The Ineptitude of Delta Airline’s Twitterers

July 27, 2010 by admin · View Comments 

Delta Airlines receives regular and mostly deserved thrashings on Twitter. So much so that it looks like the company is taking action by putting a customer service agent to work monitoring the Twittersphere (but only between the hours of 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. EST M-F).

Earlier this afternoon the Delta Blog twitter account announced that they posted a Hawaiian travel guide. Given that I’ve been there a few times and very fond of the place, I decided to check it out.

It was then that I discovered that they mixed up the location of the Shangri La in their post, attributing its location to the Big Island when in fact it’s on Oahu.

The Shangri La house is on Oahu, not the Big Island

So being the good samaritan that I am, I sent a reply tweet to the Delta Blog account to point out the error. To my surprise I received this back shortly thereafter:

It’s almost like a robot replied it happened so quick with such a generic response. After checking back and the blog post didn’t change, I thought perhaps I should let the Delta folks know I wasn’t just making conversation. Here was their response:

A Brick Wall...

Think it made a difference? Nope. As of 9:30 p.m. the site still has the incorrect information.

This is petty, I know. But like my prior experience with Best Buy, it shows that executing a corporate Twitter presence poorly is just as bad as not having one at all.

Rest in Peace Walter Cronkite

July 17, 2009 by admin · View Comments 

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, we’ll also remember the great narrator of the 20th century.

Photo Slideshow: Essex Rotary Car Night!

June 16, 2009 by admin · View Comments 

ralph at the wheel

Tuesday, June 17th was the Essex Rotary Club’s classic car night. Many of our members have some beautifully restored vehicles.  Even better our meeting time is around 6:00 p.m. making for some perfect light!

Click here to see a slideshow of some photos I snapped tonight of Ralph Hermann and Dave Winstead showing off their Model T Fords.

Toy Story 3 Teaser Trailer

May 30, 2009 by admin · View Comments 

Pixar has yet to make a movie I didn’t like. Up looks great, and I’m sure Toy Story 3 will be too when it comes out next June.

Announcing LocalOnlineNews.TV

April 28, 2009 by admin · View Comments 

localonlinenews

Today I am excited to announce the launch of a project that has been in the works for the last few months. It’s called LocalOnlineNews.TV.

The concept is simple: Experienced, professional video journalists report on issues and events that impact local communities. Our reporters will focus on a single community and file reports every day or two on hard news and other events taking place around town.

Each story consists of a 2-3 minute “package” (similar to the evening news), as well as ‘extended content’ with complete, uncut interviews with local officials and newsmakers.

This week we officially kicked off coverage in West Hartford with reporter Anna Stonestreet. She’s filed four reports already with more on the way. Content is posted at http://www.localonlinenews.tv as well as every major video hosting provider. We’re on Facebook and Twitter too.

We’ll be expanding coverage over the next several weeks with additional reporters that you’ll be hearing about soon.

While I work to build a viable business model, the editorial component will be developed by my co-founder, former WTNH reporter/anchor Anna Sava. Anna is an Emmy Award winning television journalist who brings a tremendous amount of expertise to this effort.

The idea for this endeavor came to life earlier this year after my hometown lost three of its four news sources. For many towns in Connecticut these losses are especially troubling because by law important public policy matters (like school and municipal budgets) are voted on in public town hall meetings and/or referendums.

There is a real need (and demand) for timely and objective information on important local issues. The question will be how new forms of local media will fill the gap being vacated by traditional sources.  I believe the time (and technology) is right for professionally produced online video at the “hyperlocal” level.

I look forward to your input as we develop this new business!

My Favorite Holiday 2008 Photos

January 4, 2009 by admin · View Comments 

The holidays are sadly over (at least until next year), but I took some time this weekend to go through my holiday pictures. Here are a few of my favorites:


Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Numi Flowering Tea Time Lapse HD Video

January 1, 2009 by admin · View Comments 

My friend Antonio brought over some Numi flowering tea and we decided to do a time lapse video. You can find the HD version on Facebook.

Music by Tim Stewart. Numi’s official blog can be found here.

Time Lapse of a Snow Storm

December 20, 2008 by admin · View Comments 

Here’s a fun video I shot with my Nikon D300 today:

Some Nikon cameras, like the new Nikon D90, have an interval feature that programs the camera to do some limited time lapse captures. In this case I set it to shoot a photo every fifteen seconds starting about 12:30 p.m. this afternoon (right when the snow was about to start). It collected 730 images (before the battery died) that I later stitched together to make about 12 seconds of video.  The camera limits captures to 999 images, although connecting it directly to a PC or Mac will give more flexibility.

Quicktime is an excellent tool for the stitching operation, it was almost too easy!  Special tip of the hat to the Inside Aperture blog for the inspiration and instructions.  I set the camera to shoot high quality, full res JPEGs and loaded them into Quicktime with the image sequence option.  The file was enormous (2.9 gigs for 12 seconds!) but it gave me a ton of resolution to do that motion zoom on the BBQ.

You can find a better quality version on my Facebook video page.

You can also download the full 720P Quicktime by clicking here.

Full Moon Shots

December 14, 2008 by admin · View Comments 

It was a beautiful (but cold) night here in Connecticut on Friday, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take some long exposure shots under the fullest full moon we’ll have for at least the next eight years (with my Nikon D300 of course). You can find more information on why the moon was so full from the Times Online.

Here are a few of the better shots:


Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Day 3 Photos and Video from #dnc08

August 27, 2008 by admin · View Comments 

No time for commentary (we’re on our way to a few events) but here’s the photo gallery and a video from yesterday:

1 - Hillary takes the stage

And the video update:

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