Brindle Media

Archive for the ‘Social media’ Category

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Just prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, my brother’s Hotmail account started sending out one of those “I’m stranded in Spain, my wallet’s been stolen and I need you to send me $$$ so I can get home”– email scams to contacts in his address book. I learned about it from friends who contacted me to ask if my brother was aware that his email had been hacked. Oddly, I never received the email directly from him because, as we learned later, somehow my address had been deleted from his contact list.

The situation became more complicated because we were both visiting my mother in New England and her home is equipped with only dial-up internet service and also because my brother, who also only has dial-up service at his home, had signed up for his Hotmail account on a computer at his local library several years ago.

Consequently, when my brother attempted to change his Hotmail password, the system didn’t recognize my mother’s computer and asked my brother for the answer to his secret question. However, the automated Hotmail system didn’t remind him about what the question was and it had been so many years since he’d joined Hotmail that he didn’t recall the question. So, throughout the day on Thanksgiving and continuing through Sunday night, he kept trying to contact Hotmail customer service but the automated system kept giving him the runaround and bouncing him back to his original screens.

When I returned home, I Googled Microsoft customer service and found an 866 number. However, when I called that number there was no option to connect with a Hotmail CSR nor one to connect with a live body. Considering all the criticism that Microsoft has been getting in the techie world during the past several years, I was amazed as well as frustrated.

Fortunately, when my brother returned home on Monday night, he received an email from Hotmail which helped him to change his password. As far as we’re aware, no harm was done however we still find it astonishing that it was such as hassle and took five days to rectify a pretty simple problem. Given 21st century CSR technology, we would have been happy to talk with a live body in the Philippines or Mumbai rather than to just go round and round with an automated customer response system.

What’s your customer service horror story?

During 2010, the oldest Baby Boomers turned 64 and, no doubt, wistfully hum the Paul McCartney tune while the youngest boomer will celebrate their 46th birthday. It’s got to be pretty discouraging to those younger boomers that HR departments now consider anyone older than 40 to be over the hill.

The original name for this blog was Buzz4Boomers and its intent was to provide information was to serve a translator of information about new technologies and social media for those Baby Boomers who tend to be intimidated by change. One thing I know about myself is that I am not an early adopter. But I am fascinated by new discovery and tend to be optimistic about the future. So, I frequently find that I fall halfway between those folks who are always using the hottest new technology or social media tools and those who are at the other end of the bell curve.

My challenge is that I tend to be a dilettante with a range of interests that’s a mile wide and a base of knowledge that’s an inch deep. So a review of my blogs over the past couple of years shows diverse topics such as the story of my customer experience using social media in negotiating with a large chain store, rants about musicFirst and the Performance Rights Act, and stories about augmented reality.

When I evaluated my professional broadcasting career after I left the industry in 2007, I realized that what I really enjoyed most about my job as a program director and on-air personality was helping people find ways to cope with the challenges in their lives. That could happen when I was able to provide important health or consumer protection information during a public affairs show or by simply playing a song that provided a listener with a brief distraction, sense of joy or peace of mind.

My ultimate goal for this blog is to make you aware of ideas/ events/ discoveries that are impacting our world and that a reader might not have encountered in hopes that it will provide some assistance in coping with change.

The social networks that Nicholas Christakis discusses in his TED presentation this past summer aren’t the high-tech internet-driven social media which that term now tends to infer but actual interactions between live human beings.

What can we learn from these insights?

Thanks to Daniel Anstandig at McVay Media for making me aware of Nicholas Christakis’ TED talk.

This week was our wedding anniversary so I was in our local Saratoga Springs, NY Hallmark store looking for a card for my wife. While I was perusing their selection, I noticed a video display and was amazed to discover that Hallmark is embracing Augmented Reality.

Here’s a video posting from MommyReporter:

I first discovered AR last summer around this time and have been fascinated by its potential. Most people are still unaware of Augmented Reality but now that a mass appeal company like Hallmark is employing this technology, I expect to see a lot more market penetration for AR during the next 12 months.

Here’s a link for the Hallmark website:

http://bit.ly/86tjXH

Your thoughts?

Earlier this year, I showed you how augmented reality can be used as part of the clothes shopping experience. Now, YOUReality and metalio have created an Online Retail Visualization 3D tool to help you see how furniture, appliances, electronics or other accessories might look in your current living space.

And for your iPhone:

How soon do you think it will be before you start taking this type of technology for granted?

With their tendency towards neutrality, I guess it’s not too surprising that Dutch citizens are reluctant to interfere in other people’s fights. This is presenting a problem for the Dutch government because public employees are frequently being confronted by aggression or actual violence. To encourage people to help public workers when they’re being violently confronted, the government has created an augmented reality billboard, placed above a busy intersection in Amsterdam. The billboard shows a real-time view of the street below but superimposes a green screen-filmed street fight into the otherwise empty curb space. As passersby stop to stare at themselves on the billboard, they are confronted with a tense altercation occurring right in front of them. Check it out:

Mashable reports: “The Dutch government hopes the ad will provoke a feeling of shame by showing citizens what they look like when they ignore such situations. It’s an ambitious and complex emotional experiment that injects AR into daily life. It’s also inspiring intense interest from Amsterdam pedestrians.” Your thoughts?

Just so you’ll know, I’m not employed by a radio station nor an individual or company which owns radio stations, I am not related to anyone who works in radio, and I’m not a shareholder in any company which owns radio stations. Although many years of my career were spent in radio, I am not a water bearer for any company which owns music-oriented broadcast radio stations.

That said, I find AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka’s remarks at a recent musicFIRST Coalition press conference on Capitol Hill pretty offensive.
Trumka said: “The reckless greed that drives Wall Street is the same as the unconscionable greed that drives the handful of conglomerate corporate radio executives that control 75 percent of our nation’s radio stations. If you care about music, if you care about the right of Americans to get paid for their work, if you care about doing what is right, be a part of the good fight for our performing brothers and sisters.”

“The unconscionable greed that drive the handful of conglomerate corporate radio executives that control 75% of our nation’s radio stations”? Nice rhetoric, Mr.Trumpka but what about the unconscionable greed that drives the handful of foreign-based record companies that abuse their relationships with their artists?

Lets review some facts. There are a little over 11,000 commercially licensed radio stations in America. Around 20%, of those facilities are owned by companies which control 100 or more stations. Clear Channel’s controls 11% and the remaining 9% is split up among 7 or 8 other companies. In other words, 80% of American broadcast stations aren’t owned by companies which Rich Trumka and musicFIRST could describe as “conglomerate corporate radio”.

Chairman of the House Labor and Education Committee, George Miller (D-CA) said: “The important thing to remember is this: Passage of the Performance Rights Act will stop corporate radio from continuing to exploit the labor of working Americans – Americans who spend decades passionately honing their craft to produce works that resonate with our inner angels.”

Chairman Miller appears unaware that these radio stations which he accuses of exploiting musicians are actually investing millions of dollars in air time to promote the careers of musicians and providing FREE commercials by exposing those artists’ music to the audiences that these stations have invested millions of their marketing dollars to aggregate.

At this point, some reader will ask: “But don’t those radio stations limit the number of artists and songs that they play and isn’t that unfair?”

The stations limit the number of artists and songs that they play based on what their listeners want to hear. Research has shown that most radio listeners prefer a limited number of songs on a station’s playlist. The particular songs may change over time but the aggregate number of songs remains relatively constant. It’s even been noted that iPod and Pandora users eventually limit their playlists after their initial enthusiasm for discovery wanes.

Although I’m no longer involved with the radio industry, I did spend many years programming stations and being “worked” by record industry representatives to increase exposure on those songs which were most important to their labels. Increased exposure meant and still means increased revenues for the foreign-owned record companies who are, to quote Chairman Miller, “continuing to exploit the labor of working Americans.”

In his blog today, Jerry Del Colliano offers his solution to the radio/RIAA Performance Rights Act standoff:

“1.Agree upon a very, very small fee for radio stations and guarantee the rate for the next seven years. Of course, you’ll never get the seven years but start low and give an increase — a small one — at one or two points along the way.

2. Local, independent operators (mom and pops), the real heart of local radio, should be totally exempt from any fees. I believe this can be negotiated in. Local operators are helping their communities and local and regional economies, they deserve a break. This is the strongest argument for local radio — where local radio actually exists — and this is the workaround.

3. Radio groups operating under 30 total stations should get an additional break no matter what market they are in because 30 stations constitutes a small group by today’s consolidated radio numbers. The number 30 can be 40, or 50 — it’s negotiable.

4. Large consolidators like Clear Channel, Citadel, Cumulus and others should pay the highest fee — but even that should be comparably low. Remember, the music industry just wants to get rid of the performance exemption so it can raise these percentages as soon as possible. Their compromise might have to be accepting pennies on the dollar for the first seven years.

5. This is a must and only a fool would knowingly agree to pay additional music royalty taxes for terrestrial radio without it. Radio stations would be exempt from paying these charges for their podcasting or online streaming of programming that is separate and apart from their terrestrial radio signal. The future is mobile Internet and as a result, this is the concession that radio operators need to get a leg up on the new frontier. The radio industry can argue, okay — you get some music royalties for terrestrial radio under certain circumstances but you give us music in this new space for free while we take the next seven years to build the podcasting and mobile and streaming businesses. It will be worth even more to you when we use our know-how to build these platforms and you can get a royalty on them as well later.”

You can read Jerry’s full blog at http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/2010/04/radio-royalty-solution.html

Tom Taylor writes in his daily column for Radio-Info.com under the headline

“The fight over FCC regulation of the Internet hits Capitol Hill – and partisan politics”
The Dems generally see a role for the Commission to regulate broadband providers in the name of consumer protection. The Republicans – at least several Senators who spoke up at Wednesday’s Senate hearing – don’t think the FCC has the authority. This goes back to last week’s D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals “Comcast” decision, which said the FCC couldn’t force the Philly-based media giant to treat all customers equally. (That’s also going to be called the “Bit Torrent” decision, because Comcast said it needed to choke down some traffic to extreme users of the file-sharing service.) The New York Times says Chairman Julius Genachowski now faces a strategic decision. He could choose to “re-classify Internet services as a utility similar to telephone service, to overcome the court decision.” Until the Bush Administration, the FCC did claim regulatory powers, under the theory that Internet services were akin to telephone service. Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican, basically told Genachowski this week “don’t do it”, because (in her words) “the legitimacy of the agency would be seriously compromised.” Why’s this important to radio? A lot of “radio” in the future is going to be consumed over the Internet. The question of who gets to set the rules about Internet traffic matters to radio – a lot.

Personally and professionally, I have mixed emotions about a regulated Internet. The idealist part of me wants the Internet to remain an eternally wild and open frontier for exploration and creativity. However, the skeptical adult businessman in me believes that sooner or later some cynical corporate entities will engineer the Internet version of a land grab and create barriers which can endanger the freedom of expression which it now offers. In an ideal world, business leaders would strive to create win-win situations but too often we’ve seen them turn corrupt and greedy with a sense of entitlement and a disdain for the customers they serve. Under that scenario, a watchdog like the FCC makes sense.

Your thoughts?

Your can read Tom Taylor’s columns at http://tinyurl.com/TomTaylor