I don’t even know the number of times I’ve tweeted something like, “so frustrated with my bluetooth headset in the car”, because I’m sure it’s been too much.  I have one of two problems: either I can hear the other person fine but they can’t hear me (such is the case with the Jabra sets I’ve tried), or they can hear me just fine but I have a hard time hearing them (such is the case with the Jawbones I’ve tried).  A few weeks back Jed Hallam saw one of my cries for help and replied with a direct message, “can I send you a Sony Ericcson bluetooth headset that I think you’ll like?”  Of course I said yes, but was skeptical.  I’ve been trying to find a decent bluetooth for years, and so far nothing has worked well.  Given that California, the state in which I reside, requires hand free devices for all drivers using mobile phone you can imagine how it’s more than a little maddening at times.

I got the Sony Ericsson HBH-IS800 package (in which Jed was kind enough to include a NA-friendly charger since he’s from across the pond) and was immediately impressed with the small size.  Jed didn’t tell me what he was sending, so I was quite happy to find two ear buds, no larger than what I normally use to listen to music, attached with only 1 cord.  Beautifully compact, these fit in my backpack or pocket quite nicely.

Yesterday I watched President Obama’s speech about his ideas of national health care reform.  One thing he talked about that has always been interesting to me is centralized medical records.  It’s not a new idea coming from him, this premise has been around for a long time, but privacy and security issues have always been a killer for this conversation.  This post isn’t about politics, it’s about technology.  Today, less than 24 hours after watching that speech, I came across a new Microsoft service called HealthVault.

Microsoft HealthVault (currently in beta) is working to that end: centralized medical records.  I’m sure the Microsoft jokes will abound, but my personal feeling is that they have the resources and know-how to pull this off properly…so much so that I signed up for an account.  I have a lot on my plate for the rest of the summer so I’m not sure that I’ll be adding records anytime soon, but I like the idea.  I’ve embeded the video below that explains (with cut out cartoon characters) what HealthVault (in theory) does.  Do you know what else made me smile? They’re on Twitter.

Spam on Twitter has been on my mind a lot lately.  It could be the influx of unwanted replies that I talked about earlier, or the very positive actions by the Twitter team yesterday to purge known accounts, or the constant stream of “get more followers today” that I see. No matter, spam on Twitter is only going to get worse before it (hopefully) gets better.  Anywhere people gather electronically, unscrupulous marketers will find a way to put get rich schemes or magic blue pills that promise a lifetime of pleasure information in front of us against our will.  Spam isn’t just for email anymore.

We can work as a community to help slow its advance however, and I want to tell you the very simple way I do my part and ask you to do the same with just a couple of easy steps.

Public Unfollows: The New Twitter Spam

I’ve seen some interesting things pop up in my “mentions” on Twitter recently...public declarations of people that I stopped following or blocked.  Unlike Qwitter that sent you emails when somebody stopped following you (that is, when the service worked…which it stopped long ago as far as I know), and SocialToo emails you a daily list of those that no longer subscribe to your updates, this new public method seems to be picking up steam and bots like Follower Monitor are popping up everywhere.

Personally I don’t care.  The people that I unfollow or block are by and large spammers.  Usually the accounts that I part ways with are telling me how to “get 400 new followers on Twitter every day!” or “make money online with this sure-fire, turn key system!”.  Very rarely do I unfollow somebody because I don’t like what they are saying or doing, I’m pretty open to conversations that differ from my own views.

I’m not the only one noticing this, people like Jeremy Isaac see this too and call it like it is: spam.  It’s spam because it shows up in my replies stream because my name is mentioned, and it annoys me because it’s the result of somebody that I’ve blocked or unfollowed.  It kind of feels like they are saying to me, “oh yeah, you’re going to block me? Well then I’m going to show up in one last message of yours and there is nothing that I can do about it!”  I think there is something we can do about it, let me detail it for you.

One unhappy customer has created a PR disaster for United Airlines

Have you seen the uber-popular YouTube video “United Breaks Guitars”?  I’ve embedded it at the bottom of this post so you can, it’s well worth 4:36 of your time to see this creative and funny look at poor customer service.  Seems Dave Carroll from the band Sons of Maxwell had his guitar broken while flying on United Airlines, and just a handful of days ago released a music video detailing his complaint. If we take what he says as truth, he spent a year trying to get some resolve and was repeatedly told “no”.  Personally I believe him because I’ve dealt with similar issues while traveling, and the corporate “no” is just too common.

If you run a business, big or small, you need to pay attention to what is happening in the world. The days of burying customer complaints are over, you need to develop a social media strategy to handle social media issues.

Remember the movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise?  There were some creepy, big brother themes throughout, but there were also some very cool things like billboards that interacted with the characters. “John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right now”, chimed the advertisement at Cruise’s character as he went by.  I actually remember my thought upon seeing that part, “wow, that is the future, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to think it will be soon…and I’m excited for it!”  Just a few years later I’m seeing technology created that is wonderful and amazing; that good kind of interaction is coming!

Geodelic is a company that I became aware of earlier this year, and as I tracked whatever information I could find about them I was amazed at what they were doing: creating mobile applications that interact with users in a very non-traditional and non-intrusive way! The idea seems simple enough, but the execution is extraordinary…help users find things they need that are nearby.

My Twitter Background Image

Whether you run a corporate or a personal Twitter account, your background image can say a lot about you.  I want to explain my often questioned background, and then give you some pointers for what makes an effective background for company tweets.

I get a surprising amount of direct messages from people telling me that they like my Twitter background image, and they want to know what it is.  Popular guesses include “steel mine” and anything to do with railroads.  Off-the-wall guesses include stuff from the Sci-Fi channel and “jet engine factory”.  The real answer is…a copper mine!  Not just any copper mine, it’s one that my great-grandfather was the manager of in Arizona.  I don’t know the exact date of the pic, but from what I understand (and this is understanding passed down a few generations, so who knows if it’s true or not) he actually took that picture.  It would make sense to me as I pulled it out of a photo album that included dozens of other pictures of him, other family members and more pics of Arizona copper mines than I ever thought possible.

Late last night I switched my primary domain, MattSingley.com, to a new host after receiving a lot of messages yesterday that my web site was displaying “Service Is Unavailable”.  Although I get traffic spikes from time to time, this blog doesn’t pull so much traffic that it should shut down with modest increases, even after mentions by the L.A. Times and Mashable.  Given that, I have selected Media Temple as my new host to see how things go.  I’ve been impressed with other sites’ stability that are hosted there, I love the fact that they talk about easy scalability and recognize that spikes in traffic do happen, and I’m particularly impressed with their Twitter team. It sounds like a winning combination to me!

Twitter Suspensions Are Global

UPDATE:  I spoke to the fine folks at Mashable, they did a good write up here.  Also, the official Twitter Status Blog has an update, blames the suspensions on “human error” and they are working to restore everything.

I reported last week that my Twitter account was suspended, but it appeared to be isolated to me and wasn’t wide sweeping.  Twitter was very quick to get me up and running, and their official explanation was:

At some point, a botnet tried to push out some of your updates as their own. This means that when we took out the botnet, you went with ‘em. You’re back, and you should be safe from now on.

Today more suspensions are sweeping through Twitter,and even though my account was suspended again it wasn’t just isolated to me.  In fact it was so rampant in the early afternoon that it started to trend as a hot topic.  The suspensions have hit small accounts and large alike, and don’t seem to have a preference for who you are or what you do.  Corporately I’m aware of both Blockbuster (@blockbuster) and a section of the L.A. Times (@latimestot) getting taken out, privately it ranged from myself to Kim Sherrell to ModelSupplies and everyone in between.

Time Warner Cable Sucks

This has been an incredibly difficult week for me in terms of technology. Having to rely on services that are out of my control can get challenging, especially when they all go bad at once.

Early this week Time Warner Cable went out in my area (and most of Los Angeles I understand), then my Twitter account was mysteriously suspended for half a day, and finally yesterday my email service was out all day…a day that I was waiting for some mission critical messages.