I’d love an iPhone… but my contract with Verizon and the cost of the phone itself is prohibitive. It’s not as though I can’t afford it, it’s that I can’t see coughing up that kind of cash for a luxury item while still telling my wife that a house cleaning service, for example, is an unnecessary expense. So, the Blackberry is mine and I have put my iPhone dreams to rest (at least for two years).

This rant is not about iPhone versus Blackberry, however. No, that’s for another time. Instead, I want to talk about Twitter! Greg Grunberg is set to go on the Bonnie Hunt show, presumably to talk about Heroes, but he also plans to announce Yowza, his coupon venture for the iPhone. When I learned that the iPhone was the only compatible device, I twittered my desire to include a Blackberry app, and volunteered my programming services to one of the partners, @RickMacMerc. He responded by pointing me to @august, the application developer. So literally within minutes of hearing about the new service on Twitter, the same Twitter stream responded to my query and helped me make contact with the developer who programmed the serviec. Pretty cool!

Follow me at twitter.com/mchandler

It’s very well done!  Check it out.

Millions of Americans have powered President Obama’s journey to the White House, many taking advantage of the internet to play a role in shaping our country’s future. WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration’s efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement.

Barack Obama’s campaign did an outstanding job of using technology and new social media trends to build a dedicated following online.  There were multiple grassroots campaigns for Obama, some of which were fully managed in cyberspace.  The Obama campaign itself managed its own full featured online community, powered by the popular Movable Type publishing tool.

The redesigned Whitehouse.gov not only sports a new blog, but also an RSS feed, email update subscription tool, and a promise to provide a platform with which we can all participate as citizens.

http://www.whitehouse.gov

On another note, the Whitehouse Twitter account has now changed hands, officially in control by the new President’s Whitehouse staff.  Check it out here.

Says Issara, formerly of Google’s Singapore branch:

I was hired to work in Google’s Singapore office. I found out very
quickly that Google International is not the same as Google-US. The
offered pay was way too low to survive in Singapore, so I left after I
got another job offer that I felt was better for me. I really do
believe that Google is doing some important work with humanitarian
mapping projects and digitizing libraries. But for me, I felt that
Google’s popular image did not match its actions in the work place,
and that some of the things they did were not very “Googly.”

Shelby talks about the bad judge of character of the hiring managers, not to mention a slight case of discrimination:

However, I passed my interviews with flying colors
and was surprised 3 weeks later when I still hadn’t heard from my
recruiter about the results of the hiring committee meeting. Finally
he called to tell me that I was rejected because I was currently
working as a Flight Attendant. A job I had started 4 months prior
because it was a great opportunity to move into their management group
but then the airlines started downsizing management and so I applied
for the Google Travel Sales role instead. However, apparently the
elitist hiring committee members believed that FA’s are stupid and
there was no way they would be able to work at Google. Lucky for me
the recruiter agreed it was incredibly sexist and fought with HR to
bring me on as a temp. Three months later they resubmitted me to the
committee and had me remove my former job - instead I mentioned that I
was “traveling” for four months and bingo! I got hired full time. 3+
years later I was promoted twice and named a Google Luminary!

Aaron not only got a raw deal on his salary, as he states below, but also got slammed by the cost of the move, which Google apparently only slightly compensated him for.

First, I was really disappointed with the salary that Google offered.
During negotiations, they accommodated me a little, but not much. I
was barely making more than I had been in the midwest, and the
difference in CA state taxes wiped out almost all of that. Then
there’s rent. My wife and I don’t have any debt, we pay cash for our
cars, we live in a modest apartment, we only have one small child, and
we don’t travel or live a luxurious lifestyle. Yet we were already
dipping into savings during the second month just to pay the bills.
Part of it was certainly my fault; I shouldn’t have accepted such a
low offer.

Not all the stories are bad, and most everyone seems to agree that Google definitely has a solid business model, even if they are lacking in managerial structure.

Hey Google!  I’d suggest hiring me to go in there and clean up your act… but… yeah… nevermind.

Read it all HERE.

The “massively multiplayer” online role playing game has been a popular time suck for gamers for years now, and apparently the online world comes with some frustrations, from game servers that have reached their maximum number of users to dropped connections and periods of downtime. A website is claiming to compensate users who experience these frustrations. The website is called YouPlayOrWePay.com

If you’re suffering from bad or no game play shouldn’t you at least get compensated for your troubles? We aim to do what Blizzard® refuses to do (except in extreme cases). We will compensate you with CASH for when you are stuck in waiting queues, system outages or laggy game play

The interesting thing is I can’t seem to find anything to indicate how these people might be connected to Blizzard, the creators of WOW. Nevertheless, they claim to do what Blizzard cannot. And still, I’m completely disinterested in playing this game!

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This week, we demonstrate WengoVisio, the widget for video messages on your blog or website, but we firmly believe that Eyejot is still the King!

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