Adobe Support: Does anyone give worse customer support than Adobe?

I just got told by Adobe to go screw myself.

Of course, they didn't exactly say that. What they said is, "You'll have to upgrade your Adobe Premier Pro software if you want us to help you."

Here's the  Adobe issue: I've got an activation issue for an Adobe software product (Premier) that I received as part of a video editing suite. Unfortuanately, it won't activate successfully. It gives me the 'it appears your system configuration has changed' message and when I activate it (which it does successfully) it crashes.

Look, I'm pretty tech minded. The problem, according to Adobe Customer Support, is that the software isn't correctly saving the file. (It activates correctly and then looks for the file which isn't there and crashes.) In fact, Adobe knows its an issue and has a patch called FF1 for it. So, I call Adobe customer support to get some help.

My experience with Adobe customer support over the last 4 days??

Spoke to 14 people. Was told 5 separate times that I'd receive a patch  (FF1) within the next 24 hours that never came. Today, I was finally told that the patch wasn't available and that I would have to buy new software in order to get this to work! Nice. The last customer service rep, "Ron", refused to give me any identity number.

Between the 14 people on two contenients I spoke to Adobe Customer Support, Adobe Activation Support, and Adobe Premier Support and I wasted 5 hours on the phone to be effectively told that if I didn't pay for customer support troubleshooting, they wouldn't help me activate my software.

My opinion of Adobe Customer Support is deep in the toilet right now.

China Green

China's stunning new green buildings.

The GreenPix Zero Energy Media Wall, is the world's largest color LED display combined with China's first photovoltaic system to be integrated into a glass curtain wall. It forms the curtain wall of the Xicui Entertainment Complex in Beijing, harvesting solar energy by day and using it to illuminate the screen after dark, much like a day’s climatic cycle.

FDA Gives Approval For Three Breast Augmentation

The FDA has annouced that plastic surgeons can now add a third breast when performing breast agmenation surgery.

In addition, plastic surgeons will now be able to offer third breast implants. These treatments have been popular oversees (especially in Europe) but are now going to be availabe in the US. Expect to spend much more on bikinis. Three pocket bras are already appearing on eBay.

... Three breast augmentation has been show to have no greater statistical risk than single breast augmentation. It's been the norm in parts of Europe for years and we're not looking to penalize American plastic surgeons who could be performing these surgeries instead of having patients go oversees.

Of course, I own that site and it is April 1st.

Gmail's 5 second Undo Send. (yawn)

If you're a gmail user you've now got some new functionality. Undo Send (when enabled) gives you a popup for 5 seconds before it sends the email, theoretically giving you time to prevent your email from being sent with a typo or missing attachement.

Yawn.

CNN is so smitten with this feature and other gmail trivia like "Mail Goggles" (to help users stop sending "mail you later regret) that it's featured at the top of the technology section:

"Undo Send" is also just the latest example of the dozens of creative -- and sometimes downright wacky -- online features developed at Gmail Labs to address common e-mail problems.

The number of lab features has more than tripled, to more than 36, as Gmail celebrates its fifth birthday next week.

Of course, that other shoe dropping you hear is that this doesn't actually 'Undo' anything. It simply inserts a 5 second timer after you click send before Gmail actually sends your email. That's it. Not to much going on behind the curtain and you won't need a team of crack engineers to develop functionality like that. It's like trying to build a spaceship with paddle-wheel boat technology.

Now call me prejudiced but I'm going to draw a few comparisons between Gmail's 'Undo Send' and Sendsides' feature, 'Recall' that's enabled with every account.

First, Gmail's Undo Send; Inserts a popup window for 5 seconds before your email is actually sent.

Next up; Recall. Sendside's Recall feature allows you to retract any message or file at any time after it's been sent... or delivered, or read, or forwarded.

Sent it yesterday? Fine. The recipient's allready read it? No problem. It's been forwarded? Yep. In fact, you can see who it's been forwarded to and if they've opened it, when, and every time they've looked at or downloaded your attachment.

Sendside's functionality is so far beyond what gmail is developing it's unreal. Of course, Google's at a severe disadvantage since Gmail is built on the same SMTP protocols that were implemented in 1982 and haven't changed since then. It won't always be that way of course. Individuals and businesses want to be able to really recall and control their content, see when they're message is read, and stop hassling with email workarounds.

Email won't be dislodged easily. It has 100% market penetration and works perfectly well for telling your wife you'll be home late for dinner.

Of course, the horse and buggy had 100% market penetration at one time too.

Google Design (or lack thereof)

"When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems."

Google's lead designer is leaving. When I first heard this I thought... "Google has a designer?"

Indeed they do, or did. (I"m sure they still have pleanty of designers.) But, their lead diesigner is leaving and has posted something I didn't expect from anyone associated with Google and design, a thoughful post on how anyaytics and performance based testing can strip away both the aesthetics and the humany from an interface.

Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

I can’t fault Google for this reliance on data. And I can’t exactly point to financial failure or a shrinking number of users to prove it has done anything wrong. Billions of shareholder dollars are at stake. The company has millions of users around the world to please. That’s no easy task. Google has momentum, and its leadership found a path that works very well. When I joined, I thought there was potential to help the company change course in its design direction. But I learned that Google had set its course long before I arrived. Google was a massive aircraft carrier, and I was just a small dinghy trying to push it a few degrees North.

So true it makes me wonder how the guy survived as long as he did. The amazing success that Google has shown has been without any aesthetic that's recognizable at all. Two things are for sure; Google is not Apple, and when a company is ruled by engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems.

,

Patient Gagging: Sign here before you're treated.

,

I wrote a post on this on Medical Spa MD, a blog I own, but since this crosses the bounds from medicine and straddles all of blogging, I've posted most of the original here:

Medical Spa MD, my blog for physicians running med spa and laser clinics, hosts anonymous comments. I made the decision to allow that after some careful thought when I first launched the site. (Of course, almost all comments on the web are anonymous.)

There are both benifits and drawbacks to anonynimity. With the number of cease and desist letters I've received I'm aware that not everyone is happy when they're pilloried in public by namless commenters. Here's a story from the AP on doctors who are asking patients to sign what amounts to a gag order befor they'll treat them.

The anonymous comment on the Web site RateMDs.com was unsparing: "Very unhelpful, arrogant," it said of a doctor. "Did not listen and cut me off, seemed much too happy to have power (and abuse it!) over suffering people." Such reviews are becoming more common as consumer ratings services like Zagat's and Angie's List expand beyond restaurants and plumbers to medical care, and some doctors are fighting back.

They're asking patients to agree to what amounts to a gag order that bars them from posting negative comments online.

So... where to come down? The right to criticize and protect yourself, or additional protections for individuals who may be the recipient of negative comments.

A number of companies; Sona, Solana, Dermacare, medical spa frachises and consultants, RealSelf.com, Cutera, Thermage, Lumenis... these companies have taken some heavy hits on Medspa MD from disgruntled docs. Would you want unhappy patient to have a high profile forum like this one that they could use to damage your reputation and business?

Googles Interest Based Advertising

Google has launched “interest-based advertising,” which will display ads based on the user’s previous searches and page views. Google’s experiment with behavioral targeting has also been done by Yahoo and others as a way of increasing ad revenue through a more granular focus on viewers, but has led to privacy concerns.

Google announced on March 11 that it was launching a beta version of what it terms “interest-based advertising,” a type of behavioral targeting that delivers ads to users based on their previous searches and page views.

,

Stumble Upon brings Big Traffic at Light Speed.

,

I wrote this Simple Curiosity post on 'Why Time Slows Down When Approaching the Speed of Light' a while ago. In fact it wa on the Simple Curiosity blog that I've closed and now host on this site.

Someone found that post and Stumbled it, leading to an extra 20,000 page views in the last 48 hours and the addition of 700 RSS readers. Shazam!

Of course, now I'll have to start writing Simple Curiosity? again to keep those RSS readers happy.

,

Technorati Tag Authority

,

There’s a fresh new opportunity from Technorat to create both powerful one-way links to your site and build your own reputation as the expert in your market.

Technorati has introduced new “tag pages” system, the main page:

There are two approaches to keep in mind when utilizing the new Technorati tag pages.

Firstly, you want your own blog posts to appear in the more popular tag pages (of course, they need to be on relevant tag pages as well - don’t pick irrelevant tags). There’s a comparison engine that can help you determine the most popular tags. For example, here’s “Internet marketing” compared with “seo.”

As you can see, SEO trends higher than interenet marketing. So, if you had a blog post relevant to both categories and were trying to decide which one to tag it with, SEO would be a great choice as it’s a more popular tag. You should use between 5-10 tags on your blog posts, so there’s plenty of room for several tags but, again, it’s important they’re relevant.

Secondly, and this is the fun announcement from Technorait - each tag page has a sort of “sponsor” who writes an introduction to the topic. In return, Technorati links to the authors blog! Take a peek at what this looks like:

These pages are, of course, new right now and there are TONS of them available for you on which to add your own description and link! Because you’ll only get links from and write descriptions for tag pages that are within your niche, these links from Technorati will be HIGHLY relevant as well - and we know Google loves that!

Technorati describes the opprotunity:

This is a unique opportunity for authors, brands, agencies, experts and content sites with some significant benefits. Your tag article will appear on Technorati.com with a writer credit. You will be seen as the definitive expert on a tag subject – by millions of readers. Your article can include links to useful references and sites, including your own, if relevant, as well as your own byline link. It’s also really easy to contribute: tag articles are only 2-3 paragraphs, between 100 and 200 words, and can live for years as evergreen content.

Aside from the Google love link you’ll receive, having a prominent space on your niche’s main Technorati tag pages will bring your own site and name brand recognition. Having written the tag article, you’re now the expert in the niche.

How to become a tag page author? You’ll need to join Blog Critics, and they do a manual review of your content. If you’re publishing MFA (made-for-Adsense) or other non-unique content, you’ll likely not be approved. This is the opportunity to showcase your best work. Once you’re a Blog Critics member, you’ll be able to author Technorati tag pages.

Move forward with this opportunity as quickly as possible, as the “keyword goldrush” is occuring right now - grab the best keywords for your niche before they’re all snapped up!

Via Crowd Mountain

Spoon Fed

Ben & Jerrys created the ice cream flavor “Yes Pecan!” for Obama.

They then asked people to fill in the blank for the following:

For George W. they created “___________________________”.

Here are some of their favorite responses:

- Grape Depression
- Abu Grape
- Cluster Fudge
- Nut’n Accomplished
- Iraqi Road
- Chock ‘n Awe
- WireTapioca
- Impeach Cobbler
- Guantanmallow
- imPeachmint
- Good Riddance You Lousy Motherfucker… Swirl
- Heck of a Job, Brownie!
- Neocon Politan
- RockyRoad to Fascism
- The Reese’s-cession
- Cookie D’oh!
- The Housing Crunch
- Nougalar Proliferation
- Death by Chocolate… and Torture
- Freedom Vanilla Ice Cream
- Chocolate Chip On My Shoulder
- “You’re Shitting In My Mouth And Calling It A” Sundae
- Credit Crunch
- Mission Pecanplished
- Country Pumpkin
- Chunky Monkey in Chief
- George Bush Doesn’t Care About Dark Chocolate
- WMDelicious
- Chocolate Chimp
- Bloody Sundae
- Caramel Preemptive Stripe
- I broke the law and am responsible for the deaths of thousands…with nuts

Risk Aversion

Andrew McAffe's Blog has his thoughts on how people value and avoid loss. His explanation was fascinating, and very insightful. He said that we need to stop thinking about consumers as highly rational evaluators of the old vs. the new products, lining up pros and cons of each in mental tables and then selecting the winner. Instead, we need to keep in mind three well-documented features of our cognitive 'equipment' for making evaluations.

  • We make relative evaluations, not absolute ones. When I'm at a poker table deciding whether to call a bet, I don't think of what my total net worth will be if I win the hand vs. if I lose it. Instead, I think in relative terms -- whether I'll be 'up' or 'down.'

  • Our reference point is the status quo. My poker table comparisons are made with respect to where I am at that point in time. "If I win this hand I'll be up $40; if I lose it I'll be down $10 compared to my current bankroll." It's only at the end of the night that my horizon broadens enough to see if I'm up or down for the whole game.

  • We are loss averse. A $50 loss looms larger than a $50 gain. Loss aversion is virtually universal across people and contexts, and is not much affected by how much wealth one already has. Ample research has demonstrated that people find that a prospective loss of $x is about two to three times as painful as a prospective gain of $x is pleasurable.

Squarespace

Squarespace is the platform I try to build sites on if I can. It's fantastic as I say in my Squarespace vs Wordpress review.

There are some solutions that don't work as well on Squarespace, when you can't use a hosted solution for example, but if you're blogging and want fantastic functionality and ease instead of Wordpress backend-ugly, Squarespace is da bomb.

Squarespace has made some changes to their own site today and it's more than just a little improvement if you, as I do, hate to read light body copy on a black background.

We Live In Public at Sundance

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

 

The best film I saw at Sundance this year was We Live In Public, winner of the Grand Jury Documentary Prize and a fantastic film. It was of special interest to me in dealing with how public all of our communication systems are. (Two women sitting next to me who were aghast to find out that Google serves up ads to you by scanning the actual contents of your email.)

Films that deal with technology usually aren't this good but Ondie Timoner and Interloper Films spent more than ten years filming, before finally discovering the story. Fantastic.