Andre's Big Blog

Good Friday in London

Processions led by people who appear to be from the Indian sub-continent. Their flyers are just like the American ones: crappy-looking and in comic sans. Globalization!

A ‘diary’

Around these parts, is not where you keep your innermost private thoughts. It’s what we, in ‘Muhrikah, call a calendar.

It’s weird…

I’ve already been in the office for an hour, and it’s still only 4:37 a.m. back home.

My Yelp Rubric

Having been bestowed the Yelp! Elite badge for my third year in a row now, I am now officially interested in keeping up with it because Yelp Austin throws awesome parties. I struggled with how to make Yelp! work for me, but after some fits and starts, I think I am officially a Yelping machine.

You see, Yelp allows you to rank businesses on a star rating of 1 to 5, 1 being bad and 5 being the best. They even have a suggestion for what each should mean but I invented my own rubric:

1. Bad food, bad and borderline berating service. I.e.: it offended me from how bad it was. I am not an easily offended person. Never, ever going back.
2. Bad food, bad service. Not going back anytime soon unless I get a weird craving or am with friends who insist on it.
3. OK food, OK service. Some spots of brilliance but overall this is probably how they normally operate and they are unlikely to get my continued patronage. Would consider visiting again but likely wait a few months before trying again.
4. Moar, please. I really like this place and get giddy plotting my next visit and what I will try on the menu next time.
5. Everything about this experience was amazing: from the host to the service to the food. I will likely treasure this experience for a long time and will be able to taste the food that sat in my palate during this dining experience when I tell others of this tale.

Note: most of my dining experiences will be either a 3 or 4.

United Breaks Guitars - and Bloggers, now, too

In 2009, musician Dave Carroll made the now-Internet famous song regarding his ordeal with United Airlines’ breaking his much-beloved musical instruments.

Fast-forward to 2013 and United has another social media crisis in its hands: blogger Matthew Klint and this innocuous picture of his United BusinessFirst seat. You see, on February 14, Klint boarded UA 904 to Istanbul, Turkey and despite his cooperation when told that he could not take pictures was allegedly verbally berated by a flight attendant (FA) and subsequently thrown out of the flight by the Captain.

Klint’s blog comments include a handful from other UA 904 passengers who all state that the FA flew off the handle despite Klint’s calm demeanor and cooperation.

I work for the PR department of a cloud computing company. Can you imagine if I pursued with great vengeance and furious anger those who use our products and take screenshots of dashboards to write reviews and  blog posts? It sounds silly when you translate it to another industry, doesn’t it?

Why would any business anywhere ever be interested in punishing a loyal flyer and a promoter of their product?

Surface v. iPad - in a nutshell

This morning, a friend who’s on the market for a tablet and I headed over to our local shopping center where we stopped at the Microsoft store for him to check out the Surface. He’s heard a lot of good things about it; me not so much but then again I haven’t heard much besides the fact it exists.

I am first taken aback that the Microsoft store is essentially empty save for a few patrons and employees. Then I start tinkering with the Surface and think, ‘oh, that’s a nice keyboard’. But that keyboard will set you back $129, something they do not advertise up front until you start reading the fine print of the specs strip next to the tablet.

As I tinker around some more, I start wondering how do I get to the home screen from an opened app if I don’t have the handy Windows key from the $129 keyboard. It takes a few awkward multi-finger swipes and presto, there I am back at Home screen. I doubt it was the ‘right’ (read: most efficient) way but it worked.

Next, I try the browser and it takes an unacceptable amount of time to load a file from C:\ before going to msn.com. At that point, both of us are really underwhelmed with the Surface and go to the Apple store down the mall.

First of all, you cannot simply get to the back half of the store because of how full it is.

I stick to the front of the house and start picking up iPads. I immediately get going on browsers and apps and off I am browsing the interwebz, looking at the Mail set up and seamlessly going to the home screen each time. It was that easy. It was so easy to the point that I seriously considered purchasing an iPad mini right there on the spot before finding reason within myself to walk away for now.

Look, Microsoft, you got a lot of work to do if you think the Surface is going to make any significant dent on the tablet market share. And don’t deceive your customers by displaying the item on sale with add-ons either. Sure, iPads also have optional keyboards but the Apple store doesn’t display them with that peripheral without any notice that it’s an add-on.

A Stand on Copywriting and Smartphones

I am tired of smartphone emails that have some half-assed excuse for typos in the signature. Look, there’s no excuse for typos and sloppy grammar. If you are not in a place to send someone a message, then wait until you are in a place where you can draft a message and proofread it.  You proofread emails when you are sitting at your desk, don’t you? Why don’t you give your smartphone the same courtesy?

Before you fire off an email from your smartphone next time, think about whether or not the message require more than a yes, no or maybe to satisfy the sender.