I love my HTC Desire HD so much that I named one of my characters in the “N1&Desire“‘ comics, “Desire”. When I moved to the US I didn’t care that it only worked on EDGE, I still spoke wonders about the phone everywhere I went.

On August 8th my HTC Desire HD refused to boot. I did everything I could think of: searched for help on Google+, searched forums, etc.: Nothing I could do to my phone worked and I had to admit that my phone was dead, victim of the infamous “boot loop“. The only solution would be to send it in for repair. My HTC Desire HD, under warranty, was dead and needed to be resurrected by HTC’s tech gods. All good…. not really.

In my first contact with HTC Customer Support I was told that they would be able to repair the phone but that “a Global Warranty Fee” of $USD 20 might be charged. After pressing the representative he did admit that the fee would be charged. Not only that,  HTC makes you, the client, responsible for the shipping of the phone something that I really disagreed with but, if I wanted my phone repaired, I would have to comply. I didn’t overlook the irony that a global mobile company makes their clients pay an extra fee for being themselves global AND mobile. 

August 19th I shipped my phone for repair. I was told that it would take between 6 to 10 business days to get my phone back. In the meanwhile I had been told by HTC’s PR agency that they were sorry and that I should contact the PR people in Spain and that they would probably be able to have a solution for me. In reality what they were telling me was: “You know what? We have nothing to do with this. You got your phone in Spain, sorted it out in Spain and leave us alone“.  That feeling of being guilty of moving around on this planet, with my HTC phone, crept in and for a brief second: I actually believed that I was the one that should have cancelled my life in order to get proper, and local, customer support from my HTC. Fortunately it was just a brief second.

August 29th I had not received any acknowledgment from HTC that they had my phone so I decided to call. The dialogue involved me being asked by the tech support’s representative if I had the phone with me. The possible answer to this question can be found here. My phone was now lost, somewhere in Texas, and I was told that the “warehouse team” would be looking for it. I was also told that I should call them in “a day or two”. I should call them instead of them calling me which, in my humble opinion, would make more sense. You know HTC’s claim, right? “Quietly brilliant?” Forget the brilliant, they are just quiet. To make things easier for me I decided to imagine an HTC representative going through hundreds of phones, at 4am in the morning, trying to find my phone. This didn’t make things easier for me.

August 31th I make the phone call and I am told that they have located the phone (YEAH!!!) but that they were trying to make sure that they had the spare parts for it at the infamous warehouse. The fact that they had told me that they would be able to repair it apparently was forgotten by HTC but not by me.

September 6th, yesterday, I made another phone call to HTC and I was told that they were still checking if they had the spare parts to repair my phone. I said that they had told me exactly that one week ago,  and I was on hold for more than 10 minutes only to be told that they were still trying to find out if they had the spare parts to repair my phone.

I am someone that doesn’t understand the complexity of repairing a phone but I do know a bit about information systems:  HTC taking  more than  3 business days to find out if they have the spare parts to repair one of their phones is something that I find totally inadmissible in this day and age.  This is HTC after all, the global mobile company, the maker of amazing Android phones.

I ended up my call asking for a supervisor to get in contact with me immediately, since at the time there wasn’t one available. That was at 10am and, one our and an half past, still no phone call.

Maybe I am the one to blame: Who the fuck do I think I am to actually bring a phone, that was given to me in Spain, to the other side of the Atlantic? Why didn’t I just leave it there? Why didn’t I just stayed there with my phone?

Maybe I am the one to blame but I really don’t think I am. HTC is a global company, maker of mobile phones and it should be prepared for their clients to be global and mobile and to give them customer and tech support accordingly.

Not understanding this simple reality can only result in very pissed off clients, like myself. 

Update: HTC sent me an e-mail telling me that they have the phone and that they are trying to find out if they have the parts to repair it. I received this e-mail yesterday. No comments.

Another feature already available is the inline button, where users can see who, from their connections, has +1 any article on any website, as seen in the picture below

In order to be able to see it, for now, you will have to be a part of the Google+ Platform Preview. From my experience acceptance is immediate.

How to add the inline +1 button to your WordPress blog:

1. Go to  Google’s Webmasters site

2. Choose “inline” as your “Annotation” style from the drop down box and choose the size of the button (or leave it as it is by default)

3. Copy this resulting code that starts with <!– Place this render call where appropriate –>

4. Go to your self-hosted WordPress blog

5. Click on Appearance

6. Click on editor

7. Choose “Header.php” from the templates available from the list on the right side

8. Paste the code between the </head> and <body> tags

9. Click on the “Update file” button

Your button is ready.

All you have to do is to include <g:plusone annotation=”inline”></g:plusone> where you want your button to appear in your posts. Make sure you include this code in HTML view. 

Chill.com is, in all aspects, just like Turntable.fm but it allows you to watch videos instead of just listening to music. The site is still in beta and you can only get in via invite or, if any of your friends on Facebook is already in, you can also have access.

The main problem that I see with Chill has to do with the attention span needed to be on the site. Unlike Turntable.fm, where you can just join a room and listen to the music on the background, videos are, by definition, a visual experience – meaning that you are supposed to have that tab of your browser open to fully enjoy the experience.

Samuel Davis, last night on Google+,  wrote a comment about this very issue that perfectly explains this:

When I personally watch videos online, my Internet ADD is such that if it’s longer than 5 minutes I usually think long and hard about whether or not I’ll be able to watch the entire thing uninterrupted, or if I’ll be tempted to jump to another tab to finish reading that article that I started 10 minutes ago but left for the very same reason.

Of course that the social sharing experience can change all of this and the service might appeal to a younger Facebook generation: the chat feature on Chill lets you chat in real time with others in the room while watching a video but not much else: There is a lack of control over the video that is playing (pause, rewind, fast forward) that, if added, would feel more natural and more in line with what people do when watching a video together.

Below you can find a short video showing how Chill works. What do you think? Will you use it? Will it gain traction? Let me know in the comments.

Concept and Direction: Fernando Fonseca
Voice over: Donna Winter
Soundtrack: Fernando Fonseca

I have been using GetGlue for a while and I’ve always loved your service. Yes, there were things that annoyed me about it but I kept on using it because I believed that you and your team were working hard to make the whole user experience better. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened and, as an example, the Android application is still a shadow of what it could be. On top of that, GetGlue didn’t become more social and didn’t allow me to, in a easy way, connect with other people that had similar tastes. Still, I kept using your service almost on a daily basis.

I ordered my first batch of stickers and never got them. Was I mad? Not after reading all the comments on your Facebook page showing I was not alone. Naively I thought that I would get some e-mail from GetGlue telling me why I hadn’t gotten my stickers and what the new ETA was. Weeks passed, I kept using GetGlue and nothing: no badges, no e-mail, nothing.

Yesterday I went to my Facebook profile and my news feed was filled with posts from GetGlue, all sent at exactly the same time. I made a screenshot and posted it on your Facebook wall and also tweeted it.

You see, I am one of those people who thinks social media can also be used as support channel and I’ve even written some posts about it. The following image is the dialogue I had with the GetGlue representative:

As you can see, Alex, there is not even a hint of an apology in it. “It’s from our blog,” was the first contact I’ve ever had with your company on Twitter or in any other channel since my mails to support have always been ignored. Stating the obvious—that the posts were from your blog—was not really the reply I had in mind. But, your representative didn’t stop there, oh no! In the next sentence I was being instructed to hide the posts from my Facebook feed. How does this help me? I “liked” your page to get relevant information about your product and your recommendation is to hide your content? How does this help YOU? You want one less person reading your information rather than make your Facebook page appealing and useful to your users?

The cherry on the top of this incident came when I was told to e-mail your support team. Let’s face it, after posting it on your Facebook wall, tweeting about it mentioning your brand, and telling you what the problem was you still want me to e-mail you? Why? Isn’t the Facebook post and the tweet feedback enough?

How much would it take to reply to my original tweet or comment: “Hey, we’re sorry for that. We’re working out the kinks! We will get it fixed asap.” A similar tweet would’ve been a retweet by me with a “Thanks!” but instead here I am, writing you this open letter.

GetGlue is a social tool and one that as a lot of potential but you can’t be a social tool and not be social in the way you interact with your users, no matter who they are. I go to your Facebook page and all I see is people complaining about not getting their stickers, people giving great feedback and not being listened to, even people offering to work for free so that the users can get their stickers and from your part only silence.

I’m sure you can do better and I hope that you take this post not as a rant but as a (last) attempt to reconcile myself with your service and please consider me totally available to speak with you about this and other things that could make GetGlue better for everyone.

Image: “Covering all your existence“  Some rights reserved by Pulpolux !!!

Twitter conversation by Aaron Swartz

1. The first thing I do in the morning when I wake up is to check my notifications on the G+ mobile app. It used to be checking the Android Market for updates
2. I only check Twitter and Facebook briefly and only to reply to mentions or DMs. I used to be on Twitter most of my free time.
3. Instead of writing long blog posts I start discussions that get more than 40 (great) comments
4. I totally forgot I have World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Age of Empires III installed on my computer
5. I can’t stop thinking about how Google+ will have an impact on the way we experience social networking; Donna and I  spend a lot of time talking about this.

Fortunately I am not alone. When I posted these thoughts* on Google+ yesterday I got more than 20 shares, within the first minutes and comments as well.

Brian McDaniel, that has a solid following on Twitter and Facebook, came up with his own five habits that Google+ changed:

1. I definitely check G+ notifications and stream first in the morning, then email, Twitter, and FB in that order.
2. I am spending more time in what seem to be worthwhile, quality conversations on G+. While I can’t necessarily feel good about the increase in time spent, I am overjoyed with the value of the conversations
3. I tend to want to post links, resources, checkins at locations and photos on G+ first or instead of my other social networks.
4. I already use my Android phone for G+ more than I’ve ever used it for FB or Twitter. The quality of the app and ease of use is far superior to the others.
5. My schedule and ways of posting to social media is changing to adjust for G+. I actually want to be here and see what others are saying more than anywhere else.

Some others, like Dwyndal Dee, joined the discussion making very interesting points:

1. I look to G+ for entertainment and knowledge. Before it was FB entertainment (ohh viral misery) and Twitter for knowlege.
2. I’m actually using my brain more and engaging in conversations with people not just 140 chars back and forth.
3. The app is so much easier to use than any i have used socially. Before it was seesmic and tweetdeck but they were limted. I find it too laborious to post elsewhere and don’t really feel the need.
4. The site is so clean and useful with functions, I want to test them all once more are implemented Facebook was ok but so much spam and game reports it was annoying. I ended up muting half my friends or making an alternate account just for them and i never use it.
5. I can pull people such as +tracky_birthday

Fighting Facebook with Circles

The Google+ team has been listening to what the main complaints about Facebook are: privacy concerns or the Kafkaesque venture of organizing your “friends” into different lists, just to name a few. Google+’s solution for this is called Circles, something that reminds me of the Diaspora* project but, unlike the open source project, allows you to add one contact to several circles, which replicates in a better way the relationships we all have.

These “Circles,” and the way you organize them, will be the basis of your experience when on Google+. Good organization will allow you to have a better experience and don’t worry, your contacts will never know in what circle you put them in.

Hanging out

Remember how you have a video chat with lots of people on Google Wave? On Google+ you can do that too with a major difference: it actually works. Up to 10 people can join a Hangout to talk, text chat and share videos. I am sure that other types of media and features will be added (Soundcloud comes to mind as well as Google’s own Calendar) making the Hangout not only a social space but a working space as well.

The Android factor: Huddle and Instant Upload

As soon as I got my Google+ invite (courtesy of my partner in life and everything geek, Donna Winter), I downloaded the Android application and was immediately hooked. The user interface is clean and it brings with it “Huddle” which seems to be Google’s attempt to take on RIM’s BBM. With 500,000 Android devices being activated every day “Huddle” has the potential to become the preferred instant messaging service for millions of users. The Google+ team didn’t stop here and seems to understand how mobile plays a huge role in our life. Instant upload is a hassle free sharing feature that does exactly what it’s name says: Take a picture or shoot a video with your Android device and it will be immediately uploaded to a private album on your Google+ account. You can then edit the caption and share with your circles if you wish. What I’m missing here is seamless integration with YouTube, meaning that I would like to have an option to upload the videos straight to my YouTube account via Google+ but I expect to see this happening in the near future.

So, is it all good on Google+ and will it kill Facebook?

The answer clearly is no and maybe. There is much to be done and some of the options in Google+ don’t make much sense right now. One of those options is the introduction of something that they are calling “Sparks.”

“Sparks” are based on search keywords but they are not a part of your stream and that’s a problem. If you’re interested in a certain subject the probabilities that you want to know what is happening are surely high. What I would really like to see is total and seamless integration of my Google Reader feed within my stream but, for this to happen, Google+ has to quit bumping posts to the top with every comment that is made on them. This is something that is really annoying since it doesn’t allow for new content to be discovered.

To be a Facebook contender Google+ has to attract developers able to create the kind of applications that have users hooked on Facebook and should work on the user’s desktop and mobile devices, then find a way to monetize the applications. This is a big challenge but it brings with it a lot of creative opportunities.

Sharing on other social networks is also mandatory: if Google+ wants to win this war it has to allow users to share from their desktop or mobile, their updates with other social networks and applications, and become the social media center for its users. There is an extension already available for Chrome but it forces you to post and then share to Twitter and/or Facebook.
ProTip: Taking your Facebook friends to Google+

At the moment Google+ only allows you to import your HotMail or Yahoo contacts while your Gmail contacts will already be listed. This is a bummer for those of us that don’t use Yahoo or Hotmail right? Fortunately there is a hack that you can use to import all of your Facebook contacts onto Gmail. As far as I know it only works with Google Chrome and the process has some glitches but it actually works.

The step by step goes as follows:

1. Open Google Chrome and login to your Facebook account.
2. Open a new tab and install the “FacebookFriendExporter” extension
3. Refresh (press F5) your Facebook. You will notice that you have now a new option called “Export Friends!”

1. Click on “Export friends!” and a message will pop-up asking you if you want to be redirected to your friends page.
2. Wait for all your contacts to be processed. If some contacts are not processed just close the page and click on “Export friends!” again. The extension keeps a log file of the contacts that were already exported and will only export those that are not processed.
3. Export your contacts to Gmail using Oauth.
4. By now you should find on your Gmail’s contacts a new group called “Imported from Facebook.” If you go to Google+ you will see them on the “Find and Invite” tab on your “Circles” page and you will be able to see which ones are already using Google+ and add them to your circles.

Final Comments

There is a lot to be done to make Google+ THE social network but Google started on the right foot. In my opinion the most appealing features are the ones that allow you to share your mobile life in a very easy and transparent way. I am sure that we will see many Android developers integrating Google+ with their applications and others that will make sharing to other social networks from within Google+ a seamless experience.

Find me on Google+ and please leave your thoughts in the comments.

This tablet looks gorgeous! Really gorgeous! It feels great in your hand–not too big or too small–and has the perfect weight.  What comes to look and feel this tablet is great.  It’s when you turn it on that the problems start and that can be a killer for a tablet, right?

The version I’ve been testing didn’t come with Flash pre-installed. If Samsung is hoping to reach the average user rather than those already familiar with Android devices, this could be a problem resulting in support requests for inability to see some websites, animations, etc if they’re unfamiliar with the Android Market and don’t know to go download Flash.

If the absence of Flash was the only problem that Samsung’s flagship tab had I would be happy, unfortunately, there are other issues that make the user experience very frustrating.

Keyboard

Who needs a in the main keyboard area?

If you are someone who types really fast and want to use this tablet to shoot long e-mails or write a document while commuting: forget it! The keyboard is unresponsive, slow and has a confusing layout. Furthermore don’t even try to use Samsung’s own text prediction unless you are a Zen master and find solace in shouting at a tablet. This could possibly be circumvented by installing a keyboard application like Swiftkey.

Scrolling

I don’t know how to explain this and I would show you what I mean in a video if Samsung had the drivers for this tablet available at their website, but I will try to explain:  scrolling on the Galaxy Tab feels clunky and awkward and you always feel like you need to push your finger again for the screen to scroll. The lack of fluidity really puts a dent in the user experience..

Lack of Apps

This is not an issue that is specific to the Galaxy tab but I have to mention it: My favorite applications look really bad on this tablet (Stupid Zombies and Angry Birds just to name my main gaming addictions) and there is a lack of tablet-specific applications in the Android Market. This will change in the future as more developers see the added value of developing tablet-specific applications, but for now users are limited to zoomed in versions of apps.

Conclusion

I hope that Samsung made some improvements to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 before it hits the market on June 17 because, if not, I think many people will be disappointed. Some of these issues may relate to Honeycomb and we can only hope that Google, working closely with Samsung, can fine tune some of the glitches this tablet clearly has.

I will keep you updated as soon as I can test it.

Image Credits: “close up of the army of androids on rear panel“   Some rights reserved by mac morrison

Team management’s improvements

The ability to have a group of people, or teams, curating a certain pearl is one of the biggest advantages of Pearltrees. With this update team founders are able to establish and communicate what the objective of any pearl is but not only that: team communication, a new pearl history panel – that allows reverting any pearl to a previous point in time – were also added on this update. This is something that will be welcomed by team founders and by users overall, I am sure.

User Experience

It’s on the user experience that this update left me a bit puzzled: I can’t see why the Pearltrees team chose to change the way you navigate within the application since it was already intuitive and it will probably confuse users. The rule “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” should’ve been applied here: as daily user, it has taken me sometime to adapt to the new navigation. One example is drag and drop behavior: you can drag and drop your own pearls anywhere on the screen but you can’t do that with someone else’s pearls. This alone kind of damages the consistency of navigation within Pearltrees, something that didn’t happen in the past and also makes it more difficult to visually arrange the workspace.

On a very personal note I also don’t understand why scrolling the mouse wheel doesn’t zoom in and out – something that just comes naturally when using a mouse.

In a nutshell

Team management improvements on this update of Pearltrees are to me what really matters and that is something that is welcomed and will facilitate the way one manages and oversees pearls that are being curated by a team. But what I would really like to see on a next update – and was expecting on this one – are features that will allow me to use Pearltrees in a way that is more organic. Individual pearl’s privacy is one of those features (like I wrote about on this previous post) but not only: the ability to be able to search my drop zone for content, delete all content on my drop zone – 5 days of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona have left my drop zone totally unmanageable -, select more than one item on my drop zone are features that should be already included on Pearltrees. One of the other features that I would like to see would be to have YouTube video playing on the preview window that could be resized instead of having to click on it only to be met with a zoomed in version that looks bad, especially on a 19” monitor like I have on my laptop.

The improvements on navigation, in my opinion, have brought no added value. Don’t get me wrong: I love Pearltrees and I think that it is a really well developed web application but I would like to see it evolving on a direction that would allow me to use it in more creative and productive ways.

Image:”Pearl”   Some rights reserved by amboo who?

Mobile Development Platform Wars Hackathon

Last night a group of coders gathered at La Salle University for “Hackathon – Platform Wars”. Organized by GTUG Barcelona and FastDove, the objective of this hackathon was to develop an application in one day. Android developers were in majority but it was an iOS application that took the prize: “iChurri” (Churri means “babe” in Spanish) got everyone laughing with the concept: an application that allows you to see on a map, within a certain mile radius, the number of women that are single, their “desire age” (whatever that is) and their income. The objective is that by using this app you can find a nice area to move to, in order to stop being single. #Crazy.