Communiqué

Hard Times

Better MP3 Streaming

musedot 0.5.1

So I finally got the latest point release online a few minutes ago.  This includes the new media player, which was already operational on the main site search but had to be integrated into the miniaturized version of the search engine for the facebook app, the facebook app artist profiles, and the version of the profile that you see when someone sends you a link to an artist.  I also added the events tracking features to the main site search results, which were previously available only in the fb app, and made a few UI tweaks.  The rss events tracker is something I use every day.  Get with it!

Watching Hot Snakes homemade performance videos on the new media player reminded me of being enraptured by videos on Night Flight, or MTV back when it first started and was bleeding edge revolutionary.  That is a cool feeling my friends.  The media player is still quirky, and many of the audio files are duds, but when everything is right it’s beautiful and a critical piece of a better musedot experience.  Stay tuned for a full re-design of the fb app, with particular focus on the UI, and which will include true multi-media (I said the media player will be important) playlists with invidual songs that you can organize and share.  It will be rad.

Enjoy!

F*ck B of A

…Bank of America that is. I want to organize a boycott or just smash the windows at their corporate headquarters. I will do neither, but I’ve already envisioned my revenge, other than hassling happless customer service agents (see below). Hopefully, I will manage to raise at least six figures in investor money, and once that’s all sitting nice and pretty in the accounts, I’ll switch banks as unceremoniously and noisily as possible. I’ve had these accounts at BofA for years… years, but this incident is the last straw.

The situation is that when returning from vietnam on friday I was able to get cash from the ATM as normal, but sometime after that, presumably on saturday, my card was blocked by bofa. This has happened before (I should have left then), and requires I call them to sort things out. Not exactly convenient since I’m in Tokyo at the moment, compounded by the fact that their call center is closed on sundays. So I wait until 7am ET monday morning to call and guess what? No one is there. I have to wade through all the voice menu bullshit and then guess what, it says the call center is closed and will open at 7am ET. I feel like I’m in the twilight zone or something. The clock says it’s past 7am ET but apparently not at the bofa call center! I call multiple times, using up all my calling card minutes, which I can’t refill because my ATM card doesn’t work. The kicker is there is absolutely no other way to contact the company. The have an “email customer service” option in the online banking thing, but I try that to find it is still broken. “Still” meaning since May or something when I tried to use it before and it was broken, and which I told them about. This is how much they value their customers.

Anyway, the only means I have of contacting them is via a little customer service chat app they have, and which only handles personal accounts (why the fuck is it displayed in business accounts then?). I set about harassing the “online business professionals” at first hoping to get some actual assistance, but then later simply to waste their time and cost BofA money like they’re wasting, and not letting me have access to, mine. The moral of the story is banks suck, fuck BofA in particular, and never do business with them if you can avoid it. The following is a transcript of actual chat sessions I had with BofA “online banking professionals”:

Welcome to an online chat session at Bank of America. Please hold while we connect you to the next available Bank of America Online Banking Specialist. Your chat may be monitored and recorded for quality purposes. Your current wait time is approximately 0 minutes. You are currently 1 in queue. Thank you for your patience.

Chat InformationThank you for choosing Bank of America. You are now being connected to a Bank of America Online Banking Specialist.

Grace: Hello! Thank you for being a valued Bank of America customer! My name is Grace. How may I assist you with today?
You: i don’t feel like a valued customer. when is your call center actually going to open?
You: i’ve been calling since 7am et
You: when it was supposed to open and no one is picking up
Grace: I am sorry to hear you have had a negative experience.
You: i have no other way to contact your stupid company. the email feature in online banking has been broken since like may
You: which makes me doubt your sincerity
You: although i know you’re not personally at fault
You: this is beyond negative grace. it’s absolutely infuriating
Grace: I’m sorry to hear that. May I ask you to describe the situation so that I may better assist you?
You: i’m going to bad mouth your bank everywhere i can, with everyone i meet
You: on my blogs, street corners, every where
You: you guys are the worst
You: at least i hope you’re the worst. although i suspect you’re really all the same
You: how come someone can’t find out why no one is answering the phone at the call center?
You: are you on different planets?
You: i understand different depts and all that.
You: maybe the call center is in india and you’re in indiana
You: you tell me grace
Grace: I completely understand your concerns.
Grace: To begin with, may I please have your complete name as it appears on your statement?
You: i doubt that. grace, this is a business account. i’ve chatted with three over your co-workers already. i’m just doing this out of frustration at this point since i have no other way to contact your infernal company
You: you guys are the worst
Grace: I completely understand your frustation.
Grace: While we make every effort to assist our customers who contact us by Live Chat, there are certain situations, which require a conversation with a specialized department.
You: ah, here come the canned responses
You: keep ‘em coming grace.
You: actually you might be a bot
You: i just want to waste your companies time like you’ve wasted mine
You: it should cost you something to totally screw over your customers
Last text message receivedGrace: I sincerely apologize. I am unable to assist you with the business accounts as my scope is limited to personal accounts.
You: i’m going to put the transcript of this “conversation” on my blog
You: another canned response
You: how about saying something original, like my job sucks?
You: i know it does
You: so at least i have that going for me
You: i don’t have a job like yours. now, if your stupid bank would just let me have access to my own money things would be okay
You: btw. my problem is that your stupid bank blocked my atm card on friday, presumably because i used it in vietnam and tokyo in a short period of time (you’ve done that type of thing before). no attempt was made to contact me via email and obviously i can’t contact anyone “there” (your probably a contract employee in bangladesh) to get it resolved
You: and i have no cash. and i’m in japan. and i’ve spent all my calling card minutes, and now regular international calling fees dialing your “customer service” center
You: which is supposed to open at 7am et according to your website and the stupid canned message i receive everytime i call. it’s 8:23am et and there’s no one answering the phone
You: what the fuck are they doing? reading the paper?
You: i hate you guys
You: i’m just waiting for your canned response now. it will be informative for my blog readers
You: i’m going to start a campaign against your company
You: riots in the streets. the whole nine yards
You: hello?
You: class action law suits. my dad is a high-powered lawyer*, btw
You: hmmm. i’m guess it’s time to launch another session and waste the time of another of your co-workers…

* my dad is definitely not a high-powered lawyer

Chat InformationThank you for choosing Bank of America. You are now being connected to a Bank of America Online Banking Specialist.
Antoinette: Hello! Thank you for being a valued Bank of America customer! My name is Antoinette. I will be delighted to assist you with your personal accounts today!
You: is your name really antoinette? what a strange name.
Antoinette: Yes. my name is Antoinette.
You: okay. well my problem is one that you can’t help me with, but i’m exacting my revenge on your infernal company by taking up the time of highly paid online banking professionals like yourself. sorry
Antoinette: Not a problem. As a customer myself I can understand your frustration.
Antoinette: To begin with, may I have your full name, please?
You: this is much more amusing then calling your call center which is not open even though you guys say it’s supposed to open at 7am et
You: it’s a business account. you can’t help
You: i’m just using up your time. seriously
Antoinette: Yes. I understand that.
You: you guys have to pay
Antoinette: And I do apologize for that.
You: my name is frank e. banks
You: you can tell the ceo my name too
You: i’m sure you guys are on a first name basis
You: the account is for lab nine inc.
Antoinette: I certainly understand your concern, Frank.
Antoinette: Please understand that your account security is of extreme importance to us. You being a valued customer, I have limited access to your accounts for security reasons.
You: remember that when i switch it with a huge amount of cash in it
You: i know you do
You: it’s not your fault
You: but it’s not mine either and i’m being punished
You: life’s not fair
Antoinette: I certainly understand that, Frank.
Antoinette: I have a best alternative for you. To get quick assistance with your business accounts, if you like I can get the contact phone number of our trained specialist.
You: where are you physically located? i mean like city, state
You: okay. tell me the phone number that i already know and have called many times todaya
Antoinette: I am a Bank of America associate located in India.
You: aha! i thought so
You: wow you guys really can’t do anything
You: my advice to you is get a new job
You: so you don’t have to deal with customers like me. what you’re seeing is a direct result of company policy, it’s not an accident. it’s happened before
Antoinette: I understand that, Frank. I would be glad to help you with the specialist’s number who will be able to help you in this matter.
You: go ahead, let me have that number that i already know…
Antoinette: I sincerely regret that you have found our support unsatisfactory.
Antoinette: However, we strive for your satisfaction which our utmost priority, Frank.
You: just give me the number will ya
Antoinette: Sure.
Antoinette: I would request you to contact us at 1.888.287.4637 and a Small Business associate will be able to assist you. We are available from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday, Local Time.
You: that’s the number i’ve been calling since 7am et. but thanks anyway antoinette! and get a new english name, that one’s bad.
You: just got the same message again. is it a holiday over there? everyone hungover from the olympics? i don’t get it
You: i hate you guys
Antoinette: I apologize for the inconvenience, Frank. I assure you that it is not Bank of America’s normal way of doing business. I would be glad to help you; however, even I am helpless in this matter as I do not access to your accounts due to security of your account.
Antoinette: I would really appreciate your understanding and support in this matter.
Antoinette: We appreciate your business and thank you for choosing Bank of America and our Text Chat service. I hope you have a wonderful day!
Last text message receivedChat InformationThank you for chatting with us. We value your feedback and would like to invite you to take a moment to complete a survey and tell us how we did today. The survey takes only a few moments to complete and will be presented to you upon closing this window.

audit in progress...

The title of this post is a reference to a Hot Snakes album (one of my favorite albums by one of my favorite artists), and that’s what popped into my head when thinking about the still work-in-progress musedot media player. As you can see, I’ve added artist pictures to the search results on the main musedot.com site, and more importantly, a new media player that handles both audio and video. We’re using a couple different sources for the audio and video, including youtube as before, and I’m not at all happy with the quality of the audio results, but of course we’re working on it and it will improve.

I wanted to finish integrating the media player and artist pics into the mini version of the search engine used in the fb app, the artist profile pages in the fb app and elsewhere, by today but ran out of gas. I feel like an olympic marathoner after running the marathon. Just can’t do it. However, it will definitely get done soon after a brief break from all day/every day coding. This is a significant enough set of new features that I’ll be calling it musedot 0.5.1.

Special thanks to Daniel and Sofia for helping me debug the media player.

Life Integration In Progress

I just posted a set of new features for the musedot facebook app that are near and dear to me.  Basically the features allow you to track live events for artists you care about.  This is a great thing if you, like me, love to see live music.  For me personally the coolest and most useful new feature in this set is the artist RSS events feed.  Now I can use my trusty google reader to track live shows!

The impetus for these features was missing the deerhoof show in tokyo a couple weeks back, simply because I didn’t know about it.  That made me very sad, and it got me thinking about how we can use good ol’ web technology to make sure that type of thing never happens again.

These event tracking features are a good example of what I call Life Integration, or using technology to help you integrate the music into your life beyond the discovery part.  This is going to be a critical area of focus for musedot going forward, so look out for more stuff.

Enjoy!

didn't your mom teach you to share?

...and another thing

I thought that after the release of the alpha version of the core search engine and facebook app I would at least be able to take a short break.  No dice.  It turns out that improving the fb app is an all consuming task.  I released what was almost a full rewrite of the app (which is admittedly still quite simple) this past monday.  Of course, that only provided the impetus for much more good feedback so major features for managing your artist collection, like tag filters and customizable “playlists”, are now priority number one in progress.

I’ll also be adding artist photos, probably next week, as requested by the fb app  “usability advisory council” (you know who you are).

I’m tired….

The Next Level: Musedot 0.5

I am music.

I am rock and roll.

I am a descendant of a long, long line of musicians. That ancestral line stretches back hundreds of years and now, I hope, projects forward into modernity. Sound self-congratulatory enough? I’m in a bit of a self-congratulatory mood, despite my near exhaustion.

It’s out! The alpha version of musedot is now online and I’m actually feeling more relieved than anything. It was a tremendous amount of hard work (thus my long absence from this blog), more than I expected, but the results also exceeded my expectations- at least so far. For example, I just thought of and implemented the video feature last week, and it’s actually useful.

My self-congratulatory statements aside, what musedot is really all about is empowering musicians and fans through this newfangled web 2.0 technology. Empowering all of us to connect in a simple, but powerful, way. I’m hoping that this release is a critical step forward in what will be a very long and ultimately successful journey.

Here goes nothing.

Much Better!