m2h blogs by Marcia Hansen

When I learned that I’d be teaching the unit on podcasting for the class I’m coteaching on digital media composing, I went to the classroom and tried to test iTunes podcasts. I learned that podcasts didn’t play in that room. I reported the problem to IT and wondered if they’d be able to get it fixed in time. Turns out, they don’t play very well across the University.

I received an email update today with good news. They’re still working on the problem and turns out it was a throughput problem across the university. Once they figure out the appropriate setting (2 Mb or 3Mb, which will be up from the 768 k it is currently), they will make the changes in the room where I teach and across the university.

This makes me smile. I’m glad it wasn’t just me. (You know how when you take your car to the mechanic and he is unable to fix it because he can’t duplicate the problem.) I’m glad they’re working on the issue and not discounting it so that I have to find a workaround. I’m tickled that I discovered the issue and that things will change.

Companies have many different ways to communicate with customers: the web, a blog, and the message they hear while on hold. Matt at Signal vs. Noise concludes that JetBlue didn’t use any of those means to communicate with customers. Instead, it was the guy with the megaphone standing at the terminal who had the most information.

However, I just checked the JetBlue site and there is now a YouTube video from CEO David Neeleman linked from the homepage.

It’s not just that companies need to be proactive in their communications, but they also need to be able to respond quickly when something goes wrong. They need a failover communication plan.

It would make an interesting article to examine how different companies respond to problems like these….what language is used, how quickly they respond, what mediums they use, and to what effect.

via: Seth Godin

Interesting read (actually, it reads more like science fiction):
Call for neuroethics as brain science races ahead
— Scientists who are working on brain scanning say that in some cases brain scans can reveal a person’s intentions. One of the examples in the article is about how this technology could one day be used is at the airport. Our luggage would go through one scanner and our brains would go through another.

(via Brains on Fire)

Some employees of Miller Beer are protesting the possibility that CEO Norman Adami might freeze their pensions (video). These employees are union employees so I doubt they will lose their jobs over this public protest, still it’s interesting to note how they are using a You-Tube video to make their point and respond to management actions. I wonder if they felt they had no other options. We might see more corporate policies to try and prevent such things, and we might see more anonymous versions (say with faces obscured). However, I’d agree with Virgina that the best thing for management would be to respond proactively with more open internal communication options for employees.

Here’s today’s image for you: a radio

More later…

Here’s a copy of the flyer that I worked on today. This is really a lot of fun. There were a lot of layers in the image. Lots of shapes and techniques.

I’m taking an Illustrator class this weekend. Below is the first image I created.

fun! fun!

I’m at a local coffeeshop working and I just happened to overhear a conversation that 3 guys at the bar are having about how they use their cellphones to screen calls.

One guy says that his sister renames her ex-boyfriends as “don’t answer” to remind her not to talk to her ex again and also to depersonalize the contact.

Another guy says that he assigns different tones to different people and the tones are categorized into “want to talk to” versus “don’t want to talk to.”

I’m wondering if the differing audio tones vs. the text is a gender thing or maybe a distance from phone thing.

I’ve never been much of a call screener so I’m not really sure of how people habitually handle such things and how they could be classified.

What do you think? I just thought the whole conversation was interesting and blogable.

I hate it when my local NBC affiliate, KOMU, takes over the regular scheduled programs and shows college basketball games. Bah! Give them their own channel and sell subscriptions, but stop messing with me! I don’t watch that much TV, but when I watch it, I hate it when they mess with regular programming.

A couple days ago, the Note From the Universe said:

Here’s a little trick on how to change the scenery in your life, radically, fantastically,
and perhaps, forever. (If that’s what you really want). Look the other way.

I love it. It’s so multi-purpose. Just replace “the scenery” with your career, your dreams, the inspiration, your love life, etc. and things change. The point is, focus on Door #2, Plan B, the Other Road, the Other Guy, etc.

It’s just that easy.

And, if you don’t want to look the other way, try some humor…