Continue reading »]]> I was sent an email by GoDaddy concerning verification of contact information for the domain igooglejobs.info. There were two peculiar things that stood out for me.

#1) I am not a GoDaddy customer and have no domains with them.
#2) I don’t recognize or know anything about the domain igooglejobs.info.

In all 10+ years I have registered domains for myself and others, never have I seen or heard of a case where someone else’s name would intentionally be used as the Registrant or Administrative Contact. I can only assume that the person who registered igooglejobs.info was up to no good and want to disavow any association with the domain.  And for some reason, my name, email address, and phone number were listed for the Registrant, Administrative Contact, and Technical Contact.

I called GoDaddy to let them know that I had no association whatsoever to that domain name and that I wanted my name removed or have th domain canceled. I also set them an email with this complaint.

Not wanting to entirely rely on GoDaddy, I went to the ICANN website and filed a complaint against that domain specifying incorrect name/identity, email address, and phone number. In the comment section, I stated I was Matthew Chan and that all the information relating to the respective fields should NOT have me listed at all!

It is my hopes that this domain gets canceled very soon. It is very strange to have someone use my identity and list it for their domain. From what I can tell, my name or reputation has not been damaged by it, nor have I heard any complaints relating to igooglejobs.info.

Continue reading »]]> I am writing this post for the sole purpose of making sure this gets into the Google search engines. I am pretty upset because I have been hit for the 3rd time in 2.5 weeks with this upsetting message:

“Visual Voicemail: This phone was associated with a different account. Existing emails will be deleted.”

Quite frustrating. Happened to me on approximately March 25, April 1, and April 9. It cannot be a coincidence they happened on 3 consecutive Fridays.

The first time was the most destructive because I had many voicemails save up and almost everything was deleted except with a couple of very recent emails. I forgave T-Mobile because I was given a $30 credit for what was supposed to be an isolated incident. I have been a long time customer and always been happy with my phones over the years except until now.

On April 1, I called T-Mobile and made the rounds with both tech support and customer service. After burning up 1.5 hours on the issue, I told them I had to go and would call them back.  Well, I never called them back because I let the issue die down thinking it couldn’t happen again so soon.

Well, a few hours ago, another Visual Voicemail attack and delete.  This time I got it on video.  There is some serious problems with this feature. I am into my renewal for less than 6 weeks. After this 3rd hit today, I am going to insist on some satisfaction.  I am thinking I need to get another phone and just be done with this situation.

But we will see on the next call. As I said, I am pretty ticked and T-Mobile like most big companies won’t do anything unless a lot of people make noise.  Well, this long-time customer is starting his campaign to make lots of noise until I get some satisfaction.

UPDATE: 6:50am
Just got off the phone with tech support again and got her to come to my website and this blog post specifically. Unfortunately, T-Mobile blocks out YouTube videos so she could not see the video. However, I am going to post two photos of the error message. She said she was going to set up a case for the engineers. I told her from what I know only the MyTouch 4g’s are having these Visual Voicemail problems but it is sporadic and not EVERY MyTouch 4g owner has this problem. I was pushing to get another model of smartphone altogether to end the problem but I may be forced to accept another MyTouch 4G to see if the problem is resolved or not.

Right now, I am on the fence on what to do. A suggestion was made to simply deactivate Visual Voicemail altogether. I said that was not an acceptable long-term solution. I didn’t get smartphone so I could intentionally shut down an important feature.

Go look at my video in the meantime. I took 3 short videos and merged them together. Each time I did it I thought I was done but really wasn’t.

UPDATE: 6:50pm

Base on a suggestion by tech support, I decided I would have my phone re-provisioned (reset) using the new SIM Card. I also called tech support to discuss the next course of action. Basically, they wanted to kill my voicemail account entirely which would delete all my settings and messages. I told them to go ahead. After a shutdown and reboot of the phone, regular voicemail works but Visual Voicemail cannot be enabled after multiple attempts (and still trying). I was informed it can take up to 2 hours to be able to enable Visual Voicemail.

UPDATE: April 20, 2011

Everyone should know that I was hit again on Saturday, April 16.  That consistently makes it 4 weekends in a row. This time around, we did a full factory reset. There was a partial backup but I still had to re-download all the applications.  I told Tech Support it would be my full intention to have them get me another phone AND to ask for another credit. Each call I make I specifically ask for my account to be updated with good notes so that there is a history file of info.

To date, I have lost a total of about 7 hours. Each incident costs me about 1.5 to 2 hours in aggravation time and they are going to have to start compensating me for my time between dealing with my lost messages, calling TMobile, and then fooling around to try to fix the problem. The $30 credit was enough to cover the first two incidents but not enough for 4 incidents now.

I am truly hoping there isn’t a 5th weekend in a row. But if there is, everyone will know through this blog post which is starting to catch some traction.

UPDATE: April 28, 2011

I am happy to report that the weekly weekend cycle of getting Visual Voicemail error messages on my MyTouch 4g appears to have been broken. Essentially, doing a factory reset cleared everything I had installed. This time around I was much more selective in installing only applications I needed and that had a high reputation. I am satisfied for the moment although I did have to reboot my phone once to clear anan unrelated quirky error where I would see two different overlapping screens at the same time. Weird.

Continue reading »]]> I just lost nearly 2 days video editing time because I just now discovered that installing the DivX suite of software cripples Adobe Premiere Elements 9. I uninstalled so much software and reinstalled Adobe Premiere Elements 9 trying to figure out the problem. Not only that, Adobe Premiere Elements 9 kept locking up on me, it was making me crazy.

I read on the Adobe forums that someone wrote that Divx did not get along with Adobe Premiere Elements 9. Well, that was all I needed to follow-up. I uninstalled Divx and that seemed to solved all my lockup and video editing problems.

For the moment, my system is humming along now that I got rid of DivX. What an unpleasant experience.

Continue reading »]]> Before I even contacted TubeMogul (a video distribution web service), I suspected that I would be in for sticker-shock.  It is always a bad sign when a company offers a free service but then list no prices for the upgraded versions.  It is sort of like buying a car with no sticker price.  It does not give me a good sense of security.  I searched the Internet for the prices but most of the people posted spouted the TubeMogul party line that they have a free version.

However, the free version means very little beyond using it for testing purposes.  Why bother getting invested with a service (no matter what the features are) if they are going to blow the budget?

While 100 video deployments per month sounds impressive, one video to the top 10 video sites will use up 10% of your quota.  And if you happen to screw up along the way, which is entirely likely, that will chisel away at the monthly quota.  Basically, you can expect to distribute around 9 videos per month at best.

To be fair, their sample free service seems to be pretty good.  I was pleased with it.  Otherwise, I would not have even bothered to ask for the price for the upgraded versions.  Also, TubeMogul has the right to focus in on any market that they choose.  Personally, I think they have cut a large slice of potential customers out simply because of the $500 entry barrier.

The will argue the entry barrier is $0 but I didn’t just fall of the turnip truck yesterday.  Yes, you can try it out for free and get some minimal use but the true entry point is $500.  You should keep that in mind.

Personally, I am looking into other options (which there are).  HeySpread.com has a “pay as you use” model which is interesting but that might get tricky depending on how the math works out.  I am not going to even mention the others until I try it myself.

I know a LOT of people who are willing to pay but most are not going to shell out $500/month for this service.  They will brag about the analytics but that is secondary to me to the time savings.

Continue reading »]]> I recently sent a batch of very old 110 and 126 negatives along with a variety of developed paper photographs collected over the years (some going back over 20+ years) to have them scanned and preserved digitally.  Many of my negatives and paper photos were showing signs of age and I decided I better do something about it while I could.

Once again, I used my favorite digital photo scanning vendor ScanCafe.  They have come a ways since I began using them a couple years ago.  They have gotten better at what they do and more efficient.

I am thrilled once again to experience a time warp visually reliving the moments those photos captured.  In many cases, it is a better experience to view them onscreen in high-resolution than to see them on small paper photos.

I have uploaded all of my digitally-taken and the scanned photos to my favorite online photo hosting service, SmugMug as a backup in case my computers die and/or I lose the photo DVDs.

Continue reading »]]> This article first appeared on “The TurnKey Publisher’s Blog”

=========

Because of my personal distaste and dismay of the Stock Photo industry which started with the Getty Images Extortion Demand Letter, I have taken steps to personally boycott the Stock Photo Industry and advocate not using stock photos altogether. The stock photo industry seems to be rapidly consolidating into two companies: Getty Images and Corbis, as they buy their way into near-monopoly status with them setting outrageous rules, policy, and pricing.

This article will not give you all the information necessary to entirely eliminate the need for stock photos in every situation. However, this article will give you some ideas and strategies to wean yourself and perhaps altogether eliminate your need for stock photos.I firmly believe that if you put your intentions behind the idea, you can make huge strides towards eliminating the need for stock photos altogether.

The very first thing you need to think about is whatever media project you are working on is, do you truly need a photo at all? Chances are that you are working on a website, book, magazine, brochure, news story, banner, or some other media project.Alternatives to photos might be diagrams, cartoons, illustrations, and drawings that you or a graphic artist you hire can create.Can you take your own photo to fit the need?

If you hire a graphic artist to create your own artwork, do not hire anyone in China or India where there is very little respect for intellectual property.They may be inexpensive but you can never be assured that their work is original. There is little recourse for their bad behavior because they are so far away. I recommend hiring graphic artists from the U.S. because as a professional community, they have a greater respect for intellectual property than their Chinese or Indian counterparts.They will think twice before using pirated material.

I would avoid hiring any company that outsources their work to graphic artist worker bees.In other words, I always want to deal and negotiate with a graphic artist professional themselves, not some agent or agency that farms out graphics art work.

If you do want to use and take your own photos, I highly recommend investing in a good digital camera so that you can begin taking your own photos.I also recommend getting to know amateur hobbyist photographers who have access to good cameras and enjoy taking photos.Very often, amateur photographers with good cameras are trying to find a way to justify the costs of their hobby. By hiring them inexpensively, you can get some great looking photos but also help the amateur photographer pay for his hobby.Make sure they understand that you are they are working for hire and that you will have full ownership and rights to the photos.

Professional photographers can be expensive depending on what you want and who you use. For these folks, I recommend bartering with them for exchange of services if you have talents in your profession. I find many professional photographers finicky. They will sometimes not give you full ownership or rights of the photo even though you paid them to take a photo. They are quite protective and their thinking is aligned to many in the stock photo industry. Admittedly, this is a broad generalization and based only on my experience. I am simply not optimistic that you will get good value from a professional photographer but it certainly does not hurt to try and negotiate with them.

Another source of quality photos is product photos from product manufacturers. Often, they are happy to have their products publicized and placed in a positive light and will give you free rights to use their photos. Product companies mostly police and control their photos because they don’t want their photos used in a manner they did not intend or in a way that paints their company or products in a negative light. Many will grant you free usage of their photos if you approach them the right way. However, large companies can be a challenge sometimes because of their size. They may be so large that they may not even get back to you.Again, it never hurts to try. Product companies are in the business selling more of their products, not sue people who use their product photos.

If you choose to take your own photos, invest in a digital camera that can take a resolution of 4 megapixel images or higher. You want to take high-resolution photos as your master copy.You can then “downsize”, crop, and enhance the photos for your websites or other uses.I recommend buying an easy-to-use photo editor such as Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 or Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 that allows you to crop and resize photos easily. The photo editor can greatly enhance the quality of the master photos you take. You can also enhance colors and adjust lighting with the software.Special effects such as blurring, stretching, pixelating, framing, adding captions, etc. are included with photo editing software.

I truly believe that with the increasing power and technical capabilities of digital cameras, cell phone cameras, and camcorders, the value of stock photos and stock photo companies will eventually decline. It is going to be a losing business to be in. This whole notion of extorting your way to profitability is distasteful and eventually will fall by the wayside much like what has occurred in the music recording industry. One only has to look to RIAA for that lesson.

Along the “do-it-yourself” philosophy, you should have the mindset that you will fit images or photos you create to your media project, not let your media projects deciding the specific images you need.Stock photo companies are trying to brainwash you the idea that THEY have the “perfect photo” for your particular needs. If you are creative, imaginative, and resourceful enough, you will almost always find an alternative or work-around solution that does not require the use of stock photos.

If you want to show the stock photo industry you don’t need them, the best way is to simply generate more of your own photos to devalue theirs and then use your own.I have published two books recently and have been able to successfully avoid using stock photos of any kind.I used my own photos as well as authorized product photos.I created my own artwork.If more publishers, graphic artists, and graphic designers started doing this, I truly believe the stock photo industry could be brought down to their financial knees very quickly.

Many years ago, people said that we would run out of .com domains available because all the good ones were taken. It is true it has become more challenging to find a good .com domain name. However, I have made it my policy to not deal with any domain speculators or domain squatters. I won’t be extorted into paying thousands of dollars for an available domain I can register for less than $10. And because I have set that restriction and policy for myself, I have always been able to find many suitable .com domain names for my various websites.

It is the same principle here. Think abundantly. Think creatively. Tap into your imagination. There are many ways to implement a visual concept besides a specific photo you might have in mind. There are many ways to implement a concept visually. Do not let the stock photo companies brainwash you into thinking you have to use their particular photos because there are no other ways of finding an image for your particular website, logo, banner, sign, book, magazine, or other product.

The best kept secret that the stock photo industry hates are government websites and their photo collections.Great public domain photos can be found from U.S. government agency websites. “The people” own the photos, not any one individual or organization.USA.gov is a government-operated website that was launched to help U.S. citizens have better access to various government agencies and resources.Specifically, USA.gov has a page called U.S. Government Photos and Images which contains links to government agency websites that have public domain images.The diversity of images available is quite impressive.An off-shoot of that page is the State Photo & Multimedia Galleries which links to public domain images at the State level.

Some of the more notable ones I like and found impressive are listed below:

• NASA Images has space-related photos.
• Our Earth as Art has photos relating to the earth, weather, oceans, and nature.
• U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s National Digital Library has photos relating to animals, plants, nature, and wildlife.
• NOAA Photo Library has several collections of photos relating to nature, weather, oceans, and wildlife.
• U.S. Department of Defense DefenseLINK has photos relating to the military, war, politics, and the President.
• Library of Congress Geography & Map Reading Room has images relating to historical and current maps.
• National Archives America’s Historical Documents has images relating to history, politics, and historical events.
• National Park Service Digital Image Archives has images relating to nature, history, and national parks around the U.S.

Are you impressed with these websites? I was. It is all free and much of it is available in high-resolution.However, you should realize that not all images from government websites are public domain. You will need to seek out the image usage rights notices on each website. As I said USA.gov is a great starting point to a wealth of high-quality public domain photos.

If there are any other great public domain or government photo sites, please let me know and I will add them. If you have any additional tips to stop using stock photos and boycott the stock photo industry, send them to me and I will incorporate them into this article.

Continue reading »]]> It has been over a month since I upgraded my “old” Samsung cell phone to the Blackberry Pearl 8220 Flip Phone.  I wanted to give the phone a good workout before I posted any comments.  I have literally waited years for this type of phone to come out.

For years, I have been looking for an “affordable” flip phone that I could synchronize my Microsoft Outlook information with my PC.  I also wanted a phone that I could install a memory card to store extra files and a built-in MP3 player to play music or audio recordings I might want to listen to.

The fact that this phone also has built-in Wi-Fi connection is a nice bonus.  I can actually get quite a few extra minutes out of my phone per month by simply using the Wi-Fi connection.  The sound quality is pretty good and I don’t even notice the difference from being on the T-Mobile network.

The phone actually has a lot more goodies like being able to read Microsoft Word and Excel files and play video files.  There is a built-in calculator, stop watch, alarm clock, and all kinds of sound effects to choose from.

Currently, I don’t have the Blackberry service activated to receive emails and I am not sure I want to.  I love technology but I am not sure I want to be THAT connected just yet.

My one small gripe is mostly a cosmetic one.  I wish the edges of the flip screen side had more of a curve on its edge.  It is a bit too “sharp” for my tastes.  No, it won’t cut you if you slide your finger on the edges but I was used to my prior phone which was small, compact, and slid in and out of my pocket really well.

Overall, the Blackberry Pearl 8220 Flip phone is a real winner and a keeper.

Continue reading »]]> I have been following the news on Microsoft Windows 7 and installed it on a backup machine to see what the hoopla was all about.  It has gotten a lot of positive buzz on the Internet and I wanted to see if there were truly any differences.

Although I did not find dramatic differences, the subtle changes are nice.  I especially like the fact that Windows 7 will be less bloated than Windows Vista.

I have personally been using Windows Vista for a little over a year now and I have grown to like it now that I have an Intel Quad-Core PC that can run it well.  Prior to that, it was not good and it was best to stick to Windows XP.

All indications point to a late 2009 release and I will be ready for it.  If it stays faster than Vista, I am upgrading my desktop and notebook computers.

Continue reading »]]> In last year’s review of the original Kindle, I speculated that there would be a Kindle 2.0 and how user feedback would be incorporated into a newer model.  I complained about the clumsy side buttons and speculated that there would be improved battery life.

It looks like I was right on those two issues.  Not only this, Amazon included a whole lot more.  I had been on the fence on the original Kindle.  Ultimately, I decided against getting one for myself since I still prefer books.

However, this time around, I decided to break down and pre-order the newly-announced Kindle 2.  I have more of an open mind because the product seems to be greatly improved.  But more importantly, I am a publisher and, as such, I believe the Kindle will be a force to reckon with.

Whether or not I personally prefer a Kindle to read books, the truth is that I believe the Kindle is here to stay and that means I need to become familiar with it quickly.  I also believe that I will have start publishing my books in the Kindle format.

Whether or not the average consumer base eventually adopts Kindle in a widespread format is unimportant to me.  What is important to me is that the Kindle audience are passionate folks about their Kindle and passionate readers in general.  For someone to spend $360 for a reading device either means they are affluent or simply serious in their reading.  Either way, it would be a mistake for me to not produce books for this audience.

I cannot wait to get my Kindle 2 at the end of this month.

Continue reading »]]> I have read the “official” news releases regarding the medical status of Steve Jobs, Apple CEO.

It could be said that I may be reading more into the news releases than is actually there but pictures do not lie.

Steve Jobs looks terrible. Whatever he is going through is pretty serious. Despite Steve’s personality quirks, he has been a major influence in changing our culture and improving the quality of life.

I hate to say it and I absolutely want to be WRONG. But if recent photos of Steve Jobs is any indication, Steve may not be with us for very long.

It may not be politically correct to state this publicly but too many times we say nice things only after someone passes away.

This small blog post may be one of the few that is willing to acknowledge that Steve’s time may be very short. But I am hoping that a Higher Power will step in so that we can all continue to be inspired by Steve Job’s ongoing contributions to the world.

For me, Steve Jobs is a business hero who I have admired for many years. His blend of technological and creative genius is something I have strived to attain.

If he does pass on, I will be deeply saddened. If he does stay with us, you can believe I will be following his work more closely.