Answer Guy Central

Oh-My-God-I’ve-Never-Seen-Anything-Like-That-Dress-You-Are-So-Hot-I-Can’t-Even-Believe-It!

Yesterday, I was in the car, listening, as old dudes like me tend to, to the news. And a piece came on that almost made me veer off the road. It described the biggest business change I can remember coming across in a very long time, and it comes courtesy of a couple of Valley-Girl speaking young women helming a company that seems to consist almost entirely of young, pretty girls.

What if you opened a retail store, but customers weren’t welcome to come inside?

That’s the premise being explored by Jennifer Fleiss and Jennifer Hyman, the founders of RentTheRunway.com. RentTheRunway has been described as “the Netflix of Fashion”, and it’s a fairly simple idea; at RentTheRunway, women can rent dresses and accessories that are too expensive or impractical to buy. Or just plain have some fun, girls!!!!! ... READ MORE of this article, Fashion, Business Change,and Rent(ing) The Runway from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (367 words, 1 image, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

I’ve mentioned Chris Brogan here quite a few times. Sometimes, I praise him. More often, I call Mr. Brogan out for being disingenuous, or inauthentic. Once, I suggested Chris wasn’t very smart, which he didn’t care for (although I think he missed the context of my commentary).

Today, I come not to bury Chris Brogan, but to praise him.

Brogan’s trying to do video. Already a very successful blogger and business consultant, and well as a New York Times Best-Selling Author, Chris has decided that video is the way to go, moving forward. Despite my reservations on the subject of producing web video, I admire what Chris has done to improve himself as he starts down the video production path. And I commented on that at the page where Chris Brogan is showing his video production skills.

I was honest in my comments. And I hope supportive. ... READ MORE of this article, In Praise of Chris Brogan and Video Production Values from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (391 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

Whenever I decide to write about privacy, I always cringe a little. As I’ve said more than a couple of times, privacy is a relatively new idea, has never really existed, and is impossible to legislate. The very idea of privacy is so complicated it makes my head spin.

Joining with Facebook, our friends at Google have decided to help us out and define privacy as simply as possible: at Google, your information is no longer controllable by you and you can’t opt out of whatever way Google decides to use your information.

Now strictly speaking, that isn’t true. Dig through enough settings and you’ll still be able to turn off certain behaviors. But what Google has decided is that you (meaning they) are better served by there being one set of rules that covers all Google products than there being different settings for GMail, Search, Google+, Google Music, Google Docs, Google Analytics, and whatever other Google services you use. ... READ MORE of this article, Google Merges with Facebook. Privacy Ends Permanently. from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (914 words, 1 image, estimated 3:39 mins reading time)

A few months ago, I came across this video. It’s funny. REALLY funny. Using not-a-real-App Jotly, you could rate everything. Why limit yourself to rating the place you’re at when we all know that restaurant reviews are fake, anyway? With Jotly you just … Rate everything.

Except, of course, for this: Jotly wasn’t real. It was a parody of all the rating/check-in/self-promoting web sites and apps that have become part of our daily lives, where we keep talking but say nothing. Rate Everything, indeed; we’ve been doing that anyway, so Jotly was just calling it like it was. We should rate less.

No more. Jotly is real. And I’m the 41st highest ranked Jotly user:

... READ MORE of this article, Rate Everything (Because Nobody REALLY Cares) — Jotly from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (404 words, 1 image, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

When I told you about YouHaveDownloaded.com in this story about the marketing genius that is comedian Louis CK a few weeks back, I didn’t realize we’d be getting to pick on the United States Congress. Turns out that our friends in Washington DC, the very folks who though SOPA was such a great idea, have been illegally downloading copyrighted works from the Internet using BitTorrent.

Shocker.

On the other hand, when I told you about BitTorrent, SOPA, MegaUpload, and Piracy, it did occur to me that there might be an SEO angle to the story. As you can see above, it turns out I was right; Google sees us as #6 for all spellings/misspellings of the phrase “bittorrent sopa”, despite the subject having been written about in many places, most way larger than Answer Guy Central. And that’s what Search Engine Optimization can do. ... READ MORE of this article, More on BitTorrent, SOPA, Piracy and File Sharing—and SEO from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (465 words, 1 image, estimated 1:52 mins reading time)

Except for the time that The US Congress Endorsed the Services We Provide at Virtual VIP, I’ve been pretty clear on just how ill-prepared our government is to address business change and the Internet.

Chalk up another one for the dumb guys.

In shutting down widely popular (and wide purveyor of pirated material) web site MegaUpload yesterday, The US Congress has, once again, deprived a company of due process because they had written law (or in this case granted unreasonable powers to the US Department of Justice) without understanding what they were doing.

The side effect? People who were using MegaUpload for legitimate, legal purposes have a big problem today; their files are simply … gone. ... READ MORE of this article, MegaUpload, BitTorrent, SOPA, File Sharing, Piracy, and You from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (785 words, estimated 3:08 mins reading time)

In case there was any doubt in your mind, I Hate Texting.

And while the little experiment we’re conducting at hatetexting.com hasn’t changed (it still looks like 1996 over there), neither has the point: way too often texting, useful though it can be, is still an excuse for being rude masquerading as a tool.

And now we have a new example of just how much trouble texting can cause. And it comes from the medical world.

You’d think these educated people, these men and women of science, would know better. They’ve seen the studies proving that texting causes car crashes. They’ve laughed at cocktail parties about people who text during sex. Some of them might even be aware of the broad social shifts and (negative, says me) social changes that texting has helped bring about.

But these tools have become distractions. And it’s bad. Because now,  Doctors are texting during surgery. ... READ MORE of this article, Texting Causes Botched Surgical Procedures from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (299 words, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

Some days, I wish I was a journalist. Or still a journalist. Or something that would make me feel as though I was contributing to a vocation that I’m starting to get really worried about.

The aftermath of the problems I had last week with Verizon Wireless Customer Service was that I replaced my Droid with a shiny new Galaxy Nexus, albeit with some more customer service stupidity thrown in. And because there’s still a big piece of computer geek floating around inside me (and I had stuff to transfer from my Droid to the Galaxy Nexus SmartPhone), I spent some time playing over the weekend.

Remember, computers are too hard. Turns out, as they become more and more like computers, SmartPhones are becoming too hard, too. ... READ MORE of this article, Half-Baked Reviews and The Decline of Journalism from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (777 words, 1 image, estimated 3:06 mins reading time)

Customer Service is expensive.

I’ve picked on Verizon Wireless for the last couple of days, and they deserve it. I went so far as to rename The Answer Guy’s Customer Service Wall of Shame to The Verizon Wireless Customer Service Wall of Shame in their honor; it really does feel as though Verizon Wireless is a perfect example of what’s wrong with the entire economy of the USA, and the more you look into just how bad things have become at Verizon Wireless the more you see that there’s no bottom in sight.

But no matter how bad things seem, it’s important to remember that because customer service costs money, it’s a cost center. The question becomes how you define and handle your business processes.

Last week, this piece at TechCrunch asked “why AOL is still charging people for e-mail”. It made me think of a piece I write here a couple of years back; a woman couldn’t understand where her “Free Wi-Fi” had gone. ... READ MORE of this article, Ignorance and AOL, Customer Service and Cost Centers from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (311 words, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)

When I went so far yesterday as to state that Verizon Wireless Customer Service is a model for what’s broken in the USA, and re-name The Answer Guy’s Customer Service Wall of Shame to the Verizon Wireless Customer Service Wall of Shame in their honor, you probably thought I was done picking on Verizon Wireless Customer Service for a while.

Not Even Close.

Despite the opportunity to exhibit our Search Engine Optimization abilities that inept Customer Service from Verizon Wireless provided, I might have stopped. But then Verizon Wireless moved the bar for bad customer service even higher.

I’m getting to the end of my rope with my Droid SmartPhone. The battery is getting flaky, it’s running apps way slower than it used to, and I just can’t deal with it this way for much longer. I’m ready to upgrade. ... READ MORE of this article, Oh, I’m Not Done With Verizon Wireless. I’m Not NEARLY Done. from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (511 words, 2 images, estimated 2:03 mins reading time)

Here’s how bad customer service is at Verizon Wireless: I’m renaming The Answer Guy’s Customer Service Wall of Shame to The Verizon Wireless Customer Service Wall of Shame.

While we do lots of things for businesses here at Answer Guy Central, when I write these posts I always concentrate on either customer service, business change, or search engine optimization. I’ve just experienced customer service at Verizon Wireless that was so bad, I’ve found both a way to write about all three and a compelling enough reason to do so. And while it’s self-serving to weave the Search Engine Optimization part of things into this story, I genuinely hope I can help effect some business change at Verizon Wireless if I do that well enough to get Verizon Wireless’ attention. ... READ MORE of this article, Broken About The USA? Verizon Wireless Customer Service from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (1138 words, 1 image, estimated 4:33 mins reading time)

Is it really almost two years since Chatroulette showed up, grabbed our attention for a few seconds, and then disappeared? Amazingly, yes. And while both that link to a piece here at Answer Guy Central and this story about the legality of Chatroulette continue to bring us traffic (That’s Search Engine Optimization, friends), Chatroulette itself has all but faded into memory.

Now, we get younow.com. and in a way it’s more horrifying that Chatroulette ever was.

Think of YouNow as kind of a Gong Show for the Internet, but as with so much of the web, unmoderated. If you remember that television nugget from the 1970s, contestants came on stage, performed various shows of talent—or lack thereof—and if they survived their moment in the spotlight without being gonged off had a chance at one low-value prize or another. ... READ MORE of this article, Chatroulette? That’s So Two Years Ago. Check Out YouNow.com from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (296 words, estimated 1:11 mins reading time)

When I told you about Google Music and the immense amount of bandwidth it consumes, I never thought that something so innocuous could actually trump that kind of media streaming and cost you more.

Hello, Siri.

Although I’ve been writing about Apple’s “virtual assistant” since way back in May 2010, (and I know a bit about Virtual Assistants), one thing I hadn’t thought about is just how much data software like Siri goes through in working its magic. Turns out, quite a bit. Or depending on your view of perception and reality, not all that much.

Last week, Network Software Management company Arieso released this study , and it was immediately sliced and diced by one news outlet after another seeking an angle. Bloomberg announced that Siri and the iPhone 4S created a huge data hog situation, while PCWorld announced … the opposite. (Disclosure: I’ve written for PCWorld) ... READ MORE of this article, Data and Bandwidth Usage, Perception, Reality and Siri from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (314 words, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)

A couple of years ago, Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis did something stupid when he unleashed a public tirade against an employee who’d had the nerve to stop working for him. It seems as though Calacanis learned from his mistake; he’s probably still not the easiest dude to get along with, but there haven’t been any more profanity-laced public tirades.

Not so for MG Siegler.

Siegler, formerly a writer at TechCrunch and now a venture capitalist working with for Michael Arrington, has said stupid things in public before. My favorite example of arrogance from this young guy who’s become successful through luck more than talent was when Siegler told the world that TechCrunch couldn’t survive without Mr. Arrington. As you might recall, Arrington had founded TechCrunch and sold it to AOL, and was later fired when AOL realized that journalism requires certain ethics be followed. ... READ MORE of this article, MG Siegler: Success and Fame Breed Stupidity from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (504 words, 1 image, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

When I told you about Steve Madden’s enshrinement on The Answer Guy’s Customer Service Wall of Shame earlier this week, I pointed out a problem with not being specific. Yesterday, I experienced another customer service issue brought about by non-specificity, but this time it wasn’t overt; it was a matter of careless automation run amok.

Of course, on the customer service side of things, there’s no real difference.

I’m happy to report, first of all, that I had a chance to see customer service done the right way in the course of working through this issue: my e-mail host, Digital Housing and Administration, helped me fix the problem I encountered, immediately and effectively. I can’t recommend them highly enough, and Digital Housing does lots of things besides just hosting e-mail.

Then, there’s 1and1. ... READ MORE of this article, A Tale: Rotten Customer Service, and Great Customer Service from Answer Guy Central, your Business Change, SEO Consulting / Search Engine Optimization & Computer Support Source by Clicking Here (568 words, 1 image, estimated 2:16 mins reading time)