Lessons Learned Courtesy of the Flip Mino HD

I have been through a wide range of emotion related to my Flip Mino HD video camera over the past month. Initially, I was excited about the low cost - mine was $179 after a $20 instant rebate from Costco. The package contained a small tripod and carrying pouch, but did not include the wall charger. The form factor is brilliant; it allows me to carry a 720p HD video camera in my pocket. The camera weighs very little and I forget it’s in my pocket after the first few minutes.

My first videos were beautiful and the overall experience with the Flip was exactly what I had hoped it would be. I recorded about 25 minutes of video at a pool party and BBQ at a gorgeous house on the water in Ft. Lauderdale. The quality of the video was impressive, especially when viewed on my 52″ LCD TV. I was able to overlook the absence of in-camera image stabilization, and the lack of an optical zoom simply wasn’t a problem. Everything worked exactly as I had hoped.

Flash forward about 2 weeks. I took my Flip to San Francisco to document Cisco Live 2009, with plans to video blog during the event. I intended to shoot videos during each of my sessions and share them with the world. I created a WordPress blog at contactcenterenterprise.com, got my company to endorse the creation and use of a corporate Twitter account (our first corporate foray into both blogging and social media), set up an internal SharePoint site for the bits that I couldn’t post publicly, and set off for SF with high hopes. In the process I created a YouTube account, a private FlipShare channel, linked the contactcenterenterprise blog to Twitter via TwitterFeed.com, found the right hashtag for the event (#clsf), and engaged in “the conversation” on Twitter in the run-up to the event. I read everything I could about social media, video blogging and Twitter for corporate marketing. I followed the big names in social media, engaged in their conversations, and was even asked to guest blog for workshifting.com in the process. Everything went to plan. I had built my personal Twitter following to more than 100 and our corporate following to 80 by the time Cisco Live began. In the process, I encouraged many of my coworkers to join Twitter and generated enthusiasm about how we can collectively use social media in ways that are meaningful. And so begins the lesson:

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Comcast and the Case of the Mysterious Repair

Somehow Comcast seems to have fixed my cable internet service once again without entering my home. The only correlation I can find is that whenever we have a really hard rain or a lightning storm (both fairly common in South Florida in the Summer) my internet connection goes to hell. Within several days of the outage, the service is back up and faster than ever. Here are my speed test results from DSLReports.com for this morning, which I ran while I was on the phone with Comcast customer service cancelling the appointment that I obviously no longer need.

Another Internet Outage

My cable Internet service at home is down again today. I contacted Comcast via phone first this time. My wait time was very short, but after quite awhile talking with the support agent, nothing was resolved. I also Tweeted my frustration to @ComcastCares, but the response was not nearly as fast as last time. In fact, at the time of this writing, I had not received a response.

I’ll be off momentarily to a local Internet cafe, Starbucks or FedEx office to finish some high priority tasks which require Internet connectivity.

Added reCAPTCHA for comments and registration

Due to an overwhelming amount of comment spam, I have added reCAPTCHA to the comments and registration process. I was dealing with 50+ spam comments for moderation per week, which is more than I am willing to deal with. Sorry for any inconvenience you may experience as a result. Once you are registered and logged in you will no longer need to submit the re-captcha for each comment, so it should be a one-time thing.