Ticket Master sucks, why are you surprised?

N.J. Congressman seeks probe of Springsteen concert sales by Ticketmaster

Bruce Springsteen, Ticketmaster Ticket Scam

Congressman Wants Ticketmaster Investigated For 'TicketsNow' Website

This is blown out of proportion. A pile of people flooded TM site. The site broke. The site always breaks. Technology will do that with unexpected loads. Ok, fine. Their service sucks and is overpriced – we all agree. This is not news.

But for people to blow up over being directed to TicketsNow is stupid. So if the TM site just broke, and didn’t force people to TN, then they wouldn’t be angry? I believe that TM is doing that as an upsell courtesy for its fan base – nothing more.

The “writers” of these articles and blog posts assume that TM and TN are in cahoots. I’m not so quick to assume that, I find it entirely believable that everyone that bought tickets stuck them up on TN to try and make a quick 3x to 5x. I don’t think those are TN tickets that were somehow bought/transferred/provisioned by TM.

And all the politicians getting around it? Please, that’s show boating. I agree that TM charges way too much. The solution is to connect the producers of the shows with the fans themselves, increasing producers margin, decreasing fan cost. Cut TM out of the loop – the internet and digital distribution is making this all very real and possible. Politicians have better, bigger problems to deal with – pay attention boys.

As for the secondary market – I believe in free markets, and this is supply and demand at its finest. I don’t think it should be regulated, but I do think there should be a “priority” given to true fans that don’t participate in the secondary market. Print my name and SSN on the ticket, and check my ID on the way in – if I’m willing to do that give me the ticket at 1/2 price as a fan. If I don’t want that, I should have to pay full boat to get a “blank” ticket that I can sell to the secondary market. I’m not sure I like the privacy ramifications of this yet, but it is an idea in the right direction. NIN did something similar for their last tour, but I don’t think they checked IDs for those tickets.

Conclusion: TM sucks, always has always will until a competitor eats their lunch; these articles are blown out of proportion and taken out of context; I clearly want to be distracted at the moment...

Voicemail to Text: Callwave, PhoneTag, and You

For about a year I was a mildly happy user of CallWave.  To be honest, their service didn't do a great job of converting my voicemails to text - and it usually messed up the transcription in ways that made me laugh.  So I kept their beta service active on my phone, figuring it would get better.

After about a year, I never saw much improvement in the service.  They did send me a nice email asking if I'd be interested in upgrading.  It seemed that the only plan that would "cover" my needs was around $40/month - eek!  I opted to continue using the free "beta" service, as I saw nothing that led me to believe the actual transcription quality was any better on their premium offering.

Then, about two months ago, they sent me a fairly nasty note saying I had 48 hours to upgrade before they discontinued their beta service.  This didn't rub me the right way: I don't like having a gun held to my head, wasn't pleased with their offering or pricing, and felt that if they were going to put me (a free, leechy user) over a barrel once, they'd probably do it again.  So I started shopping. [To be fair, a day later they ended up extending this period to 2 weeks, but I was already gone by then...]

I came across several, but Simulscribe (now PhoneTag) and SpinVox were the only two that stood out as viable options.  I liked what both services offered and intended on trying them both.

However, after nearly two months with Simulscribe/PhoneTag - I have been very, very happy.  The quality of the transcription is excellent, and the service consistently works well!  I'm going to stick with them - and hopefully convince someone else to try SpinVox at some point in the future so I can compare.

Signup with Simulscribe using this link, and you and I will both get 30-days free.  Yay!

MC Yogi's "Vote For Hope"

A friend of mine forwarded this great video of MC Yogi's "Vote For Hope" - written and performed by MC Yogi and produced by Robin Livingston.

The production quality impressed me, and it's a good tune too!  I actually d/l'd the track from Yogi's site and have it in today's playlist.  :)  Check it out!

Even Google isn't very optimistic today...

I realize the Dow is down Goog, you guys included.  But you really couldn't find one more or less article related to this to report on?

 

Artists + Technology = Hilarity

So a good friend of mine is an excellent artist - with talent (and hair) flowing freely from his ears.  But sadly, when it comes to technology he can be all thumbs.  To be fair, he's actually better than what I would expect from his paintbrush wielding brethren - but if I had a quarter for every time I told him to "Google it," I'd be Larry Brin.

This is the Callwave transcript (which is about as accurate as a Magic 8-Ball) from a voicemail I received from him today.  It makes me laugh, out-loud, every time I read it.

know I'm curious to know if you've ever come across, somebody you know client or whoever that is literally taking their computer and like throwing it out window or just like rush it was a baseball bat, or something like that because, I'm really about to do that and secure snow, if anybody's ever really done that I'm sure you got some stories it's will after one and I'm it's still trying to figure out this Microsoft contact me see outlook, and I'm when I type in the phone number of the client, in is here all the stupid noises from my computer it like he wants to dial the number like the computer wants to dial the number and then it gets locked into this setting that I can't get out of you want to cancel yes so you understand, if you do see that and you sure you want to cancel, yes and it just takes me back it's like the cycle won't let me do it even control alt delete any more like unplug the computer so I'm gonna stop reason long winded, voice mail and just I hope you give me a call back when you get a chance give me some tips.

Fortunately he doesn't know how to use the internets, so I doubts he'll ever find this post.