By B.L. Ochman

Here’s a study in customer service contrasts. Two major sites’ accounts have been hacked lately: Zappos and Facebook. Zappos immediately did right by its customers. Facebook? Not.

Here’s what Zappos did – immediately – for its customers when its database was hacked. It’s called “the right thing.”

And here’s what we all need to learn about passwords to keep our accounts safe.

Over the weekend, 24 million Zappos accounts were hacked and some user data – but not passwords – were compromised. Zappos CEO/founder Tony Hseih immediately emailed customers to say their passwords had been reset as a precaution.

That’s because Zappos, unlike Facebook, is powered by extraordinary customer service and actually gives a hoot about what happens to its customers.

Urging customers to re-set their passwords, Hseih wrote: “We are writing to let you know that there may have been illegal and unauthorized access to some of your customer account information on Zappos.com, including one or more of the following: your name, e-mail address, billing and shipping addresses, phone number, the last four digits of your credit card number (the standard information you find on receipts), and/or your cryptographically scrambled password (but not your actual password).”

Facebook still hasn’t said a word about the 600,000+ user accounts compromised daily and the 45,000 accounts – including mine – that were hacked last week.

In the past few days, Zappos spokespeople were interviewed repeatedly by scores of online and traditional media outlets, and were open about the breach and the steps being taken to prevent it from happening again.

Facebook, meh. You got hacked? Somebody’s using your credit card to make purchases through your Facebook account? Tough petooties. There is no human being you can speak to, and you have to be Sherlock Holmes to find the site’s so-called Security Center. On Twitter, we call that a FAIL.

Experts note that, in and of itself, having a password on one site hacked isn’t too big an issue. You change your password, mitigate the damage, and move forward. The problem is that many – if not most -people use the same password on multiple sites.

What to do to protect yourself from hackers
Robert Siciliano, a McAfee consultant and identity theft expert, told Mashable that he expects whoever hacked Zappos’s site will now sell the data to people who run phishing scams.

To be safe, Siciliano says people who got Hseih’s email should avoid clicking on links that claim to be from either Zappos or their credit card firm over the next few months. Phishing emails and voicemail messages typically ask users to “update” their info, giving hackers access to more potentially damaging data. No legitimate company will ask you for credit card information or passwords via email.

When re-setting your password, Tony Bradley of PC World recommends these safe practices for creating passwords strong enough to resist hacking, but simple enough so you have a prayer of remembering them.

1.No Personal Information. Never use a password that has anything to do with you personally. Even a novice hacker can easily find out your full name, the names of your spouse or children, your pets, or your favorite sports teams.

2.Don’t use real words. Not only should you not use your name or your pet’s name, he says, you shouldn’t use any actual word that can be found in a dictionary. Passwords like that can be easily cracked by password software.

3.Mix Character Types. Passwords are almost always case-sensitive, so use both upper and lower case letters to make it more difficult. To really make it complex, be more creative than just capitalizing the first letter. For example, do “paSswoRd” instead of just “Password”. Better yet, throw in some numbers and special characters to substitute for letters, and do “p@Ssw0Rd”.

4.Create a Passphrase. Some password cracking utilities are also smart enough to use common character substitutions for common words. Cracking “p@ssw0rd” may take longer than cracking “password”, but it will still be relatively trivial to crack because, special characters or not, the password is still “password”.

Instead, he recommends, take your favorite line from a movie, song, or book and convert it to a passphrase. If you like the scene from A Few Good Men when Jack Nicholson is on the stand, take the line “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!” and convert it to “Ywtt?Ychtt!”. It has upper case and lower case letters, as well as special characters. It is not a word appearing in any dictionary, yet it is simple for you to remember.

I know I’ve been guilty of ignoring all of Bradley’s recommendations at one time or another, but you can bet it won’t happen again. How about you?

As for Facebook, I’ve been doing just fine without it. Haven’t missed it one little bit.

I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again. If your customer service sucks, nothing else matters. Are you listening yet Facebook?

By B.L. Ochman

Yesterday, an email from my buddy, Toby Bloomberg, founder of All the Single Girlfriends, alerted me to the fact that my Facebook page had been hacked. As it turns out, I’m one of more than 45,000 Facebook users whose Facebook accounts – and most likely also email accounts – have been hacked.

I’m still cleaning up the mess. Facebook certainly hasn’t helped.

Here’s the video I clicked on:

Has Facebook acknowledged the problem? Have they apologized? Have they offered a fix? No way!

Because, as usual, Facebook really could care less about its users’ privacy.

How it happened.
Here’s what happened and what you need to do to prevent your Facebook account from being hacked.
1- I clicked on a video posted in a trusted friend’s page. He’d been hacked too, but didn’t know it, until I email him with the bad news.
2- That apparently let loose the Trojan Ramnit, which has existed in one form or another since at least April 2010, has now “gone social” and is using Facebook to spread.


3- I immediately changed my Facebook password.
4- Firefox also was compromised because every link I opened re-routed to a blank page, or to Facebook.


5- I uninstalled Firefox, downloaded it and re-installed it. The same thing kept happening.
6- I went to my Facebook security settings and discovered that half a dozen apps, including Zynga’s Cityville, had installed themselves in my account and sent me welcome emails.

7- I deleted all the apps, changed my Facebook password again, added my cellphone and another level of security.
8- New apps proliferated.


9- I dug down many layers in Facebook to find the page where you can tell them your account has been hacked. It suggested that you change not only your Facebook password, but also the password of the email you use to log into Facebook.

When any other site gets hacked, and many do, they have the common decency to send out an email to let you know that you should change your password and they tell you what they’ve done to fix the problem and prevent it from happening again.

How to find Facebook’s security information
Security information is on Facebook, buried about six levels deep. Of Facebook’s billion members, 5 million liked the Security Center page, which I guarantee you won’t find in a casual search. Likegate Hint: you have to Like the page to see the information it contains! (Scroll down for how to keep your account safe.)

Facebook? Silent!
A Facebook rep told ZD Net that the information that was stolen was from out of date accounts. Wrong!

And Facebook claimed that most of the hacks happened in Europe. Thousands happened in the US yesterday – including my account.

How to keep your account safe.
So what should you do to keep your Facebook account safe? Besides deleting the whole damn thing? Here are the steps to take:
1- Change your Facebook password. Make it strong. Include numbers and letters. Don’t use the same password you use in other accounts or in email.
2- Go into your account settings and delete any apps that have installed themselves. Review permissions you have given to apps to be sure you still want them to access your account.
3- Log out of Facebook.
4- Change the password in the email account you use to log in to Facebook.
5- Delete your browser and re-download it.
6- Log back in to Facebook. Keep monitoring your account.
7- Log out of Facebook EVERY time you leave it. There simply is no reason to leave it open, because that apparently leaves you more open to being hacked.
8- Turn on https:// browsing in your Facebook settings
9- Don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know/haven’t met.
10- Don’t click on suspicious links. You’re really not going to win an iPad for clicking on a link.

Consider switching to Google+
At least Google lets you know when they screw up and tells you how to fix it.

Here’s more bad news:
• More than four million Facebook users experience spam daily.
• More than 20% of Facebook newsfeed links currently open viruses
• 600,000 Facebook logins are compromised daily – that’s 7 every second.
Source: Zone Alarm

By B.L. Ochman
These are the first What’s Next Blog’s annual Pissoffy Awards to clueless corporations.

For their callous and clueless behavior in 2011, the honors go to Netflix, Bank of America, GoDaddy and Verizon.

Each company paid the same price for pissing off their customers – a precipitous hit to the bottom line and a huge loss of business.

The lesson learned by each was the same: if you don’t listen to your customers, they will get angry enough to leave you and they won’t come back.

Social media amplified customer dissatisfaction in real-time, while the companies took anywhere from one day to two months to reverse their unpopular policies. In each case, the company said it was changing its mind in response to customer feedback. And in all cases, the reversal — too little, too late — couldn’t undo damage to reputation and sales.

Why Netflix, Bank of America, Verizon and GoDaddy won What’s Next’s first annual Pissoffy Awards
1- Social media spreads news, good and bad, in real-time and allows people to instantly amplify their point of view through their extended networks.

It’s a big hassle to switch banks or phone companies, but people will leave if you refuse to consider their needs and desires. Once they’ve left, customers won’t give companies a second chance. Each of these companies made people mad enough to bother to move.

2- Responding has to happen in real time.
These companies took an entire day, and in one case, three months, to reverse a bad decision that could and would do potentially irreparable damage to the bottom line.

Within two hours, a company has to acknowledge that it is aware of, and looking into an issue. The announcement has to be made in the medium where the issue arises. If that’s on Twitter, a Tweeted response is necessary. And then the company quickly has to explain how and when the issue will be resolved.

3- If your customer service sucks, nothing else matters.
Nobody had warm, fuzzy feelings about any of the Pissoffy Winners. It doesn’t matter what you sell, or how great it is, if you don’t consider and respond to the needs and desires of your customers. If you have an ongoing relationship with your customers, created by listening and working to satisfy their concerns via social media, they may cut you a break when you make a mistake. The key is to respond quickly and openly. Admit mistakes and move forward. Turn a deaf ear, and you’ll pay the price.

A review of Pissoffy winners’ biggest and most avoidable customer service disasters:

July: Netflix announced that it was splitting its DVD and unlimited streaming services into separate plans, doubling its prices, and changing its name to Quikster.

They took back the plan 23 days later, but it was too late. The company lost roughly 1.5 million customers and stock prices dropped precipitously, from $300 a share, to less than $150.

Oct: Bank of America announced a $5 a month fee for US debit card users to use their debit card for purchases. Amidst huge customer outrage, the bank backed down — two months later.

Twitter, Facebook and blogs fueled the fire, and one customer, Molly Katchpole, a 22 year-old woman from Washington, collected more than 300,000 signatures on a petition circulated via Change.org. This led to a grass roots effort calling for “Bank Transfer Day” when tens of thousands moved their accounts to local banks and credit unions. BOA Stock prices are below $5 a share for the first time since 2009.

“We have listened to our customers very closely over the last few weeks and recognize their concern with our proposed debit usage fee,” David Darnell, co-chief operating officer at Bank of America, said in a statement. Doh!

Oct: GoDaddy announced support of controversial Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA). The announcement got picked up on Reddit on Dec. 22, 2011 and went viral.

Within a few days, more than 72,000 customers moved their domains from GoDaddy’s hosting service. Protestors included Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Ashton Kucher, and Cheezburger’s Ben Huh. (as in I Can Has Cheeseburger, FAIL Blog) @benhuh Tweeted “We’ll move our 1,000 domains off @godaddy unless you drop support of SOPA. We love you guys but #SOPA-is-cancer to the Free Web.”

Dec: Verizon. A leaked internal Verizon memo announced that, beginning Jan 15, 2012, Verizon would follow in Sprint’s footsteps and charge customers $2 “single payment fee” if they opted to pay their wireless bill online or over the phone. The only way to avoid the fee would be to pay by electronic check or sign up for AutoPay to take the money directly from your bank account or credit card.

Within hours, 95,000 people had signed an online petition protesting the charge. The reversal, just one day after announcing the fee, also came after the industry regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, told The New York Times it would investigate the matter “on behalf of American consumers.”

Verizon reversed the announcement, saying “The company made the decision in response to customer feedback about the plan, which was designed to improve the efficiency of those transactions.”

Perhaps they should get a prize for fastest reversal of the year.

“The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
And the first one now will later be last
Cause the times they are a changin’”
Bob Dylan

By B.L. Ochman

Newt Gingrich was punked today by the political action group The American Bridge 21st Century, which bought NewtGingrich.com, and is selling it for $1 million or the highest bid.

The URL re-directs to negative articles about the GOP frontrunner, and to Tiffany’s, where he ran up a $50,000 tab, and to Greek Cruise Lines, among others.

And I just bought Newt-Gingrich-Lies.com and Newt-Gingrich-Cheats.com – both of which I’d be happy to sell for a minimum bid of a mere $150K each.

We are 30 years into the Internet Age, and it is mind-boggling that none of the geniuses surrounding the candidate for President of the United States had the smarts to reserve every negative URL anyone could possible think of about Newt. No-Newts.com is available too, if you want to buy it.

There seriously is no excuse for this level of ignorance. But hey, this is a fun game. Do Join in!

By B.L. Ochman
Tools for listening to social media range from free to tens of thousands of dollars, but more expensive isn’t always best.

Here are some tools that do a really good job of helping brands track, respond, and build relationships. These tools will help you learn who’s talking about your industry, your competitors, and your brand, and what they’re saying. They range from free to reasonably priced.

The bottom line is that no one tool that I’ve investigated (and I’ve tried several dozen) can do the whole job. Combining a few of these is the best way to go.

• SamePoint is a somewhat geeky but remarkably thorough conversation search engine that tracks – in real time and historically – and categorizes social media mentions, discussion points, bookmarks, wikis, networks, groups, microblogs, reviews, podcasts, documents, video, images, news and websites. Accounts range from free to $1,000 per month.

• Spiral16 is a paid service with a human-guided data-validation process and 3D visual mapping, which allows clients to get comprehensive data in a visual format. Spiral16 picks up data from social media, reference sites, directories, and non-traditional trade publications. Pricing starts at $500.

• PageLever “If you think Facebook Insights leaves something to be desired, you’re not alone,” says PageLever.” If you’re responsible for managing a Facebook page, PageLever puts Facebook’s own weak analytics on steroids. The demo video (http://pagelever.com/tour) will show you how it works. Prices range from $34 to $250 a month.

• SproutSocial creates a dashboard for monitoring social media relationships across Twitter, Facebook (fan and personal pages) and LinkedIn. You can search, monitor and cross-post to networks, schedule messages to be posted, as well as track links and referrals. Prices range from $39 a month for up to 20 profiles, up to $899 a month for the enterprise version and unlimited profiles.

• Vitrue is a social media content management system for brand pages in Twitter and Facebook. You can create and schedule messages for Twitter and Facebook, and you can use Vitrue Apps to create custom videos, photo slideshows, polls, surveys, coupons and other marketing tools for Facebook. Month-to-month licenses in three price plans begin at $300 a month.
Besides letting you upload videos to multiple sites simultaneously, TubeMogul, TubeMogul has recently developed a rich set of metrics that let you see stats on how many people have watched your videos across various networks.

In real-time, you’ll get a dashboard showing views, audience geography, time spent, embeds, referring sites, search terms and lots more. And it’s free.

A sampling of CRM Database Management Tools
Once you’ve got a picture of who’s talking about your brand, you can engage with them with using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database tools tools including:

• Assistly lets you create a desktop dashboard of all your customer service conversations. You can collect, prioritize and respond to them all in one well-designed, easy-to-use space. Every employee can use Assistly to provide customer response by phone, email, Twitter, or chat. You can try it free.

• Batchbook neatly combines Facebook, Google, and your contact database. It lets you view blog posts, photos, tweets, and more alongside your customer contact history. Prices range from $14.95 to $149 per month.

• If you use Google Gmail, Rapportive will show the contact information for the person whose email you’re reading, just to the right of your inbox. Instead of ads in the right column, you’ll also see links and details from LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and numerous other social sites that the writer uses.

The bottom line: engaging with your customers in social media channels is simply an updated version of fishing where the fish are.

Cartoon: Hugh Macleod, gapingvoid

By B.L. Ochman

My guess is that this post will resonate with anyone whose creative work has ever been under-valued by a client. And I believe that’s just about all of us.

Like anyone who covers technology and Internet trends, I’ve received some pitches from hell. The other day, I got what is perhaps the most delusional pitch ever.

It said, in part, “in 2008 application [sic] had 40,000,000 visits in two months – until 2011 it had 70,000,000 visits in total (application is available only for 2 months each year) – application had 5,380,272 visits in one day (24.12.2008) – application made $73,000 in two months – it took two and a half weeks to produce, plus four hours of refactoring – development costs = $0 – advertisement costs = $0.”

“There is no such thing as “development costs = $0, advertising costs =$0,” I responded.

Consider:
Time is money.
The pitch I got said: “it took two and a half weeks to produce, plus four hours of refactoring” Even at breakneck speed, two and a half weeks of a developer’s time is money.

I don’t care if the developer was trying to come up with the idea or it hit him in the shower. He or she still devoted time to it.

I don’t know about you, but I get ideas for writing, solutions to problems, and new approaches I’d like to try at work even when I’m not working. Something someone says spurs an idea; I suddenly realize the solution to a problem I wasn’t consciously thinking about while I’m walking in the park: I thumb through email, or visit social media sites to catch up on news while I’m watching TV or sitting on a bus.

If you are self-employed and you think your time is worth nothing, I can only pity your lack of understanding of basic economics.

Unless you occupy your parents’ or a generous friend’s couch, you will have to pay for rent, phone, electricity, an Internet connection, food, taxes on the zillions of dollars you’ve made with your $0 cost app, and, we’d hope, medical insurance. If you’re not paying those bills, somebody is, and that still doesn’t make the cost $0.

Employers seem to think that work developed in-house has no cost. But that simply isn’t true. If you’ve hired someone with no education, and no track record, it is unlikely that you have a particularly valuable employee. And, if you pay them, provide health insurance, vacation, and a computer, you DO have expenses.

The Picasso Principle: Creativity costs money.
This story, which has come to be known as The Picasso Principle sums it up:

A woman asked Picasso to sketch something on a piece of paper. He does, and says, “That will cost you $10,000.” Astounded, she said “You took just five minutes to do the sketch,” she said. Isn’t $10,000 a lot for five minutes work?
And he responded, “The sketch may have taken me five minutes, but the learning took me 30 years.”

Education costs money
A bachelor’s degree takes most people four years to earn. If we think of a work week as 40 hours, that’s an investment of 50 x 40 x 4 = 8,000 hours. Knock off 30% for vacations, that’s 5,600 hours. And that just brings you to the point where you can begin putting in the time to become a master at what you do.

Hosting and Servers cost money: and expenses can run into thousands of dollars for a wildly successful viral campaign.

The pitcher noted “The first problem popped out in one week. Server couldn’t manage the burden, PHP code and database were overloaded.” And then, doh, they had to pay for bigger servers.

There is no such thing as an overnight success
In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the “10,000 hours” concept. Numerous studies have shown that in order to become an expert at something, you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice (i.e., practice in which someone or something is critiquing your work and giving you feedback to improve).

The number comes from a 1993 study of elite violinists by Dr. Anders Ericsson, in which Ericsson found that by the time the top musicians were 20 years old, they’d practiced a lifetime total of about 10,000 hours.

Gladwell says that Bill Gates, for example, had access to state-of-the-art computer labs early in life, allowing him to get his 10,000 hours of computer education. As a result, by time he got to college, he had reached a point in his education that his contemporaries couldn’t reach for another 10 years.

Of course there are exceptions, but, as Psychology Today pointed out “The 10,000 hours is your ticket to being able to compete, and after that expertise is accumulated, luck and circumstance play a part.”

PETA has some serious, and useful messages, but for some weird reason they once again seem hellbent on ruining Santa’s night.

As if Christmas isn’t going to be stressful enough for most people this year, PETA suggests that you leave soy milk and vegan carob chip cookies for Santa.

“You won’t be doing Santa any favors by leaving him a glass of milk on Christmas Eve,” PETA insists. “Cow’s milk is meant for calves. It’s designed for them to grow four stomachs and weigh 300 pounds within a year.”

That won’t be as hard to explain to your kids as PETA’s earlier claim that milk would make Santa impotent. “Hey, kids!” the site said, (you really can’t make this stuff up!) “Is the milk that you’re leaving out for Santa sending his “North Pole” south? It could be that “Jolly Old Saint Nick” can’t get his jollies because milk is bringing him down.”

So maybe this year, lace Santa’s soy milk with a little Viagra. Thanks for the tip PETA!

By B.L. Ochman

Even more disturbing about Occupy Wall Street than the police’s wanton use of pepper spray against peaceful demonstrators, is the arrest, detainment, and in some cases, physical harm to journalists covering the protests.

The eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park took place in a media blackout, with credentialed journalists penned in “free speech areas” or arrested for embedding with protesters.

From Gothamist’s coverage of the 1a.m. Zuccotti Park eviction:
“During our coverage of the eviction of the Occupy Wall Street protesters early this morning, a NPR reporter, a New York Times reporter, and a city council member were arrested. Airspace in Lower Manhattan was closed to CBS and NBC news choppers by the NYPD, a New York Post reporter was allegedly put in a “choke hold” by the police, a NBC reporter’s press pass was confiscated and a large group of reporters and protesters were hit with pepper spray. According to the eviction notice, the park was merely “cleaned and restored for its intended use.” If this is the case, why were so few people permitted to view it?

Complacency is dangerous
I’m worried and disturbed at how little these arrests seem to bother most people I’ve spoken to, particularly in an election year. Our free press is what separates us from a police state and those who don’t care will surely pay a price down the line.

Thanks to technology, the whole world learned of the arrests in real time, via social media. Police Commissioner Kelly, who initially defended the arrests, was forced to recant a week later in the face of protests and demands by a coalition of news organizations

At first, Kelly said of credentialed journalists who were arrested, “I think there was confusion on their part as to just what they are allowed to do. They are private citizens, they were technically trespassers.”

At his press conference about the raid on Tuesday morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said journalists were barred from covering the raid “to protect members of the press,” and “to prevent a situation from getting worse.”

Kelly forced to apologize, Bloomberg defends strong arming of media
Less than a week later, The New York Times reported “Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has issued an internal message ordering officers in New York City not to interfere unreasonably with journalists’ access during news media coverage and warning that those who do will be subject to disciplinary action.” The message was read aloud at every police precinct in the city.

Bloomberg, alas, still defends the press blackout. I’ve lost all respect for the Mayor as a result. Sadly, just a couple of years ago, I hoped he’d make a serious bid for the presidency.

Arrests are symptoms of sea change
“These arrests are a symptom of a larger debate about how we understand the First Amendment in a digital age, as the institutions that traditionally embodied those freedoms shift and change,” Josh Stearns of media-reform group Free Press writes on his blog. “As more and more of our speech moves online and over mobile networks, and as our press is distributed across vast human and technological networks, we need to contend with new kinds of First Amendment issues.”

Occupy Wall St, begun as a gathering of anarchists and hippies, quickly spawned nationwide demonstrations, and gained the support of unions and mainstream liberal groups. Indeed, as protesters pointed out repeatedly, “the whole world is watching” in real-time on computers and mobile devices. They’re not relying on mainstream media for coverage, they’re following it in social media, including Storify, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.

“Technology has given us a communications toolkit,” he writes, “that allows anyone to become a journalist at little cost… Nothing like this has ever been remotely possible before,” wrote journalist Dan Gillmor in his 2005 book, “We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People”

Citizen Journalists and Buggy Whips
Increasingly over the past dozen years, anyone with a computer, camera, cellphone or tape recorder can report on news, in real-time. This access to audiences has had the same impact on the business model of mainstream media, politics and law enforcement as Henry Ford’s automobile had on the buggy whip industry. Both events proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that old ways of doing things were outmoded and those who couldn’t adapt would die.

Associated Press admonished its reporters for scooping the wire by posting to Twitter in real-time about their arrests. But, as Matthew Ingram pointed out in Gigaom blog, “If Twitter is beating your news wire, you have bigger problems.”

That argument, he writes, is a lot like newspapers which used to publish in print before publishing on their websites out of fear that nobody would need to buy the paper if they read the news first online. That’s a lose-lose approach if ever there was one!

Pepper Spraying Cop becomes a sick joke meme
Mainstream media increasingly finds itself reporting on news generated online, as in the case of the anonymous Tumblr blog “Pepper Spraying Cop” that sprang up and promptly went viral in response to Lt. John Pike’s horrifying pepper spraying of UC Davis students who were passively sitting on the ground, linking arms, to protest tuition hikes.

The paunchy security guard sprayed the students as casually as he might have sprayed cockroaches with poison, and citizen journalists recorded him in photos, videos, and then in a meme, mocking his merciless act by showing him pepper spraying his way through great art and everyday situations.

Regardless of what you may think of the politics involved, it’s hard to deny that the Occupy Wall Street movement has changed the national conversation and forced mainstream media to move coverage from mocking the protests to covering them on page one and embedding their reporters in the protests.

Bill of Rights
Freedom of Speech, Press, Religion and Petition
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Journalists and observers have been embedded in controversial situations, events, and wars since Biblical times. This is no time to stop that tradition. This is the time to track the news in real time, all the time.

Cartoon: Hugh Macleod, gapingvoid

Ok, so I’m an Apple fan girl. I have a MacBook Pro, iPad, and a nano watch.

I held out as long as I could, but, well, I had to have Siri. And the new 2-way camera, with a flash, (at last!) and iMessage, and all the rest of the newly added goodies. Apple has made buying the new iPhone a royal pain. Because they can, I guess. Because they don’t care what customers think, I gather.

The Apple site says you can go to a store to buy the iPhone 4S. So, I went to the Apple Store in SoHo yesterday and was told by a sweet young Apple employee that, actually, you can’t just walk in an buy the 4S. You have to reserve it, online, the night before.

I defy you to find that information on the Apple page about the iPhone 4S.

I called the support number and learned that every night, at exactly 9 p.m., you can go online, pick a store, and see what they’ll have available the next day, and – if the model you want is available – then go to the store the next day to pick it up.

Is that written anywhere on the iPhone 4S promo page? Nope-er-do.

I wasted hours going to the Apple store on Saturday. Left feeling like I hadn’t made the team.

At 9 p.m. the phone I wanted was available at the 5th Avenue store. I reserved it, and made an appointment to pick it up between 3 and 4 p.m.the next day.

At the store, there was a huge line, which I waited in for 45 minutes until I finally got to spend my several hundred dollars and take my phone home.

The bottom line: Apple took the fun out of getting the latest phone, wasted many precious hours of my weekend, and ended up making me not at all glad to part with my hard-earned cash.

You know what Apple: I don’t care who you are, if your customer service sucks, nothing else matters.

And this way of selling the new iPhone just doesn’t cut it. Even Apple will feel a bite if you keep acting like customers aren’t the real reason you have to come to work. FAIL.

But yeah, Siri is great.