Just wanted to point this out. This is so true. There is nothing worse than clicking a link on your smartphone to go to a certain page or article and getting redirected to the site’s mobile homepage. While I appreciate sites having a mobile version, all links should work properly, meaning they should point you to that article on the mobile site or just bring you to the full site for that article.

Also, if you have a mobile site, have a link (a prominent one) for your full site somewhere. That way if I didn’t want the mobile site, I can find what I’m looking for on the full site.

I joined Twitter in early June of 2008. The first people I followed were mainly local people and people they followed. Soon after, some Phish fans started following me (prior to protecting my account for various reasons) and soon I had a small following of Phish fans. I really enjoyed following people and started following more, including celebrities, news sites, bands, etc. I have since stopped following many people, especially celebrities and news sites, because they just aren’t relevant to me and I don’t care what celebrities have to say. To me, the social web was, and still is, for real connections, not listening to celebrities talk about some unimportant news, or even some important news, but in a way to make them feel important and influential.

Phish announced their reunion after nearly 5 years since the Coventry festival in 2004, which was to be their last show. Ever. They were getting back together for 3 shows in Hampton in March of 2009. The world was abuzz with this news, including Twitter. I gained more followers and followees than ever before, simply because of my interest in Phish. One of those people was @UNOlker (aka UNO, for brevity’s sake). Hampton came and went. There was a small tweetup of some of my initial Phish Twitter folks at the shows. Phish had also announced a summer tour, which was to start the last day of May at Fenway Park in Boston. In April 2009, UNO created a group on a site called twibes.com for Phish. The Phish Twibe was born. While we rarely used the Twibes website, we did use the name for our group. Those initial Phish Twitter folks all joined, and a tweetup was scheduled for the Fenway Phish show. It was the first “official” Twibe tweetup. There were probably 10-15 of us in attendance, all meeting for the very first time, though one or two had met prior at the Hampton tweetup. The rest of Summer Tour 2009 was filled with smaller tweetups at the individual shows.

Sometime that summer, the band announced they would be holding Festival 8 over Halloween weekend in Indio, CA. It was the band’s eighth festival and fifth Halloween show. Plans were made. Several of us got together and met up in Las Vegas and took an RV to the festival. There were seven of us on that RV, most meeting each other for the first time, though we had each met at least one other at some point prior. Since we were all friends on Twitter, it was like a family reunion. We already knew each other quite well, and the course of the weekend was a great time. What was arguably the most successful “official” Twibe tweetup was held on Halloween afternoon. There was somewhere between 30 and 35 people in attendance, many who we had never met prior, some who we have not seen since. More tweetups were held during the Fall Tour 2009 and the New Years run in Miami. We all met up again during the summer of 2010, when the @phishtwibe Twitter account was created to help organize tweetups and give a single point of contact for people looking for information on Twibe happenings. More large tweetups were held in Atlantic City, for the band’s Halloween 2010 run, and in New York, for the band’s New Years 2010 run at Madison Square Garden. In November 2010, PhishTwibe.com, known simply as #theboard on Twitter, was created. It is a “secret” (though clearly not-so-secret) forum for the Twibe to have conversations in more than 140 characters.

Many of us have become great friends in real life as well as on Twitter. There have been romances created within the Twibe – some started prior to the Twibe’s inception, some are due to the Twibe. I consider the people of the Twibe to be close friends. I consider them to be some of my closest friends, in fact. Several of us have even gone so far as to permanently show our love for the Twibe in the form of a tattoo. The Phish Twibe is a true social media success story, and it only continues to grow. This is one story that remains unfinished, and will likely remain unfinished for years to come…

For more information on the Phish Twibe, simply follow @phishtwibe on Twitter or visit PhishTwibe.com.

I have personally met many people from the Phish Twibe in real life, and track them through a list on Twitter.

The vast majority of people who pay for a cell phone plan pay for a plan that fits their needs. Sure, on occasion, the estimated needs may fall short of actual usage, but that doesn’t happen all that often. Cell phone plans are designed to get you to pay more for something you don’t really use or pay less for something that isn’t enough. I’m not a heavy phone user. I pay for the lowest priced cell phone plan that AT&T allows and I never go over my minutes. In fact, it’s a family plan with shared minutes and while my wife uses them more than I do, we never go over them (I think we pay for 450 minutes per month). We already have plenty of rollover minutes because of this. Adding 1000 additional rollover minutes will not affect my wallet or my experience with AT&T. I imagine this will be the same for the vast majority of people I know who mainly use their cell phones for texting and data.

AT&T has one of the worst networks in the country. Calls drop, texts never get sent (or sent too late), data connections fail or don’t exist. It’s bad. So bad, in fact, that I’m one of those people who will happily switch back to Verizon. Sure, I can’t use voice and 3G data at the same time, but, as I said above, I rarely use my voice minutes. I can’t switch yet because I’m under a contract and I’m not willing to pay extra to switch. I will suck it up and deal with AT&T’s awful network.

AT&T is also relatively expensive (though the iPhone plan is about the same as Verizon’s). So not only is the network terrible, you also pay for it. I pay about $170/month for my family plan. It includes the unlimited data and I added in the family unlimited texting. I think I also get a slight discount through my employer, but I think it only affect the voice plan for my line, not Susan’s and not the data or texting plans. So really, it’s not much of a discount at all. I think it’s somewhere between 10% and 20% off of a base plan of about $40. When you throw in everything else, it’s really only a savings of about 1-2%.

So what can AT&T do to actually get people to stay? I could only come up with three suggestions:

• Lower the costs
• Improve the network
• Allow free tethering

They could easily lower the costs. Sure, they “lowered the costs” with the new limited data plans. I could switch to the 2 GB plan and save $10/month rather than stick with the unlimited plan I’m grandfathered into, but that would bring us to Verizon’s cost, which, I am pretty sure, does not include unlimited data. Drop the texting plan and include that with data. There’s no reason text messages should cost what they do. It’s data, plain and simple. Texting costs are just a way for wireless companies to gouge their customers.

Improving the network is a costly and long process. They’ve improved it a bit over the past couple years. I travel to northern New England quite a bit for vacation and skiing. When we first went, Vermont had no AT&T 3G coverage. Now they have it in many areas, but still not everywhere. One of my favorite places to go skiing in New Hampshire has no AT&T coverage unless you stand on your head in one spot of the parking lot with your arms outstretched a certain way. If you move, the call drops. Sure, those are extreme examples because they’re remote areas. But then there’s my house in Providence, the second largest city in New England, the largest city in Rhode Island. I had great AT&T coverage when we first bought our iPhones and switched to AT&T from Verizon, who didn’t have such great signal in our house. Lo and behold, within a year of switching, our AT&T coverage started dropping. Now it’s pretty bad. I get little, if any, signal in my basement (not overly surprising, but it was stronger down there at first). I have random places throughout my house where calls don’t work, including on the top floor. I have made no changes to my house in this time. It’s all AT&T’s doing. I could splurge and get one of their little MicroCell devices, but I shouldn’t have to pay more for the network to work in a place where it used to work without a problem. The company advertises the largest network. Yes, that’s true, but how much of it includes their 3G network? That’s where it gets sad. How much of it has dropped calls? It gets really sad there. If they actually put in some effort and improved their network, they wouldn’t have to worry about Verizon getting the iPhone.

Finally, they could allow for free 3G tethering. I already have it on my jailbroken phone, but since the free trial of PDAnet is up, I only get HTTP traffic, not even HTTPS, which means I can’t log into Twitter or my email or even Facebook now (since they just started using HTTPS). Verizon allows it on the iPhone, but it’s $20/month extra. AT&T allows it on other devices, but you have to pay for it. You already pay for data, why not just allow it for free? Yeah, there’s the issue of the network’s capabilities, but they just got rid of their unlimited data plan. So they have that to stand on. What does the money go to? Clearly not improving the network to handle the extra load. It just goes to lining the pockets of the top executives at AT&T.

Perhaps people would be willing to stay or switch back to AT&T if the company did something for the customers, if they sold a product that people wanted. Instead, they just make money off us and don’t really do much to keep us besides pointless gestures, like giving us 1000 free rollover minutes. No thanks, I’ll likely be switching to Verizon this summer. Hopefully, there will be a new iPhone released then and I’ll be on a more robust network.

As I write this, my Tivo now works with the CableCARD that was installed. While this whole process was very problematic and the CSR’s I dealt with did not do their jobs properly, I am happy with the outcome. I received as ideal an outcome as I could have expected. I did not want to have to leave work to have it installed tomorrow. The dispatch manager checked in with me again to make sure the job was done to my satisfaction and he would not accept my thanks as he knew his people were to blame. He again stated that he would be calling me tomorrow to explain what he found to be the cause of the problem.

I found it amusing was that the technician agreed with me on the CableCARD installation issue. He said that there is no reason they can’t give them to the customer pre-activated to allow the customer to install it themselves. I would take it one step further and say that Verizon should allow this, but charge the customer if a tech needs to come out because the customer ran into trouble during the installation. The technician’s mind was blown that the second order could not be completed until the first one had been closed. That’s also something that I found to be odd.

Regardless of what happened and what caused the problem, Verizon made things right. That is what I wanted in all of this, and that’s exactly what I got. I hope they will learn from this and prevent it from happening in the future. I have been very happy with the TV and Internet service I get from FiOS. I did not want this bad customer service experience to ruin that. I am glad I read The Consumerist as I would have never thought of trying to email a bunch of executives at Verizon to get this problem resolved properly.

In case you need to contact Verizon for your own problems, 7 of the email addresses below bounced back to me as “user unknown” (meaning they no longer work for Verizon). The emails that don’t work anymore are the following:

robert.e.ingalls.jr@verizon.com
doreen.a.toben@verizon.com
bruce.p.beausejour@verizon.com
john.p.hoey@verizon.com
michael.k.hassett@verizon.com
maura.c.breen@verizon.com
william.barr@verizon.com

You should only contact the Verizon executive team if you have a valid issue that you could not get resolved through the normal support channels. I CC’d The Consumerist in my email to bring attention to the poor customer service at Verizon, and you should too.

Subject: CableCARD Installation or Lack Thereof

To: robert.barish@verizon.com, william.barr@verizon.com, bruce.p.beausejour@verizon.com, maura.c.breen@verizon.com, michael.k.hassett@verizon.com, holly.hess@verizon.com, suleiman.hessami@verizonbusiness.com, john.p.hoey@verizon.com, jerry.holland@verizon.com, robert.e.ingalls.jr@verizon.com, virginia.p.ruesterholz@verizon.com, joseph.j.russo@verizon.com, thomas.j.tauke@verizon.com, doreen.a.toben@verizon.com

Cc: tips@consumerist.com

I have been a Verizon FiOS customer since shortly after purchasing my first home in Providence, RI about a year and a half ago for TV, Internet, and landline phone. I have been extremely happy with the service. I recently purchased a Tivo HD to use with the service because I missed my old Tivo that I previously used with my Cox cable service and because I wanted to take advantage of the streaming video that went along with my Netflix account. About two weeks ago, I contacted Verizon FiOS support to have a CableCARD installed in my Tivo. While I felt that having a technician come out to install this device is a little unnecessary, I scheduled an appointment for Thursday, May 6 between 1:00 and 5:00 (order #OMITTED). When scheduling the appointment, I requested that the technician contact me upon leaving his previous appointment or when he arrived at my house because I work exactly one mile from my house and can be home within five minutes. I gave the customer service representative my cell phone number to include in the order. He said this would not be a problem.

On Thursday, May 6, receiving no phone call, I left work at 4:30 as usual expecting the technician to show up in the next half hour. When I checked my voicemail on my home phone, I had a message from Verizon at 1:30 stating that they left a message on my other number, which was not the number I gave the CSR when scheduling the order, that the driver was at my house and no one was answering. I was not happy about this and immediately called Verizon to find out what happened. I was told that the CSR who took the order gave me false information. I was told that the drivers do not all carry cell phones and may not have the ability to call when they’re on their way. I found this a little shocking as every cable TV technician and installer I have ever experienced carried a cell phone as their means to contact dispatch and the main office in case something went wrong. I accepted the answer, and scheduled a new appointment for Tuesday, May 11 between 1:00 and 5:00 (order #OMITTED, that’s today). Because of the problems before and knowing I may not get a call, I took half the day off to come home in order to be here when the technician arrived.

The following day, Friday, May 7, I received a call from Verizon asking me to reschedule the appointment. I found that odd and explained everything to no fewer than 3 CSR’s before being transferred to a manager. Upon answering, the manager had no been informed by the previous CSR what was going and, forcing me to explain the entire situation one last time. The manager explained that the reason I was called to reschedule was because the original order for May 6 had not been completed before the new order for May 11 was created. She went and canceled the order for May 6 and opened up the order for May 11 to be completed as scheduled.

That brings us to today. I left work at 12:30 to allow myself ample time to come home and hook up the Tivo to the cable, getting it ready for the technician. I received a phone call around 1:30 asking me to reschedule my appointment from May 6. My jaw dropped. I could not believe this was happening. I explained everything, once again, to the woman on the phone. Unable to access my account information, she transferred me to the business office, which really means transferring me to the same number I would call if I needed help with my bill or if I needed technical support. The fact that CSR’s are unable to transfer directly to the proper office and explain the situation to the person on the other end is astounding, but that’s beside the point of this email. I spoke with one CSR, Mindy, who was able to see my order and put me on hold to speak with someone at the Fiber Solutions office. She accidentally disconnected my call, which I discovered after waiting for about 10 minutes. Reluctantly, I called the same number and spoke with another CSR who contacted Providence dispatch to check on the status of my order. She came back with the bad news that they did not have my order because of the issue that happened with the order from May 6. I immediately requested to speak with a manager, and I got the impression that she was expecting that. As her manager was busy, she explained to me that I would be offered one month of free service and they would reschedule my appointment. I explained that while I will more than happily take the free month, I would prefer to have an appointment scheduled around my schedule. I explained that I work in customer service managing IT support. While we don’t give people set times when we will be out there, if we make a mistake this bad, we most definitely do make an appointment around their schedule. She then said something that completely blew my mind and made me feel as though I was in the Twilight Zone. She suggested that the driver could call me when he was on his way to my house. I explained how the other CSR’s claimed that this was not possible. I explained how I was promised this from the beginning. She did not have anything more to say than to inform me that the previous CSR’s all made mistakes when taking my order and had been giving me false information.

I sit here now waiting for the manager to call me. I have wasted half a day when I should be at work because I was under the assumption that someone would be coming to my house to install a CableCARD. That isn’t happening today. I am at my wit’s end with something that should have been a 10 minute job completed last Thursday. If Verizon doesn’t fix the problem today, I will be re-evaluating my switch from Cox Communications to Verizon FiOS for all of the services. None of this should have happened. If I ever let something like this happen in my job, I would be out of a job. While I would never suggest that people lose their jobs, something needs to change. This is completely unacceptable as I have been simply going in circles with the Customer Service department at Verizon. I absolutely love my FiOS TV and Internet, but dealing with Verizon Customer Service has been an absolute nightmare. Not once did I receive such horrible support when I was a customer with Cox Communications.

Please note that I have CC’d The Consumerist on this message.

The dates for the festival are September 12-19 with a special kickoff at the Rocktucket Block Party in Pawtucket on September 6.

Check the links for all the details. I’ll be attending most of the events (I’m not a maker, but I am a geek and find this stuff to be pretty cool). The best part is, aside from the fundraiser on September 12, it’s all free and open to the public.

Rhode Island Maker Faire and DIY Festival

Map of Location

If you’re on Twitter, you should follow @kippworks and @bjepson for info.

Erin starts off by saying we are dependent on technology. That we have lost touch with the each other and with the world. Part of that dependence, however, is necessity. Technologies that Erin doesn’t mention (automobiles, trains, and planes) have moved us around. She mentions a simpler time when people basically lived off the land. What she fails to mention is that in those times people did not travel. People stayed as close to a home base as possible. Sure, they wandered off in search of supplies, but only as far as their feet or horse could carry them. Would I like to see more people paying more attention to their local environment rather than worrying about what’s going on in the rest of the world or venturing off to far away cities to have fun? Of course I would. In fact, I think everyone should be doing that. However, technologies have allowed us to travel and travel we did. People never lived an hour drive away from work. They didn’t live a 2 hour train ride from their office. Instead, they lived within walking distance of the trolley or bus or even their place of employment. They lived within the same city, sometimes in a streetcar suburb just outside the city. But with the travel came a need for more technology to keep in touch with family and friends that were far away.

Do you see payphones anymore? I don’t even know where I could find one now. I used to always know where there was a payphone when I was out and about by myself. Now, they’re hard to find. That explains the dependency on cell phones and why parents get them for their kids (I’m still of the opinion that I will never pay for a cell phone for my kid, if he wants one, he can pay for it himself). My car broke down back in 1999 on my way to RI to pick up my brother for Thanksgiving break. I had no cell phone. I walked down to the commuter lot at the end of the exit ramp and used the pay phone to call my parents. It didn’t work. I took a ride with a random dude to a gas station even further away and found one that worked. I stayed there until my father was able to pick me up. Having a cell phone in that situation would have been helpful. I may have been crazy for taking the ride, but he looked like a nice enough guy (actually, he looked like a Phishhead).

I have heard people say that we have become out of touch with the world and each other because of technology. I disagree with that. I have a few personal anecdotes to explain my reasoning. I have met lots of people on the internet. When I first moved to RI, I didn’t know anyone. I went on a few dates through Craigslist and ultimately met my wife through that site. I made some friends through online postings. I met people in Providence through local forums. Since joining Twitter, I have met a bunch of people interested in Phish. We met up at shows in June. In fact, I am going on a trip to California to see Festival 8, a 3 day Phish festival around Halloween. I’m flying to Las Vegas, meeting 6 other people from Twitter, and we’re all renting an RV together and driving the 4 hours to the festival together. The Internet has brought us together. Finally, one of my closest friends was met online. I have never met her, but we met about 12 years ago in a chat room on AOL. I know it sounds super sketchy, but we have stayed in touch ever since. We have gone through ups and downs in our lives together. We have helped each other through rough times. It’s a relationship like no other, but it would not exist if it weren’t for the Internet.

People have come together to become more in touch with the world because of technology. Look at the phenomenon of flash mobs. Look at all the people who joined together to support the problems with the Iranian election or those who came together for the people of Darfur. Sure, most of that was meaningless gestures, like changing your Twitter avatar green. But there are many people who have actually made a difference because of it. Look at what social media did in our own elections. Barack Obama would not have won such a decisive victory if it weren’t for his creative use of social media.

Technology has changed the world. Sure, some of that change is not good. It has caused people to become more isolated. However, I think that it has brought more people together. It has led to meaningless gestures to show support for some issue, but it has also brought “doers” together to actually make change. It has helped people (to be super cliché) to be the change they want to see in the world.

Do I think we should all join the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps and travel the world to help others? Not at all. In fact, I believe we should start right at home with our own communities. I believe that change must start locally. I believe in the “think globally, act locally” sentiment. If everyone did just that, the change we should see in the world would happen. In fact, one of the things I use the Internet for is local issues. Technology has helped this movement.

Perhaps I’ve missed the point of Erin’s post, but it said 2 things to me. The first is that we have become too dependent on information technology (I disagree with the spirit of that statement, but not with the statement itself) and the second is that we need to step away from these technologies to experience real life, to learn to be happy without them, to really have a personal relationship (again, I disagree for the reasons listed above). As for that first part, look at dependency on older forms of information technology (they were technological for their time) – newspaper, radio, television. The computer allows us to experience other things that we wouldn’t normally experience in our lives. Not everyone is given the chance to visit other countries and see other cultures. Heck, many of us can’t even visit other parts of our own country. The computer and Internet allows us to travel without leaving our home. I have never been one to believe that to be cultured, you have to travel. I believe there is plenty to discover in your own backyard. You just have to seek it out, and technology can help you find it.

I have to say… I love this thing. I’m a geek through and through and this phone is like a wet dream. I like being connected all the time (though I do enjoy my time away from technology). I mainly love that I always have Twitter at my fingertips. When they say there’s an app for everything, there really is. I have a Peanut Butter Jelly Time app, a farting app, a light saber app, a beer app (that actually gives descriptions of beer), and many many more.

If you weren’t sure about the iPhone for whatever reason, it’s definitely worth it. In addition to the phone, I had to get a case. At the recommendation of one of my Twitter followers, I got the Mophie Juice Pack Air. It’s an extra battery plus case. It does add some weight and size to the phone (mainly to the thickness and height), but it makes the phone easier to hold and type one handed for me. It has a nice indicator on the back to tell you how much life is left (similar to MacBook batteries when they still had removable batteries). It also has a switch to turn it on and off. The only downside for me (I don’t mind the extra weight or size) is that it covers the dock port because it needs to plug into the phone. It nearly doubles the batter life (I’d say it adds an additional 80-85% to the battery). It’s not cheap at around $80 (the Apple store had it for the same price as the website, I thought they might try to rape me), but I feel it’s well worth the money. Considering the most popular case (the InCase Slider) runs about $35, you’re paying only $45 for an extra battery. I will admit that I am considering the purchase of the Slider case as well, mainly to use when I’m at work or know the phone isn’t going to see quite as much usage and I won’t need the extra battery life. I just have to wait and see if it’s really necessary.

I won’t really go on any longer. I don’t really have anything to say about the iPhone that hasn’t already been said about it. I did jailbreak my phone. It allows for some nifty customizations and apps. I won’t go too much into it, but if you want app recommendations, let me know.

First, I’ll start with my bandwidth. I have more bandwidth available to me than I would have with Cox. It’s a tough judgement here because it’s noticeably faster, but part of that is because it should be. I have 20 mbps downstream and 5 mbps upstream. It’s quite convenient, but difficult to compare to my Cox connection because it wasn’t supposed to be as fast. However, I will say that my connection has been more reliable with FiOS than it ever was with Cox. With Cox, I had been through 3 cable modems (granted I’ve only had FiOS for a few months now) and always had a problem with dropped connections. I suppose it could’ve been my router (which I plan on trying to use with FiOS as I’ve heard there’s a way). Now their router, while it works well and does what I need to (and even seems to give off a stronger wireless signal than my Linksys that had 2 antennae) has a really crappy interface (warnings everytime you go into an “advanced” setting, even after you’ve confirmed a change in an advanced setting). The advanced settings shouldn’t be called advanced. People should be able to set their wireless encryption to WPA or WPA2 without having to go into an advanced area (that scares them away). I can’t change the DNS server (I used OpenDNS on my old router) and if you mistype an address, you go to Verizon’s error page/search engine (a little shady if you ask me, I’d rather get a “page cannot be displayed” message). However, I need to use their router because it grabs the on demand and guide for the set top box.

The TV service is also good. I like having HD service, though I’ve noticed that I can only get 1080i (my TV does 1080p). I don’t know if I have something configured wrong, if I have a crappy HDMI cable (came from Verizon and Gizmodo says it doesn’t matter), or if HD cable service only goes as high as 1080i. It really shouldn’t matter because based on the size of my TV and the distance it is from where we sit, I shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between 1080p and 720p. However, I can’t really compare it to my Cox service as I didn’t have HD with them. From time to time, I do notice some digital pixelation, but that can happen with any digital cable service.

The DVR, however, sucks ass. It had to be said. There are 2 reasons I’m using their DVR. The first is because I can’t afford a Tivo HD. The second is because even if I could afford a Tivo HD, I wouldn’t have the Verizon guide and I wouldn’t be able to use any of the on demand features (I may even lose out on the music channels, but I’m not sure on that). That being said, Tivo’s interface blows away the Verizon DVR. I’d also get a whole lot more storage from a Tivo and better multimedia capabilities without having to pay an extra fee (as with what I’d have to do do get those from my Verizon DVR).

So it’s not all roses over here in FiOS land, but it’s better than my experience with Cox. Cox’s support system was a whole lot better. They have phone numbers listed for easy access on their webpage. They had realistic hours (Verizon stops answering their phone at 6 pm). But the extra bandwidth and reliable service make FiOS better for me.

Update: Apparently, after doing a little research, the set top box is only capable of 1080i.