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.

Attending CiscoLive in San Francisco

I am attending CiscoLive in San Francisco this week. In an attempt to keep my co-workers and others who could not attend the conference this year “in the know,” I have created a blog to record the event. The blog contains video that I have shot using both my Flip Mino HD and my new iPhone 3G S.

Please check it out at contactcenterenterprise.com.

Guest post on workshifting.com

Head over to workshifting.com to read my guest blog post, which attempts to answer the question “How do you ask your boss for a raise?”

I’m really proud of this post, because it is my first guest blog post on another site. Thanks to Justin Levy and the workshifting.com team for the opportunity.

A day (two actually) without the intarweb

Tuesday, May 26th was one of those really frustrating days where nothing seemed to go my way. This badness started in the morning when I figured out that something had gone horribly wrong with my high-speed internet connection. I could connect to the internet and every now and then I could open a web page, but I could not send email and most of my IM’s wouldn’t go through. Worse was the fact that my home phone didn’t work, since it is a Vonage phone and depends on my cable modem from Comcast to function.

This is not a situation that I have had to deal with extensively in the past, with only 2-3 days without a network connection in the past 5 years (barring hurricanes where there was no power for multiple days). That’s a pretty good track record and a testament to the general reliability of the cable service in my neighborhood. I am also quite meticulous about having every piece of electronic equipment in my home on either a UPS or a quality surge protector. That includes all of the networking gear, so that I don’t lose network connectivity if the power goes out briefly. In South Florida, a good rain storm will cause brown-outs and brief power outages, and I hear the alarms on my various UPS’s go off about 3 times a week.

What was interesting about this experience (besides scouring Google Maps on my iPhone for a Fedex Office or Starbucks location with Wi-Fi nearby) is that I actually had an opportunity to test out Comcast’s customer service and tech support for myself, after reading about their recent surge in CSAT scores and focus on Twitter as a service channel.

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1and1 has a sense of humor

Have you ever had one of those moments where you were on hold or in queue for a contact center and the music was so good that you didn’t want anyone to pick up? Yeah, neither had I - until today.

I called my webhost (1and1.com) this morning to discuss my hosting package, and while on hold with their sales department I was treated to the ultimate in contact center hold music. What song could possibly engage me so thoroughly you ask?

This song.

For the uninitiated, this song is from the closing credits of the video game Portal by Valve Corporation.

After a long time away from blogging…

This is the first blog post that I have written in quite a long time. My current job keeps me rather busy, and I simply haven’t had the time to invest in writing about my daily life. Additionally, I can’t write about much of the work that I do because of non-disclosure agreements with my employer’s Clients.

I am not entirely sure what I will write in this blog or if there will be a primary topic, but I know that I am anxious to resume writing about my interests - technology, gadgets and SCUBA diving, as well the focus of most of my days at work - Cisco, VoIP and the Contact Center.

Let’s just see how things go!