There's a strange phenomenon taking place in the world today. Social networks http://twitter.com/, which were meant to connect people & foster friendships, are now being combed by companies searching for negative comments about their products/services. Blog alerts http://www.google.com/alerts notify CEOs when their companies are under scrutiny on the web. Call it web 2.0, call it common courtesy, the bottom line is corporate America is starting to listen to its customers –- and that's good for the little man. They can't afford not to –- their brand's integrity is at stake with each negative post from an unhappy customer on a blog or forum.

My question is, "When is the medical field going to follow suit?"

Do you have back problems that are keeping you out of work? Need to see a neurosurgeon? You'll have to wait until you can get in to see your family doctor for a referral -- "... that'll be only three days, sir. Oh, but you're gonna have to have an MRI before seeing the surgeon... gonna have to wait a week for that. Got your MRI? Great, now it'll be another week to get in to see the Neurosurgeon."

And when that glorious day comes...

The neurosurgeon will tell you that you're (essentially) over-reacting and you'll have to chase him out into the hallway asking questions because he's blatantly not concerned about your condition. "You don't need that procedure, you need this other one" -- which you've had in the past and HAS CLEARLY not helped you or you wouldn't be back. And, I hope you aren't still in pain, because he won't give you a prescription for anything. You'll have to go back to your family doctor for that (who will accuse you of "drug-seeking" & send you to ANOTHER doctor (a "pain management" specialist) in order to get some relief. "Thank you Dr. Guarnaschelli. Yes, I'm calling you out."

With all that said, will I get a response to this post from someone at his practice? I'll hold my breath.... maybe that will help with the pain.

I think Facebook, Amazon and TiVo are triplets separated at birth. Okay, so they're fraternal... but they're multiples of the same genes. Let me explain.

All three tools have been taught and molded into useful and gratifying weapons in our every day arsenals. But, they have the same personality flaw -- they presume a lot of things about us based on our previous behavior. Facebook, for example, looks at my current friends and provides me with a list of people they think I'd be interested in "friending" (love that new gerund in our lexicon, by the way). Facebook assumes that, because I went to college at Transylvania, I must know everyone else who went to Transy at any time in the past 20 years. Facebook is bigoted, essentially. I live in Louisville, therefore I must know everyone else who lives in Louisville. I have blond hair, thus I must know everyone else who has blond hair. Stop with the assumptions, Facebook!

Amazon has the same problem. Based on what I have bought in the past, it makes recommendations on what I should buy in the future. For the most part, this is actually pretty cool. I have stumbled upon quite a few little gems I'd not have otherwise discovered. But, it's the strange connections Amazon makes that cause me to lump it with its evil birth brothers. I recently purchased a CD by the band Fleet Foxes. Now, Amazon assumes I want to read a bunch of National Geographic nature books about foxes and buy the DVD of some Jodie Foster movie made in 1980. Stop, Amazon!

And the last of the demonic triplets: TiVo. Patton Oswalt does a great comedic bit about TiVo and its learning habits. I can't really do better than the bit, so I won't try... but the basic idea is that he programmed his TiVo to record a particular Western ("The Man From Laramie," I believe) and came home a few days later to find his hard drive full of everything on television that had anything to do with horses, featured horses, discussed or addressed horses or had horses anywhere in any image in the program. TiVo got a little too aggressive with its assumption that it knew what he wanted to see.

In short, all of this artificial intelligence has its advantages... and its disadvantages. Oh well, I'll take the bad with the good, I suppose!

I sat through an online presentation in our conference room yesterday about paid posting and I found myself bored to tears within about 10 minutes. The guy did not do his homework and asked, “do you guys blog?” He said he was on a 13-week tour of the country to peddle this new product—that he did not have a business card for—and actually had us write the url of the company on his “other” business card. He pointed out some very base information about blogging which was a big DUH for us and that’s when I noticed the tabs open on his laptop. The first one was “Growing through Divorce.” Now this poor schlep is starting to make sense to me, I thought. He was clearly an unhappy man. I couldn’t tell if he was just tired and irritable or always like this. When I read the tab, I actually began to feel sorry for him. The next tab was for a mortgage company so he was also potentially dealing with a home sale or looking for a new place to live. Then there was the tab that was a spreadsheet of some sort titled “2008 Guarantee.” He was probably forecasting income potential for peddling this new product. And yet another tab for Free Stuff. Funny what you can learn about a person just from reading the tabs. 

Recently, I had reason to complain about some poor customer service I received from a rep at a call center for Network Solutions.  I had two client  accounts that needed to merge in order to setup some E-commerce functions, but not only was the fellow I spoke to not helpful at all, I could barely understand his accent.

So what did I do?  I vented on Twitter about it.  Even with the recent bad luck they've had with downtime and unreliable service, I've not quite decided to be a Twitter Quitter either. For a while I was close to it, but I've decided to stay and post maybe 3 - 4 times a day.

I'm glad I stuck around, actually.  What happened after I vented was quite interesting.  After figuring out the problem myself, I went to my Twitter page and I had a direct message from @netsolcares, a Network Solutions customer assistance rep on Twitter itself.  And this wasn't the first time he's contacted me on there!

Yep, I actually meant to blog about this the first time @netsolcares contacted me about mentioning Network Solutions on Twitter.  I got into a discussion with him, not about the issue, but about how he was using Twitter and how he found my message.  He used Summize, a search engine for conversations going on at Twitter and found my message within hours of posting and contacted me directly to see if he could help at all.

Now that is proactive customer support!

How can other people use this as an example?  If you have a product or business that people use, try finding out where and what they are saying about it online.  You'd be surprised at what you find, both positive and negative.  Seek the positive remarks and chime in to say thanks.  Find the negative comments and poke your head in to see if you can change their minds.  That is the future of customer service online.

Do not wait for problems to come to you because they can boil up beyond your control, which would be a shame if a single proactive approach and a "sorry" could have kept the issue small.

Apple again stands to make history on July 11 with its release of the iPhone 3G. And while there will be no shortage of lines filled with loyal Apple fans, this loyal Apple fan will be quite happy downloading the software update to his "old" iPhone.

The most important of all updates (and I won't go into all of them here) is the compatibility with AT&T's 3G network. Download speeds are supposed to as high as 1.4 Mbps. This is comparable to EDGE network's speeds of between 75kbps & 135kbps. While that is better, it's still not as good as WiFi. The bigger problem (for me - not everyone) is that I don't live in one of the 280 metro areas covered by the 3G network, so my phone bill would go up & I would still be using the EDGE network.

GPS is a new feature that a lot of people are buzzing about. The drawback there is, it does not have map data loaded into (like popular GPS units) therefore it requires a constant data connection. And lets face it, battery life isn't something that iPhones are known for - the 3G version being only slightly better.

So, for now I will live with my decrepit 4-month-old iPhone which is about to get new life breathed into it with the new software update. But I will have to take Rick's for a spin. ;)

MSN recently published an article entitled "The Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances," a few at which I laughed out loud because I experience them every day. "LinkedIn is uptight" - totally!

While this article is a great one, I thought it was missing just a few:

- Friendfeed feeds too many friends
Aggregators are now so complex that I need an aggregator to aggregate all of the information that is being aggregated in my subscribed aggregators. Jiminy Crickets.

- I may soon be a Twitter Quitter
I do love Twitter, I must say. I can't explain what makes it so fun and addictive -- it's, well...fun and addictive.
But, it's so buggy. There have been numerous excuses for this unexplained phenomenon (too many people following Robert Scoble or the technology was never built to handle so many followers, blah, blah, blah). The bottom line is that there are too many competitors popping up and if Twitter can't take the heat, it needs to get out of the kitchen. Our CTO suggested that Twitter limit the number of people you can follow. Not the number of people who follow you, just the number of people you can follow. So, 2,000 people might follow me, but I am only allowed to follow 20. It would certainly make us all a bit more selective about who we follow and thus unburden the Twitter bandwidth.
A second annoyance about Twitter is that I have a saddened sense of humanity every time I read the Tweets of certain people I am following. I know, I should just stop following them. But, it's like a soap opera! One gentleman lamented the fact that he was forced to get off Twitter to take his kids out to dinner. Oh my.

- Facebook should just tell me what Gem I am
I know this is the way Facebook stays in business...but, I vehemently dislike (I am trying to eliminate "hate" from my vocabulary) that I have to force 10 of my friends to take the "Which Gem are you?" quiz in order to find out my own results. Yes, that's right, I do want to know which Gem I am. I will certainly use this valuable information at some point...like on my wedding anniversary or in my annual performance review. "Did you know I am a diamond? That means I deserve a huge raise!" It could work.

- ncludr has not caught on
Despite my previous blog entry, includr has really not caught on like I thought it would. That's an annoyance. If more people used includr, we wouldn't need bumper stickers with sayings like "Visualize Whirled Peas."

Okay, I'm writing this blog from within a new program called Buzz Word, part of an online word processing suite in Beta test from Adobe. It allows me to write, similar to a conventional software-based program ... except the fonts are limited.

And that's where the similarity stops.

The documents are stored on Adobe's servers, and I can access them from anywhere. What's more, I can email them to a Co-Author or a Reviewer or a Reader at my discretion. That affords them differing permission levels of modification. The dictionary/spell check is teachable for either Within this document or Always. Colors. Bolds. Variable font sizes. Paragraph formatting. Charts. Lists. Cut. Paste. And yes I can embed and save images (4 megs or less) within the document with more freedom of placement & movement than Word ever allowed.

Then I can export it to my desktop as a Word document, PDF, Rich Text file or pure HTML.

It's damned sweet, that's what it is.

I'm not sure about the whole "do I have a connection" question as it relates to online enterprise activities such as this. My hunch is in the next few years, online connectivity will be ubiquitous, so that question/hesitancy is probably moot.

Confession time: I've been using Apple's Pages program for a month or so and prefer it to Word for all the elegant Apple features you'd expect. Buzz Word won't replace that immediately, though I expect to use it for longer documents which require ongoing revisions.

In 2006, a video startup made a startling announcement that sent shockwaves through the professional video world: the production of a camera that would capture images at a 4k resolution direct to hard disk or flash based memory cards, with the ability to use prime cinematographic lenses, for only $17,000. The Red camera was heralded as a game-changer for professional video, and production companies around the world plunked down a $1,000 deposit for the mythical camera. Red involved themselves in several online forums, and involved their customers in the design of the camera, further promoting brand loyalty before they ever had a product.

In 2007, Red released the first 25 Red One cameras to great hype. 4,000 cameras have been ordered and Red has already announced their next product line, a 3k handheld camera called the Scarlet, and a 5k camera called the Epic.

So what does this all mean? In short, the U.S. standardization body (the National Television System Committee) decided in the 1940s on a video standard that called for a video picture that was drawn with 525 lines 30 times a second. For more than 50 years, that was what video was. In the early 1980's, an international body developed a standard for High Definition video that called for a video picture to be drawn with 1080 lines 30 times a second. 20 years later, technology finally caught up with these goals and HD video became prevalent.

In digital terms, Standard definition images are 720 pixels wide by 480 pixels high, while HD video varies between 1280x720 pixels to 1920x1080 pixels depending on which mode you are shooting in. The Red One captures images at up to 4k - 4096x2304, more than twice the resolution of the highest HD standard - for only $17,000 (minus the lenses). This means you can shoot 35mm quality video at a fraction of the price. So why isn't this splashed all across the news and why aren't agencies bursting to deliver the highest quality video for their clients?

Because for many, these cameras are still vaporware. To date, Red has shipped, maybe, 2,000 units. It's not uncommon to find posts online from disgruntled customers who were given a ship date, paid in full, and then told that their camera was on hold indefinitely. Apparently, Red is incapable of keeping up with the demand. Adding insult to injury, they are already trumpeting their next line of cameras while they still can't fulfill the orders of their current line.

There are those that suggest that Red used the reservations for R&D money, rather than having to give up a portion of the company to a VC firm for startup funds. Still others suggest a kind of corporate shell game, where one is enticed to order the Red One, then encouraged to upgrade to the Epic before ever getting one's hands on the first camera. While the first statement may be true, I think what we have here is the beginnings of another video revolution, mirroring what has happened over the last 10 years in the storage market. these cameras are real and are shipping.

And the game is starting to change. Already companies are working hard to compete with Red on price and quality. Although, there are some problems associated with the Red One, once this company matures, they, along with Apple's Final Cut Pro, will have forced the high end video market downstream, giving the little fishes a chance at the big time. The real test will come when the Scarlet is released. A 3k video pocket professional camera for under $3,000 with no reservations will blow the prosumer market wide open, and all these premium HD camcorders will start collecting dust.

The Bouv has been asked to answer 3 questions about his day-to-day life at CurrentMarketing.

The Bouv Abides.

1: What's the most interesting tool you use to do your job?

This may seem funny at first, but as Geek In Charge around here, I'm not going to say the programming editor I use or my favorite browser. I'm not going to say it's the command line of the nice UNIX soul behind my Mac OS X workstation.

No, the most interesting and useful tool I use is Mac OS X's Spaces program. Not all you Macheads even know about this feature of OS X 10.5, but it is the application that I most often use throughout the day. Spaces allows you to have multiple desktops to help organize your other applications into functional groups.

For instance, I have one area for browsers, mail and instant messaging. I have another for my programming tools (editors, terminals and sftp windows) and a third desktop for iTunes or other multimedia apps. And the coolest one is Desktop 4 where I can run Windows Vista full screen.

Just take a look:

I can push Control + 1 thru 4 on my keyboard to cycle through my desktops to get to any area I need. If I click on an app on my dock that is already open in one of those desktops, it automatically moves me over to that area. Spaces really is the most interesting and useful tool I use to keep productive daily.

2: What website do you visit most often?

Why, UnderCurrent of course! I mean it's the blog of Louisville's Leading Interactive Marketing Agency!

3: What website do you REALLY visit most often?

Google without a doubt. I have a customized Google home page that feeds in my personal Google mail account, my Google Reader list, and my Remember The Milk todo list. 3 websites for the price of 1. I could put more on there but I don't want it to be cluttered.

Microsoft has had a lot of press lately, and none of it very good. First, they were sued for certifying computer components as "Vista Capable" when they were clearly not; next, they announced the closing of the MSN music store, thereby orphaning thousands of legitimately purchased songs; then they were publicly told to speak to the hand by Yahoo; and now it's rumored that MS will install filtering software as a part of a future update that will not only scan your Zune (OK, maybe not your Zune, but the Zunes of the 12 people who have actually purchased one) for "unauthorized" content, but then delete any music or movies not purchased from the Zune store. One has to wonder, what in the world is going on over there?

Granted, Microsoft is not hurting. They still print money in their headquarters in Redmond, WA. But when you're fined by the EU for anti-trust violations, caught gaming your sales numbers and being dismissed as irrelevant by Motley Fool, it might be time to think about some fresh leadership. Bill Gates was wise to split when he did; perhaps he saw the writing on the wall. In any case, it is upon Steve Ballmer's shoulders that the blame for the morass that Microsoft has become will fall.

Microsoft is a gigantic ship, widely perceived as unsinkable. However, as we learned from watching Titanic for the 152nd time over the weekend, we know that there is no such thing. How much longer until Ballmer walks the plank? And at what point is he going to throw up his hands and say, "What the hell?! I'm a billionaire for God's sake, I don't need this!" My prediction is that within the year, Steve Ballmer will either have engineered a hostile takeover of Yahoo and mounted Jerry Yang's head on his wall, or Bill Gates will be back in the CEO's hyperbaric chamber in Redmond, cruelly plotting the overthrow of free software.