BlogPotomac: Coming Soon To A Theater Near You

I was really excited to see a tweet form Geoff Livingston announcing BlogPotomac taking place on June 13th.  The venue is the State Thearter in Falls Church, VA.  So see, it really is coming to a theater near you, I wouldn’t lie to my local readers.
Anyway, I am totally jazzed at the news and will be closely following the events page for any announcements.  As it stands right now here is the lineup:

Our excellent line-up of seven keynotes includes:

Opening Keynote: Lionel Menchaca, digital media manager and chief blogger, Direct2Dell

Lunch Keynote: Frank Gruber, community manager, AOL and author of Somewhat Frank

Additional keynotes (in alphabetical order) will be given by:

• Social Media Group’s Maggie Fox on integrating social media
• Kami Huyse, Communication Overtones on ethics
• Author KD Paine on measurement
• Jeremy Pepper, The Point and Pop! PR Jots on strategy

The current invite for our final keynote is MyDD’s Matt Stoller on political blogging. Co-chair Debbie Weil will emcee with BlogOrlando creator and BlogPotomac advisor Josh Hallett. Without Josh and his original concept there would be no BlogPotomac.

Sounds like its going to be a great event.  I look forward to attending.  The seats will be limited to 150 and as of now, the costs will be $75.  Any profits are being donated to the EFF.

I Live in Maryland, But Not a Millionaire

No yet at least ..
I saw this article yesterday on the Baltimore Business Journal Online about a study that has found that Maryland has the second largest population of millionaires in the United States.

The percentage of millionaires to total households in Maryland was nearly 7.1 percent in 2007, according to the study. That number is up from 6.2 percent in 2006, when Maryland ranked third.

Of Maryland’s 2.1 million total households, more than 150,000 were millionaires, the study found.

In case your interested, New Jersey is #1 in the study.  It stated that the combination of education levels and access to high paying technology and finance jobs contribute to the finding.  Virginia was 6th and Washington, DC was 20th.

I always knew there was some reason something inside me never liked Virginia

Allegheny Power To Refund Customers !

A special thanks to @kejaja who tipped me off to this article.
Apparently Allegheny Power went before the Public Commission Board today and

agreed to stop collecting the surcharge on fluorescent bulbs it had sent out and to refund any surcharge money that has been collected.

and the article goes further to state

PSC members said Allegheny did not follow instructions for clearly notifying customers about an associated surcharge.

PSC members also said Allegheny gave vague details about how to dispose of the bulbs, which contain mercury.

Shortly after noon, the PSC took a break to give Allegheny officials time to come up with ways to fix problems with a program that has riled customers and state lawmakers.

Eight Western Maryland state lawmakers testified and some insisted that the surcharge be credited to customers’ accounts.

This is great news.  Stupidity stopped in its tracks.  Thanks to everyone who made a difference.  Another example of the power of social media

AppleTV: See, Apple Had A Plan

Recently Robert Scoble had a piece “The MacMini HDTV Revolution” where he plainly states

We all agreed that Apple TV sucks. More on that in a minute.

So does it still suck so much now Robert ?  I do not think so.  With Apples announcements about its upgrades today, like I said previously, Apple is well positioned here to take over our living rooms as well.  With the rental offerings, HD content, direct access to iTunes, it makes the AppleTV so much more valuable.

There is a point I am surprised I have not hear anyone making yet … part of Roberts love affair with the Mac Mini was Dave Winer’s recent piece of software called called FlickrFan. It basically pulls flickr photos from streams and displays them on your tv, Mac desktop, or Mac laptop. It seems like a very cool product and the mac mini is the perfect platform for it.  Well Apple went ahead and pulled the carpetright out from underneath Mr. Winer with the addition of Flickr streaming to the AppleTV.

Now I am not sure I can wait till the new software update comes out ….. I need help

Follow Up: Allegheny Power Bulb Fiasco

I wanted to post a follow to my recent post on Allegheny Power, the Maryland power company that got itself inot a bit of hot water recently.  Reference my original post here.  I want to start by thanking everyone who read the post and passed it on.  We generated a lot of page views (thousands) and a lot of support.  It really was, as my friend Andrew said, a case study in social media and using it as a tool.

Now I cannot prove we had anything to do, but some of the comments were great and provided tools to go file complaints.  Appreantly the uproar has made difference.  According to the Frederick News Post

Allegheny Power took full responsibility today for inadequately notifying customers they would be charged for two lightbulbs sent through the mail as part of the program.
“Allegheny Power accepts full responsibility for the customer confusion and delivery issues,” Allegheny President David Flitman wrote in response to a letter from members of the Western Maryland delegation of the General Assembly.

Allegheny sent 220,000 customers two energy-efficient bulbs, billing $11.52 for them in 12 monthly payments of 96 cents. The move prompted outrage and complaints to the state’s utilities agency, the Maryland Public Service Commission and the power company that the charges were not clearly explained.

Many customers believed the bulbs were free.

The letter, sent Friday by the delegation’s Chairman Delegate Bob McKee, said, “The manner in which this campaign was carried out has been and continues to be a public relations debacle for Allegheny Energy.”

Flitman — saying the company “has heard loud and clear the concerns” of lawmakers, the Public Service Commission, customers and media — wrote that the power company was working to address customer complaints.

Allegheny has been ordered to appear at a Wednesday hearing of the PSC to review and explain the program.

“We stand ready to take whatever corrective actions are deemed necessary by the commission,” Flitman stated.

I am so happy that action is being taken. As stated above, Allegheny has to be present this week in front of the Maryland Public Service Commission.

Thanks for the help everyone

Twitter: As A Customer Service Tool ?

In my last post about Twitter I wrote about how business need to move to brand themselves with Twitter names.  As I was writing that post, a thought came to me as to how businesses can also use Twitter as an important tool in customer service.

After a company has taken the step to create a user-name on Twitter in order to interact with the social timeline, I think they can use it for more than a simple “echo chamber” as my friend Andrew Wright calls it.  There are possibilities beyond just a product announcement.  For instance, how about a quasi help desk ?

If you are a small company, it may not be feasible to set up a help desk with dedicated communications.  Instead you can use Twitter.  Take that company branded  Twitter name and distribute the password for the account it to a team of “customer service representatives”.  These reps need not be sitting in a central place, or even in an office for that matter.  During the course of the day they simply follow replies to the company’s Twitter name.  Now the customers of this company simply send any questions, technical or otherwise, to the company’s Twitter name.  Almost instantaneously one of the reps sees the tweet and sends a reply, either in the form of a reply of direct message if necessary.  This interaction will not only benefit the customer who sent it, but many other customers who may have been having, or may have in the future, the same issue.  It is help page forum, but in real time.  Fort example:

Say I am using a product of  @company and  encounter an issue, any issue. I could send a Twitter message to @company stating my problem or asking a question.  One of the company’s reps would see the message in the companies timeline and respond.  No more waiting on hold.  If the problem requires further consult, maybe a call is necessary at that point, but for most issues, a few messages back and forth would more than likely solve the issue.

This is yet another way Twitter’s infrastructure could be leveraged by a small company to provide superior service to it’s customers at little to no cost.

Netflix Uncaps Streaming Video Rentals. And ?

So there is a lot of buzz going on today around the web to the news that  Netflix has announced that it will begin unlimited movie streaming of its 6000 title catalogue.  According to Duncan Riley over at Techcrunch:

The move is said to be in response to the expected announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the Macworld Expo Tuesday that iTunes will offer movie rentals from most major studios. The expected price of the iTunes rented movies is $3.99 each, putting Netflix is a competitive position for high value regular movie watchers.

Am I the only one who thinks this is a non issue here?  Netflix streams to a browser, meaning you have to be on your computer to watch the movie.  Apple has the AppleTV to rent movies from, if the rumors are true.  The AppleTV allows me to watch the content on my television.  Hopefully the content will be available in HD making it an even better experience.

In any case, watch in your browser or on your TV, which one would you choose ?  I’ll take the TV.

Are You Backing Up Your Backups

I came across this post “Who Protects Your Cloud Data?” by Mike Gunderloy over at Web Worker Daily.  It really struck a chord with me since I am developing a service that rides on top of one of the mentioned storage providers (its not quite ready so more news on that to come).  In any case it appears that OmniDrive, an online storage provider, may have go offline and joined the so called “deadpool”.

How sucky is that.  I started to wonder just how many customers of OmniDrive, who have been trusting their data to OmniDrive, now have not only lost the trust but also their data.  How many have been using OmniDrive to protect their cherished family photos that are gone.  How many have used OmniDrive to store important business documents they no longer have access to ?  It pretty sad, an unfortunate tale of the technology and the companies providing that technology we have come to rely on.

The post points out we need to be selective in trusting our data.  There are other providers out there that are backed by big named companies that will not be going anywhere.  Mozy is backed by EMC and Amazon has their S3 storage platform.  These are sound companies, not a “storage startup”.

Does this affect any of you out there ?  We would love to hear your thoughts.

Is This Maryland Power Company Committing Mail Fraud?

Over the last month or so our local MD power company, Allegheny Power has sent us 2 small boxes containing 4 of the CFL light bulbs and a small brochure on the benefits of using this new type of lighting. I thought wow what a great idea that is of them to do that. It impressed me they would go to that distance to educate us consumers. STOP. not so fast.

Apparently, without the knowledge of us customers, Allegheny was sending those bulbs and charging us 0.96$ a month over the next 12 months to pay for the bulbs !!That’s $12 for each one, meaning I am going to pay $48 for 4 light bulbs !! To be honest, I have a monthly payment plan and never even see a bill. It gets paid right out of my bank account. If I had not see this post from Frederick Maryland Online, I, and I am sure many others, would have had no idea. According to one customer who called to complain

So when Munck called Allegheny Power’s toll-free customer service number Wednesday morning to let the company know she had no intention of paying the 96-cent surcharge for the next 12 months for receiving two compact fluorescent, energy-efficient light bulbs, she was understandably taken aback by the company’s response.

“They threatened to turn off my power if I didn’t pay this 96 cents,” said Munck, one of 220,000 Allegheny Power residents to which bulbs were sent.

When Munck told the customer service representative she didn’t need the bulbs - her home already is “full of those bulbs” - she was told she could give them to a neighbor but, regardless, she’d be charged for them.

“That was really underhanded what they did,” Munck said. “It’s unconscionable.”

This is unacceptable behavior on Allegheny’s part. Not to mention that what they have done is bordering on, if not totally in, mail fraud. The used the US Postal system to deliver a unsolicited product to our homes and charged us for them. Some customers tried to send the bulbs back and were told they were being charged in any case. I cannot and will not stand for this behavior. This blog will be my medium to spread the news of this foolishness. I need all of you to help us residents out and spread the word on this. I will post it anywhere I can, and I ask you to do the same. You might be saying, “$12 isnt that bad”, but where does it end.
Please DIGG or StumbleUpon this story so we can get the word out.

UPDATE:  @kejaja pointed us to this article in the Baltimore Sun about the light bulb issue.

Twitter-Branding Your Business

It used to be when you started a business you went out and got a business card, some stationary, and maybe did some advertising in the yellow pages. Then came the age of the internet where you needed to add the step to get a domain name to match and brand your business online. My how far we have come.

These days, as soon as a business idea pops into our heads, we have to get the domain name registered before someone else grabs it, even if we (or they) don’t intend to use it. Domain name resales have become a a huge business and caused a lot of attention, evidence the story this past week of Network Solutions so called “front running” domain names people were searching for on their web site.  Having that branded domain name for our business is critical anymore.

Now we have moved into another era, branding your business on social networks.  It has also become essential to grab that important username to further brand your business venture.  We are now even starting to see people front running on usernames as well.  Check out this pic of a Twitter message from a user who registered the “Geico” Twitter name and is looking to sell.

I am sure there are more and that this will eventually become a bigger deal and a bigger business as companies, large and small, start to use these new social tools to reach out and connect with their customer base on these social networks.  Whether it be product announcements, quarterly financials, or maybe even product recalls, these companies will want to carry that branding forward.  Can you imagine a Twitter message from “TheRealGeico” announcing specials on car insurance rates ….

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