I’ve been in a strange mood all weekend. Then it hit me. i don’t think i’ve ever had a totally satisfying customer service experience in an emergency until last Friday.

It’s common. Those Iphone  screens crack or shatter with regularlity. As yet another profit center the Apple stores recently started fixing them for $199 on a walk in basis. that means it’s easy, but at that rate you’re almost getting a new phone.

I thought i’d try to avoid a trip to the Promenade and see if i could get it cheaper. I had a similar experience to the NYC blogger. I found kits  for under $30 but the howto video required a suction cup, double sided tape, a heat gun(?) \ and a razor blade, not to mention ordering this kit by mail. Would have quickly been more than  $199 in phone replacement.

There are also tons of  mail off places and i’m sure they ‘re fine, but i wasn’t sending it off  and riskiign it all to save $40 or soemthing.  Last attempt was a local search.

It uncovered  Ifixnow.com. if I’d been ready then he would have had me over.  800 number. Takes appointments, Says repairs take 20 minutes. Took under 20 minutes. Phone returned fixed , cleaned and with one of those peel off protectors that made it feel like a virgin, though obviously still ATT.

 So if it happens to you in LA–particularly on the west side  or near LAX– definitely try out this service reachable online or toll free at 888-998-0777. It’s a one-man show out of a perfectly fine apartment in MarVista

i literally can’t remember ever feeling the urge to write a review like this but it had promise, delivery,  service and professionalism, value, and speed in the comfortable living room –which as advertised let me "Enjoy FREE refreshments and internet while we repair your iPod Touch or iPhone".

He — and i wish i could remember his name — was even conscious even the perception of  privacy making sure i had the Sim card out when i went to take a walk. 90 day guarantee. A nicely designed business card with  20% offer for a friend or next time.

Why can’t the cable, dishwasher, plumbing, gardening, car repair, doctors, vets, and everyone else figure this out. Set clear expectations that are  desireable, live up to them. Charge a fair price that rewards them without leaving the customer feeling like an idiot.

i’m not use to feeling limerant about a customber service thing . ( Actually not so limerant about much in a while but to be expected and make this all the better.)

i see now he takes mail in’s as well. I nixed that idea out of obvious concerns. While i can’t vouch for the man,having known him fewer than 20 minutes, my feeling onthe whole thing was if you can’t easily get it done near you , arrange to send it to him through the site for overnight.

Then join the Facebook group

Top Posts from “Full List of Stuff White People Like”
#96 New Balance Shoes
White People in the News: Education Special
#11 Asian Girls
#1 Coffee
#9 Making you feel bad about not going outside
#4 Assists
#88 Having Gay Friends
#2 Religions that their parents don’t belong to
#81 Graduate School

Of course there is already a Stuff Queer People Like in nascent stages, an offshoot of a blog to watch.

Newsweek has named Towleroad one of its 5 “It” Blogs in the July 9, 2007 issue. The whole package is great, “What You Need To Know Now”.

Wow, great company to be in. Congrats, to all. We learn tons from these guys — especially the cat pics on Cuteoverload – all the time.

If you don’t know these other blog, please check them out. Now. And since Newsweek doesn’t actually link to its It Blogs on the site it has with MSNBC, here are some links. Don’t want you to mess up your wrist.

New York, NY (PRWEB) January 31, 2007 — Towleroad premium gay news for gay men (http://www.towleroad.com) attracted more than 3.5 million unique visitors in 2006, will hit 500,000 unique visitors for January, and served more than 20 million pageviews last year to its site “with homosexual tendencies.” Founder Andy Towle thanked the growing Towleroad community and invited their participation in further growth.

Towleroad grew organically through daily coverage of news, political, cultural and entertainment stories mixed up with photos of attractive guys in the news. Again in 2006 a few of the year’s biggest stories were initially reported by gay bloggers, and went on to on to become major straight-focused media events. Among the highlights, Brokeback, the church and state sex scandals around the election, Lance Bass, Neil Patrick Harris’s graceful landing with David Burtka after stumbling over a publicist and all the other tales of the celebrity closet, the scariest of course being the hostile homophobic set of Grey’s Anatomy.

Earns Place as a Savvy Must Read :

Towleroad is now part of the daily “must read” for groups of DC politicos, NY media types, Hollywood execs, gay gadget lovers, and others looking for, as blogger PopMuse put it, “the gay news you need.” By year end, many groups recognized Towleroad’s unique role:

–Peer bloggers gave the site a sweep of the Gay Bloggies, 2006 including Weblog of the Year
–The gay press included Towle in both the Out 100 and Advocate year-end issues
–Straight-focused news organizations have made Towleroad one of the relatively few daily contributors to Google News and Topix. Pieces are regularly also featured by by Reuters and internationally.

A Great Word-of-mouth Audience for Entertainment Launches

Somewhere between the comprehensive Brokeback Mountain guide and publishing the first review of Dreamgirls anywhere, the entertainment industry began to recognize Towleroad’s growing audience as well suited to word-of-mouth launches and movie openings. The Dreamgirls distributor followed up Towleroad’s review with a significant ad campaign focused on “opening” the movie, targeting Towleroad’s brand aware, media savvy guys who care about and what to know what’s new and what’s opening across the board.

Attractive Demographic. Extraordinary Cross Readership

New numbers from Quantcast.com** put Towleroad in the top 2-3,000 sites globally ranked by on unique visitors and show attractive demographics for marketers across the board. (http://www.quantcast.com/towleroad.com). The site shows higher than average participation in the 25-34 range and significantly higher in the primo advertiser target 18-24 year old males; Presumably, it’s the slightly older respondents that index Towleroad very high for post-graduate education and household incomes greater than $100,000+. The site has significant readership overlap with Wonkette (100-times as likely to read), Daily Kos (70 times), (New Yorker 45 times), as well as rollingstone.com, ew.com, style.com, and pinkisthenewblog.com (300 times as likely).

High Profile Ads

Working with key partners Blogads and FeedBurner among others, Towleroad has recently carried ads from AOL, Discovery Card, Nikon, Best Buy, EMI music, New York Times, RIM Blackberry, Bahamas Tourism, and Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage among others. Good results and the research numbers make significant campaigns more likely.

Partnership to Expand

“I am humbled by the positive response and great feedback Towleroad has received this year and am thrilled to announce a partnership with Michael Goff that will facilitate Towleroad’s growth into new areas. As OUT magazine founder and former general manager of Microsoft’s MSN, Michael has been an editor and an entrepreneur many times over and brings a wealth of experience in both gay media and Internet properties.”

Goff said of the just announced partnership, “I couldn’t feel more privileged to be working with Andy. Andy has single-handedly taken Towleroad to incredible heights, maintaining a quality aesthetic and robust content with frequent surprises. Most importantly he’s kept focused on his readers needs by tapping his past experience as a professional photographer, national magazine editor and published poet. He’s set a high bar for us and we’re taking that seriously as we combine our efforts and reach out to other bloggers, journalists, and business people to collaborate.”

The two have know each other for a number of years, and began collaborating mid-year on new projects while expanding business components of Towleroad and broadening the site’s offerings with the already popular TowleTech and Guide to the Tube regular features.

More on Towleroad founder Andy Towle.

More on entrepreneur Michael Goff.

The two with their small team will launch their first new project in the coming weeks.

**NOTE: Because Towleroad is (proudly) hosted at TypePad, it is reachable at towleroad.typepad.com as well, If using Quantcast.com (or Alexa or others) be sure to combine the two results. On Quantcast, combine numbers from the core site at http://www.quantcast.com/towleroad.com with numbers from http://www.quantcast.com/towleroad.typepad.com

After the guy who re-did the shower and another who hauled away the junk, Craigslist served up the recent-immigrant entrepreneur whose team cleaned and shampooed the rugs. He doesn’t know where that list came from or who this Craig is, but "I don’t waste my money on the other places anymore. I stopped every one." Not a single ad in newspapers, yellow pages, penny savers, or Yahoo Local like he used to. He gets more calls, almost all from the better-off with more computers. And that’s fine by him. As is the cost. He doesn’t think much of the prospects for newspapers going forward. Does a good job too.

And finally, a business-travel lifehack that’s made my life better…Since about a year ago, if I am in a city for more than a few days with work to do, first thing I buy a used CRT monitor off Craigslist. I send off 3-5 emails when i hit town and usually get a quick response. The longest took 5-6 hours. They’re about 1/10th the cost asked by retail rental services, and these monitors are conveniently all over town rather than in a single store. Here’s the rss feed for monitors under $100 in NY.

I acquired one after a late flight, when it was hard to get a cab but a seller responded in minutes. I was back at my hotel, set up, and revising notes for a morning meeting within 20 minutes. There’s always a choice of 17" and 19" models, ranging from "come and get them" to "$35". And I’ve been lucky to find always find them blocks or a quick cab from my where i’m staying. Most laptops support extended desktop mode, so even a 15" doubles your work area. Twice, I got a full size keyboard thrown in when i asked if they had one for sale. (You can also get them new for under $10 in discount stores.). And when i leave….
Then I just abandon them. I just check out. I leave them in the room. **
It feels wrong. I’ve offered a last gasp of life to those beasts that will never be allowed on my desk at home again. Hotels won’t hold them for others because they really are big and ugly. The maids don’t want them, nor could they get a 1000 pound monitor out without some management rule kicking in. I’ve offered them back to sellers saying I’d leave the monitor for pick up at the front desk. But even with assurances that i’m not looking for a refund, they admit they don’t ever want to see the things again.

I even tried to ignite an entrepreneurial flame in one seller, promising i’d rent one every time if he’d deliver and pickup. And i assured him there were clearly others like me. He wasn’t having it. Maybe someone else out there can make that work. Othewise, I’ll keep doing this until they’re gone.
**ASIDE (Tip): I have learned to leave a note taped to the screen so you don’t get off the plane to messages on every number you have from the concierge, proudly assuring you that your precious equipment is safe and will be shipped off and billed to your credit card. I did head that off.

cc attribution license pics. By Flickr members: southernpixel, endlisnis, and akubba

Only a ‘moron’ would buy YouTube
–Mark Cuban (CNET reported)

The Lesson: Mark Cuban has started, supported and owned many wonderful things. There’s a lot to admire and emulate. (No, really. Click that link to Long Tail blog’s list from last year.) I do think particularly highly of his willingness to say things, know full well the obvious linking that will be done, and not care one bit.

The Obvious Wikipedia Link:

Broadcast.com was a web radio company founded as “AudioNet” in 1995 by Mark Cuban…

In April 1999, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in stock and became Yahoo! Broadcast Solutions. Over the next few years Yahoo! split the services previously offered by Broadcast.com into separate services, Yahoo! Launchcast for music and Yahoo! Platinum for video entertainment. Yahoo! Platinum has since been discontinued, its functionality being offered as part of two pay services, AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet and Yahoo! Plus.

As of 2006, neither broadcast.com nor broadcast.yahoo.com are distinct web addresses; both simply redirect to yahoo.com.

Before

Ah, I remember my close call with Match.com and their 72-hour Memorial Day promotion as if it were yesterday. I almost signed up, but at the last minute noticed the small print saying the only way to get out of the “free” trial with the “free” intact would be to send a telegram or “mail or deliver a signed, dated notice” to some Plano, Texas before midnight of the third day (a holiday, of course). Unlikely, even if you could find a telegram.

After

The change came clearly in response to the broad reach and active readership of Gawker’s Consumerist which blogged my little SEO experiment of a post. Labor Day’s promo from Match.com was virtually identical, but for the changes in the small print allowing online cancellations and leaving off any mention of telegrams.

Net loss: A summer romance.
Oh, and a Fall one too. I didn’t sign up. And i should have done this update sooner. Sorry. Others on the way.

(Addendum: Although Google search listings indicate Western Union still sends telegrams, as does a still-posted Staff Report at Straight Dope from 2001, The Western Union site notes, “ffective January 31, 2006, Western Union discontinued all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage.” Not surprisingly, one can send a telegram at ITelegram.com, SendATelegram.com, and SendTelegram.com.)

* * * * * *

LastFM and Pandora have gotten much deserved attention. And, i’ve been pleased to enjoy them…all the while discounting the fact that LastFM seems like too much comittment and Pandora is more complicated than it needs to be for what you get. Playing with Musicovery once, it’s clearly something different. Check it out. You think you know what it does, and then it does something else.

Del.icio.us users are saying…(the French is pretty self explanatory).

• The coolest radio ever

- tcboo

• music discovery tool

  - mikeyspice

• Great music discovery concept. It’s in French though.

  - bjtitus

• Music-choosing tool and player…choose songs by emotional association…same as you would buy grapes…

  - AaronZ

• A flash based web radio. Very slick, very cool

  - duncanponting

• FUCKING AMAZING AND SO MUCH BETTER THAN PANDORA

- iamthepinkylifter

NowPublic‘s come a long way since the first site I saw that they launched at PC Forum 18 months ago. It’s completely different now, with more than 2 million visits/month, and 15,000 reporters posting links, stories, and a ton of video footage. The NowPublic tools for protecting these media assets, managing them, and aggregating it all so others can build real stories is new and different.

I dont’ know of any other news-focused citizen-journalism entity that even comes close to this many participants. And, with the proving of their tools and platform — something of a mix of features found at Digg, Newsvine, a video editing tool, right managment, and things you just haven’t seen–the team is finishing up their first offering for other publishers, their On Demand Reporting system.

But what can you do there?

At NowPublic you can:

• Point people to news and events that are important to you.
• Make the news better by contributing photos, video or audio to any news story.
• Store your footage, share your photos and videos with the world, and protect your intellectual property – all at the same time.
• Get free news footage to use on your blog.