and you can’t afford an attorney to sue us anyway” thing.

So, if you have an old ex who just doesn’t want anything more to do with you, Facebook has your back. As for that ex, well, it’s her fault for not realizing how we’ve changed and how much we mean it when we promise not to a) “cheat on you again”, b) “hit you when we’re drunk”, or c) “bring home another floozy from a bar because we thought you always wanted to do a threesome but were too shy to say it out loud”. Come on, baby, you know we love you. I mean, just ask our best buddy, Facebook. Facebook would never lie to you, right?

Now open the damn door and let me in!

A Nation Without a Rudder

Business, Economics, News, Politics, , , , , , , ,

Sometimes, it is so easy to fall into partisan bickering that it’s not even necessary to write the column. Circumstances fill in all of the details for you. But if you’re one of those people who purport to be lacking in partisanship, or at least trying to avoid the pitfalls, it’s a lot harder to talk about the same issues without someone automatically believing you are part of the status quo (one side or the other) and immediately fill in criticisms because of such observations and beliefs.

The President of the United States delivered his “jobs” speech last night, and it went over like a lead balloon. The Los Angeles Times (most definitely not a conservative newspaper) took a tongue in cheek approach to covering the speech, and wrote an article that is probably one of the most sarcastic I have read in ages. Here’s an example:

But here’s the catch that Obama and his Windy City wizards missed: Most Americans are not politically obedient machine Chicagoans. Like a linebacker reading the quarterback’s eyes, they’ve already figured out this South Sider’s game.

But after the laughing subsides, you have to start looking at the bigger picture and wonder what’s really going on here. If it’s just about one side failing, and the other side benefiting, I guess it would be fine (if you were on the side benefiting, I guess), but in this case, we’re not in a zero sum situation (where one side wins); we’re in a no sum situation (where no one wins). The United States is in such need for sustained success, and we’re nowhere near finding it.

Unfortunately, our country is like a boat with no rudder. Granted, it’s a pretty strong boat, capable of floating quite well, but at the moment, no one has any idea where to take it, and even if they did, they don’t know what to do with it once we get where we’re going. Instead, the hope is that things will get better, and all we have to do is just hold our breath until we get to that better place. That’s not a plan for sustained greatness. It’s a plan to avoid bad things by hoping things won’t be so bad if we get beyond the current wave of bad things.

So what is the answer? Well, we need leadership that can focus on what’s really the problems with America and then do something about fixing them. But as long as every leader is only interested in self-interests, like getting re-elected, we’re never going to find a solution because we’re too stupid to realize that we need to allow them to fix things first instead of punishing them for trying to do what’s right. It’s like the whole Jimmy Carter election where he spent his re-election period trying to point out what needed to be done to fix America. He got slammed and destroyed by his opponent because he “hated America” and other such false-isms. We’re so stupid and incapable of realizing our own self-interests that we’ll let someone say nice things about us and then convince ourselves that the person must be a great leader because he said good things about us. That’s how simple the America psyche is. And that’s why we’ll never actually get any success.

America needs a splash of cold water in its face to wake up and realize what’s really wrong. But we’ll never get that because anyone who wants to run for office is doomed to have to say nice things and embrace American exceptionalism rather than try to fix anything that’s wrong. Think of it this way: If I was to run for office and say that the way to fix our cities is to eradicate poverty by actually focusing our attention on improving the lives of people in poverty, while creating a new atmosphere of intolerance towards gangs, racism, hatred, and corruption, and then turned around and devoted my political life to doing just that, my career would be over before it started. However, if I got up on stage and talked about how great America is, how I’ll use my office to put more police on the streets to “stop crime”, and that I will support business to “rebuild this country”, I have a far better chance of being elected, and once in office, I’ll be completely ineffective, but will probably be able to enrich myself by giving rich lobbyists exactly what they need to make sure their clients become richer, while people who really need help get limited help and lots of condemnation for not raising themselves up by their bootstraps. Think about that for a second because I’ve described practically every politician out there, from your local mayor to the President of the United States. And somewhere out there is a voice thinking to itself, “well, the problem is too big, so there’s really nothing that can be done about it” and another voice thinking, “well, if I can’t fix it, I may as well try to profit off of it and make a good life for myself”.

And so the band will keep on playing on.

America Needs a Social Messiah

Business, Economics, Education, News, Politics, Social Networking, Technology, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Most people feel it but don’t really know how to put it into words. Something’s wrong with our country, everyone seems to know it, but no one really knows what to do about it. Our politicians keep claiming they have it all figured out, but they’re floundering, unsure of what to do and constantly going back on everything they say because they’re as confused as the masses. Something’s wrong, and we’re at a stage where something needs to happen to fix what’s wrong.

Having said that, I have to point out that one of two things is going to happen (aside from nothing happening and this state of morass continuing for more years before a solution finally occurs). Either someone is going to come along and rally everyone together to lead them off the end of a cliff, or someone, or some thing, is going to arrive and lead us to a better place. We’re at that stage where we need something, and unfortunately everything already in place is totally incapable of doing the trick.

This is part of why Obama became president. He came after a crappy period in US history, when we had a president and and administration that led the country down a road into near despair and depravity. He came along and promised a new sense of America that would put the country back on track, kind of like a political messiah who would lead us to the proverbial promised land. Instead, he gave us a lot of what we already had, and basically became Bush Light, leaving us in a state where we’re still waiting for someone to come along and pick up the slack he was supposed to actually use to make things better.

It’s not just a bad economy that’s causing the frustration. It’s a sense that no one knows what to do with the most powerful country on the planet. We have no rudder, steering us to some place better because we honestly don’t know where a better place might exist. Technologically, we’ve created the computer and hand held devices that make life simpler, although they tend to make things even more complicated (adding to our work day instead of cutting it down). Intellectually, we kind of have a lot of science and medicine already figured out, although we still can’t provide health care for everyone, our medicine is created by companies that make only the drugs that are profitable and lobby to make sure things don’t get better for the masses, and we pay our businessmen far more than our engineers and scientists, which means we’ll always have more people making money than making better products. Our political landscape hasn’t changed since the 1800s, as we still rely on diplomacy that requires tit for tat game theoretical models which reward last year’s actions and beg next year’s compliance (even the Roman Empire planned five years ahead, rather than this “what have you done for me lately” policy we seem to have fallen into).

In other words, we don’t seem to have a direction, or even a clue as to how to get ourselves pointed in any direction. People are so focused on the now that they could care less about the future, and anyone who things progressively is seen as foolish and foolhardy, which means we are like ten year olds planning for lifetimes of mediocrity.

This is the time when someone can come along and change things. This could be a great thing, especially if we find an enlightened thinker, but unfortunately we’re so 18th century in our thinking that we all seem to believe we need an enlightened “leader” rather than an enlightened “thinker.” Think about that for a moment. When it comes down to it, we’re going to end up going to the polls, or erecting an homage to a power base, rather than follow the enlightened ideas of someone who has the right ideas. We’re so Hobbesian in our ideals (needing a leader to lead us) that we have forgotten that the US was created in Lockeian ideals (where we control the leader), and really should have been leading to Rousseauian ideals (where the group identity has more power than the individualistic desires that we have today…where some corporate entity can dominate the masses because it has economic power that speaks louder than ideas and voices).

Part of my fear is that most of the west is filled with people who are only capable of the lowest levels of Maslowian achievements (basic needs) rather than higher level analysis (using logic to figure out ways to fulfill needs rather than immediate gratification). This means that when someone comes along and tells us what we want to hear, we’ll comply and expect great results, and when that person proves to be no better than your average Detroit politician (i.e., corrupt), we’ll back that person even when things turn into Ponzi schemes and false hopes and promises. When people are incapable of thinking logically through higher level concepts, they’re constantly doomed to being cheated and exploited by their leaders (kind of where we are today).

The ideas of Rousseau are probably interesting to point out here because the ideas he espoused were those of an enlightened society that realizes its needs are met through its communicative knowledge, but as long as we want things fulfilled within easily constructed plans, we’re always going to be doomed to Hobbesian outcomes (the leader telling us to do what to do so he can get the payoff instead of us). The solution, unfortunately, involves more and more people talking to each other about how to make things better, but as long as media is one-way communication (them to us), we’re never going to get there. Social networking is designed to be two-way, but as I look at the recent approaches of Facebook and Google+, all I see are attempts to create celebrities with bullhorns, rather than a process to open communication between both sides. Which means we’re moving further and further away from where we need to be.

At the end of a diatribe like this, I’m sure the logical question will come: “Do we need to know this for the test?” And when I say no, thinking stops and texting starts.

So I give up again.

I is a teacher

Education, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , ,

A new semester is finally about to begin. Again, I will be teaching college political science and interpersonal communication, two separate disciplines, but two fields I am qualified to teach). Strangely enough, the two disciplines really aren’t that different from each other.

While I’m looking forward to a new semester of new young (and some older) minds to educate, I’m also feeling a bit apprehensive, and it’s mainly because our country is so negative towards teachers that I’m tempted to tell America to go screw itself and stop educating anyone on anything. The money isn’t all that great, so that’s not the only reason anyone would ever teach. But whenever I read about some critic of education going all half cocked about how teachers are lazy, how they only work a short period of time and get great pay (which they rarely do), and all sorts of other insults, I want to just say screw it. It’s not worth it. If America sees education as less important than business than let’s let the market figure it all out (which to make a long story short, the market is completely incapable of handling altruistic disciplines, like education, because there is no profit in doing the right thing to make your country benefit in the long run). Altruism, which is quite often the only reason to teach, is very difficult to maintain, especially when society goes out of its way to ridicule your field and everyone who has ever gone to school is convinced he or she is an expert on teaching, even though they have absolutely no experience at teaching, or so little that they have nothing solid to contribute.

When I first started teaching years ago, I remember being bogged down by the fact that I was overly concerned that a few of my students were struggling and no one else seemed to care. Other colleagues would tell me they were lazy, so forget about them, but I didn’t feel that way, and by getting closer to them, I discovered that there was more going on with their personal lives that was actually interfering with their learning. I realized then and there that they were going to fail because everyone else gave up on them because it was too much work to care, not because it was the right or wrong thing to do. What I discovered then and there is that educators who care are quickly discouraged from caring and working harder, quite often by the system, and sometimes by the same people they educate. Yet, I was convinced that this was important to overcome, or our very reason for teaching was gone.

Years later, I found myself in the same situation with a few students just last semester. It was so difficult to try to be more available than the system allowed, yet I tried, and in the end all you get is sometimes a belated thank you from someone who may or may not have saw you as their ally rather than the person who was making their education “more difficult” by forcing them to jump through hoops no one forced them to do so in the past. A couple of students out of the blue contacted me and thanked me, which may not have been the reward that completely paid back the efforts, but it helped, and that sort of thing is the item that keeps a teacher going. However, when attacked by so many other who really don’t care and see you as the enemy (for bizarre reasons that make no logical sense), it becomes less and less likely that you’ll continue trying.

So, I go into a new semester, thinking that maybe this will be the time when I find that one struggling student who needs that certain nudge forward, and hopefully I won’t be discouraged, rejected and forsaken at the time that one person needs a little more from an educator who is doing everything possible just to make sure the trains run on time (for the sake of an Italian historical reference of competent leadership).

When you’re standing up in front of a class of students and explaining the virtues of the governmental system, as proposed by Adams and Madison, you have to bite your lip after that young student in the back row raises her hand and asks: “Do we have to know that for the test?” I remember once responding to that exact question with a ten minute lecture on the importance of knowing information, history and relevance to all sorts of connective synapses of knowledge. How Caesar understood that Alexander’s charge into India incorporated phalanx technology with the scattering of forces or how Patton understood that Caesar’s understanding of Alexander showed him how a faster tank can be stopped by a barrage of spread ammunition. To them, nuance was more important than specific knowledge, but they came to specific knowledge through understanding of nuance. Even when explaining such things, you’ll still have one student sitting there wondering, “is this going to be on the test?”

Unfortunately, teaching can be a lot like that.

Creating Apps, Programming and Just Plain Ole’ Creativity

Business, Computer Games, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recently, I mentioned that I had decided to start making apps. Originally, my thought was to program in Android, mainly because I wasn’t a fan of Apple’s nefarious walled garden. But then I started to realize that all of my Internet stuff was involved with Mac/Apple, including my iPhone and my iPad, so I ended up buying a MacBook Pro and downloading Xcode to start using Objective C to write iPhone and iPad apps. So here I am.

What I discovered is that getting started is never easy. I think this is why most app designers never end up actually designing any apps. The learning curve is freaking huge. But once you get past it, you actually start to get somewhere. But man, what a journey that learning curve has been. I could give you an Odyssey-like journey of a story, but I’ll save that for another time. I’d rather just talk about creativity and design today.

You see, I used to be a computer programmer back in the day when there weren’t a whole lot of different languages for programming. I learned BASIC and then went to school and learned FORTRAN. Right after that, I taught myself COBOL. Shortly after that, I designed my own word processor and then one of the very first databases (in the days before Filemaker and Access were even considerations). That first database housed the Asian threat assessment for the US Forces in Southeast Asia in the 1980s. People from all over the Asian allied forces visited my office during that time just amazed that I was able to take a paper filing system of known threats and turn it into something that people could use to compare cases they were working on. At the time, there was no such thing as an Internet linkage system, so if you wanted to access the database, you had to come to my office and enter the names yourself. Or they’d phone me and ask me over the phone; there was no thought of phone surveillance back then. We were really naive back then.

Anyway, I had designed this back when few people had personal computers. At the time, I used a Wang computer system. Personally, I coded on a supped up Radio Shack TRS-80 Model IV. Man, that thing was the shit back then. Now, it has less processing power than my $1.99 calculator I bought at Wal Mart.

But because I was in the military, the computer revolution quickly came and passed me by. I pretty much missed the whole thing. When I got out of the service, I had a few stints working for computer gaming companies like Maxis (working on Sim City and The Sims) and Electronic Arts, but it was pretty obvious that the programming world was changing quickly, and I was not keeping up with it.

For years, I kept telling myself I would get back into it. I created a bunch of games when I first started out, and I keep thinking that my way of coding is so much different than everyone else’s. I keep thinking I need to get back into it and develop something the way that only Duane might ever do. But I kept avoiding it and doing other things.

Then I decided to do the whole apps thing. And I’m learning. And right off the start, I’ve started to see a few things I would like to create that no one seems to be doing. And as I used to do back when I first started, I find myself wondering, why isn’t someone else coming up with these ideas, too? The self-indulgent part of me wants to say that I’m exceptional, but the cynic in me says that I’m not smarter or more innovative than anyone else. So why do I keep coming up with really bizarre ways to do things that other people aren’t? Some people look at Facebook and say, “wow, what a great idea. Wish I would have thought of that.” I looked at Facebook when I first saw it (and just a few minutes ago) and think: Why would they have stopped with that? There were so many other things they could have done with it, things that could have enhanced these social communities, but instead they created an interactive business card model that keeps you informed what other people might be doing, kind of like a boring stalker who has nothing better to do. Anyway.

So, I’m starting to think this is the direction I should have been going a long time ago. Currently, as I learn to code through Xcode, Alice and Objective-C, I keep coming up with grandiose ideas of things I would like to do. And I keep finding myself wondering, why isn’t someone else already doing this? I sometimes feel like Socrates responding to the Oracle of Delphi who claimed he was the smartest man alive, and Socrates spent the rest of his life trying to disprove the Oracle. Well, the difference is: The Oracle never said I was the smartest guy alive. As a matter of fact, the Oracle would have had no idea who I was and would have shrugged his shoulders if asked about me in the first place. At least I have an easy task ahead of me because I don’t have to disprove anyone of anything, and no government will force me to drink hemlock because I taught society’s kids to question authority. Nowadays, Socrates would have been unknown as well, competing against people like Kim Kardasian and Paris Hilton and the whole concept of being famous for being famous. But I’m kind of rambling now as this wasn’t really the topic I wanted to discuss.

So I’m making apps now. And I’m writing my first post on my iPad’s Word Press app. It might not even make it to the server. Hell, if I designed it, it would do all sorts of fun things, but knowing my attention to detail, “publish” would be the one thing I’d have forgotten, never thinking that was all that interesting to begin with. I guess there’s something to be said for practicalities. I hear they can be useful.

Why Google Plus Won’t Beat Facebook

Business, Social Networking, , , , ,

I recently signed up for Google Plus. It took finding someone who get me into the beta, or whatever it is they’re calling the early period of Google Plus, but because everyone was talking about how great it was, I had to see for myself. Right off, I can tell you that I’m extremely underwelmed by the experience. The majority of the problem for me is that there’s no one I know already on it, so joining it is kind of useless. Plus, working with Google is a nightmare of proprortions when it comes to user friendly material. Not once, with any product, has Google ever really gotten it right. I’m surprised that I’m still having to make this comment.

One thing that Google fails at is simplicity. Oh, it claims it’s simple, but almost always whenever you want to do something that’s not right out of the original set up, you’re pretty much screwed. I discovered this with Gmail, Google Voice, Google Adsense and practically every other product Google has ever put out. You see, Google wants to integrate all of its products together, but it seems that their process was designed by Kafka, who believes that the more levels of hell that you have to go through to accomplish something the better off you should be. I discovered that with Google Ads. Tried to set up a simple ad, much like I had done with Facebook for one of my books. To this day, I don’t know what I kept doing wrong, but I could never get it to work. However, a few weeks after complete failure, Google charged me $5.00 for “launching” the service that could never be launched. It took me an hour more of dealing with page after page of confusing menus before I figured out how to stop Google from continuing to charge me for something I never could figure out how to use.

Google Plus is a lot like that. I can’t figure out how to add anyone that’s actually on Google Plus. Sure, I figured out how to add a few people I know, but they’re not on Google Plus, so they’re just imaginary names in my “circles”. How to find anyone else, well, Google doesn’t explain that. It just has these annoying little pages that I keep going back and forth on, unable to get any further or to find any way to make the service useful in any way, shape or form. With Facebook, I remember finding a friend the first time out, and in minutes, I actually had a connection. I’ve been on Google Plus for a few weeks now, and much like my real life, I’m still my only friend. My news feed is empty and has never shown me a piece of information. Talk about a social networking program revealing the truth. I’m not sure I want that much truth.

The other thing about Google is that it loves to link all of its products together, so that no matter what you do, if you are involved in one of their enterprises, you’re linked to everything else you do with them. So, if you end up doing one thing wrong, like using a business instead of your name, you might end up getting arbitrarily deleted or locked out of your email account. I’ve seen Google cancel people on a whim before, and giving them more reasons to do so is really not a great idea. At least with Facebook, if they cancel my account, only my account gets lost. I can still receive my email and everything else I do online.

The biggest problem Google Plus has right now is that its owners want it to be the “cool” place to go, so they’re going after the movie stars and celebrities and pretty much saying screw you to the rest of the crowd. But all social networks are actually made popular by the rest of the crowd, and rarely by the celebrities. Sure, the celebrities make it cool after it gets big, but that’s an after the fact thing, and companies like Google just don’t get that. They’re trying to get to the “already famous” stage of celebrity without doing the work that actually gets you famous. Sure, they’re Google, which means they’re big, but let’s be honest. All Google has ever really done great is create a search engine tool. Their email is okay, but it’s not ground breaking, and I’ve discovered myself rarely using it these days (choosing a Yahoo account instead, or my own dedicated one that is tied to no one but me). So, if Google wants to make it big with Plus, it has to do something to make itself famous first.

And my experience with the service has been less than stellar. That, in my opinion, is why I don’t see them being the Facebook killer they so want to be.

Companies That Don’t Understand Social Networking

Business, Social Networking, , , , , , ,

We’ve all heard the story of a major company that totally blew its social networking strategy by doing something really stupid, like tweeting something inappropriate, thinking it would drive business but ended up driving it away instead. But there’s something even worse, at least in my opinion, and that’s a company that wants to engage in social networking but doesn’t understand what engaging in it means. An example is a company that advertises that it has all sorts of hip connections on social networking sites, but then turns around and blocks all of those sites from everyone of its employees. This wouldn’t be so bad if the company didn’t keep sending out notices to employees about how they are now on Facebook, starting up on Google Plus, and then asking employees to participate as well. And when that employee attempts to do so, they get a blocked message, indicating that the job considers that site to be an illegal site for viewing at work.

One of my favorite sorts of erroneous activities involves the housing complex where I live. They put up a bunch of signs around the complex, saying: “Add and Follow us on Facebook for current news and activities!” Four months ago, I attempted to add them on Facebook; they haven’t accepted. Yet, each day I see their signs on the bulletin board at home, just begging me to add them to my Facebook profile.

These are companies that don’t get the whole social networking thing. If you want to engage in social networking, you have to actually engage in social networking. You don’t just get a presence and then expect the masses to come flocking to you, but then decide you don’t want to spend the energy actually working with the environment. The work thing is a no brainer because you’re never going to have a real social networking presence as long as the majority of your staff can’t promote it. If the only Facebook presence you have is a Human Resources person who gets paid to have to maintain the connection, you’ve failed in all things social networking. Basically, it’s a plea to join their network but then a follow up statement to say that your employees aren’t allowed to communicate with the masses you just asked to join. Sure, it keeps people from doing something to embarrass you, but what these companies don’t understand is that social networking is about people, not about people interacting with a company’s icon. That’s why Google is destroying any business presence with Google Plus; at least they understand what a social network should be about. Although, I admit, I suspect they’ll backtrack on that once they realize that Facebook will take advantage of their absence.

Personally, my belief is that any company that avoids letting its employees engage in social networking is doomed to be considered old hat. Any company, like my housing complex, that considers social networking one-way only (we speak, you listen), then they’re doomed to fail as well.

Unfortunately, social networking is one of those animals that takes many years for people to truly understand. And as I’m pointing out, sometimes they never do.

Technology Companies Still Don’t Understand Their Business IS Customers

Business, Technology, , , , , , ,

Sprint PCS is ramping up its engines to try to gain new customers because their managers realize they’re just not cutting it as the third biggest cell phone company. If you looked at them on paper, they’d have everything to sell, such as the only big cell phone service that still offers an unlimited data plan (unless grandfathered in), a great all in one wireless satellite service (Clear Wire), and they’re generally cheaper. So why aren’t they defeating everyone else?

Well, let’s look at that for a moment. I had Sprint, and I currently still have Clear as my additional service. When I had Sprint as a cell phone, the first thing I noticed is that I rarely could get a solid signal. And if I did, I’d lose it. When I went in to complain, the response wasn’t “Oh, we’ll look into that” but “They’re aware of it, and we’re waiting to hear something new”. In other words, they knew they had problems and they did absolutely nothing to fix it. I had Sprint for six months before I gave up on it. When I gave up on it, of course they wanted to charge me they’re punishment fee, even though I was dropping the service because it never worked. A smart company would have said: “You’re right. It’s our fault, so we’ll pick up the charge.” That way, I might look back at Sprint with a sense of “Hey, they at least treated me with respect.” But that’s not how I left.

As for Clear, I like it, but it’s a generally shitty service for the price that I pay. I was using it at home and at work. At work, I would sometimes lose signal for a week (and no tech person on their end could fix it, other than the classic: “Have you tried restarting your computer?”). I still have it, and I paid for the modem straight out (which means there should be no fee whenever I do disconnect), but I’ll bet you every dollar the United States doesn’t have to pay its bills that they’ll try to tack on a disconnect fee, even though the disconnect fee is supposed to pay for the “great discount” I would have gotten on the equipment, which I paid full price for because they didn’t have a deal, and I really didn’t feel like renting their shit.

So, Sprint is now having trouble gaining new customers. You might think word of mouth might be their biggest problem. The woman who works in the next cubicle over from me has had nothing but nightmares with Sprint phones and service. I was on the shuttle bus going home from work last night, and two women started a chorus of how much Sprint sucks as they discussed their lousy phone service.

Now, this could be just in Grand Rapids, but I’m suspecting that if they’re screwing it up here, they’re probably screwing it up in a lot more places. Big companies are a lot like that. I’ve hated Comcast practically every city where I’ve had them, and I’ve had them in Grand Rapids, Stockton and a few other places that aren’t coming to my Alzheimerish mind right now.

Netflix is another one of those companies that doesn’t seem to get it. Oh, they think they do, and they’re all meta-like, acting like they’re on top of things with their knowledge of psychology and how people will eventually get over their price hikes, but rather than first telling their customers that the price of new content requires more money to pay for it, they just upped the price and pretty much told everyone to either live with it or leave, and then did this sanctimonious crap about how they’re the best deal in town so either live with it or stare at the walls in silence because they won’t have Netflix to watch instead.

This is NOT the way to treat your customers, especially the ones who stuck by you all of these years when you were growing and struggling to grow. Right now, I’m royally pissed at Netflix, and when September comes around I will cancel their services completely. Not drop down to the streaming only, or the disks only, but dump them completely like a cheating girlfriend who was never really good in bed in the first place. Okay, that’s a bit vulgar. How about: Like an ice cream flavor that doesn’t taste as good as…ah, never mind. Go with the first, vulgar one. It works well enough.

It’s almost as if major companies are less concerned about public relations and more concerned with handling damage control. And if your company’s focus is always how to minimize your negativity from customers, then something’s seriously wrong with your business model. My advice there is fire all of your executives, hire a bunch of kids who have watched a lot of Elmo on Sesame Street, and start over.

The Death of Amy Winehouse & the Problem with Santimonious People

Business, Music, News, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The singer Amy Winehouse died a few days ago in London. From my understanding, she suffered from alcohol abuse and had a difficult time breaking away from the addiction. In the end, she lost her battle, and the world lost a talented young musician. She, like a number of others before her, died at the early age of 27.

I’ll go out on a limb here. I’ve never heard any of her music before. I was not a fan. To be honest, I rarely even followed her antics, other than peripherally hearing about them much like I heard about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and various other celebrity names that had very little relevance on my normal, daily life. But I did hear about her, and secretly, it always bothered me that everything I heard about her indicated that this was a young woman constantly on a projectory towards where it eventually led her. Many others would point out that they saw it coming, but no one ever really “sees” it coming, and unfortunately, she’s lost, and her talent will never have a chance to create again.

So why am I writing about this? Well, the amount of chatter about her death has started to really bother me. The blogosphere, and the conversations that come from the usual suspects has really gotten on my nerves. People can’t be satisfied with pointing out that her life developed towards a tragic end and then move on from there. Instead, whenever I read about her and saw “common people” comment, I couldn’t help but read how some people can be so really mean towards another human being, even if they may have disapproved of her antics, her lifestyle and/or her way of handling her demons.

Part of the fame of Amy Winehouse involves a direct tie to her battle with alcoholism. There really can’t be any disputing that. She’s one of those artists who created while suffering, and I would argue that a lot of her creativity probably needed a touch of her suffering to make it work. It’s sad, but there have been great artists who needed that sort of connection to develop the work they did. Van Gogh was that type. I suspect so was Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, and Ernest Hemingway. She may or may not have her own place in artistic history, or she might not, but at the same time there are a lot of people who were touched by her music, and I think it does a horrible disservice to their memories for people to go on message boards ridiculing them, her and the music she created. There’s a lot of hatred in this world, and it really makes itself seen whenever an event like this takes place.

Part of the tragedy of Winehouse’s death is that it came at time where it cannot be examined without someone else believing it has to be compared to something else. Salon has a great article on this, where the author Mary Williams talks about how people have ridiculed her death by comparing the tragedy to horrific events in Somalia and even the recent horrible actions of some crazy right-winger in Norway. At what point did we make it so that people cannot mourn the losses they feel without having to be felt that their tragedy is not worthy?

One of the things that started bothering me about this incident was on the weekend when I heard about her death. I was on itunes, and I noticed that the service was trying to milk its customers by selling her most popular work, as if paying Apple money would be “honoring” the artist rather than helping executives at Apple profit from her demise. Then I found out that Amazon was doing something similar, and after awhile you just start to shake your head and realize that we live in a very greedy society that will do anything to make a buck. At some point I really should stop being surprised.

The biggest tragedy to me is that her music might have been great, and I never bothered to pay attention when she was still around. I kind of had that same feeling with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. I never got to know the music until after he died. Others, however, were big fans long before that happened.

For me, I’ll probably start listening to her work to see if I can ascertain the message she was trying to deliver. She was an artist, and for me it’s important to try to find out what the artist was trying to share. Sometimes, the message is brilliant, and trascends time and space. Other times, the artist just wanted to make you snap your fingers and maybe tap your foot to the beat. And sometimes, we forget that that is important, too. I’ll listen and try to figure it out. If her message is knowledge, I’ll try to discover it. If it was just to make me sway with the rhythmn, that’s okay, too. The tragedy is in never bothering to listen in the first place.