Chuqui 3.0

Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

louisgray.com: Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail:

On Monday, when I said "The Talk About Rules for Social Following Is Getting Out of Hand", I had taken a screenshot of my current Twitter ratio, at 1,534 to 1,441, after having worked for a good part of the previous week with Twitter Karma to get my ratio synchronized. Just a few days later, that data is carved to 672 and 1,236, prompting some to try and refollow me, and even more to flock to identi.ca. Twitter's gotten a lot of abuse on this blog in the past few weeks, as we've gone over issues with developers, uptime and changes to the API, but every time I think they've captured the market on a single route to failure, they find another way. The team's employees are talking a good game about getting this resolved, but seriously, Twitter, why should we believe you now?

I've been trying to decided what to do with twitter. I have great sympathy for the problem they're fighting -- the combination of growth way beyond expectations AND people discovering uses for a system that it was never designed for is close to my heart (and stress levels) -- but the trend lines are bad. I checked in this morning after yesterday's fun to see I'm only following 25 users. Makes twitter REALLY quiet, and I see no easy way to get my follower list back, and I have to assume if they were going to restore it, I have to expect it to be back by now. So having lost the one key set of data that ties me to twitter -- my follower list, if I'm going to rebuild that list somehow, or create a new one, or whatever, why do it on Twitter? I'd experimented with moving my twitter following to friendfeed, decided there were aspects of that I didn't like (* note 1), and moved it back. Mistake. And to be honest, I still can't see how twitter monetizes itself. it's not a service, it's a feature. well, monetizes itself other than selling itself to someone to be integrated into a service, but if I were looking to add something like twitter to a social network, I'm not sure I'd buy Twitter to do it, given how it's alienating its users, I'm not sure I'd buy it for the customer base, either. note 1: basically, I don't like how friendfeed hijacks replies onto friendfeed. What I really want is a tool like twitterific for friendfeed, one that recognizes where an item came from, pushes the reply back to that service, rather than suck it into friendfeed. I don't like the way friendfeed redirects the conversation off of the original service, not a bit (although I've noticed what seems to be a recent addition, which is an option to send a copy of the reply back to twitter also. progress, still not right). Friendfeed definitely seems to be a better answer to this kind of lifestream and discussion than twitter; I expect I may abandon twitter, or use it merely to monitor people who still use it. not absolutely sure yet, but twitter is definitely rolling off my list of things I pay a lot of attention to. The only reason I haven't is because twitterific does a great job of presenting and managing tweets, and friendfeed simply doesn't have an interface or tool that works for me as well (I've basically set it up so that I run friendfeed in a browser window in safari, and do the rest of my browsing in firefox... okay, not good, definitely not great. Twitterific being its own app adn window set works a lot better for me)

Starting the migration to me.com

Now that Apple seems to have the birthing pains of MobileMe under control, I'm starting to migrate my "stuff" off to MobileMe. First thing I tried, because if there are glitches the world won't end: moving my Yahoo Groups subscriptions to me MobileMe address. Guess what? Yahoo doesn't see me.com as a valid domain name; evidently it's caught by their spam/garbage traps. I can understand why they did this at one point. I can't believe it hasn't been fixed. Yahoo guys, you have a patch you need to issue... Go ahead, try to add a "acct@me.com" to your yahoo valid emails. acct@mac.com works fine, of course. So it looks like there are going to be glitches beyond Apple's here, but wow, this one should have been caught and fixed by Yahoo already. (oh, for those wondering: chuqui _at_ me.com -- of course)

My new site shipped!

So finally, we brought the new release of one of our sites at work live: http://www.openlaszlo.org/ -- a huge improvement on the old version, if I do say so myself.

I've been trying to focus on getting out for the last few weeks, part of what's been contributing to my relative quiet here. Now that it's finally done, it's time to sit back, take a deep breath, relax a bit, and realize I've got these HUGE freaking piles of stuff I've been meaning to blog.

And then plow into the next project. But man, does it feel good to have that puppy in use...

OTA's losing online hotel share

Diane Clarkson - OTA's losing online hotel share:

Comscore has released information indicating consumers are increasingly shifting from online travel agencies to supplier sites. According the Comscore’s data, supplier Web sites accounted for 72% of online hotel spending during Q1 of 2008. That's a three-percentage point increase in dollar share from last year.

This trend is certainly consistent with JupiterResearch’s travel forecast. We looked at this trend specifically among online leisure and unmanaged business travelers

I have used an "OTA" for years -- mostly Orbitz. I used Expedia for a while until it inexplicably started telling hotels I lived in Atlanta. I like Orbitz for one reason only: it's the best at allowing me to specify a location (like the city my family lives in) and then sorting by distance.

In Travelocity, alternatively, their database is smart enough to know that my family's city is in the "greater anaheim area", and after that, I'm on my own. Trust me, sifting through the 3,000 hotels and motels that leech off of Disneyland isn't my idea of fun. Travelocity lets me sort by city name, but if I'm trying to check a hotel in the Anaheim Hills area, well, good luck finding them among the downtown disney places.

I've been increasingly unhappy with Orbitz, though, for a few reasons. A biggie is that they've gone from the traditional model (first night guarantee on credit card) to "here, prepay for this great discount!" (which overtime increasingly wasn't great or discounted) to "just shut up and pre-pay the bill". Which not only means they get the money early and get the float, but I lose all sorts of flexibility if plans change.

And as you might imaging, with what's been going on in SoCal the last few months, plans have had a habit of changing. I've found booking through Orbitz makes it difficult to impossible to CHANGE plans.

And in a recent trip down, I realized I had to extend my stay (again). In the previous trip to that, I had to as well, but I did it via Orbitz, they couldn't just extend my stay, they had to book me a fresh reservation, and have me check out and check back in on the day; it was a minor hassle (no room change, etc), but it was definitely a hassle.

This latest trip, I had to extend AGAIN. Since I wasn't terribly happy with the hotel, I booked my extension to a different one that I liked better, about 36 hours ahead of time. when I went to check in -- no reservation, even though it was prepaid and already charged to my card. So for 20 minutes I was on my cell phone with a really nice lady from Orbitz who really didn't know what to do, who was on the phone with the front desk five feet from where I was talking to her trying to get this resolved. After 20 minutes, I finally told her I'd had it and wanted her to terminate the reservation and refund the pre-pay back to my card.

She told me she couldn't do it. And we spent another 35 minutes before she was able to fax the confirmation data to the hotel (third try! first two went -- well, who knows?) followed by getting the hotel the RIGHT confirmation data and billing info so Orbitz could pay them for the room I'd paid Orbitz for.

All because, as far as I can tell, the Orbitz system screwed up forwarding the reservation. It wasn't even like I did it last minute -- because I was trying to make sure I avoided exactly what happened.

All the while, she kept trying to get me to let her get off the phone by trying to tell me the situation was resolved, while the hotel clerk 5 feet away was going "huh? no, it's not". the classic problem of "support by how short you keep calls".

And the fact that she refused to cancel the reservation, and it took me almost an hour to get booked into a room taht I could have had in 5 minutes without her, was more than enough. Especially given I'd pre-paid the entire stay.

So no more Orbitz for me. And for grins, for the trip I took down over the weekend, I tried Travelocity instead. and cancelled out as soon as I saw the "prepay" requirement from them as well.

So instead, I went back to Orbitz, found a hotel at the right location and price, then went to their corporate site and made the reservation. THEY only required first night guarantee, not complete pre-pay, and wow, also offered me a AAA discount (which you used to see on Orbitz and Travelocity, but good luck finding them now), which saved me another $10/night. And I didn't have to put it on the card until I actually used the room.

Which was actually pretty nice; the biggest complaint was a somewhat funky TV lineup, not that I was really using the TV, and a $5/day internet charge. Compare that to my previous three hotels, with aircos that didn't cool, an in-room refrigerator that wouldn't freeze water in the freezer for ice (or my blue blocks for the drink cooler I carry while travelling, and to ice my heel when it flares up -- I got some on-demand ice-bags to compensate), or the herringbone patterns on the TV.

So I will use Orbitz for what it's good for moving forward: finding a hotel I want to stay at. Then I'll go to the chain web site and book there. And any site or hotel that requires 100% pre-pay of the entire bill will lose my business. Just like Orbitz has.

Sad thing in, the poor girl spent so much time on the phone trying to fix my problem she clearly ate whatever profit there was on my reservation; it would have been cheaper for Orbitz to call it and refund when I asked for it. And by refusing to, they lost my future business. Great customer service -- and not HER fault; she was clearly trying to fix the problem.

But the online travel sites have gone from convenient and helpful to greedy; in the same timeframe, corporate chains have figured out they don't need these sites as much, and have much improved their own reservation systems.

And frankly, I think the bottom line (and what'll kill the online travel sites) is that the best situation for the CONSUMER is to have as few parties involved in a transaction as possible. And that means dealing directly with the hotel or airline and not tossing in middlemen and third-parties, both from a margin view and from a "when something goes wrong, the fewer fingers pointing the easier to solve" view. And my experience this last week with orbitz shows why. A ball got dropped, and all Orbitz really wanted to do was hang onto my money -- even though they clearly lost money on the deal and lost a customer doing so.

not good business.

Is there a thing called normal?

We buried dad friday at the Riverside National Cemetery, the busiest cemetery in the U.S. they had 73 burials planned that day, so things might seem hectic there, but they did an awesome job of not making people feel rushed or going through the motions. Color guard, taps.

We've hired the caterer and the mariachis and ordered a cake for the wake, which will be the 14th, his birthday. I'll be headed back down again next weekend for that, then hopefully life will return to some semblance of normal. The last couple of months, honestly, have turned into a bit of a blur.

To those of you who've written, called, emailed, twitted, and whatevered -- thanks. It's helped. I hope to thank everyone personally, but in case I miss something or misplaced something along the way (quite possible in the chaos of the moment), here's a thank you for all the kind thoughts.

Carrizo plain birds...

Coming back from LA from my dad's funeral, I decided to do a bit of birding on Carrizo plain and then come down to the coast and wander around Morro Bay.

I spent a total of about 90 minutes on Carrizo plain, coming in on the south side, and driving in to about 3 miles past the end of the paved road, then back out to the road. Highlight birds included three different Loggerhead Shrikes, a number of flocks of Lark Sparrows (lifer for me, #198), and a family of rock wrens (total of 4-6). Also saw a gorgeous male bullock's oriole right where soda lake road and the 33 meet, a western kingbird, a couple of northern mockingbirds, ravens, etc.

Not a massively birdy day, but a very successful one:

Location: Carrizo Plain --IBA
Observation date: 6/8/08
Number of species: 8

Western Kingbird 1
Loggerhead Shrike 3
Common Raven X
Horned Lark 1
Rock Wren 6
Northern Mockingbird X
Lark Sparrow 15
Bullock's Oriole 1

Decent photos include Lark Sparrow, Horned Lark, and rock wren/

The rock wrens were in a gully near quail springs road, about where I turned around. (to give you an idea where my head was at, I then proceeded to drive back out the 166 to I5, sort of messing up my plan to visit morro bay... ohwell)

On the way in, I drove via Frazier Mountain Highway (from i5 near the Tejon Rest Stop) over to Carrizo plain, doing "fencepost" birding -- anything I could see sitting on a fencepost and waving. Nothing too spectacular:

Turkey Vulture 1
Red-tailed Hawk 2
Mourning Dove X
Western Kingbird X
Steller's Jay X
Western Scrub-Jay X
American Crow X
Common Raven X
Tree Swallow X
Western Bluebird 2
Northern Mockingbird X
California Thrasher 1
European Starling X
Red-winged Blackbird X
Western Meadowlark X
Brewer's Blackbird X

although California Thrasher is a year bird for me.

Not a bad day overall. I'll retry actually FINDING Morro Bay next weekend, when I drive back from Dad's wake (we've hired the caterer, we've hired the mariachis, and I'm buying the beer).

-- 30 --

My dad died today, quietly and not in pain. His body was just too frail to recover from the complications that set in with the triple-bypass. He had a feeling the end was near, I can't tell you how many of his friends have told me in the last month that he felt he'd had a good life with no regrets, with his classic laugh and a smile. Fortunately for him, once the decline set in, it didn't take long -- as much as he loved life, he really hated doctors and hospitals, and being kept alive by machines was his real horror story, and we worked with the medical staff to accommodate him on that where we reasonably could. Everyone involved with Kaiser on this impressed the hell out of me, and have my thanks and respect.

I went down to help out the family when he went in for the tests and stayed around through the surgery, went down again in a hurry last week when things started to go the wrong way -- and after coming up yesterday to get home for a bit, am headed down again tomorrow to help with the arrangements and to be there for the burial.

He went to Stanford (and hated when they changed their mascot to Cardinal, and never forgave them), drove a tank while helping to liberate Manilla, then spent significant time in Europe.

Dad was always a newspaperman, in the classic style, working for Stars and Stripes in Berlin during the airlift, and later as part of the first non-military-controlled paper for troops (which did not endear him to the establishment, something he loved doing...). Later on, he took over the family newspaper, until the industry changed enough that the town weekly basically went extinct -- as I've said before, those of you who think the struggles of the newspapers is a new thing simply haven't been paying attention; it's been going on for 50 or more years, and this is just the latest phase.

Former board member and past president of the California Newspaper Publishers Association, active in historical preservation in orange county, later on in life a teacher -- and proud to be seemingly the only liberal in the county, or so it seemed at times. Even more proud of his 50+ years together with my mom, and the times and travels they took together.

And so he's written his final byline, and I speak for my entire family when I say we miss him but that we're glad the suffering is done. It was a bit of a rough few days for all of us, but it's starting to head back towards normal. Thanks to everyone who've popped in with kind words via email or twitter or IM or carrier pigeon; it's nice to know people care, and it helps.

Burial is probably this weekend, and per his request will be private and family only; also per his request we're planning a more public get together -- including mariachis -- for his extended (very extended) set of friends and compadres. If you know my dad and you're hearing about this here, my apologies, it's been a bit chaotic and we're still digging through things to find contact info for everyone (and drop me a note if you need info to the wake).

Wherever he is, you can bet he's making the local city council crazy, pounding away on a manual Royal typewriter, and playing catch with Pierre, his standard poodle that preceded him by a few years, and getting ready to watch the Lakers in the finals.

And over the next few weeks, life will start to return to normal, only quieter and a little less interesting for all of us that were influenced by him and proud to call him friend.

Rest in Peace, dad, you did good, and have earned the rest.

back in SoCal again....

haven't been blogging again, sorry. Life's complicated. I'm down in SoCal with the family again, helping out. Unfortunately, dad went in for a medical test a couple of weeks ago, and that led to his admittance into the hospital and a triple-bypass. We've had some complications, and he continues in hospital, and I'm down here helping mom and the family while we work with the doctors to help him get through this.

For now, though, real life is getting in the way of blogging. So it goes, and it puts all of this online stuff in some interesting perspective. I was going to make some commentary on scoble's latest over (horrors!) having a comment deleted, but man, that seems so -- trivial -- right now.

I have plenty I plan on writing, I just need the time (and emotional energy) to write.

until then, stay tuned.

Life in LA LA land...

I've been down in LA again, visiting family. This time, it's because Dad was scheduled for an angiogram on Friday, and I felt it made sense to be here in case anything happened.

Well, the test found three arteries about 99% clogged, so he was immediately admitted into the hospital because the doctors felt he was too risky to allow home. Arrangements were made, and this morning, he went into surgery for a triple bypass. I'm happy to say that he came through fine and was in recovery and from talking to the doctor, there seemed to be no complications. If all goes well, he'll be in the hospital another week or so, then I'll head down to LA again to help get him home and settled.

The family (and myself) are all nicely de-stressing now, too.

So it's been an interesting week or so especially the last couple of days. I've been using the down time to study up on some work stuff, and have gotten out when I can to go out and do some walking and birding (trying to, instead of stress eat, get out and get some exercise. So far, it's worked)....

It's been a positive trip for birding -- spring migration is on, so the migrant traps are busy. I'm about five minutes from Tri-City park in Placentia, so that's where I head when I don't have much time. In researching orange county birding, I also ran across Lakeview Park, which is on the Santa Ana "river", and happens to be literally next door to the kaiser hospital (on Lakeview in Anaheim) where dad had his tests (his surgery is up in San Bernadino at a place that specializes in heart surgery).

I also took some time out Sunday for a more extended trip, visiting Huntington Beach Central Park for the first time, and a return visit to Bolsa Chica and then a quick drive up Newport Back Bay.

All in all, I added 7 birds to my life list:

Warbling Vireo, Orange-Crowned Warbler, Plumbeous Vireo, Least Tern, Elegant Tern, Rufous Hummingbird and Ash-throated Flycatcher, taking the life list to 196 (with a goal of 200 for the year, I've probably set the bar too low. Maybe I'll shoot for 200 species for the year list).

The year list added those 7, plus four more: Wilson's Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Semipalmated Plover, and Bewick's Wren, giving me 164 for the year.

I finally added two problematic birds to my list: Orange-Crowned Warbler and Rufous Hummingbird. OC Warbler isn't all that difficult a bird, but even when I've been in a group and had it called out, I've had trouble pulling it out of trees and identifying it to my satisfaction. This trip, I finally did so, so I can check it off. It was with a large group (20+) flock of warblers wandering Tri-city park, mostly yellow and Townsend's with some Wilson's for spice. And -- I think -- at least one Hermit, but I never got a good enough look to be sure and no photos. The photos I thought might be a candidate are bad pictures of a Townsend's that make it hard to see the facial coloration. Ohwell. I'm pretty sure a Hermit was with that flock, though, but not enough to call it out for sure.

And rufous? they've just been hiding from me, even in places like Ed Levin where they're known to congregate. Adn twice I ran into birds down south that turned out to be Allen's, but I finalyl hit an adult I could sit and study enough to be able to differentiate it from the Allen's.

Here's a hummingbird that looks to be a barely-fledged rufous or Allen's (probably Allen's) -- you can see just the barest hint of the gold/orange on the sides starting to come out, and there's almost no green yet. Teh orange makes it selaphorus, and the general lack of color makes it real young. Doesn't hurt that I saw Allen's at that location, so I'm fairly sure they were nesting there.

More enjoyable, though, was being able to pull out some of the vireos and get good enough looks and photos to get solid IDs. Those birds can be tough; I found a spot at Huntington Central Park where there were a lot of canopy birds and a snag that actually went into the lake, and the birds were using it as a staging point to get down to the water to drink. It almost made it a bit too easy:

One negative: bad light (grey and overcast) so I was shooting with flash, including a Miligrid flash extender, and I'm not thrilled iwth the light catches in the eyes in some cases. ohwell.

This is one where the light catch works well, adn the flash really brings out the faint olive coloring on the side:

And for the Plumbeous, notice the different eyebrow than the warbling:

Newport Back bay was really quiet, and I was running short on time, so I only stopped at the observation parking lot, and wandered across the street into the brushy area up in the hill rather than focus on the wetlands. It's a hangout for swallows and sparrows and stuff, and I was hoping to run into a loggerhead shrike or a blue-grey gnatcatcher (both seen there in the past by people I know); no luck, and it was pretty quiet other than the song sparrows, until the rufous popped up and gave me a good look, and then this bird popped up into a bush and hung out for a minute or two. I immediately realized it was a flycatcher ("Say's Phoebe. Boring. No, wait, not with that head!...."). Those two species made the side trip on the way home more than worthwhile...

I'd originally planned on either a run down to Salton Sea, or up into Carrizo Plain and Morro Bay, but of course, plans changed. maybe next trip, once dad is settled. But I don't think I did badly at all, and I'm starting to get the hang of tracking and seeing canopy birds better, and getting some decent photos.

And I can't not show off the ducks... Came back from the birding trip to the beach, only to say to mom "did you know you have ducks in the back yard?". fortunately, while they like the idea of nesting in the garden and using the pool, Remy had other ideas, and they moved on...

On the other hand, the neighborhood is pretty birdy, if not exotic: two mockingbird nests, a black phoebe couple, and for some reason, a flock of bushtits have moved in and are systematically cleaning all of the bugs and stuff off my mom's window screens....

My entire photo set is, as always, on flickr).

How many reasons do you need to not blog?

In theory, only one, if it's good enough.

But it's been one of those busy, complicated times the last while, but less than 24 hours after the Sharks ended their hockey season (and, of course, the hockey talk is over at Two for Elbowing), I'm jazzed to be able to say that at work, we've launched a new application that I think is really neat:

Introducing Laszlo Calendar:

Our Webtop family has grown to include a personal Calendar, a perfect complement to Laszlo Mail and Contacts. As we said earlier, Calendar is the most requested application and, while we’ve taken a lot of time to get this right, we have decided to release it a little early — as a Preview — because we want to know what you think.

Getting my parts of the beast ready has been a challenge, but also a lot of fun, and I'm really happy with the results. And we might even get a minute or two to catch our breath, but to be honest, there are some more fun things coming soon, and I have a bunch of work over on the openlaszlo.org site I need to wrap up.

But things will likely get livelier here again soon. Towards the end of the week, I'll be headed down to LA to visit the family again, because dad's going in for a medical test and I wanted to be around and get in the way; taking a day of vacation on the way back, and I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing -- Carrizo Plain and Morro Bay is the most likely, but I'm also thinking of Salton Sea for some birding and exploring the desert a bit, or perhaps a run up 395 to Bishop and up the back of the Sierras to Tahoe via mono lake. It'll come down to weather and how much driving I want to do...

Lots of stuff pending time to blog about. But until then...