Technology

Things that catch my geeky interests that don’t fall into a more specific tag.

Condition of Sale

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In the midst of recording and digitally archiving some old 78s (and I do mean old, dating back to the early 1900s), I noticed the following language on a disc from the Columbia Phonograph Co. (catalog #3045, “Mamma’s Boy (Marching Song)”, tenor solo with orchestra accompaniment, sung by Byron G. Harlan):

CONDITION OF SALE

This record is sold upon the express condition that it shall not be copied or duplicated and that the full right of property or possession reverts to the Columbia Phonograph Co. upon violation of this condition.

Two things popped into my head:

  1. Wow, copyright lawyers have been rabid for at least a full century!

  2. How in the world would the common consumer have copied or duplicated records in the early 1900’s? For reference, while there’s no definite pressing date on the disc, “Grand Prize Paris 1900”, “Grand Prize St. Louis 1904”, and “Patented December 10, 1901” are printed on the label, and “Patented Nov 25 1902” is pressed into the surface of the inner ring, so it’s reasonable to assume that the disc was pressed sometime after but reasonably close to 1904.

I love being able to listen to this old stuff.

Windows 7 + Digital River = Headaches

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Yet another item in the “why I’m a Mac user” file, and the “we’re never buying another Windows-based PC” file.*

Back on September 18th, I bookmarked an article detailing a special program Microsoft had set up for college students, offering the Windows 7 upgrade for $29 dollars. While I’m definitely a Mac user, we do have Hermie, our PC laptop, and this seemed like a reasonable deal. I went to the website, put in my college e-mail address, and got the process started, placing an order for the digital download and paying the extra $13 for a physical installation DVD to be set via snailmail.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before things started to go all pear-shaped. The following is the text of a support request I sent to Digital River, the company handling the digital sales and distribution for the program, through their website:

Selected Reasons: Order question – I received an error message.

Shopper Email: [me]@cwu.edu

Shopper Comments: Store error?

I just had what appears to be a catastrophic error when attempting to place my order for the $29 Windows 7 special student price. On my first attempt, I made it through to the final ‘checkout’ button, when the store stalled for a minute or two, then came back with an error message (unfortunately, I didn’t save the message, so I can’t relate exactly what it was).

When I reloaded the store and again attempted to place my order, I am now being told that I am not eligible for this upgrade, even though the initial check of my e-mail address indicated that I was, and allowed me to place the order (until the error message appeared).

At this point, I’m not sure if my order has been placed or not. I’ve not yet received any sort of e-mail confirmation, which seems to indicate that my order does not exist, but the ‘ineligible’ error message might mean that the system thinks I have placed an order, and is preventing me from placing a second order.

Additionally, I’ve been receiving the following error from the webserver while attempting to submit this error report:

Access Denied

You don’t have permission to access "http://drh.img.digitalriver.com/DRHM/servlet/ControllerServlet" on this server.

Reference #18.64d32d0.1253551495.12f2e3d

This forced me to find this customer service page on the main Digital River website, rather than being able to use the customer service page on the Windows 7 US Online Store.

Any assistance, including confirmation of whether or not my order has

actually been placed, would be greatly appreciated.

Three days later, on September 22nd, I got the following response:

Thank you for contacting the Windows 7 Offer online store.

We show that the payment for order number XXXXX has been received and is awaiting clearance through the bank. This process may take up to 14 days from the date payment was received. Once the payment has cleared, you will be notified via email. If you purchased a digital product, it will become available for download after the funds have cleared.

Order Number : XXXXX

Sincerely,

Mark V.

Windows 7 Offer online store

Customer Service

webhelp.v4@digitalriver.com

Email ID: 11915177

Time passes…

I never did get any e-mail confirmation of my order, and the payment took a lot longer than 14 days. Yesterday I checked my bank accounts online, and saw that the charge from Digital River had finally gone through on October 27th, more than a month after I had placed the order. Still, at least that was confirmation that they had received and processed my order. I went to the Digital River site, plugged in my order number, and was finally able to download the Windows 7 installation.

So, yesterday morning, I get the upgrade process started. The initial download was a small, 346k installation manager. I open that, and it begins the two-hour process of downloading the full Windows 7 installation package.

Two hours later, it’s ready to go. I run the installer, it chews on things for a while, checks for online updates, chews on things a little longer, and then tells me that I need to complete two steps before proceeding: I must uninstall iTunes, and restart Hermie because of some system updates the installer had changed. Okay, fine. iTunes goes away, and I restart Hermie.

Once Hermie restarts…um, well, now what? The installation process didn’t automatically restart. There’s no standalone installer that I can see, either on my desktop or in my Downloads folder. Odd. Maybe it’s all handled through that initial little download manager? I open that up, and a few minutes later, I’m watching the download counter slowly crawl through another two hour download process, as apparently whatever it downloaded the first time disappeared during the restart process. At this point, I have to head off to school, so I just let a few choice words fly and wander off, letting the machine do its thing.

That night, I come home from school. The download is finished, so I start the installation process again. This time the installer seems happy, and proceeds chug away, after warning me that the process will take “a few hours.” A few hours indeed — two hours later, it’s still installing, and I go to bed.

Which brings us up to this morning. When I check Hermie, it looks like the install has gone swimmingly, and Windows is happily sitting and waiting, asking me to type my Windows product key. “You can find your Windows product key on a label included with the package that came with your copy of Windows. The label might also be on your computer case.”

Hm. Well, since this was a digital download, I don’t have a package. Maybe, as this was a digital download, they just need the old Vista product key? I dig out Hermie’s box, find the Vista product key, type it in…no go. Okay, so apparently, I’m actually supposed to have a Windows 7 product key somewhere. Not really surprising, but I’m more than a little curious as to where it might be.

Back to Digital River’s site. I poke around the customer service pages and find out that the product key was supposed to be e-mailed to me. Hey, I’ll bet that that was part of the e-mail that I never got because the website crashed! Oh, goodie.

So, the following two e-mail messages go off to Digital River, this time directly to “Mark” at the e-mail address that replied to my first message:

Hi Mark —

On or about September 20th or 21st, I submitted a support request through Digital River’s main site regarding my issues ordering the special $29 student price edition of the Windows 7 upgrade. You replied to me on the 22nd, letting me know that despite my problems with the website, my order had been received and was merely awaiting clearance through my bank. I’ve included the discussion thread with my original request and your response below.

The good news is that the order did finally go through — I saw the entry on my bank statement yesterday, and was able to log in and download the Windows 7 installer. I let the installer run overnight, and everything seemed to be going well. Unfortunately, the bad news is that (I assume) because of the issues with the website when I originally placed my order, I never received an e-mail confirmation or receipt for my order. And, of course, it is this e-mail confirmation that contains the Windows 7 Product Key necessary to complete the install and activate Windows. At the moment, I have a computer that has a legally purchased and installed copy of Windows 7, but is of no more use than a doorstop because of the lack of a product key.

I’ve tried every avenue I can think of to find the key on the Digital River website. While I can log in and view my Order Details page, which verifies my order number, date, status, and billing and shipping addresses, that page does not display my product key. It does offer a helpful-looking button titled “View Invoice”, however, clicking on that, rather than showing me my invoice, instead sends me to the main Registration page on the site that asks for my educational institution e-mail address to verify that I’m eligible for the program.

I’ve paid for the software, the money has been deducted from my account, I’ve installed the software, and my computer is now useless due to some bug in the Digital River system. Please have someone find my invoice or receipt and send me my product key so I can use the software I’ve purchased…and my computer.

An addendum to the attached message that I sent approximately 40 minutes ago:

I have just checked my physical e-mail box, and though the charge from Digital River was deducted from my bank account on Oct. 27th (incidentally, more than a month after I initially placed the order), I have not yet received the physical DVD that I ordered (which I’m hoping would also have the product activation key as part of the package, though at this point, I’m less than optimistic). Do you have any idea when my installation DVD shipped, the expected shipping time, or (best case scenario) a tracking number?

In addition to sending the e-mail off, I also decided to see if I could call Digital River and actually speak to a customer support representative. Of course, Digital River doesn’t have a customer support phone number anywhere on their site that I can easily find, so I turn to Google…and boy, was that an education. Searching for ‘digital river customer service phone number‘ brings up a whole lot of reasons not to trust ordering anything from Digital River — including this battle from 2001, indicating that in eight years, they still haven’t managed to figure out their process — something that I wish I’d known before starting this whole process.

I do find a phone number for Digital River customer service listed on this customer service contact page from an entirely different company. Calling that number just gets me a recorded message from Digital River telling me that the number is no longer in service…but at least they are kind enough to give me another number to call.

For the record: as of November 6th, 2009, Digital River’s customer service phone number is (952) 253-1234.

So, at 7:57 a.m., I call. I speak to a polite young Indian lady who tells me her name is “Jay,” who checks and verifies my order, and tells me that I should get an email at my CWU email address in “about fifteen to twenty minutes” with my product key. The whole phone call takes all of about five minutes, so some small kudos to Digital River on that score: once you can find someone, they’re relatively polite and efficient. I thank her, and start writing this blog post. It’s now 8:52 a.m., long past the “fifteen to twenty minute” window that I was given, and no email has arrived yet. Yeah, any points Digital River got from their phone etiquette have been quite handily counteracted.

And that’s where the matter stands right now. I’m lucky in that Hermie is a backup machine, not a primary for either myself or Prairie, so it’s not catastrophic that it’s currently out of commission. I’ll keep fighting with Digital River, but if this goes on for more than another day or so with no product key, no physical installation DVD (with product key), and an inoperative computer, then I’ll be using the backup install DVD that came with Hermie to go back to Vista and start arguing for a refund instead.

What a completely crappy experience. Thanks, Digital River, and thanks, Microsoft, for choosing such a stellar business partner.

Update: After waiting for a full hour after the stated 20-minute window, I called back and spoke to another representative. This time, I had him send the email to my Gmail account, and kept him on the phone until it appeared. When it did appear, the email was very helpful in explaining how to download and install the Windows 7 upgrade…but said absolutely nothing about the product key. I explained this to the representative, even narrating exactly what happened when I followed the link in the email he had just sent me, until it finally sank in that yes, I had downloaded Windows 7, and yes, I had installed it, and yes, I still needed the product key!

Finally, he admitted that there seemed to be something going wrong, and read me my product key, character by character. Once again making sure to keep him on the phone, I read the product key back to him as I entered it in…and, finally, success! The box blinked away, and Windows 7 finally finished installing.

So, an eventual acceptable ending. But wow. What an incredible amount of frustration to get there. Any bets on whether that physical installation DVD ever shows up?

* A quick aside to the zealots: yes, I’m perfectly aware that this post details an issue primarily with Digital River, and only slightly with Microsoft. However, as I’ve never had a customer service experience quite this frustrating with Apple or an Apple-related company, and as I wouldn’t be having this experience were it not for attempting to upgrade a Windows-based PC, the Microsoft/non-Apple-PC side of things ends up being the target of my ire. Perhaps it’s not entirely fair, but that’s just how it is.

Your Cellphone Can Kill

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I’ve had a guideline in my head for some time that I haven’t always followed as closely as I should. From here on out, I’m going to be making a much more determined effort to follow through.

If I can tell that you are talking to me on a cell phone while driving, I will hang up after asking you to call me back later.

I don’t care if you’re friend, family, job recruiter, Trent Reznor, or Barack Obama. Do not call me while driving. It’s stupid and dangerous to yourself and anyone around you.

There really shouldn’t need to be much explanation on this one, but just in case, here’s excerpts from two recent articles from the New York Times that essentially confirm what should be blatantly obvious to everyone.

Driven to Distraction: Drivers and Legislators Dismiss Cellphone Risks

Extensive research shows the dangers of distracted driving. Studies say that drivers using phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as other drivers, and the likelihood that they will crash is equal to that of someone with a .08 percent blood alcohol level, the point at which drivers are generally considered intoxicated. Research also shows that hands-free devices do not eliminate the risks, and may worsen them by suggesting that the behavior is safe.

Five states and the District of Columbia require drivers who talk on cellphones to use hands-free devices, but research shows that using headsets can be as dangerous as holding a phone because the conversation distracts drivers from focusing on the road. [Not to mention all the people in Washington who blatantly ignore the law and don’t even use hands-free headsets, because we wussed out and passed a watered-down, ineffectual law that is practically pointless. -mh]

[Simulation-based] research, showing that multitasking drivers are four times as likely to crash as people who are focused on driving, matches the findings of two studies, in Canada and in Australia, of drivers on actual roads.

The highway safety administration estimates that drivers using a hand-held device are at 1.3 times greater risk of a crash or near crash, and at three times the risk when dialing, compared with others who are simply driving.

Research also shows that drivers conversing with fellow passengers do not present the same danger, because adult riders help keep drivers alert and point out dangerous conditions and tend to talk less in heavy traffic or hazardous weather.

“There is zero doubt that one’s driving ability is impaired when one is trying to have a cellphone conversation — whether hands-free or hand-held, it doesn’t matter,” said David E. Meyer, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

In fact, some scientists argue that hands-free laws make driving riskier by effectively condoning the practice.

U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving

[The] National Highway Traffic Safety Administration…decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.

The former head of the highway safety agency said he was urged to withhold the research to avoid antagonizing members of Congress who had warned the agency to stick to its mission of gathering safety data but not to lobby states.

Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking.

“We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety.

Mr. Ditlow said that putting fears of the House panel ahead of public safety was an abdication of the agency’s responsibility.

“No public health and safety agency should allow its research to be suppressed for political reasons,” he said. Doing so “will cause deaths and injuries on the highways.”

Amazon Kills Pocketpedia

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For a while now, I’ve been using Bookpedia to catalog Prairie’s and my book collections, and DVDPedia for our movie collection. One of the handiest things about the system was the ability to sync our libraries to my iPod through Pocketpedia and have them available at my fingertips whenever we were out and about. No more trying to remember whether or not we’d picked up a particular book from a particular author or series, just check the iPod. It was one of my most-used iPhone apps.

Unfortunately, that’s not an option anymore: Amazon recently changed their API Terms of Service, and included the following clause in section 4(e):

You will not, without our express prior written approval requested via this link , use any Product Advertising Content on or in connection with any site or application designed or intended for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device.

Since the update to the TOS, Amazon has been aggressively enforcing that clause. I saw the writing on the wall a couple weeks ago when Delicious had their iPhone app pulled, and now Pocketpedia has been killed as well.

This morning we received an email from Amazon requesting the immediate removal of Pocketpedia from the App Store since the program is in violation of their license agreement. (A clause we’re pretty sure didn’t exist when Pocketpedia launched with the App Store in June last year but TOSBack only tracks Kindle and MP3 music service terms of use.)

We’ve logged a request with Amazon that Pocketpedia be exempt from the mobile clause (this is stated as a possibility in the license agreement) but it seems others have tried this before and were shot down so we’re not holding our breath for a favourable response. Hopefully the future will bring a positive change in their policy and we can all go on competing in the App Store.

Pocketpedia Not Available

Unsurprisingly, I — and a number of other previously-happy customers — are none too thrilled with Amazon about this. I’m hoping that some workaround can be found, and that Pocketpedia can continue on (even if that means gutting it to remove all data ever retrieved from Amazon). All I can do now (aside from dropping Amazon a quick complaint e-mail, which I’ve already done) is wait and see what happens next.

Update: Hooray! As of today, Nov. 10th, 2009, Pocketpedia is back! You can download the new, Amazon-free version right here.

The End of Empathy

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This may be a little rambling and disjointed, but hey, that’s one of the benefits of a personal blog with a relatively light readership, right? A few loosely connected threads have been running through my brain, and while I’m not likely to be able to weave them into anything resembling a gorgeous tapestry, I might be able to produce something akin to a kindergarten “my first cross stitch” project.

How’s that for a tortured metaphor?

Item 1: Neighbors

As much as Prairie and I like where we live — we’ve got a nice apartment, in a nice complex, in a fairly pretty area of Washington, in the Kent Valley right next to the Green River and lots of farmland, with easy access to the Green River Trail and frequently gorgeous views of Mt. Rainier — we have neighbors who drive us up the wall with noise. We’ve made a number of attempts to find a solution (first personally, then through the rental office, and occasionally with the assistance of the local police), but the issues continue.

As we’ve discussed it, we keep coming back to the conclusion that on a very real level, the people around us simply don’t care about anything outside of themselves. Where we recognize that we live in an apartment complex and, out of common courtesy, take steps to live quietly and not impact on our neighbors any more than can be reasonably expected when living in an apartment complex, they act as if they have no idea that there’s anyone around them. Rock Band parties, loud music, shouting and yelling, little to no consideration for what time of night it is, etc.

It’s not that they don’t know that what they do might be (and often is) annoying to the people around them, it’s just that they don’t think about it at all. There’s no point when they realize that they might be getting a little loud and perhaps they should tone it down. There’s no concept of how they might be impacting their neighbors. Back when we used to think that being good neighbors and politely talking to them might make a difference, I’d get (privately) frustrated how they’d all wide-eyed and innocently tell us that they were not trying to bother us…but it never clicked that it would be good if they tried not to bother other people.

In short: no empathy, no acknowledgement of other people around them.

(And this little rant doesn’t even go into the number of “boom cars” that cruise through the parking lot at all hours of the day and night….)

Item 2: Jason Fortuny and Troll Culture

I’m not sure if the following is so much a lack of empathy as it is a near psychopathic anti-empathy, but the rise of modern ‘trolling‘ found a poster child in 2006 in Jason Fortuny, a local prankster and troll who conceived and executed the notorious Craigslist Sex Prank, in which he posted a fake sex ad on Craigslist, collected the hundreds of responses he got, and proceeded to post them publicly and in their entirety, complete with any identifying information (e-mail addresses, names, numbers, pictures, etc.) that had been included. I just found out a couple hours ago that one of the pranks victims sued Fortuny, and last week was awarded a nearly $75,000 judgement. This (the judgement) is a good thing.

Item 3: We Live in Public (and the End of Empathy)

Yesterday, Cygnoir linked to this article by Jason Calacanis from January, where he dives headlong into this lack of empathy and links it to our ever-increasing dependence on the digital world, and how a generation that has grown up with most of their contact with other people being through the digital medium are failing to develop that empathic sense of the actual person on the other end of the bitstream. It’s a long post, and well worth reading, but I’m going to pull out a couple of excerpts here.

From “Godwin’s Law Meets Harris’ Law”:

Digital communications is a wonderful thing–at least at the start. Everyone participating in digital communities is eventually introduced to Godwin’s Law: At some point, a participant, or more typically his or her thinking, will be compared to the Nazis. But that’s only part of the breakdown. Eventually, you see the effect of what I’ll call Harris’ Law: At some point, all humanity in an online community is lost, and the goal becomes to inflict as much psychological suffering as possible on another person.

Harris’ Law took effect last year when Abraham Biggs killed himself in front of a live webcam audience on life-streaming service JustinTV. The audience’s role? They encouraged him to do it.

Harris’ law took effect in October of 2006, when Lori Drew, a grown woman, created a fake alias on MySpace (”Josh Evans”) in order to psychologically torture 14-year-old Megan Meier. Drew started a online love affair with Megan as “Evans” before pulling the rug out and viciously turning on her victim. This “cyber-bullying,” as the press likes to call it, resulted in Megan killing herself.

Harris’ Law took effect in October of last year when Choi Jin-sil killed herself, reportedly over the fallout from Internet rumors. The bullying in Korea has become so intense that you’re now required to use your Social Security Number to sign up for a social network. This lack of anonymity is one of the most enlightened things I’ve heard of from one of the most advanced–if not the most advanced–Internet communities in the world.

Ownership of one’s behavior? Who knew?!?!?

I’m sure some of the wacky Internet contingents will flame me for saying that anonymity is a bad thing, but the fact is that anonymous environments create the environments in which Godwin’s and Harris’ Laws apply. What’s the point of starting these communities if they eventually end in pain and suffering? Anonymity is overrated in my book.

From “Internet Asperger’s Syndrome (IAS)”:

I’ve come to recognize a new disorder, the underlying cause of Harris’ Law. This disease affects people when their communication moves to digital, and the emotional cues of face-to-face interaction–including tone, facial expression and the so called “blush response”–are lost (More: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FxwHfoWdS8 ).

In this syndrome, the afflicted stops seeing the humanity in other people. They view individuals as objects, not individuals. The focus on repetitive behaviors–checking email, blogging, twittering and retiring andys–combines with an inability to feel empathy and connect with people.

[…] In IAS, screen names and avatars shift from representing people to representing characters in a video game. Our 2600’s and 64’s have trained us to pound these characters into submission in order to level up. We look at bloggers, people on Twitter andpodcasters not as individuals, but as challenges–in some cases, “bosses”–that we must crush to make it to the next phase.

From “What’s at Stake?”:

Today, we’re destroying each other with words, but teaching ourselves to objectify individuals and to identify with aggressors will result in more than psychological violence. This behavior will find its way into the real world, like it did when Wayne Forrester murdered his wife Emma over a change in herFacebook status, from married to single.

It’s only a matter of time, sadly, until this loss of empathy will hit the real world. We’re training ourselves to destroy other people, and there’s a generation growing up with this in their DNA. They don’t remember a world when communications were primarily in the real world.

So what?

So what’s the point of all this? Well, aside from the obvious conclusion of Jason’s piece — “In summary, how we treat each other does matter. It matters because, without empathy, our lives are shallow, self-centered and meaningless.” — I’m really not sure.

I do believe, though, that this is a real problem. I see too much evidence of this lack of empathy and consideration for others, too many instances of “it’s all about me,” both online and off. From internet trolls like Jason to people on a bike path who will continue to ride side by side, forcing other people off the trail, because it’s more important to continue their conversation than to share the space. From neighbors who feel Rock Band isn’t any good unless it’s played at the volume of a rock concert to people who hide behind anonymous handles to post hateful messages attacking others.

People sometimes wonder why I don’t try to be more anonymous online, why I blog under my real name, especially as it’s something that has caused me problems in the past. Some of the reasoning goes back to my “Own Yourself” post (itself triggered by Anil Dash’s “Privacy Through Identity Control” post), but some of it is this very issue.

I don’t want to hide, or be perceived as hiding, what I think, say, and believe, through an online pseudonym. This is what and who I am, this is what I believe. Sometimes I’ve believed some stupid things that I’ve later changed my mind on, sometimes I’ve done some stupid things that I’ve had to take my lumps for, but it’s all me. Perhaps, in some small (and quite possibly futile) way, I’m hoping that being open and honest about myself will, in some cases and for some people, humanize me more than would be the case if I stuck to ‘djwudi’.

I think, perhaps, that anonymity hurts those who practice it as much as it protects them. Hiding behind a pseudonym with no real view of who the real person is dehumanizes yourself, encouraging others to see you as something less than a real person, and leading you open to attack. Perhaps for some that’s an acceptable risk — I can see a whole long debate about whether the dehumanization of anonymity is more or less dangerous than the openness of a real identity, and I’m certainly something of a poster child for the risks of blogging under a real name (though I’d still argue that my case is more one of blogging foolishly under my real name) — but for me, it’s not. To quote one of the great philosophers of our time, “I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam,” and I’m standing by that.

The End (Such As It Is)

And now that I’ve gone completely off the rails (hey, what ever happened to that thread/sewing metaphor?)…yeah, empathy. Have some. Please? Think about the people around you, both in the real world and in this online bitbucket. I don’t care how cheezy it sounds, or what you might think of the source document, but the Golden Rule of “do unto others as you’d have done unto you” really isn’t such a bad thing, now is it?

Now if we can just convince our neighbors of this….

30 Years of CDs

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Looks like the venerable Compact Disc turned 30 years old on Sunday.

Compact discs weren’t always impromptu drink coasters. Once, in the not-so-distant past, they played music, contained pictures, and let people play video games with tacked-on FMV sequences. And today, the venerable CD turned 30.

Of course, the CD didn’t immediately take off right then and there…it wouldn’t be until October 1, 1982 that Billy Joel’s 52nd Street became the first CD album released. It was conveniently released in Japan alongside Sony’s brand new CDP-101 Compact Disc player. The album (and more importantly the medium it was pressed upon) changed history, as more compact disc players were introduced into the market beginning in 1983. The music CD would reach its zenith with The Beatles “1” (30 million in sales), before beginning its eventual and inevitable fall to the Mp3 in the mid-2000’s (in 2008, for example, CD sales dropped 20%).

The first CD I ever bought was purchased while on a trip of some sort — I’m not sure, but I think it was during a trip to the Episcopal Youth Event one summer. A group of us Episcopal Youth had flown from Anchorage to Seattle, from whence we’d load up in a van and drive to Missoula, Montana for the EYE. While in Seattle, we got to browse through the Pike Place Market. This was my first time there, and I remember two things clearly: seeing a prop phaser (possibly a replica, though I’ve always remembered it being an original prop) at Golden Age Collectibles for quite a few hundred dollars more than I had available to me; and browsing through one of the music stores in the Market and finding a “Limited Edition” of Queen’s “The Miracle” album.

I didn’t even have a CD player at this point, but this was a limited edition! Who knew how long it would be on the market, or whether we’d ever be able to get it in the frozen wastelands of Alaska! As a Queen fan, I had to have it, and I plunked my money down. Of course, it wasn’t long before I discovered that “Limited Editions” are rarely anything but marketing drivel, but hey, I had my first CD.

(I did this with my DVD collection as well, picking up the original, un-edited release of “The Devil’s Advocate” before that pressing was recalled to have the unauthorized appropriation of the Ex Nihilo sculpture digitally edited out. This time, I’ve got a Special Edition that’s truly special!)

Amusingly, before that point, I wasn’t convinced that CDs were going to take off. In fact, it would be far more accurate to say that I was convinced that they wouldn’t take off. I mean, really, they didn’t seem that that much of an improvement over the tapes I’d been collecting for some time by then. They didn’t seem to sound any different, and you couldn’t even repurpose them when you got tired of the music that was on them! At least with cassettes, you could tape over the little holes at the top and put whatever you wanted on there after you were bored with that album. These CD things would be useless if you decided you didn’t want the music!

Of course, better CD players and better stereos soon convinced me that yes, there was a (very) audible improvement in sound quality, my CD collection soon grew to far outstrip that of my cassette collection, and now the majority of the 1,500-some CDs I own are in storage, while any of that music (and so much more) is available at a moments notice on my computer. And yet, I spend a chunk of my free time importing old LPs, 45s, and 78s to my computer, relishing the warm tones and old, outdated, analog crackles and pops of my collection of vinyl. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

1234567890

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As of now — Feb. 13th 2009, at 3:31 (and 30 seconds) PM (PST), the Unix Time is 1234567890.

Pretty exciting, isn’t it? Hey, some people think so — there’s a listing of “1234567890 Day” parties right here.

Good Twitter Marketing is Communication

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I’ve been having fun over the past couple of weeks playing with a bit of unofficial marketing via Twitter for a couple of the local conventions. I’ve been using Twitter (djwudi, if you didn’t know already) for some time now, and I’ve been seeing a number of different companies and organizations picking up Twitter accounts, some of whom seemed to use it successfully…some of whom, less so.

To me, possibly the single most important aspect to marketing successfully on Twitter — and keep in mind that I’m not a marketing wonk in any way, I’m just an opinionated geek with a Twitter account — is having a real person behind the account. Just as people prefer to call a business and speak to a person rather than an automated machine, I like to know that there’s a real set of eyeballs paying attention to a Twitter account, and it’s not merely an automated receptacle echoing an RSS feed. Many companies seem to see Twitter as little more than an RSS reader for people who don’t grok RSS readers, and that’s a rather sad outlook.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with feeding RSS feeds into Twitter accounts. I’m doing that very thing myself, in fact. However, that shouldn’t be all that is done with the account.

Right now, I’m managing two Twitter accounts for local conventions: norwescon (for Norwescon) and steamcon (for Steamcon). Both of these are unofficial (i.e., I’m not actually involved with the production of either ‘con, but just do this because I can and because it’s fun to play with this stuff), but the Steamcon account is slightly less unofficial…that is, I’ve received a nice thanks from the Steamcon Powers-That-Be along with a link on their homepage to the Twitter account. Both accounts are somewhat automated, using Twitterfeed to pipe in RSS feeds. However, I also take care to make sure that neither account is a simple infodump.

Here’s the steps I’ve taken so far:

  1. Use multiple sources.

    Each account actually has multiple RSS feeds contributing content. For Norwescon, that’s the LiveJournal group, the Flickr group photo pool, and the Flickr group discussions; likewise, Steamcon gets their LiveJournal group, their Flickr group photo pool, and their Flickr group discussions. At the moment, there’s very little activity on Flickr, and most of the posts come from announcements on LiveJournal, but the Flickr feeds will come in handy post-con.

  2. Find the people that might be interested.

    I knew that since these weren’t official accounts, the chances of people stumbling across them were pretty slim. So, rather than just set them up and toss them into the electronic wind of the ‘net to see if they caught anyone’s eye, I set up two Twitter searches and subscribed to the RSS feeds. I use the same syntax for each search, just changing the name of the ‘con: norwescon -from:norwescon. This shows me any Tweets mentioning the ‘con, while excluding those sent by the Norwescon Twitter account (I originally also appended -"@norwescon" to exclude reply Tweets, as those have their own tab in the Twitter interface, but I’m finding it handy to have those included in the RSS feed as well). When I see someone’s tweet pop up, I take a look at their Twitter account, and if they look like they’re interested, I follow them.

  3. Interact!

    As evidenced by how I started this post out, I think this is the most important of the three. Rather than letting the RSS feeds take care of everything, I check in on the accounts myself off and on when I can. Admittedly, it’s not as often as I check my personal Twitter account, but it’s often enough that I can catch mentions, reply to any Tweets directed to the account, and so on. I also post Tweets myself when I find something interesting or worth sharing that fits the theme (such as Star Trek corsets or steampunk Lego). Any indication that there’s a real personality behind the account handle is good, and is more likely to get not just subscribers, but active subscribers. Twitter should be a conversation, not a lecture.

In the end, I’m having a lot of fun with this little experiment. It seems to be working well enough — the Norwescon account is up to 40 followers just through my dinking around and word-of-tweet, while the Steamcon account is now up to 38, most of whom have just shown up in the past two days after the Twitter logo and link hit the Steamcon website. Not huge numbers by many estimations, but both accounts are relatively new, and I’m sure both will continue to grow as the cons get closer and as word continues to spread.

Now if only I could figure out how to get paid for this kind of stuff full-time, instead of doing it for free during lunch breaks and evenings at home! ;)

Links for January 21st through January 26th

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Sometime between January 21st and January 26th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Improved Del.Icio.Us Posting Bookmarklet (With Gruber’s Title Case Goodness): "For a while, I used the del.icio.us Complete Firefox extension, but it's one of those few abandonware extensions that didn't make the trip to Firefox 3. So I switched back to my bookmarklet, as it can do everything the extension does and more — and with keyconfig and a handy reference, it can be triggered by a keystroke just as the extension was, so I'm all good."
  • Time Machine backups on network shares in Leopard: A guide to setting up Time Machine backups over a network without springing for Apple's Time Capsule device.
  • Obama signs order to close Guantanamo in a year: President Barack Obama began overhauling U.S. treatment of terror suspects Thursday, signing orders to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, shut down secret overseas CIA prisons, review military war crimes trials and ban the harshest interrogation methods.
  • The Obameter: Tracking Barack Obama’s Campaign Promises: PolitiFact has compiled about 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter. We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken. (So far: 6 kept, 1 stalled, 14 in progress)
  • US Democracy Server: Patch Day: * Leadership: Will now scale properly to national crises. Intelligence was not being properly applied. * A bug has been fixed that allowed the President to ignore the effects of debuffs applied by the Legislative classes. * Drain Treasury: There appears to be a bug that allowed loot to be transferred from the treasury to anyone on the President’s friends list, or in the President’s party. We are investigating. * Messages to and from the President will now be correctly saved to the chat log. * Messages originating from the President were being misclassified as originating from The American People. * A rendering error that frequently caused the President to appear wrapped in the American Flag texture has been addressed.

Happy 25th Birthday Macintosh!

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Twenty-five years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the original Macintosh: “The computer for the rest of us.”

It’s funny to see just how much hasn’t changed in the past 25 years — especially Jobs’ consummate showmanship and flair — and how much has. That little machine that started it all is certainly a far cry from what’s being offered today, but it’s very easy to see how much today’s Mac still owes to the original, in everything from the interface to the advertising (I was really amused at how similar the two ads at the very end of the above clip are to many of today’s ads from Apple).

So happy birthday, Macintosh! And here’s to another 25 years to come!