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A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about John Mayer is using augmented reality with his new album and how the technology will be incorporated into a new book about Michael Jackson which will be released just in time for Christmas.

Augmented Reality is becoming a hot topic. BusinessWeek magazine has an article in its November 23rd issue about the Dutch startup, Layar which makes free software that developers can use to associate digital info with specific locations. On the BusinessWeek website, technology editor Peter Elstrom interviews Stephen H. Wildstrom who wrote an article, “Augmented Reality:Not That Real Yet” for the magazine. You can read the article and listen to the interview here:
http://bit.ly/2kWiRx

Meanwhile, the December 2009 edition of Esquire magazine with Robert Downey, Jr. on the cover is titled the Augmented Reality issue. I think you’ll enjoy this video:

And you’ve got to watch this from Pranav Mistry at TEDIndia

So, how do you see augmented reality being incorporated into your life?

In September, I wrote about about a customer service problem I experienced with my local Home Depot. Since Brindle Media’s services include marketing, branding and customer service, I thought it would be useful and fair to the Home Depot organization to to share my experience and post this follow-up.

A brief overview: Due to negligence on the part of the plumbing subcontractor that installed a water heater which I’d purchased at Home Depot in late July, our laundry room was flooded. The plumber paid for an emergency crew to dry out the laundry room and installed some dry wall which had to be removed but refused to take responsibility for restoring the room to its original state. The plumbing company then proceeded to turn the victim into a victimizer and accused me of trying to rip them off. That whole process took us to mid-September. When I complained to the local Home Depot who had hired the subcontractor for installation, their position was that I needed to negotiate directly with the subcontractor. This is where social media and customer service entered the picture.

After blogging about the problem on September 14th, I Twittered about the blog and hash-tagged Home Depot. Within minutes of that tweet, I was contacted by Michael at Home Depot’s customer care center in Atlanta who then connected me with Stephanie in the company’s Customer Care Social Media department. Within 48 hours, I was connected with Sedgwick Claims Management and on October 22nd received a check to cover the cost restoring our laundry and family rooms to a semblance of their pre-accident state.

As a customer, I was very satisfied with my treatment by Michael and Stephanie on behalf of Home Depot and by Tammy at Sedwick CMS. The good news is that the situation was resolved. The bad news is that the resolution took three months. It was interesting and disturbing that no one on the regional or local level at Home Depot ever bothered to follow up.

So the lesson here is that when you encounter a customer service problem with a national retail chain, social media tools like Twitter and Facebook can provide you the leverage that you need to get the attention of the customer service department and help resolve a problem using a top-down rather than a bottom-up approach.

Hopefully, you won’t ever find yourself in a situation where you’ll need to employ this advice !

The run of the Michael Jackson movie, THIS IS IT has been extended. To be honest, I was among those who had intended to wait until it was released on DVD but my wife and I saw it last night (the theater was approximately 1/4 full and the demos were surprising older) and we were both impressed and moved. I conducted a survey to learn if people were intending to see it in theaters during its run. Results are posted below.

Only 12% of those who took the survey planned to see the movie during its 2 week run. The remaining 88% were either not interested in Michael Jackson, have other priorities or they plan to see it when it’s released on DVD/on-demand (25%).

Here are some of our respondents’ comments:

“I saw it yesterday and I loved it. It was well done and Michael was without a doubt the ‘King’. I felt like I was at a concert. The atmosphere in the theatre was awesome.”

“…will probably wait till it comes out on video”

“It’s relevant to my profession, but I seldom have time to go see movies, and seldom do.”

Like many, I’ve been turned off by all the negative tabloid press concerning Michael during the past 20 years but seeing this documentary provided me with some perspective. Obviously, it was edited to portray Michael Jackson in the best light possible but it’s difficult to walk away after seeing this movie and to not be impressed by the man’s humanity, concern for others, dedication to his craft and his humility. The opening sequence of interviews with people auditioning to be part of Michael’s final concert tour is quite touching.

After seeing THIS IS IT, my former MTV colleague Chip Rachlin sent the following to friends in the music industry. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m in agreement with his assessment:

“I’m writing everyone to recommend you go see the Michael Jackson movie, “This Is It”. Most everybody on this list is somehow connected to the talent business. We’ve all been around talents, some great, and some, not so great. Michael Jackson’s talent has been in our lives for forty years. His talent for writing, recording and performing had been obscured the last decade by his talent to attract bad press and some not so terrific people in his life.

So go to this movie. Take your kids. Take your civilian friends who only know about the MJ that was in the tabloids the last ten years. More important, take yourself to remind you of the gold standard of talent.”

A couple of weeks ago I told you about how augmented reality will be incorporated into a new book about Michael Jackson. The website, Mashable notes that John Mayer has become “the first recording artist to release an augmented reality music video.”

According to Mashable, “The music video for ‘Heartbreak Warfare,’ from the upcoming Battle Studies album, is now featured on John Mayer’s website, http://www.johnmayer.com/ar/#/Home After the Flash player loads, viewers can activate their webcam and hold up a printed or mobile version of the Battle Studies icon to their webcam, which, if aligned correctly, will prompt the video to begin playing with you as an extra in the background.”

I’d be interested to learn how you see all these new technologies impacting the way that you use audio/visual media.

For those of us who’ve been used to the standard in-car FM/AM/CD player with mp3 player plug-in options, things are about to get a lot more complicated. It won’t be long before the ability to receive Internet radio will become standard in new cars which will mean that you’ll have the ability to choose from not only local radio stations but also from among the 10,000 or more Internet stations from around the world.

Can you say “Information overload” ?

It’s pretty obvious that we’re going to need help in narrowing our choices with aggregators and I’ve been wondering when we’d start seeing these services pop up. So I was pleased to read Jennifer Lane’s Audio4cast (www.Audio4cast.com) and Mark Ramsey’s Hear 2.0 (www.hear2.com) recent blogs about Muziic and MixCloud.

Jennifer notes that Muziic was created by 15 year old developer and offers the chance to search for music, listen to Internet radio stations, watch music videos, build playlists, chat with friends, or post what you’re listening to on Twitter.

Mark points out that MixCloud is designed to be the equivalent of YouTube for radio shows. It’s not about individual songs but rather about individual talk or music shows.

I’d be interested to learn what you think about these services.

(Photo courtesy of Daniel Alexander/FramesMedia.com)

I first met John C. Havens at one of my friend, Bill Sobel’s NY:MIEG (NY Media Information Exchange Group) monthly networking breakfasts in Manhattan. John is a very likeable and knowledgeable guy on the social media scene who hosts a podcast on BlogTalkRadio. Recently he’s been doing a series about a subject I’d never heard of before, “augmented reality”. To be honest, I still don’t quite understand it but you can listen to John’s “Tactical Transparency” podcast about it here:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/search/augmented-reality/

“The Official Michael Jackson Opus” biography which is now available at www.michaeljacksonopus.com is 400 pages, weighs 26 pounds and features “augmented reality” that will allow you to integrate both video and music so that you can watch and listen through your computer (webcam required). It will cost you $ 249 at www.michaeljacksonopus.com

You can watch Al Roker’s TODAY SHOW interview about the book and see an example of how it will integrate “augmented reality” here:

Any thoughts about how you might be incorporating “augmented reality” into your daily life in the next few years?

How trusted do you feel by your employees, colleagues, clients?

How much do you trust them?

Dov Seidman, the author of “How: Why How we Do Anything Means Everything…in Business (And In Life)” makes some interesting points in this recent BusinessWeek article http://bit.ly/CR2rT

Meanwhile, at a recent TED (Technology-Entertainment-Design) event, Daniel Pink shared some eye-opening findings about how to motivate people. You can watch it here: http://bit.ly/PinkTED
(Thanks to Jerry Del Calliano for making me aware of this)

To be fair, Michael from Home Depot’s customer care department contacted me within minutes of my blog posting explaining my recent adventure. Another customer care rep, Stephanie from the corporate office, has been working to try and resolve the situation but her efforts to connect me with the regional Home Depot people here in the Saratoga area have not yet been successful. I appreciate her efforts but I wanted to share some of the comments I received to my initial posting:

Peter wrote: “When I renovated my home in Rockville years ago, I bought the appliances and most stuff from Lowe’s. However, since Lowe’s was farther away, I opted to hire a contractor recommended by Home Depot (after buying some more things from them). Home Depot is the worst. The Lowe’s contractor finally straightened out what the Home Depot contractor did wrong/failed to do. One of the best examples? I asked the Home Depot supplied electrician to connect a dimmer switch to the chandelier in my dining room. They did, and it didn’t dim the chandelier, but rather caused the lights to go off and on in a bizarre pattern, with some bulbs popping like in a bad movie, smoke to issue from the chandelier, and the circuit breaker to blow. Guess they didn’t teach the Home Depot ‘partner’ what ‘ground’ and ‘hot’ mean in electrician school… apparently, I was lucky not to have lost the whole house to an inferno...”

Lynn wrote: “I have been on a mission for quite some time to let everyone know NOT to hire people whom Home Depot employs(or suggests)as subcontractors. I have yet to see one job completed by any of these subs that has come up to the standards of most LICENSED, INSURED contractors.The best thing you can do in the future is NOT hire anyone from a home store like that until you have properly checked out their credentials and/or referrals, as you would do with anyone working in a trade. It sounds to me like your plumbers might not be properly insured, as they should have had NO problem in correcting THEIR mistake. As for Home Cheapo…keep on them too, especially to report the plumbers as ‘Sub’ standard in their quality of work .”

Jeff wrote: “Been there done that with Home Depot. We use Lowe’s now (in our experience, much better customer service). Like you, we bought an expensive product from Home Depot and they farmed out the installation. When things did not go right (which, of course, they didn’t), Home Depot would not take any responsibility. And neither would the contractor. It was not a fun situation. We have not had a similar scenario with Lowe’s”

The adventure continues….

Addendum added on 9/17/09:

Home Depot has connected me with their insurance company and I’ve been asked to provide estimates for the project so that we can resolve this matter. I can’t say they I envy the customer service reps
their jobs but at least dealing with them has been a positive experience.

On July 27th, I purchased a water heater at the Home Depot in Saratoga who subcontracted with a Glens Falls plumbing company, Goldentouch Plumbin & Heating to do the installation. Due to negligence on the part of the installers, which they readily admit, our laundry room was flooded soaking the wallboard on several walls and some of the carpeting in the adjoining family room.

Goldentouch arranged for a restoration company to come in and do some emergency work using industrial dehumidifiers and removing the damaged wallboard. But the plumber balked at paying for phase two of the project: replacing and repainting the wallboard which had been removed, reattaching the wall and door moldings, cleaning the mud off the laundry room floor which had been tracked in the by the restoration team and cleaning the carpet which was dirty from muddy shoes and soggy boxes of books that had been stored in a laundry closet. Instead, Goldentouch opted to replace the wallboard themselves but refused to take any responsibility for the rest of the cleanup.



I complained to Home Depot who contacted Goldentouch about the problem. Goldentouch accused me of trying to take advantage of them. I explained that I just wanted to have my laundry and family rooms restored to the conditions that they had been in prior to the installation of the water heater. Goldentouch’s attitude was that they were the victims and I was the victimizer. They inferred that it was suspicious that I didn’t want to simply make a claim with my insurance company. I explained that it didn’t make sense for my homeowner’s insurance policy to pay for their mistake. I was told that Goldentouch planned to turn the situation over to their attorney.

I returned to Home Depot to recap the latest developments. The customer service rep informed me that it wasn’t a Home Depot problem and that I would need to resolve the issue myself with Goldentouch. I disagreed and suggested that it was, indeed, Home Depot’s problem since they had sold me the water heater and hired the installer. I was told that the district manager would then contact me about the problem. That was a week ago. I’ve heard from no one since.

At this point, I can’t give high marks for customer service to either Home Depot or Goldentouch Plumbing & Heating in Glens Falls.

A couple of weeks ago, New York Times writer Stuart Elliot had a column about the significance of the side-by-side bathtubs in Cialis ads. Here’s an insight from a person who does research in the field of semiotics:

“…those bathtubs…represent female sex organs.”

Hmmm.

Is there a Georgia O’Keefe reference here?

You can read the rest of the reader’s perspective here:

http://tinyurl.com/StuartElliot