I have recently signed on as the Senior Director of Social Media Strategy with M80, the Los Angeles based leading provider of social media marketing and digital publicity services to Fortune 500 brands.  That’s a mouthful, isn’t it?  Simply put, I work with some of the most amazing companies from around the globe, helping them to reach out, listen to and engage their current and future customers.

I’m humbled and excited to be in this role.  The staff of M80 consists of some of the brightest and most forward-thinking men and women that I have had the privilege to work with, and what we have been able to accomplish together in just the last few weeks in amazing to me.  Although I probably won’t get into granular detail with what we are doing (need to keep some of the wizard behind the curtain stuff behind the curtain still…) I will continue to write about how social media and technology impacts both brands and consumers.  I actually hope to be writing more now, as I’m spending so much time on airplanes.

Me and my Zune HD

I am working with some amazing global brands like Microsoft, LG, Dr Pepper, and Volkswagon.  All of our projects are incredibly interesting and exciting, and if you have been following me for some time you know that I am really passionate about one in particular: Zune.  In the interest of full disclosure, I do advise the truly delightful people at Zune, but my enthusiasm should come as no surprise to anybody that has been reading this blog for any amount of time.  I wrote my first Zune post in July 2006, and did the math about why Zune is superior in this June 2008 article (boy did I get blasted by the fanboys in the comments!) I’ll keep blogging, tweeting and Facebooking about them and our other clients, but now I can do it as a loyal consumer and an industry insider!

As usual, I will continue to use social media to make personal connections with people, both digitally and in the real world.  Twitter is my daily hotbed of activity, but I would also love to connect with you on LinkedIn and Facebook. If you want to subscribe to this blog, the feed is here.

I would love it if you would also start tracking M80 in the usual places like Twitter and our blog.  We’ll be striving to provide value to you, information that you can use (like this article) within your company or just for your own personal satisfaction.

Thank you so much for being a part of this community!

As he writes, “…relationships are what make great and unique pictures. That’s why I love documenting people, their families, and their celebrations and sincerely enjoy developing a working friendship with my clients.” That was exactly the attitude I was hoping to find, and I wasn’t disappointed when we met Matthias a few Saturdays ago.  In fact, he greatly exceeded my expectations.

Part of the deal that I advertised was that I would write a post about the photographer, pointing to their site, and then put up several tweets about it.  What I didn’t expect is that the experience would be so incredible and perfect that I would want to write more than just an obligatory “go visit this person’s site”.  Spending that day with my children was such a personal experience and one that I wanted to remember with pictures, and Matthias didn’t just take a lot of pictures that will help with that (although honestly I would have been happy with that level of service), he truly captured the mood and the feel of our adventure together, and so perfectly caught the kids’ personalities in his images.

When he sent me a link to the photos I was excited, but when I started looking through them I was just blown away.  He caught the playfulness and bond of my two youngest, the beauty and joy of my oldest daughter and the pensive introspection and kindness of my oldest son.  I was mesmerized by the images, and they brought back the joy and excitement of that day immediately.  As I write this and look back over those pictures again, I’m just stricken by how well they turned out.

Beyond the amazing photography, our day with Matthias was a true joy.  He was with us during very personal times, and also exploring and heading in every direction in a sea of people at a popular tourist destination.  My kids felt comfortable with him right away and in a very short time they seemed to forget that he was taking pictures of us.  He laughed with us, he saw the world through the eyes of a child at times and as such was able to anticipate and capture the moments that he saw coming.  We had such an amazing time with him, and Matthias made everything comfortable, easy and memorable.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area and are in need of a photographer for your personal moments, like a wedding, an engagement or something unique like a day at Alcatraz Island, I can honestly and enthusiastically recommend Matthias Giezendanner.  He is professional, attentive, unassuming, gentle and artistic.  Please go visit his site, look at his work, then get in touch with him.  I have no doubt that, like me, you will look forward to another time that you will be able to work with him.  Thank you Matthias for all that you did, you perfectly captured a very special day to me.

|  Intro  |

I occasionally receive messages from people asking me why I hate Apple, why I slam the Mac, why I refuse to drink the Kool Aid.  Let me be clear: I don’t hate any of these things.  I have a tendency to like what is best for my uses no matter who makes them.  I’m not very brand loyal, I’m usability and financially loyal. Most of the recent “why do you hate Apple” comments come because of my post about iPod versus Zune.  I choose Zune.  It makes the most sense.  It really does.

However, I like much of what Apple does, but most of their products (in my opinion) are scaled toward entertainment, not common business practices.  In fact, I think it’s safe to say that I wrote my first Apple application before most of you even knew what Apple was (1982 to be exact) and I realize that is before a good percentage of my readers were even born!  My first home computer was an Apple, and I used them almost exclusively when I was a graphic designer in the early 90s. So no, I don’t hate Apple.  That said, the iPhone 3G is my first Apple purchase is well over a decade.

|  Roll Out Strategy  |

Certainly Apple was prepared for the massive demand of the second generation iPhone…right? I mean, with the incredible response to the first gen, they had to know that hundreds of thousands of people wanted a piece of the new digital candy, even died-in-the-wool PC users like myself.  They had to be prepared for this, right?

Wrong.

iTunes (the only way to activate the phone, and the way to upgrade software v1.0 to 2.0) crashed harder than a new Madonna movie on opening day. Twitter lit up with talk about iBricks and how frustrated people were.  Rightfully so!  I’m actually surprised that the Apple servers crashed as hard as they did since this is their single point of failure for phone activation.  Seriously, did they not prepare for this?  You had to know it was coming, Mr. Jobs.  Be a Boyscout, be prepared.

That is one of the reasons that I waited for several days before picking up my iPhone.  Let’s let the bugs get worked out.  Sure enough, iTunes seemed to be a little more stable just 24 hours later, good news for the new phone owners (old as well) since this is the only way to activate your phone.  Oh wait, I already mentioned that.  Yeah, I’m not a big fan of in-store activation.  Let’s talk about the lines now.

I can kind of (but not fully) understand lines on opening day.  Dark Knight has lines, iPhone has lines.  It’s part of the hype and the fun.  However, I do not understand lines four full days later.  Another note to Mr. Jobs: the actual process of selling and activating a phone is pretty simple.  Two words, sir: temporary labor.  Seriously, I waited for a full 110 minutes in line before I could buy your phone.  The total time for purchase (including the trip to AT&T that I had to take, and including the return trip to your store to fix the brand new broken phone) was six hours.  Just a half a year earlier I somehow managed to buy a pretty nice car, cradle to grave in the process, in three hours.  My car costs 200x what the phone costs and I have to be licensed to use it, yet it took me half the time to acquire it.  That’s a big word up to Car Max, a big boo to Apple.

Oh, one last free piece of marketing advice for Mr. Jobs and all of the managers of the various stores: it wouldn’t take a lot to talk to the managers from Starbucks and California Pizza Kitchen (or other mall eateries) to get them to walk the line for orders.  The other business is happy, your customers that are withering in line are happy, everybody wins.  I understand you did this on Friday at the store I went to.  Good move.  Now repeat it every day that you choose not to have temporary help, forcing people to stand in line for hours.  Thank you.

Finally, after 110 minutes of angry Twitters I was at the front of the line.  As the Apple employee walked toward me in slow motion, Feist music slowly wafted out of nowhere, and I floated toward the doors as he said, “Hi, I’m Evan, welcome to Apple.  Are you ready for your new iPhone?”

The rest of the process was fairly simply and without complication.  It took about 30 minutes total to do everything after I told him I wanted an 8GB phone.  He grabbed one, unboxed it and signed me up.  I love the fact that he checked me out using a Symbol PocketPC.  Yes, that is a Windows based device.  Don’t think for a second I didn’t notice and give him the appropriate amount of crap about it, because I did.  I asked if the three of us (him, me and the PocketPC) could take a picture together.  He said no, it wasn’t allowed.  No surprise there, but I thought I would ask.  So the checkout process went well, and 30 minutes later I was on my way out the door with my new iPhone!

Before moving on to the next section, somebody asked me if the six hour ordeal that I endured (I’m not going to talk about the return trip to the store or the necessary trip to AT&T) was worth it.  “After all”, they reasoned, “it was a horrible experience but now you have an iPhone!”  I guess my feeling can best be described in a parable.

Let’s say you go to Ruth’s Chris Steak House for dinner.  You have one of the best steaks that you have ever had!  They pour you a Shiraz that curls your toes with its peppery goodness.  A dessert of Baked Alaska finishes you off in a way you didn’t even know was possible.  Overall, the best meal of your life.  Then let’s say that as the waiter is bringing you the check…just as he slips the little leather booklet onto your table and you reach for it…he flat out punches you in the face.  Hard.  Right in the nose.  Blood spurts everywhere and you realize that this wanna be actor broke your nose.  What the heck is going on?

This is part of the experience.  The fact that you got jacked in the face shouldn’t take away from the fact that you just ate an insanely good meal…should it?  Or would you consider all events surrounding the evening to be the sum total of the individual parts, even that really awesome steak?  Moving on to hardware…

|  Hardware  |

If you want the tech specs of the iPhone 3G head on over to the Apple site. I’m just going to give you a summary and a gut reaction.  The phone just could not be sexier.  People at my work in Portland used to make fun of me for referring to different computer things as “sexy”, but this takes the cake. It’s slim, it’s gorgeous, it’s everything I want in a piece of hardware.  The screen is brilliantly beautiful and bright, although I have turned the brightness way, way down to save on battery power.  Nice transition, let’s talk about that for a bit.

The battery is understandably underpowered.  Between vibrate, 3G and a dazzling screen there isn’t much room for anything else when it comes to electricity.  Rumor has it that after a few charges the battery life gets better, but I think a more accurate thing to say is that after several tweaks, the battery life gets better.  With the screen brightness at almost the lowest setting and with my new car charger I can make it through the day.  I also had to turn off the 3G feature because this is a power drain.  Nice transition, let’s talk about that for a bit.

I can tell you that I’m pretty disappointed in 3G on the iPhone. I’m no stranger to 3G, my HTC 8525 sported it well. I’ve noticed two things with the iPhone 3G when it is on.  First, the battery gets drained pretty quickly.  Second, making a call is painful.  Honestly, and I’m not sure why this makes a big difference, but I can hardly keep a call connected when 3G is enabled.  What’s more, the coverage in my neck of the woods is terrible.  I have 1 or 2 bars most of the time.  When I turn it off I go up to 3 or 4 bars.  Ugh.

As far as feel goes, that is, the ability to easily navigate, there is nothing slicker than the iPhone 3G.  The one-button front and touch screen is incredible.  Seriously, just stunningly amazing.  It makes moving around the phone, from app to app, so easy.  I love this.  One-handed navigation in my car (~while at a stop light of course) is super easy, and I can thumb around to wherever I want to go.

I’m not sure if this next piece of commentary belongs in hardware or software, so we’ll just move into the software review after a convo about the keyboard.

The keyboard.  Wow.  This is my biggest gripe with the iPhone.  I’ve talked to many, many people that *like* the keyboard on the iPhone.  After a little pressing, most fall into one of three categories.  1) Only ever had a phone where you had to press the number multiple times to type (like a Razr) 2) Had the 1st Gen iPhone and have been beaten into submission so they say they like it but I don’t really believe them 3) Don’t really give a hoot about the keyboard because they barely use it, and only for web browsing.  I’m in category #4 folks, and that is this: I use my phone heavily for email and texting.  Heavily.  Over a thousand text messages a month, countless hundreds (thousands?) of emails a month replied to via my phone.  I need to type, it’s part of the business process.

People keep saying to me, “trust me, it gets easier”.  My reply so far has been “my fingers aren’t getting any smaller, and the keyboard isn’t getting any bigger”.

Now, when you flip the phone sideways during web viewing (on Safari…please let me install Firefox…please…) everything on the screen including the keyboard orients to a landscape view.  The keyboard gets bigger and is almost usable for typing.  Not entirely usable because it’s not tactile, but almost.  Close enough.  If it could do this for email and texting I would be so happy…but so far it doesn’t.  Perhaps I’m ignorant, and if you are less than ignorant, please point me to a hack that lets me type everything in landscape.  Please, for the love of all that is good, tell me how to do that because I don’t know.

|  Software  |

Now we get to the sweet spot of the iPhone.  Some of the software on this little glistening beauty is incredible.  From “Slide To Unlock” to the daily weather, it almost brings a tear to my eye it’s so beautiful.  The Stocks app is pretty silly (download the Bloomberg app, so much better, and free), but most apps are quite useful. As I’m new to the iPhone, allow me to bask in the wonder of it all, I know that many of you have been using the 1st gen for a bit, but allow me to bask.

It’s stunning.

Even the software of the phone is superior to anything that I have used.  The visual voice mail is excellent, so much so that I have actually disregarded SpinVox for now (don’t hate me SpinVox, I still love you).  Actually, I would probably still use SpinVox but I can’t figure out how to apply it to the iPhone.  Maybe WhatleyDude knows.

The “Settings” tab allows me to change some things, but not all.  As a PC user I appreciate the ability to change all kinds of junk around, to modify whatever I want to my needs.  Before you go on and on in the comments about viruses and junk, I haven’t had a virus on any of my computers is years.  YEARS!  So please don’t start up with “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” crap because I won’t be baited into it.  </rant>

Anyway, about the settings…fairly useful, but not completely giving me control.  It’s okay though, I’m fine with this.  My favorite silly app is “Phone Saber”.  Ha ha ha!  I have a light saber on my phone and I’m going to attack you with it!  Oh, I love it.  Seriously, I do.

The two best applications of all for the iPhone 3g?  Not even made by Apple, but that’s okay, they work marvelously on this phone.  The runner up is…Twitterific!  A beautiful Twitter client, I love how it is laid out on the iPhone.  I love how I can differentiate by color reply to @mattsingley and direct messages to @mattsingley.  Brilliant!  So, so user friendly.  Replying is a snap (save the ridiculous portrait keyboard) and if Twitter is up, Twitterific is up!  I’ve found myself using this more than the actually twitter.com site.

And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for.  The winner of the very best iPhone application goes to…YouVersion!

My friends over at LifeChurch put this together and they have absolutely hit it out of the park. I have to confess something to you…I got pretty lazy with my daily Bible reading habit.  Once I installed the YouVersion app I actually got back on track because it has a button that says “Daily Reading”, and it updates automatically.  So now even lazy guys like me can be just one click away from two OT and one NT chapter.  Incredibly useful.  I love this app, go download it now!

I desperately want to leave you on this very positive note, but I have to point out a pretty major problem that I’ve found.  When I try to Sync with Outlook (Apple says there should be no problems), it syncs everything *except* calendar events that I put into my iPhone.  So if I’m meeting with somebody and they say, “hey, let’s get together Wednesday” and I put it into my phone it will not move into Outlook.  I’ve tried everything I can think of, including re installation of software.  Ugh. Outlook to iPhone is fine, but not the other way around.  Totally unacceptable.

|  Outro  |

I am going out of my way to find reasons to love the iPhone because it’s just incredibly innovative and cool.  I want so desperately to love it!  Right now I have a switch inside my head and it has just two settings.  The first is “love the iPhone 3G” and the second is “hate the iPhone 3G”.

The GUI is incredible.  I love it.  It makes it so easy to cruise between apps, check voice mail, make phone calls, read my Bible.  I love it!

As far as a business machine goes, the iPhone blows.  My productivity has come to a grinding halt as I am not able to reply to emails very easily except for short sentences.

The final judgment…

I’m keeping the iPhone, but I may have to pull an uber-geek move and carry two phones.  One for being cool and the envy of all around me (the iPhone), one for getting things done (my HTC 8525, perhaps even an upgrade to the HTC Flip).

“Wow, very lukewarm”, you say, “so what do I do?”

Thanks for asking.  I think the iPhone is beautiful and brilliant if you don’t need to do business on it.  I think for most people, the iPhone is the best thing on the market.  Although I have experienced moments of mind-numbing frustration, I’m glad I got mine.  That, and I am working on apps and communities that iPhone users will use, so I want to see up close and personal what they will see.

If you are a heavy business user, if you rely and fast thumb typing for emails and you need to view docs, etc, you should probably stick with your Windows Mobile device or Crackberry.

Bottom line: the iPhone 3G is absolutely brilliant!  I love it!  Just not good for business folks.

I would love to hear your feedback, let me know what you think of your iPhone 3G!

Following is a list of things that I would like to accomplish in the next 1,000 days.  Some are easy, some will require quite a bit of effort.  All are interesting to me for some reason or another. This was originally posted on January 1, 2007.

Without further adieu…

1. Complete (at a minimum) basic guitar lessons
2. Scuba dive in warm water again
3. Teach Chloe how to ride a bike
4. Live like a homeless person for one night
5. Do 25 chin ups, 50 push ups and 100 sit ups back to back to back
6. Share a Cuban cigar and a glass of scotch with Ted Broadway on a warm summer night
7. Teach Nick how to shoot a rifle
8. Memorize the book of James
9. Go to an opera
10. Run a 5k in 27 minutes or less
11. Run a 5k in 24 minutes or less
12. Run a 5k in 21 minutes or less
13. Attend my 20th Mexico mission trip in 20 years (had to cross this off at trip # 18 as it is now too dangerous to bring other people in to Mexican border towns)
14. Play a song on the guitar at some sort of a social gathering
15. Listen to the audio tapes that my father made just before he died (this was one of the most emotionally challenging and satisfying things that I have ever done)
16. Read the manuscript my father wrote before he died
17. Take Nick camping for the weekend and give him the “birds and bees” talk
18. Paint a picture that hangs in our house
19. Go horseback riding
20. Bench press 225 lbs once
21. Bench press 225 lbs five times
22. Bench press 225 lbs ten times
23. Do something kind for each of my neighbors but not tell them it was me
24. Run a half marathon….even if it kills me!
25. Keep my Outlook Inbox at zero messages each night when I go home for one full business week
26. Ride my bike more than 30 miles at once
27. Ride a train somewhere (MAX/BART/Muni don’t count)
28. Go to the Portland Getty Art Museum without a timeline and just walk around and look at things
29. Go to the Portland Japanese Gardens
30. Read something by T.S. Elliot
31. Take each of my kids on a “just me and daddy” day at the park without their siblings
32. Get a tattoo
33. Learn how to ride a motorcycle
34. Weigh 175 pounds
35. Become a level 7 in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 55 in Call of Duty 4
36. Read an epic fiction series, just for fun…not to learn
37. Visit a country farther south than Mexico
38. Have my garage organized enough to fit two cars in it at once
39. Pursue professional voice work
40. Try eating eggplant again (I had it at Panda Express…it was pretty good actually)
41. Get new glasses
42. Finish installing the baseboard mouldings in my house
43. Take one personal retreat per quarter in hopes of improving myself
44. Visit a Baha’i center
45. Spend an afternoon browsing around Powell’s bookstore without an agenda
46. Read a book by A.W. Tozer
47. Go to the firing range to polish up my skills
48. Take the family to Disneyland
49. Make a batch of my own beer
50. Make a batch of my own cheese
51. Attend the Pendleton Roundup
52. Go rafting down the Deschutes
53. Stay for a weekend in Sunriver with my family
54. Finish painting the walls in the entry of my home
55. Clean out my Contacts in Outlook
56. Attend a David Crowder*Band concert
57. Get a massage
58. Buy a new belt
59. Make an entry into Wikipedia
60. Go wine tasting
61. Take an audit class of something at the local community college, just to keep the brain moving
62. Connect my Xbox360, My Media Center Edition desktop and my Zune all seamlessly together
63. Use the Google 15 for 30 days. Why?  Because it’s there. (an interesting tool…you should check it out!)
64. Make it for a full year without taking prescription medication for my AS or Crohn’s
65. Remove the TV from my bedroom
66. Have a 24 season premier party (off the hook goodness!)
67. Don’t eat a meal at a restaurant for 14 days
68. Set up blogs for everyone on Management Team (my part is finished…now it’s up to them to actually post)
69. Install new windows in my home
70. Be more patient (hard to measure, but I’ll know)
71. Pray more
72. Journal (my written journal…not my blog…) three times per week for three months straight
73. Work out a plan so that I am more available to staff …but a plan that doesn’t kill me in the process
74. Get an administrative assistant (which will probably help with #73)
75. Put up a blog post once a day for a week that summarizes what we are doing in the Operations Department at Sunset Presbyterian Church Bel Air Presbyterian Church
76. Follow through completely on my commitment to Jay to work out with him like a madman for the month of January (this wasn’t easy…but I did it!)
77. Learn how to swim the butterfly.  I was on the swim team for years and still couldn’t do this…
78. Learn how to swing dance
79. Learn how to tango
80. Have a photograph published in a magazine or on a prominent blog/website
81. Juggle with four balls.  No jokes please.  I can juggle three quite well, four is beyond me right now
82. Get a new passport (mine was stolen in Mexico last year)
83. Clean out my closet and give unecessary clothing to charity
84. Go sailing
85. Buy another house
86. Make a list of 100 things that make me happy besides money
87. Get another tattoo
88. Send a message in a bottle
89. Write down my life story…or at least the highlights.  Keep the copy in my safe at home
90. Go back to my rheumatologist and ask him why I don’t need medication for my AS anymore
91. Go back to my gastrointerologist and ask him why I don’t need medication for my Crohn’s anymore
92. See how many jumbo sized marshmellows I can fit into my mouth at once (only 11)
93. Read Animal Farm again
94. Take my family to a Portland Winterhawks hockey LA Galaxy soccer game
95. Publish on a top 20 blog (in the world)
96. Build a water fall (or some sort of water thing) in my backyard
97. Build a sweet tree house for my kids
98. Help somebody I love to quit smoking
99. Openly share my faith with somebody, with zero assumptions. Just to share, not to convert. I love hearing what others believe as well.
100. Be the man God wants me to be (always a work in progress, but I believe I am where I should be, finally)

As I conquer this list I will put a strikethrough on the task completed.  This should be quite an adventure!