Lexical Light

My First YouTube Vid: Bike Ridin'

It's destined to be...well, it's destined to be. I needed an illustration of how to ride a bike, so I voluntold one of my kids to help me. The result is a riveting minute of skills, both bike and technical.

 

My Newest Site: DontExpandTheTournament.com

Oops, I did it again.  Just had to make a blog about NCAA tournament expansion. Don't Expand the Tournament.com is what happens when March Madness meets Digital Dementia. Because I don't have anything else to do.

My PlumChoice Support Log

Let's see if I can maintain this record of PlumChoice performance.

12/5/2009 PlumChoice Support - Fail

Again? 15 minutes waiting for a tech to respond on chat. It was 2:30ish am, so they weren't staffed for prime time, but it's not an isolated incident. Arghh, especially on the heels of yesterday's fiasco.

For my brain: the issue was a spy/malware screen popping up after using a Facebook relative app. I used PlumChoice's SAFELink to get a screenshot and send it to them via chat and e-mail. Nothing, except waiting on hold at chat for 15 minutes. No e-mail this morning confirming the submission. Nothing.

Thankfully the computer is still running well because I don't want to spend a couple of hours waiting for a phone call. I'll contact support later. 

Testing My Loyalty - Plum Choice Remote PC Repair

Since Nov 2005, PlumChoice techs have solved my PC problems remotely, quickly and affably. (Glowing review here.) The $25/month PC Maintenance on our 2002 PC is almost essential, given our family's computer dependence. Having PlumChoice as my personal IT service made me happy, until August 2009. That's when they started missing appointments.

Over the past few months, they have missed a handful of appointments. That doesn't sound too bad, but each of those times was an hour I had to wait by the computer for a phone call. Ugh. I understand an occasional day with staffing or technology issues, but the appointments were missed far enough apart to rule out being an off day.

Perhaps today was "one of those days." PlumChoice missed two appointments with me, at 10 am and 1 pm. Then I spent 15 minutes on hold (with really bad music...really) to see if I could get worked in. I had things to do, so I just scheduled a 5 pm call instead of waiting around for the first available tech.

A tech called for the 5pm appointment and is working on installing software for the $10/month Protect and Assist plan on our new computer. Since I have to stay close to the computer, I'm on the old computer looking up PlumChoice reviews and competitors in the event I need to switch my PC service provider. This post is link storage for what I find.

Because of the hassle involved with finding a new provider, I'll stick with PlumChoice for a bit. However, I'm concerned that the decline in customer service is symptomatic of something larger in the company - at first I chalked it up to growing pains, but I'm not sure now. Time will tell whether it's a hiccup or a choking hazard in their growth and quality. Hopefully they'll be able to right the ship and I'll again enjoy computer confidence thanks to the quality of my personal IT staff. 

Link storage for PlumChoice reviews and competitors info:

Steve's 2 Cents Post, 12/13/2005 PlumChoice at Circuit City

    Circuit City is already kaput in my town, so that's not good. There is a bit of interesting feedback in the comments.

Boston Business Journal, 4/29/2008, PlumChoice nets $2.8M in funding

    "The Billerica, Mass.based company plans to use the money to expand its reach in Web-based technical support services to homes and small businesses." Please don't sacrifice quality for quantity. Expanding your reach is only beneficial if you maintain a firm grasp on the bedrock of your initial success - providing a quality service at a sustainable price. 

Xconomy, Boston, 9/8/09, PlumChoice Plucks $14.7M

    Securing funding is good. Will I see it positively effect PlumChoice service?

iTOK, possible tech support option

    $20/month for PC Care, similar to PlumChoice's $10/month Protect & Assist. No time for complete comparison. File for future reference.

TypeTwitFaceTest

So, if I post at LexicalLight.com, will it end up on Twitter and Facebook? If my tweaking is successful it should.

Update: Hooray! It worked! Wonder if it will repost an update?

Update: Nope. It doesn't repost update, which is a good thing.

I feel so smart, thought it's just a matter of hunting through the Typepad, Twitter and Facebook apps to find out how to do it. I did get FB help from a post by Michael Hyatt. Thanks. 

To configure Typepad to send updates to FB & Twitter, go to the Settings tab on your blog.

If you need more info, check the Typepad help. Don't be shy about filling out a support ticket. They have awesome customer service, which is one reason I've stayed with them 4.5 years.

Now to check my BloggingForWriters.com settings.

Update: It seems deleting a tweet that has already gone to FB doesn't delete it from FB.

Facebook

I finally succumbed to familial pressure to join Facebook, because I need another distraction from all the things I don't get done. Now I'm testing the Typepad integration with it. Fascinating, I know.

Update: FB had a neat "import blog button" that worked well. Cool.

My Next Virtual Conference

In May I participated in an online homeschool conference. The workshops had interactive chat and could be listened to later, so it was cool and convenient. It didn't require much new techno learning on my part, just downloading some conference software and playing with iTunes.  Though it won't replace being physcially present, it's a nice chance to learn from people you may not otherwise hear.

My next virtual conference will require some techno learning. I'll need to figure out how to use 2nd Life so I can attend the BlogHer '07 conference.

What's Blogher? It started in 2005 as a conference for women bloggers and has grown to include an online gathering place for women bloggers.

Being the learning junkie I am, I would love to hang out at a BlogHer conference. However, I can't make it to Chicago, but I can still attend the conference virtually via 2nd Life.

My geeky self is quite excited about that. What's better is there is no fee to attend virtually. Woo-hoo.
It will cost me some time to learn how to participate in 2nd Life, but it will be a fun experiment.

I'm interested in the "Business of You" workshop track. It seems like a nice fit for blogging writers. Here's the description:

Business of You: This track is devoted to personal and business advancement. We will discuss speaker and media training, self-branding and promotion, mentoring, turning your blog into a book or a business, and even managing your time, your finances, your blogging policies and best practices...the business of you.

If you're interested in attending virtually, go here for more info. Let me know if you'll be there.

Google and Politics

Do you want to know "Google's views on government, policy and politics?" I know. You were just wondering about that. Now you can read the Google Public Policy Blog.

Information is powerful. Google is a worldwide distributor of information, granted it has a lot more user control  than traditional information distributors like newspaper & tv, but it's still a huge purveyor of ideas. The user has to be able to critically sift through all they find on Google.

I'm used to thinking of Google as a search engine, a tech company - even a verb. I'm not sure what to do with this new idea of them shaping public policy, but as an observer of how technology affects our lives I had to note it in my blog.

Now that I think about it a bit more, other companies have influence on government, so it makes sense for Google to have a blog focusing

"on issues like net neutrality, censorship, innovation regulation, immigration, R&D, national security, and trade" ("just to name a few"). Google's public policy team, who author the blog, say that they hope to foster a "dialogue" with Google users about political issues in order to "do a better job of fighting for our common interests." (from this post
on readwriteweb.com)

Do other big companies, particularly oil, have blogs about issues affecting their business?   

Since my brain hasn't processed this info yet, though I have been thinking, I'll leave you with Josh Catone's conclusion from his Google the Vote post:

"Lobbying and PACs are the more traditional road for corporations to influence American politics. Google's latest approach leverages social technologies (the backbone of web 2.0?) to bypass Washington completely. By creating platforms for candidates and talking directly to the people, Google has positioned themselves as a major force in shaping American political policy (and by extension, have a far reaching global effect). At the same time, Google's political forays will likely strengthen their brand -- not just by helping them get what they want politically, but also by associating their name with yet another staple of American life: the democratic process."

Nothing like a little food for thought with my Berrylicious Oatmeal.

 

More than an Elf

"Expand means to get bigger. So, we expand." -- Kara, 5 years old

Science concept. Check. Vocabulary. Check. Auditory comprehension. Check.

Sounds like our homeschooling is progressing. What curriculum was that? Ummm...how 'bout the The Jim McNeil News Hour on PBS - at 10:30 p.m.?

I was working on a blog post inspired by the shifthappens presentation about the exponential growth in technology and information we are experiencing, which is an inkling of what our kids will face. Jack had just watched the presentation and was watching the News Hour when a story about Intel's new computer chip came on. (Audio here.) I stopped blogging and to watch the perfectly apropos story. Not being able to sleep, Kara was downstairs on the love seat. I figured it would be a 2-for-1 deal to watch the story and snuggle with her. At the end of the piece, she piped up with the above quote. Somewhere in the news story she had picked up the word expand and was compelled to explain it to me. (Of course, some of us expand more than others, but we didn't go there.) She's one smart elf.

Big Books and Powerpoint

"... big fonts, big graphics, and a “storytelling” orientation. These are three crucial qualities of a good presentation."
-- Guy Kawasaki on the winners of The World's Best Presentation Contest

Hey! It sounds like Guy is talking about a Big Book. It seems some principles of  communication apply throughout life, from preschool to the boardroom. Another reminder of what I should teach my kids. It's also a reminder of the usefulness of storytelling.