Adam-Jackson

I’m hoping someone representing Starbucks comments here as I’d like to use longhand to write this down beyond 140 characters which is what I’ve been using all morning.

Starbucks had Gold Card in 2008 as a $20-$25 (can’t remember exactly) yearly fee which enabled 10% off all Starbucks Purchases (not machines, coffee supplies or gift cards) but you could buy a coffee and a pound of coffee and get 10% off. For me, my $5 Starbucks expenditure each day really benefitted by this great deal.

Then in December of 2009, they killed that program and transitioned to a free Gold Card model where any Starbucks gift card holder would register their card at http://starbucks.com/card and would then they’d be a “registered” member. After five purchases with that card, they’d receive green level status and after 30 purchases, they’d be a gold member (w/o paying any yearly fees) and, from what I could tell, that gold card membership was good for life so you could not purchase coffee for 5 years and still have your gold card.

I wrote a review of this program on 12-22-2009. You can read the full review here. I’m including the Starbucks chart for rewards that was current at the time of that review.

Today, this changes. Here’s today’s June 14th press release but I’ve copied the relevant bits below.

As part of this commitment, Schultz recognized customers’ desire for a better in store Wi-Fi experience and announced that on July 1, Starbucks will turn on one-click, free Wi-Fi through AT&T in all U.S. company operated stores.

Great! This is fantastic news to get more customers into Starbucks and it’s a pain point that has bothered me since I started working out of coffee shops full time in early 2008. Starbucks was always out as a meeting place as no one could connect to Wifi. So, in many ways this is a huge step forward and for that, I’m applauding Starbucks in finally giving away something mom & pop coffee houses have been doing since 1998 in big cities like NYC and SF.

This also means that a perk that the small percentage of Green and Gold level Starbucks loyal customer is going away. Free Wi-Fi 2 hours a day was a perk. In fact, I’ve sat in a Starbucks for 8 hours authenticated with the same account on my Macbook, iPhone and iPad with no issues so they were being very relaxed about the 2 hour limit. Not a single person I met outside of Starbucks’ daily coffee drinkers knew what gold was. I had to tell them how to do it so, I believe Starbucks had a hard time selling the program and it could have been single digit conversions but don’t quote me on that. My point is, Starbucks green and gold wasn’t huge. No one knew about it and I rarely saw another person with a gold card.

Starbucks said, “fine, let’s make the non green and gold people happy by giving them free wifi anytime for free.”

My perks haven’t changed:

• Free soy & syrup in drinks
• Free refill on drip coffee
• Free coffee with whole bean purchase
• Free beverage every 15 transactions
• Free Wifi

but the “value” of those perks has. But hey, it’s not like I was paying $20 a year for these perks and now they’re taking something away and charging me the same because they’re not. This is a loyalty program from Starbucks to reward loyal customers and now loyal customers are simply rewarded less for their loyalty.

My point is that I’m just another bitching customer but I’m a loyal customer who felt that free wi-fi was a good thank you for dropping in twice a day and buying coffee. Now, everyone gets that privilege and has to do nothing for it. If Starbucks threw in an additional perk like a free extra shot of espresso or free upgrade to Clover Brewed coffee for the same price is a regular drip coffee, then I’d be super stoked but nope, they’re simply weakening the loyalty program for us.

Starbucks is doing nothing wrong but making us feel more dumb for being so loyal to a brand. That’s all I have to say. I love the coffee, the experience and the teams running these stores. I would like to be offered perks and not have them taken away piece by piece. This opinion piece does not reflect the views of my employer. (had to add that).

Thanks for reading.

skip down to the horizontal page break to read the story of what happened tonight that made me leave

This was my first time at BFD which, I believe stands for, “big fucking deal.” so I guess that was intentional and it takes place at the start of summer at Shoreline Amphitheatre which is over the hill from Google HQ but the festival was nothing like Google even though you could pick up and use Google’s city-wide wifi which was a nice perk. I’ve camped out at Google HQ. It’s a nice area with tons of friendly mosquitos but this is the first time at shoreline and it’s a great amphitheatre. The area I was in was a tent with 2,400 capacity at the entrance to the park. In comparison, Ultra Music Festival in Miami was close to 60,000 people in a huge park over the course of 2 days. It was also an all ages event but nothing like this.

The story I’d like to tell is that of fighting, bloodshed, a broken camera and the biggest waste of money ever. I think it’s important to note, that while writing this, I don’t care anymore. I’m over it. Maybe I’m just tired but this is a part of life and I encourage you to read / skim through all 10 blog posts about Ultra in Miami that I did before and after the show. I had a phenomenal time and it surpassed all expectations for the trip and worth every penny that I spent so I feel that this not so good experience is just nature balancing things out because Ultra was too good and too amazing.

First of all, Brian Transeau’s performance this evening was terrific. I’ve never seen BT play a day show but it was just as the sun was about to go down so as the set finished, it was completely dark. This was special after seeing him perform in clubs and night-time festivals for so many years. The set was absolutely perfect. He opened with Deadmau5’s “Strobe” and finished with Flaming June and Suddenly. In the middle, there was a bit of Tiesto and tracks from his new album. If I were to review his set, I would simply say, “perfect” and then hit the publish button on this post. However, the best BT set I’ve ever seen was at a club in Miami when Jes sang live on stage with him and I was standing next to the stage. That was the best but let’s move on to what happened.

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I feel like I’ve already written too much but let’s FINALLY go over the events of this evening. See that pic above? That’s the best shot I got of BT while he was playing his set. I shot off about 50 shots tonight but only a few came out before he started because the following things were happening.

• Three mosh pits started right behind me and I was being elbowed and punched repeatedly causing me to get into a few fights
• Elbowed in the head as people jumping up and down were flailing their arms in this sardine can of a crowd
• Pushed aside multiple times as men larger than me pushed their way to the front
• Being swayed side to side as a group of guys decided to lean against the crowd with all of their weight forcing people in front row to be suffocated on the bars
• Kicked, punched and sat on as people crowd surfed over me and each time they’d kick me in the head on the way up
• Feeding a girl water as she overdosed on too much ecstasy (something I did over a dozen times in Miami)

I had to get a good shot of BT for a few projects I’m working on so I always arrive 30 minutes early and go to the front of the stage but far right so I’m not really in the tent but I’m first row, just 30 feet away and as people leave, I fill their spot slowly making my way to front and center. It took until BT was 10 minutes in to get center but 4 rows of people back. I was happy with this spot. In the process, I was being bum rushed by groups of guys. A rule for you young’n’s. If you’re 200 pounds, you can’t push your way to the front. The 5′2″ girls with pacifiers can do that because they’re tiny but you are a big guy and you piss people off (thus my strategy above). I’m a tall guy so I always look behind me to see if a short girl is behind me and I let her in front or I crouch down so she can see the stage. I hunch my shoulders forward and make myself small to everyone enjoys the show. It took 15 minutes for me to realize that I have to expand my chest and keep my arms out to be able to breathe. As guy after guy hit me to get by, I finally faced that direction and confronted each of them head on saying they can’t get by and I won’t allow it. Most of them gave up.

I continued to be big and tall the whole time just so people wouldn’t abuse the fact that I was being considerate. Then a mosh pit erupted. Yes, BT’s song about love lost and the world spinning around and how we’re all connected…yeah people were moshing to that. In a crowd already crammed like sardines, this was a bad idea. This is where I busted my lip (the 1st time). As more layers of people behind me entered the moshing, I finally was the only thing between a group of teenage girls and a bunch of big bullies and after the 4th leg kick and 2nd elbow to the head I had to put a stop to it.

Before I go on, I don’t talk about this much but I fought daily with my dad and 20 other guys from 5 years old to 22 when I moved here. Not karate or judo but, “adam here’s a real knife. I want you to attack Matt.” kind of fighting. Equally as important and this is evident to anyone that’s met me, 50% of our training was compassion and using the knowledge for good so you all know my personality but I have that other stuff tucked away and I just turned around and found the guy with the most aggression and asked him politely to stop. I may have added an eff bomb in there. Naturally, he told me kindly to screw myself and tried to “mosh” me in the face with his fist. I took him down and picked him up over the crowd and “crowdsurfed” him out of the concert. The mosh pit stopped (for about 20 minutes).

As the crowd grew larger, girls and these freaking big 200 pound guys started crowd surfing. Guys. I’m sorry that you were born with a large frame and a penis. I really am but it’s impossible for you to crowdsurf. You just can’t do it. Maybe if you were 13 or maybe if you were a girl but big guys can’t crowd surf cause a size 13 shoe hurts when it kicks you in the head. Over 25 times, a guy or girl hit me in the head as they crowdsurfed over to the front. On the 12th one, I stopped helping. as I got hit in the head, I moved out of the way and let them fall. Yeah, compassion I get it but this was too much. This was to the point where I was going to have a concussion if this continued and enough was enough. I’m sorry your tail bone is bruised but this is a concert, not the X-games.

The guys pushing everyone back and forth. That was annoying. After half an hour of that and once again, seeing the girls being squished by this group of people pushing, I finally took all of my weight and pushed back. Granted I had just moved with it for so long but my ankles were in such pain that I couldn’t take the pressure anymore. I pushed back and when I saw the guy pushing the hardest, I had the girl hold my camera and pushed through to him. I grabbed him by the shirt, kneed him in the balls and threatened his family with terrible things. Was that too much? Maybe. Maybe it was but one of the girls was about to pass out from being unable to breathe and he was the only cause of it and needed to know he was causing harm.

When I returned, I saw the girl had turned on my camera. It was an innocent thing I get that but as she reviewed my photos, someone pushed her and it fell to the ground and with the lens fully extended. The lens broke in half. I have no way of measuring the amount of anger I had at that moment but right after I grabbed my camera hearing her apologize profusely, an elbow hit me right on the glasses and my glasses flew off onto someone’s shoulder and now they are permanently bent.

At this point in the show (half way through BT’s set) I wasn’t smiling. I wasn’t happy. I actually had missed the last 4 songs he was playing and it became an all out battle to just stay alive in this crowd. Giving up would have meant destroyed property, bruises, broken bones and suffocation. Moshing was still happening a few levels back and in an attempt to save my gear, I stuck the camera in its bag down my pants, put my iPhone and wallet in my front pocket and spent the next 5 minutes trying to decide if I should just leave but realizing I have nowhere to go!

I couldn’t dance. I couldn’t sing. I couldn’t put my hands in the air and I couldn’t even watch BT. I had to look over my shoulder constantly and usually I’m thankful I did as I was just about to get hit with another crowd surfer or 200 pound rushing guy trying to get to the front.

Finally. I jumped the fence at the stage and ran out. I waited around the side to hear the last song of BT’s set and I left giving my water to a girl who had overdosed and her 15 year old friends had no idea what to do. I knew what to do because I’ve seen it a hundred times but they were too young to be popping pills.
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This spray cools everyone off.

Where things went wrong and how to fix them.

• Hire real bouncers. The stage-hands, security, bouncers or whoever they are at BFD were dancing, chanting, hitting balloons and throwing water all over the crowd. Kids were being trampled and guys were starting fights and one of the guys who pushed past me was congratulated by a bouncer who said, “you got skillz man.” The bouncers are supposed to be babysitters and these guys were partying just as hard and sometimes not even facing the crowd.
• All Ages events are a mistake. Everyone goes. parents drop off their kids and drive off. Bad idea. Adults go to drink beer, smoke pot and do some X. The kids go and do the same thing but they don’t know what they’re doing and someone gets hurt.
• Larger tents with ventilation. Ultra had these. They had liquid nitrogen type stuff that was sprayed on the crowd and huge commercial fans at every corner of the tent (seen above)
• More security, police and people checking for drugs and people using drugs. Stop being reactive. Be proactive
• More time between sets. 15 minutes between sets. People will clear out, more will come in. Back to back is a way to only make things more congestive
• Kick people out. Don’t point your finger. Kick them out. If 10 punks want to hang out at the house, play Metallica and drink PBR and mosh, they can do that. I don’t care. Or go to a Metallica concert but don’t mosh in a crowd full of teenage girls in a tent where everyone is packed like sardines.
• Better speakers. Half of the vocals on BT’s songs I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The speakers were atrocious. yeah I’m spoiled but it was bad. That’s the only feedback about the show at all that’s negative.

See the open air? BFD's tent was half the height.

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I left BFD with a mashed nose, broken camera, broken lip and bruised arms. My legs are sore and my head is pounding. My glasses are bent and I discovered on the bus home that my pants are covered with blood (on the back of my pants). How that blood got there, I have no idea.

I got to say hi to BT before and after the show which made it worth it. It’s good catching up with him and chatting. He’s not responsible for the crowds. BFD and the people it attracted was unlike any other concert I’ve been to. I was there for 1.5 hours and I left. It was extremely disappointing.

A final note: a lot of people that don’t know me personally do read this and they’ll have criticisms like this was not my crowd and I shouldn’t be punching people for being themselves and that I was too harsh and too judgmental and a party pooper. To be absolutely clear, this was an all ages events with music from electronic, trance, metal, alternative and even ska (sublime was there) and a few acoustic indie bands. There was something for everyone. BT’s music may be interpreted differently by different people but when it’s just him performing, the people that show up all have a common style and lifestyle. BT fans just fit together. We all come to shows ready to feel and be loved by the music. It’s positive and uplifting. I’ve never ever had this happen to me at the 10 times I’ve seen BT starting in 2004 at Ultra in Miami. Hell, when This Binary Universe came out, he toured the country doing performances in movie theaters so everyone could feel the 5.1 surround sound. We all sat in seats, watched the films he helped create to go along with the music and smiled because it was so beautiful. This is BT’s fan base. The fact that I was punched and kicked and got into fights was in defense of what the music means to me, not because I’m right but because every show he performs doesn’t have that stuff and I won’t be punched or elbowed and NOT defend myself. it was clear that I was defending myself and I did nothing to cause trouble. I’m very low-tempered and I was there to have a good time.
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Finally, BT really caught me off guard tonight. I was in the VIP area parked right by his car. He totally twitpiced me drinking beer before the show. This kind of made my evening.

That’s the full story. Sorry to spend 2,500 words writing it but a lot happened tonight. I had a great weekend and took a lot of photos. You should check them out.

The grass is always greener. I’ve had some technology envy before. The great thing about technology envy is that it doesn’t have to exist. With money, you can be the most envied tech guy on the block. I’ve been envious of guys with natural talent (Olympians, guinness book record holders) I’ve pretty much never complained when someone had a nicer computer than me or a faster car or if Microsoft or Apple decide to change something that I don’t like because, with money, I can simply buy my way out of the situation. Trust me, technology is engineered to get us to spend money. That’s just a fact.

When I see people complaining about technology, I can usually find a solution for them that involves them spending more money. You don’t have to go out and train for months to run a triathlon or go to school for 8 years or actually do anything. Just skip a few meals, cut back on your electricity use and take the bus to work and what you’re complaining about won’t be a problem cause you can buy your way out of the situation.

Easier said than done? Not really.

• I wanted an iPad. I sold my MacBook Air. I bought an iPad.
• I wanted a pair of Shure SE530 earphones. I sold all 5 of my current headphones that were sub-par that I’d collected over the years and had enough money to now buy the $600 ones.
• I wanted a bigger monitor. I spent weeks searching Craigslist and eBay till I found a bigger one. Then I literally got a 2nd job working as a waiter for 4 weeks over the summer to save up the $800 I needed.

In all three situations, I never ONCE went to an online message board or comment on a blog saying, “this sucks! Dell just released a 24″ update 18 months ago and now they have a new one out! Shure has the balls to charge $600 for headphones? WTF! The iPad is $499. Damn. This sucks! It’s so overpriced and the Apple tax is strong!.”

No. I didn’t do that. I just spent the money. I didn’t spend an hour blaming Apple for making a phone with a glass screen. When I dropped it and I broke, I paid the full $499 price to have it replaced. That’s how this works. It costs money to have the latest and greatest stuff.

Hey, if I get beat at a 400m race, I have to spend weeks training and preparing to try again. I may learn that my shot legs or genetics keep me from being a good runner and then accept the fact that my body isn’t built to be a sprinter and there’s nothing I can do about it. Posting how much you hate Apple for not doing something or charging too much is just stupid.

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Today, Apple stated that original iPhones and iPhone 3G models (and 1st & 2nd gen iPod touch devices) won’t be able to do multi-tasking in iPhone OS 4.0 that ships this summer. The reason wasn’t that Apple was greedy is simply the fact that those devices, which only have 128mbs of ram, can’t do multi-tasking effectively do to system limitations.

Users were pissed.

• 1st Gen iPhone ship date: June 29th, 2007
• 2nd Gen iPhone ship date: July 11th, 2008

So a device that’s 2 to 3 years old can’t run the next generation of the iPhone OS. Dang that sucks! Here are what some users are saying:

My hatred for Apple only increases after seeing this. Apple doesn’t care about the consumer, it just wants his money. These features should have been, and most certainly could have been, in the second generation iPhone.

Apple had no reason to hold these features out, other than for it to get the consumer to buy a new product just so Apple could make money.

All photos taken by me last week on my trip to Miami

More and more am I hearing of the connected youth and how we are always carrying one or two cell phones, a digital camera and laptop computer. Even scarier is when I hear stories or see photos of a concert, rally or public function that shows dozens, if not thousands of people holding an electronic device in the air taking a photo, streaming video, audio or simply tweeting that, “this is such an awesome concert!”

I’m guilty of this but I have an excuse.

I’ve missed the past two Ultra Music Festivals in Miami. I was either moving or had just moved to San Francisco so I couldn’t find the time or funds to go to Miami just to party. WMC is an older crowd (the conference / party aspect of Miami’s techno lovefest) but UMF is a younger crowd, as it’s an all ages event with a daytime focus. Twitter was around and YouTube was around so I spent weeks after UMF in both 2008 and 2009 trying to find info, twitpics, videos and photos from the event so I could at least get the feeling that I was there. I searched and searched and found maybe a dozen videos and 100-200 photos from UMF for each year. What? Why didn’t anyone post any rich media content from the event? UMF is a younger audience of “technology carrying youth” so where are all of the videos and photos?

This year, I saw a staggering amount of people with their cameras and video cameras in the air. People were recording entire DJ sets on their Blackberrys and someone had an iPhone just taking photo after photo which meant I didn’t even see the entire Swedish House Mafia set due to his phone being in front of my face the whole time. Where did his photos go? Why didn’t he post them? Because I saw the photos and they fucking sucked.

There’s a reason why old media will be around for a long time. Very few new media people or “citizen journalists” produce any content worth looking at, much less, paying for. I wouldn’t pay to see Johnny’s iPhone TwitPics because they suck. I don’t care about Jenny’s tweet that says how awesome Carl Cox’s set was at UMF this year and how his remix of Coldplay’s “Trouble” was so awesome. I don’t care despite the fact that I was very interested in the event and keeping up with everything that was happening.

First Things First:
I desperately want all citizen journalists to start producing great content. I really want great content to start happening. You have all of the tools now and they’re freaking affordable. You have 3G/4G network connections to make that data go out to the masses faster and you have unlimited free storage on Flickr and YouTube to post that content. Heck, every Mac and PC comes with software to help you edit those photos and videos to make them look good.

Your content sucks. It’s not even Twitter worthy! Your photos wouldn’t even make good TwitPics. That’s how bad they are. Hey. I suck as a photographer. I completely suck. My photos are finally something I share with my Mom and not feel like I’m wasting her time. Your TwitPic or Flickr upload from your Blackberry was a total waste of time. That video you shot on your Blackberry and uploaded direct to YouTube w/ auto-post to Twitter & Facebook sucked. The 15FPS couldn’t capture the light show accurately, you used the LED flash on the Blackberry which forced a fast exposure time which made the image too dark and the little Blackberry Mic completely choked on the 12,000 watts of Bass going into it which meant the audio was completely unbearable.

That’s just my unprofessional opinion.

I don’t dare upload photos from my iPhone from concerts or festivals and then have the balls to put those on Flickr. If it’s past dusk, you won’t even see me with my iPhone out because I know the photos will suck. This goes for all phones. Shoot wisely.

Stop using your flash! Just stop! The flash does not help. Drop the aperture to f/2.8 or f/1.8 (maximum setting), set the ISO to the 2nd to highest level and then try to use the fastest exposure you can afford to use. On your 5th or 10th snap, you might get a photo good enough for Flickr. I shot 2,000 photos both days at UMF and uploaded 200 of them. I suck as a photographer but I go out every single day and shoot with my Canon G11 and then I try every setting possible to find out what I can do with this camera and even then I spend hours editing, deleting and processing photos for Flickr. Then, I tag, geo-tag, catalog, title and add those photos to Flickr Groups related to the event I attended. I spent 4 hours after getting home from Ultra doing all of that because I care.

You? I honestly don’t know. I’m assuming most mobile phone users might MMS it to their friends or just keep it on the phone till they get a new one. Some users might TwitPic is or upload to Facebook it. Those of you with digital cameras are going to get home and realize you shot 400 photos of complete grainy crap and throw them all away. Both processes are a waste of time.

I laughed when a guy with a video enabled iPod nano had it high in the air for over an hour capturing the Tiesto set. Seriously? That audio and video quality is crap! Good luck putting a one-hour video on YouTube cause it has a 10-minute limit which means you’ll have to edit it down. Oh you don’t know how to do that?

A Disclaimer:
I’m realizing that I sound like a complete asshole in this post. I do but I wouldn’t be making such a big deal about it if these two things hadn’t occurred.

1. Everyone in the audience had a mobile device in the air taking photos & videos
2. 2. It’s been 5 days and there are only 1,000 photos and 50 YouTube Videos online from the event. Half of these completely blow.

So you’re telling me that over 17 thousand people attended an event, took hundreds of thousands of photos and only a few hundred are actually good? I’m not angry that people suck at taking photos or shooting video. Just like I’m not pissed off that everyone sitting next to me at the office can’t go build a house perfectly. Most people just aren’t talented at everything. I know I lack a lot of talent and manage to barely get by with photography.

What’s pissing me off is that you’re all fucking wasting your time! John took an hour of video on his iPod nano and snapped over 100 photos on his Blackberry Bold. Now what? You saw the entire Tiesto set through a stupid iPod nano screen because you HAD to record it and now you realize that it was jumpy, off-center, low-quality and has audio that makes you play the whole thing on mute. Why did you piss off everyone behind you who couldn’t see and cease to see the event as it was happening just so you could cherish this crap video you recorded? Honestly!

How I Record Events:
I should be the one talking, right? My crap photography skills where I had to take 2,000 photos just get maybe 50 good ones is sad. That means I was also a jerk which his hands in the air. Here’s my statement. If all 17 thousand people at the event took photos all freaking night and ended up with 1 good one, I’d be happy but you didn’t. All of you took crap photos because I’ve searched every photo-hosting site and I don’t see any photos from the event!

I snapped 1,000 photos a day and here’s how I did it. I looked up at the stage, the crowd, the building or whatever subject matter I was trying to capture and got an idea of what setting I needed for the camera. I then looked down at my camera and set the appropriate settings on manual mode. Then I shot the camera up in the air, took 1 second to stabilize my hands from shaking and then I shot the photo and then a 2nd one. This process of actually annoying people behind me with my hands up took 3 seconds. Half of the photos I took weren’t taken while in a crowd listening to a DJ set. They were taken in-between sets from grassy knolls or hanging from trees where I wasn’t in anyone’s way.

The important thing is that I went home and spent hours focusing on the quality shots.

On Sunday afternoon, I looked on Flickr and searched for “Ultra Music Festival” and organized by date. Every single photo for pages and pages was I. I was highlighted on Flickr as the person to go to for all UMF photos because I properly tagged and organized the photos. Every single photo was processed and, in my opinion, the cream of the crop.

I was very proud of my photos.
I shot a couple of videos and then took the time to write this blog post that explains how much the G11 sucks compared to the G10 at shooting video. So not only did I waste everyone’s time by shooting bad video, I took the time to warn others about the issue by blogging about it so another dedicated content producer wouldn’t make the same mistake.

For the Future:
From here on out, don’t waste your time. I’m serious. I can deal with your hands in the air or being distracted from a laser show with 1,500 Blackberry screens in the air but what I can’t stand is the fact that you all wasted your time and missed half of a $200 show trying to take pictures or video when the content is complete crap and goes to waste.

Number of SLRs at a typical “headliner performance” – 10. That’s such a low number. Most of the good photographers or real photographers had press badges and weren’t in the crowds.

I’m very happy with the shots I uploaded. Seriously. I don’t feel that my 10 minutes per one hour set spent setting up and shooting photos was a waste at all. In fact, I should have shot more but I was too busy dancing my ass off and enjoying the festival I spent over a thousand dollars to attend. That’s what it’s all about. Enjoy the moment, capture it quickly then go back to enjoying it. Spending all day staring into your screen is just wasting everyone’s time.

AT&T has responded. See bold text below.

Oh AT&T you love to give us a reason to hate you. You’ve done some pretty good stuff for us and I’m still not convinced it’s the AT&T network that makes the iPhone so crappy but whatever, I’m over that and won’t complain about it on this blog.

The Red Cross setup a terrific system that allows anyone in the US and possibly the entire world to send a text message to 90999 with the text “HAITI” which will add $10 to your next month’s phone bill. This money will go to the Red Cross to support those who have lost their homes, loved ones and much more in the earthquake that occurred there. I think this mobile payments platform that works very well for so many organizations is a great way to get people do donate effortlessly. Yes, it will be a success.

I was excited when I saw AT&T put a press release online that shows their support for the cause. By “support” and “PR”, I assumed AT&T took the stance of waving the text messaging fees instead of actually donating money to the cause. So what if AT&T loves 1/8th of a penny of profits on the 100,000 people who decide to donate this money to a worthy cause. AT&T isn’t really put out as we already know that SMS rates are completely blown out of the water.

From gthing.net:

Cost to transfer 2560 songs:

From my ISP: $1
Via SMS messaging: $15,339,212.80

Whatever, so we know that AT&T’s rates are bullshit but let’s thank AT&T for waving the “fees” as their support for this noble cause to benefit those in need. Except, they don’t wave the fees. Here’s the press release from AT&T’s Press Room:

In response to the horrific earthquake in Haiti, wireless customers of AT&T* (NYSE:T) can send $10 donations to the Red Cross International Relief Fund by sending a text message from their mobile device. Standard text messaging rates may apply.

A customer simply types the word HAITI and sends it to 90999. A confirmation message will arrive within a few minutes, to which the customer replies “yes” to finalize the donation.

100 percent of all money donated will be passed on to the Red Cross.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

Yes, they said, “Standard text messaging rates may apply.” Those are the same lines uttered at the bottom of those 2AM “sex line” advertisements you see on comedy central. “Text Single to 41145. Standard text messaging rates may apply.”

So AT&T puts up a press release to show their support for this amazing effort to save lives in Haiti NOT because they actually give a shit about anyone affected by this but because the process will earn them 80 cents from anyone that doesn’t have a text messaging plan. If you pay $9.99 – $19.99 a month for their messaging plan then you should be okay because you already paid but if you don’t and just pay for text messages as you go, that’s 20 cents per text.

I found this screengrab from a loyal AT&T user who did the donation.

It looks like they spent 80 cents right into AT&T’s pockets. That’s 80 cents that could have gone to victims in Haiti. If my math is correct, that’s 8% of the donation tacked right on top of the money the user donated that AT&T takes. It’s bullshit.

Now, I’m not saying AT&T is the only evil corporation in the world, nor am I saying that they’re the only evil telecommunications company. My point is, their support for this program, if successful, will yield them a huge additional profit this week over what they would have made otherwise. So, of course they want to promote the hell out of it. The company looks good and makes money.

AT&T, would it have killed you to waive these fees to this number if only for 48 hours? The SMS infrastructure was paid for 15  years ago, it’s a cash cow now and yet you still are making serious dough through this program. I’m surprised that you didn’t give money, support or even waive fees for this program and yet find a reason to put it out as a press release.

Utter Bullshit.

UPDATED: John Britton of AT&T Corporate Communications contacted me via telephone to clear things up. He provided this statement.

I wanted to let you know that
your information on AT&T’s texting support to help the relief effort in
Haiti is incorrect.  All AT&T text donations to support the relief
effort in Haiti are free.   The vast majority of our customers are on
texting plans, but for those who use pay per use, we want to make it as
easy as possible to make donations to this worthy cause.  The entire
amount of the money donated goes to the relief effort.

Well, I guess that clears things up. Just so you guys know, AT&T’s press release from yesterday still says “. Standard text messaging rates may apply.” so it’s clear or maybe unclear that their original intentions or possibly oversight was to charge the normal rates and then they now realize that the users don’t like that very much. Good on AT&T for changing but I still think it should have been that way from the beginning.

TechCrunch is the site that always makes a point to say, “we told ya so.” For those of you that respond with, “well they’re just that cool.”- maybe so and that’s why I’m going to “pull a TechCrunch” and take full credit for Apple’s new vertical artist tab in iTunes 9.0.

That’s right. Not only did I call it but I also am the only person on The Internet that inspired Apple to do this. I called it back before the engineer that coded it was even working at Apple. Just like TechCrunch, I’m that cool. Jealous? Yeah, you should be!

In 2005, while we were still using iTunes 4.7, I wrote a blog post on my (now defunct) blog, DailyTechTalk about what we could expect from a future version of iTunes. Sure I said that this was a feature that should be in version 5 but Apple spent the past 4.5 years perfecting it so I’ll let this one slide.

In this post, I said:

The way we organize music is more and more difficult every time I get a new CD. I have almost six thousand songs in my iTunes library and finding one to listen to is difficult so I just hit the Random button or organize the library by “Date Added” and listen to my latest songs because I have songs in my library I am tired of and tend to skip more than I listen to. Apple should add a hierarchical view in the Playlists area that enables Playlist grouping. You can create a group called, “Favorites” and put your top 25 songs, favorite love songs, dance, hip hop and movie soundtrack theme songs. The list is yours to make but grouping them together would be great for users with tons of playlists. I was connected to someone’s library via Airport and saw they had hundreds of playlists for only ten thousand songs. I was amazed how they even navigate those playlists.

Also, you can organize songs one way. You can sort them by name, artist, genre, album, year, type and more. What if I want to hear all songs by Michael Jackson organized by year. I would have to create a playlist with all Michael Jackson songs and then sort by year. I could save time by having two sort bars at the top of the screen. The top bar would be general organization. The second would look the same but would organize those songs. You could organize all songs by Genre then all genres organized by Artist. All Oldies songs would be in order and each artist would be in order in that genre or year, album, whatever. I proposed this idea in an old article but is a feature I would really like to have. I also think you should be able to save a search in iTunes to a playlist. I feel this will be added with Tiger’s spotlight technology and is only a matter of time since Tiger’s Finder can already do this.

So there you have it. I out-scooped TechCrunch and I wanted everyone to know that I was first at calling this feature! Me and only me! No one even had a bit of insight to to this on iTunes until I said it so I guess you can say that I had the exclusive taste of the vertical artist sidebar even back in 2005. BOOYAH! Naturally, I wanted to make sure everyone knows I’m just being sarcastic.

BTW, don’t make fun of my old blog’s text formatting. I’d rather not talk about it.

Two weeks ago, I posted this blog post about Twitter and how the API is making it less user friendly and annoying new users. The API is the cause for Twitter’s success and it could serve as the demise of Twitter as well and slow adoption rate. Without revisiting the point I made, let’s move forward and I’ll explain how Twables and FB140 are taking the very forgiving API and really pissing people off.

Last week, @Ev sent this status update to Twitter which was an endorsement of a service that helped you find which of your Facebook friends are on Twitter and it made it easy to follow them. I immediately jumped on board because I was very interested in seeing this in action.

The concept is, visit http://www.twables.com/fb140 and Connect your Facebook Account. Then connect your Twitter account. Both of these use OAuth so I was pretty stoked about that but once you set this up, the pain begins.

The site it self wasn’t designed well and I had some issues getting started and really taking advantage of it for the intended purpose. The issue is with spam and how Twables OR FB140 is leveraging Twitter’s way of handling spammers.

Once I used the service, I removed it from my “authorized apps” on Twitter which usually means, “hey I’m done using you now. go away” but I failed to remove it from Facebook as an authorized app but no problem I’ll do it when it comes to mind and I don’t think it’s hurting anything at this time.

Well, I received a reply on Twitter from @FB140 the next day that “Jad” is a Facebok friend who is now on Twitter. I was lazy and away from my computer so I just blocked the account. That would resolve the issue and I’d never hear from them again. WRONG!

The next day I received another reply, thinking I had somehow made a mistake when blocking the user, I blocked again but since then I have received SEVEN replies from FB140 and here’s how they’re circumventing the blocked feature.

As you can see from this Search.Twitter.com result, they have multiple accounts. At this time I know of 10 so I’ve pre-emptively blocked all of them but I don’t know if that will fix it but what is confusing is how they’re gaming the system.

Does FB140 or Twables know when they’ve been blocked and their software registers a new account and sends a reply using another account automatically? That’s what’s curious to me because if so, that’s a great idea that more app developers will adopt that is sure to piss people off.

I’ve removed FB140 as an authorized app on Facebook and that might be the last link that resolves this once and for all, if not I’ll be calling the company directly and telling them to bug off because this is becoming ridiculous.

There’s a reason Twitter added the block functionality and when someone blocks you, that’s your queue to screw off but FB140 thinks that it’s a mistake because, “if this user still has our FB app authorized, maybe they blocked us by mistake” no because after 7 replies, the last account to reply to me was @FB140_7 so they’re clearly not taking a clue.

Just to prove I’m not pulling the typical social media douche bag crap, Here’s a link to Search.Twitter.com showing some other people are are clearly pissed off. This TWEET shows exactly what I’m going through as well.

[UPDATED]: Clearly removing the app from Twitter and removing the app from Facebook did NOT fix the problem. I just received THIS REPLY from FB140 (copied below).

When I began working on a project that taught Twitter to the masses, the service was still small with only a couple of celebrities and American mainstream media didn’t know the definition of tweet. My project is still going strong but there was a phrase I coined that, “Twitter is The Gateway Drug to Social Networking.” I still feel Twitter has that potential but honestly, this is no longer the case in Twitter’s current form.

What inspired this quote was when I compared Twitter to other social networks and realized that Twitter has the easiest point of entry and is really that easy compared to other networks. Facebook & Myspace are the top two US social networks and joining these can be a bit of a challenge for people who weren’t born in after 1980. The issue isn’t that 30 and over web users don’t understand social networking, it’s that the amount of people they relate to and interact with aren’t on social networks. Why join a network to connect with friends when there aren’t any friends there to connect with. Twitter is different.

In the most extreme case, my grandmother would join Twitter and experience something so basic that involves updating her status. What seems like a completely idiotic thing to do at 71 years old, it’s easy to do and requires no more than a text message or dial up Internet connection. I’m sure that if she saw it on television enough, she’d try it out. The beauty of Twitter is that so many people are searching it every day and right below my grandmother’s info is a link to search Twitter or, “What people are doing right now.” She can search knitting, bbq, fishing, farming and even sweet potato pie and instantly find other people with interests or performing those actions RIGHT NOW. With as little as two clicks, she’s following someone with at least one similar interest as her and this become something fun to her.

Soon, she may connect with family members and build up more followers. 1 year later, my grandmother has heard so much mention of Facebook on Twitter.com that she decides to sign up. She’s not web-savvy yet but she knows copy and paste so she posts a link on Twitter to her facebook.com/cool-granny profile. Soon, she has 10 friend requests and she’s successfully joined Facebook and found some people to connect with.

Do you see what just happened? My grandmother, who is not the ideal member of Facebook.com and would never join because she has no one to talk to has successfully transitioned to Facebook.com after simply joining Twitter and talking about what she’s doing. It’s a truly beautiful thing and completely possible with Twitter but never would have happened if she joined Facebook.com a year ago with no contacts.

The reason why this story and my idea of Twitter and its title of “The Gateway Drug to Social Networking” is because the system is flawed now and I blame The API+Simplicity of the system.

Twitter has done an amazing job at creating a web standards system that allows ANYONE to develop applications for it that can pretty much do anything. I’ve seen amazing things performed with the Twitter API and this is part of the reason they’re successful. I’ve heard that 90% of Twitter’s traffic comes from The API which is a testament of this simplicity. Why does the API get the poor rating?

The Twitter API & Search API can be completely pwn3d meaning you can use them to your advantage to cause really annoying things to happen. Now when grandma joins Twitter and talks about knitting, she gets replies from companies trying to sell her things. These are auto-replies when she simply mentions knitting. She also now gets about 20 followers a day from accounts of naked woman asking her to check out their cam-site. The worst of all, as if that wasn’t bad enough is that she might follower a spammer back by accident and now her phone or inbox notifies her with direct messages from these spammers.

This is something the Internet Generation is used to but my 71 year old grandmother will see it as advertisements, pornography and more advertisements and she’ll leave. She needed a simple system to help her find new friends on the web and now she’s confused and overwhelmed which is exactly what happens when you first join Facebook or Myspace. This issue is only getting worse and for over 6 months, Twitter has done nothing to combat these issues.

Let’s also briefly touch on trending topics. These were pretty awesome up until around 4 months ago when more API goodness was used to hack these trends. Now there are bots that have bios linking to sex camera sites and free auction houses that simply tweet out what topics are currently trending. Why is this bad? Well it’s ok if you follow one of these that once an hour tweets out the topic but these systems tweet out every minute or more what topics are trending and thus make the trending topic completely useless and impossible for you to find out why the topic was originally trending. It also keeps something trending. Taco Bell starts trending and then 5,000 spam accounts start tweeting every minute that the topic is trending and now everyone has stopped talking about it but that topic continues to stay on top for quite a while! This problem isn’t going away.

Going back to my grandmother for a second, now she always sees a ton of topics that are confusing and when she clicks them, she sees a ton of spam. Is this advertising too? She probably doesn’t know how to collapse this sidebar and it’s just an annoyance. At the end of 48 hours, my grandmother leaves Twitter and decides that The Internet isn’t for her and that’s that.

What’s unfortunate is that this horrible truth will ultimately lead to Twitter’s failure. As more and more networks see that 80% of their followers are photos of nude woman and trending topics are full of spam it will cause media networks and celebs to also give up on Twitter which have accounted for most of the site’s growth in the past 8 months.

By fixing these API hijack tools, they ruin functionality of honest and awesome sites built around Twitter. It will be a sad day in Twitter history but I see no other solution.

My Twitter eco-system is fine aside from the fact my last 500 followers were spammers and I get 10 replies a day from companies trying to sell me things. i deal with this but most users won’t. This patience will eventually wear out and Twitter will not get those users back. Until further notice, Twitter is not, “The Gateway Drug to Social Networking” but it can redeem itself. I hope this title will be re-enacted soon because right now, it’s not looking like a very bright future.

*If you found this blog post via a link in my email signature, welcome. This is for those of you who don’t think it’s worth your time to respond to my emails*

Some people say they’re too busy and others say they forgot and others say that my email just got lost in the mix but I’m sick and freaking tired of friends not replying to my messages. Yes and it’s intentional and don’t blame it on your inability to stay organized because if I email you with a sales lead or Paypal you $25, you’ll reply instantly either thanking me or replying in some way but when I actually need something from you it’s pushed to the side and I’m tired of it!

On average, 15 emails every single week that I send out go unanswered and no I’m not asking for handouts nor am I cold-emailing random people. I’m emailing friends that should care enough to reply to a simple question or offer feedback on something OR just simply reply back saying that they’re too busy and sorry they couldn’t help. ANYTHING AT ALL!

My lawyer who is a great guy, as are most of my friends replies to every single email. Of course, I’m paying him for that but when I email people that I know personally and see on a weekly basis asking for anything or simply emailing them offering feedback on their site, product or blog post, I don’t hear back either. No I don’t expect replies to EVERY SINGLE EMAIL but when I specifically ask a question and you don’t reply, that’s just rude.

Before you delete, mark as read or “archive” this message, reply back please and offer some kind of answer that you even received my message.

MY NEW PLAN: Every week, I’ll run a script that shows what emails didn’t receive a reply (based on subject line) and if you haven’t replied, I’ll resend the message with a link to this post. I’ll continue to do so every week until I get a reply.

The level of unprofesionalism toward email really pisses me off and I’m inclined to start a list below that includes names of people who have SCREWED ME and not replied to my very important & sensitive emails. Why do I have to call you on the phone or hound you at social events just to get a reply to my email. You’re not that busy. I receive over 150 emails a day, half of those require 2 paragraph replies and every night I end the day at inbox zero. Email is part of your job and you’re sucking at it.

Fix your email work flow or find a new line of work!

Oh and have a great day!

Earlier, I tweeted:

Seriously. Everyone that keeps adding a period or brackets when you @ someone so it shows up in my timeline. It’s dumb and I hate it!

Some people weren’t quite sure what I was talking about so let’s break down how replies work. Oh I’m sorry “mentions” is what it’s called now. I’m not in the habit of calling it “mentions” but it makes sense given how the system is setup now. Anyway, before the #FixReplies debacle last month, there was a preference on Twitter Settings that gave you control of what you saw in the timeline.

• You would see everyone’s tweets that you follow. You follow 500 people and every single tweet they make will show up on Twitter.com or your favorite Twitter application.
• The second way was to only show tweets from people you follow that don’t contain replies. Basically, I would only see tweets from people if the tweet DOESN’T start with a reply (@johnsmith…) wouldn’t show up. However, an @JohnSmith somewhere in the tweet didn’t affect this rule. It was only tweets that started with an @.
• The last setting showed replies from people you followed ONLY if you’re following the person they’re replying too.

The third option was my favorite because I like seeing people I mutually follow interacting with other people I follow. Twitter added this around 6 months ago (guessing) and the preference was actually removed. You can read more about it here on this Mashable Post.

Lately, people are getting around this feature. My preference still remains that I don’t see anyone’s replies IF they’re replying to someone I don’t follow. Now people are getting around this setting and it clogs up my stream making Twitter less useful for finding information. Here’s how you can beat the filter and annoy the hell out of your friends who don’t want to see all of your replies to other people.

• Put a period before your reply. The person you’re replying to still sees it and so do ALL of your followers. .@JohnSmith
• Put brackets around the person’s name you’re replying to [@JohnSmith]
• Put quotes around your reply “@JohnSmith”

Basically any punctuation character will work to defeat Twitter’s system. Honestly, it’s annoying to those of us that specifically told Twitter that we don’t want to see your replies and maybe it’s something Twitter will fix soon. For now, I’ll just have to un-follow people that do it too often.