We use ChartBeat on a daily basis, and today our ChartBeat control panel was pretty fun to watch. We launched a website today for The Rumpus Room, a restaurant owned by our client The Bartolotta Restaurant Group (based in Milwaukee, WI), and watched the traffic grow all day using this handy, nerdy tool. ChartBeat is used for monitoring realtime user stats on a daily basis by sites like BoingBoing, Threadless, Starbucks, Groupon, The Onion… and every single hosting client of fathead design.

Check it out for yourself – just click this link and you’ll get a look at the realtime stats for this site, which you just contributed to by reading this post.

It is comforting I suppose, to know that history will repeat itself. We get all these new toys with wild promises every several years and the good versus evil debate is ultimately spawned, with mediocrity, or in layman’s terms, crap, usually winning out. The advent of radio held so many assurances, yet it split between amateur operators and soap opera Americana, television a similar journey, with academia at first holding ground, only to lose to the flickering images of Felix the Cat in the earliest of days…

It all works out in the end, look at television now… or broadcasting for that matter, it follows you through the adventures of your day to day life. News at the airport to lull you awake, queues along the way through informative screens, meaningless tips at the checkout line to mundane entertainment on the box at home. It has adapted.

Apple’s landing has spoon fed us a new means of being plugged in. Touch. We have our audio, our video, our connection to our friends, our family, our business associates, all in the palm of our hand. It is adaptable. We are adapting. With every new product we leap forward without going back. We are stimulated and eager. New apps prod the plan along by the minute. Businesses of all types are utilizing new ways to incorporate these products. It is fluid. It is amazing.

It is also kind of gross. Staying in touch now includes so much, well, touching. Hands all over everything with touch screens within arms reach everywhere. Businesses, to malls, to grocery stores, to airport bathrooms. Ew. The element of touch to the mix not only has the Felix Unger’s of the world a little freaked out, but I think it has really boosted sanitizer sales planet wide. I have a crystal clear memory of one of my first iPad encounters. A client meeting was planned and the little glowing beast was the star. On it proofs were presented and passed around, touched, handled, fondled, retouched and touched again. At meetings end, it was a fingerprinted, smudgy, dirty mess only a crime lab would love. I certainly didn’t want to touch it. At all.

Moral of this little technology unleashing is this… I think we are all on the right path. I think that ultimately all this will jibe even smoother, more elements will be developed, added and easier to use. I am delighted at what the future holds. I just think, no, I know, I just know that for the time being at least, I should buy some stock in Purell, cause, well, ew.

*this of course excludes the flying cars we were promised.

What did I do on my summer vacation? Contemplated the rendering of border-radius in different browsers, of course.

I told her I thought her mother wouldn’t let me go if I tried to bring my computer, because we were going on vacation – and we weren’t going to work on vacation this time (admittedly I’m a bit of a workaholic, to put it mildly). Of course I would bring my iPad*… but only so she and her brother could watch movies during the flight. I promised her I wasn’t going to work, instead I was going to be the Dad I wanted to be for an entire week: playing with my kids on the beach for seven days straight. Totally unwired.

Fast-forward a few days, where she and I were laying on the beach in Mexico – resting for a bit after playing in the ocean. She brings out her DS, and I bring out a book on web design – specifically CSS3 For Web Designers by Dan Cederholm, from the A Book Apart series. My daughter looks at me and says “Dad, why are you reading a work book – you’re on vacation! Read something interesting!

I’ll tell you what I told her – this sort of stuff is interesting to me. Sure, we’d been planning this vacation for six months… but I’d had this book sitting on my desk for about the same amount of time. Of course I’d already read it cover to cover, along with the other three books in the series that have so far been published. Any real web designer worth anything is already waist deep in CSS3 and HTML5, implementing it more and more into every project possible. But the opportunity to read thru the entire series again, uninterrupted by phone calls, IM windows, text messages, site alerts or deadlines, well that was an opportunity upon which I wasn’t going to miss out.

So with the sound of the ocean in the background, and the smell of suntan lotion and salt in the air, I told her this… I honestly love what I do. I’m lucky to have an occupation where I enjoy going to work in the morning, work with co-workers and clients who I truly enjoy spending time with, and constantly get to learn new things.

Yeah, I might not have been “totally unwired”. Sure, I Facebooked pictures of my kids playing in the pool and getting henna tattoos, and I FourSquared my location from the beach whenever I was close to the one wifi spot at the resort… but hey, she played on her DS.

*Confession: I do have Gusto installed on my iPad, just in case I need to edit a site in an emergency. But sssh… don’t tell my kids.

…

Hi Gregg

Thanks for the suggestion of checking out Micro Center.  I bought my iPad on Saturday.  Love it!  Now I have to figure out why?

Paul

…

I figured I better put together a list of apps I use on a semi-regular basis, based on actual functionality and usability. And best of all… most of the apps I recommend here are FREE.

So let’s get right down to it.

Dropbox
If you don’t have a Dropbox account, then just take your iPad back now for a refund. iPads do not have disc drives or USB ports, so the only way you’re going to be able to transfer files to and from your iPad is either through email or Bluetooth transfer… unless you have a Dropbox account. Think of your Dropbox account as a shared Documents folder (which it is, only based in the cloud) between your desktop computer & your iPad (and your iPhone too, while you’re at it). You want to get a file from your computer to your iPad, simply pop the file into your Dropbox folder, then navigate to that folder on your iPad and *poof* – there you go.*
Cost: FREE.

PlainText
Working in conjunction with Dropbox, PlainText is just what it sounds like – a plain text editor. No bells, no whistles, but all about clean functionality. PlainText keeps all its files in your Dropbox folder, and even allows you to create and organize folders within Dropbox. It’s super lightweight, runs on iPad and iPhone, and has a very well designed and minimalist interface. Recently PlainText has started running small ads inside the app to keep the app free (you can remove them for a $5 donation), but unless you really need to do a ton of document creating & text editing, the ad-supported version is just fine. Besides, if you’re going to pay $5 for an app, just go ahead and spend $10 on Pages.
Cost: FREE

AirVideo
AirVideo allows you to play videos on your iPad that are hosted in your iTunes library… on your Mac or PC. Thats right – you don’t have to download them onto your iPad, you just play them straight off your computer. It’s unbelievably convenient, and I’m pretty shocked that it isn’t standard Apple fare (though that might step on the upcoming iCloud file synchronization). Just install the free server app on your computer, map the iPad app to your computer, and stream videos without having to download or sync. There’s a free version if you want to try it out, but the free version limits the amount of items you can see in your shared folders… and if your iTunes library is anything like mine, you’ll need to see the full file listing that is available with the paid app.
Cost: $2.99

HashAPass
I have recommended HashAPass to every one of my clients for years, even before the iPad and iPhone apps came out (back when they just had their dashboard widget). This app allows you to generate random passwords based on one master password of your choosing. Instead of having to remember a bunch of different passwords, just remember your one master password, and HashAPass will generate random passwords for any website or passcode protected service you need. Keeping your data secure with random passwords is imperative, and HashAPass makes it easy to do so.

Note: this is actually an iPhone app, so it’s minimized on the iPad. Also, the “design” of the UI leaves a lot to be desired – because there is none. This app is as bare bones as they come, but it works perfectly.
Cost: FREE for the Lite version, paid version is $ .99

PS Express
There’s lots of different photo manipulation software out there for the iPad & iPhone, and I’ve purchased my fair share. However, I keep going back to the mobile companion to a software I use every day as a designer – Photoshop. PS Express allows you to color manipulate your photos & then share through your favorite social network. And using PS Express in conjunction with a free photoshop.com account gives you 2gb of space to store photos & videos.
Cost: FREE

Evernote
Evernote turns your iPad into that digital notebook you wanted it to be, and then some. With Evernote you can store notes, images, voice memos, pretty much anything you can capture with your iPad (or your mobile phone and/or computer, for that matter). Keeping items organized in your Evernote library, you can either share those items with others via email (even if they don’t have an Evernote account) or share your Evernote notebook with other Evernote users. There’s a paid monthly version of Evernote, however I use the free version and it works great.
Cost: FREE

Kindle for iPad
The ability to carry around digital copies of your books is a great selling point for any device, most notably the iPad and Kindle. Now don’t get me wrong, the iBooks app works great. But what if you’ve already had a Kindle for a while, or you want a book that’s not available in the iTunes Store? That’s where the Kindle for iPad app comes in. It syncs with your Amazon account to make all your Kindle purchases accessible on your iPad, and also allows you access to the many free books available through through the Kindle store.
Cost: FREE

Interesting side note: recently I wanted to purchase a digital copy of A Project Guide to UX Design by Russ Unger. I went to the iTunes store, and found the book for $27.99 – ouch. I already own the physical book, so I really didn’t want to pay almost thirty bucks for a duplicate book. I then looked on Amazon – and found a copy of the exact same book in Kindle version for $17.59. Out of curiosity, I emailed Russ (a friend of mine) and asked him if it mattered from whom I purchased. He told me it really didn’t matter, but as an author he makes more from a digital book sale due to less overhead.

Flipboard
Recently named iPad App of the Year, Flipboard takes your social media feeds and formats them into a really elegant magazine layout. You can port your Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Instagram and Flickr accounts into Flipboard and digitally flip through these in a great coffee-table book format personalized with your content. You can also choose from hundreds of other free publications (my non-designer / tech nerd ones include The New Yorker, FFFFound and Bon Appetit) to fill out your ever-changing personal Flipboard publication.
Cost: FREE

WordPress
Allows you to administer your WordPress powered website right from your iPad. You can moderate comments, create new posts and pages (or edit existing ones), and even upload images & video. I wouldn’t recommend doing any heavy-lifting of site design through this app, but for day-to-day maintenance of a blog it’s pretty slick.
Cost: FREE

What’s on TV
It would have been easy to put either the Netflix app or Xfinity on this list (I actually use both of these) but I’m trying to go with apps that are free or have no extraneous costs associated and both of those require additional service subscriptions. Instead I’ll recommend the “What’s on TV” app, which I have used for a while on my iPhone. It’s basically an interactive version of TV Guide, which allows you to see what’s on TV based on your service provider. It also allows you to view what movies are playing in theaters close to you, and even view movie trailers. If they brought in the ability to purchase tickets through Fandango that would be perfect, but no reason to – it works great as is.
Cost: FREE

Have you found any free or low cost iPad or iPhone apps you’d recommend to a novice iPad owner? Let me know about them in the comments!

Notes:
* Synching between Pages and Dropbox could certainly be easier, but rumor has it that will come with the next iOS update. Let’s hope so.

I love drawing these maps. I wish I could tell you why they make me so happy – except, I guess, for the same reason any aspect of design makes me happy. It’s informative and attractive at the same time. Google’s maps are definitely informative, and truly elegant in their own way, but they’re also very much Google-branded. When I custom-illustrate a map for a client, the end result is useful and informative, and the design is consistent: consistent with the client’s branding, but also consistent with the document or website that’s presenting the map. It all ties together, and becomes a visually unified whole.

But enough philosophy. Let’s look at some maps. Most of these are from work with fathead, but some are from my own personal stash. That’s how much I geek out about maps, I have my own map-stash.

I was lucky with I Dream of Falafel; we started working with them just as they were getting off the ground, so we got to handle all of their branding and design. Over time, their map has expanded from one, to two, to three locations in downtown Chicago. I can’t tell you how sad I was to crop out that gorgeous Eisenhower Expressway loop when they moved to three locations.

This one for the Chicago Waldorf School blends seamlessly into the rest of their site design.

These two for Epic Burger (which unfortunately aren’t being used on their site anymore) played with negative space and the quirky shapes of their logo:

While the maps for the two locations of Enaz are softer and more delicate, and play off the colors and shapes of their shop’s site background:

We’ve done some fairly sober presentation maps for Omega & Associates:

And some more interesting ones for airport terminal presentations for SSP America:

I was especially pleased with this interactive one for San Diego’s Burger Lounge:

And with the elegant cohesiveness of these ones for the multiple site locations of the Bartolotta Catering Company. These ones link to Google maps, but also include a printable pdf version for prospective clients to download.

It’s not enough that I’m the go-to cartographer here in the office; I actually made this one in my spare time for my older brother, when he was working at a hostel on Mount Desert Island:

And this one for a local Flamenco studio:

And I’m in the process of working on these ones for my neighborhood’s farmers market:

I’m sure some of my cartography-related geekery comes from bookish childhood hours spent poring over maps of Middle Earth and Moominland and the 100 Acre Wood. Now if only I could find someone who’d let me sneak in some vicious sea monsters. Every single one of these maps is missing some sea monsters.

Several years back, when we had more full time employees and were in a different office space we realized that we needed a phone system. A professional, multi-unit, whole mess of buttons phone system. And just like that, our business felt very bussiness-ey. It wasn’t easy, either. We had to research all sorts of systems and at that time, the so called coolest feature was that it could tie in to your computer and do neat things – if you had a PC. We did not. We have always been Mac based. So there. We had to get a server just for the phone system – the phone system that could do neat stuff on a PC, although none of us ever saw any of this on our awesome Macs. We also had to have some clod come out and teach us all how to use the phone. It was, honestly, a pain in the ass. An expensive pain in the ass.

So, here we are today. We have been in our present office a few years, have slimmed down our workforce, and efficiently make use of our time and space. With one exception – those phones. One in the reception area (unused) one in our break/meeting area (rarely used) one on each of our desks (unfortunately used). Half the features are unneeded, the computer options never realized. The rest of the phones previously used rest in a box in a closet. Each is a bulky, buttony, blinking albatross. Blinking because we have long lost the pass codes for several of the phones, so whatever news was left on voicemail, we will never know.

The old, clunky, PC server sits downstairs whirring away, sucking up energy so that we may answer calls from solicitors and call in for sushi. We do have client conference calls (also a real treat to try and configure) and such, but the majority of our contact is done through email or instant messaging.

Phones have always seemed so… permanent. Remember your grandmother’s phone? The one. The only one. The one that weighed 400 pounds, with a rotary dial and a cord so long it could circle the globe, twice. That one. Permanent. So I couldn’t get rid of our phone system. I mean, I paid good money for it. Lots of good money. It worked, it was there, it was installed. It took guys and tools and beer to install it at our new office. It was plugged in to a jack. Permanent.

Then it happened.

I had been worrying over the phone system – because it sucks, see above. It had been suggested that we ditch the whole thing and use cell phones. This, I thought, was ridiculous due to the fact that we could not use our office phone number, and, more importantly, our office is evidently constructed out of some oddball bunker material that creates a cell phone signal vortex flushing any thought of phone usage into the depths of hell. So there’s that. We were all at a stalemate. We knew we would have to just deal with the old phone system for the rest of our lives. One day, I was throwing away all the mail except checks and bills like I always do, when the back of a flyer caught my eye. It was from AT&T and in the corner there was a small ad for an app called Office@Hand. It had a picture of an iPhone! We all have iPhones! And it said, “Get a professional, full-featured business phone system that works with your existing wireless and office phones. Connect all your employees with one system—whether they’re in the office or in the field.”

I can do that! Sure, maybe we won’t be able to get any calls ever with our reception in the office, but golly this thing seemed cool. I went online and found out more info. You can see all your calls ON YOUR MAC! You can record your own greeting. You can assign departments and extensions. You can be in the bathtub and someone can call your office and the call comes straight through – to the bathtub. Seamlessly. It looked awesome. I’ll take it.

And I did. Why yes, we all did have to upgrade to iPhone 4′s to get half decent reception in the office, but hey, they’re cool, right? Even better, we got rid of the phones, well, almost, they are on the air hockey table waiting for some sucker, er, some kickass person to buy them on ebay. I got to cancel my two other office lines, which saves a lot, in fact, I was paying more than the monthly Office@Hand fee. We got to keep our established, well-liked office phone number. Turns out, with Office@Hand, you can have your phone number transferred to their magic cloud, yes, cloud and from there it lives on, catching calls in the air and filtering them like fairy dust to their intended recipient. They even give you a toll free line and a fax line. It is amazing. We are all thrilled, and solicitors do not bother us anymore, now that they have to choose from a menu who to bother.

I do have to say, not having a traditional phone on my desk anymore is weird. The permanence of a phone-phone has switched to something personal. Cell phones are personal. What if someone comes in off the street and asks to use the phone? I don’t want some stranger using my phone, that is like someone asking to wear your sock. Blech. But I wouldn’t go back. I do wonder what to do with that empty phone jack on the wall. It now seems so old timey.

(You can click on any of these images to embiggen them, by the way.)

So let’s throw some imagery in there to break up the text. But here at fathead, we do most of our web designing in Photoshop, and Photoshop’s not a large-blocks-of-text layout program. I know how to do text wrap in InDesign. I know how to do it in Illustrator if I have to. How do you do make text wrap around placed photos in Photoshop? You could make several text boxes, and break up the text, but that makes any future text edits a headache. As it turns out, there’s a slightly more elegant solution.

First, let’s copy all that text from the text-heavy page. Keep that copy in your clipboard. Don’t go losing it by copying any YouTube links your friends are sending you.

Next, hide or delete the old text layer, and drop in the images you want to use.

Now, we’re going to use the Shape tool to draw a rectangle back in for our text box:

And here’s the trick. Using the same Shape tool, select “Subtract from shape area” in your toolbar, and draw subtracted rectangles around your images.

The rest is easy! Select the text tool and click anywhere in your shape area – it will create a text box from the new shape you’ve created. Command-V your text right back in there. You can even edit your new text box shape by dragging the points with the direct selection arrow. You can delete the original shape layer, too, if you feel like it.

Victory! Ok, it’s a little complicated. But isn’t that better than duct-taping a handful of differently sized text boxes together?

As a business owner, the not so distant past meant watching over the flock and tangibly relating to customers. A systematic order of establishing and maintaining customer relationships was established, and with experience, easy to command. Times have changed – maybe not so much changed but progressed. In the last decade or so the tools to use have not only improved, but the language spoken has completely been replaced. As an agency, untangling the social media approach for our fellow small business clientele has been a kicking, screaming, hand holding, break-up, make-up experience. The result is either lukewarm acceptance or complete denial of any existence of social media whatsoever. Three comforting mantras have helped our clients find at least a validation of the social media zen: acknowledgement, practicality and bravery in the new world.

Acknowledgement, or, crossing the bridge… at least getting to the bridge… okay, recognizing that there is a bridge. Social media is here, everywhere and from the immediate eye roll your client doles out upon hearing those two foreign, beguiling words, it is not welcome. To you, it seems like an uphill battle. To them it is simply unfamiliar territory. It is a language spoken by their kids, employees and jackasses. You are the jackass. Accept it. Once you do, you can carry them straight to the bridge. Knowing that social media is not a hand it over, ‘here is how it works kind of thing’, but that it is a ‘work in progress, living breathing thing’ eases much pain. By revealing this to your client and that you too are still learning has just opened a door and welcomed them in to learn the language. Now we’re talking.

Practicality, or, listening to reason. It is all really common sense, but seeing the black and white of it is comforting. When test driving a new car, the wiper versus turn signal placement predicament is usually a fleeting test of humility. When boiled down, so is social media. It is simply different positioning of objects used daily. Conversation, building relationships, sharing, listening, offering, accepting, all social muscles flexed. Opening your clients eyes to the realization that this is simply all it is, is comforting. A facebook page is just sharing with current customers. A twitter account is networking with customers and possible customers.

Bravery, or, do not get bewildered by always changing social media moires and the latest newfangled whathaveyou. Nothing is worse than learning everything for the recital, then having two numbers change right before the show. Terror. Your client has come a long way… a sporadically updated facebook page… a twitter stream dotted with @’s and retweets. You are so proud. Stronger everyday. Then, it happens, changes to facebook, a new Twitter app, or the worst, the dreaded word from your client that makes you realize all your work is about to collapse like a house of cards… the introduction of a new “gizmo”. You know that feeling. Arm your clients with the knowledge that, yes, all these things change, new things are constantly introduced, but, most importantly, we are on this road together. No new gizmo will defeat us, no ‘like’ option will get us down, no fail whale will sink us.

All in all, your client has a lot of smarts – or else they would not be your client. They know they have to face this. They know that results will not be instantaneous, (though they would like them to be). What they do not know is how to proceed on their own. The words Social Media harness schools of thoughts, ideas, methodologies and campaigns that can be overwhelming, confusing and deflating. Let them know you are there to help, to further, to grow, to go down that road with them, and, most importantly that you will be there when needed.

When working on web projects it’s always best to build your projects in a live server environment, but not on a live server or domain. For a small studio, keeping two servers running for projects (one server live, one for development) can get rather costly, and besides… who has time to administer all that hardware? I’m admittedly a nerd, but I don’t want to spend all my time doing IT work – I’d rather design. So how do you set up a development environment that’s reliable, easy to use, and cost effective – and do it all by yourself? I’m about to show you exactly how to do that… and to do it for under $100.00.

Right out of the gate, I’m going to state that I’m a die-hard Mac fan (as most designers are). I’m comfortable working on PC’s and a few flavors of Linux, but when it comes to day-to-day workflow Mac is how I roll. This blogpost is written with other Mac users in mind.

First thing you need for this project – a Mac. Doesn’t necessarily have to be Intel-based, you can use any Mac you have but it’s got to at least be fairly recent. For my server, I decided to use the 1.42 GHz PowerPc G4 Mac Mini with 1 gb ram I have in my conference room… it basically sits in my conference room idle except for making client presentations, so why not get a little more use out of the little guy? At the time of this writing, this Mac is running the most current Mac operating system 10.5.6.

Your Mac needs to be on a dedicated IP address and located outside of your firewall. If you have either a Comcast business class cable modem or an AT&T business class DSL modem, you should have access to the use of five dedicated IP addresses (one will be taken up by your modem, the other four are yours to do with what you want). If you do NOT have a dedicated IP address, you can use a dynamic one – but you will have to use a paid DNS service like DynDNS or EasyDNS. I personally have never used either of these services, I have a static IP from my service provider that I use on my development server.

Next you need to route the DNS for that IP address to a URL (or subdomain of your URL), so your sites are visible to the internet. My suggestion here is to get one dedicated URL that you will use only for development, and point that URL to your dedicated IP address (in this case, say it’s www.mydevelopmentserver.com). Then you can set the DNS records up for that URL with a Wildcard DNS Record (looks like this: *.mydevelopmentserver.com), so you don’t have to adjust DNS records & wait for propagation every time you want to set up a new site. Using wildcard DNS, you can also have an unlimited amount of subdomains at your disposal, which is extremely convenient. You can manage the DNS and purchase the dedicated URL from GoDaddy for $8.00.

You’ll also need to download and install MAMP Pro. MAMP stands for Macintosh, Apache, MySQL and PHP. It also comes with PHPMyAdmin for setting up and administering all your databases and database users. Make sure you download the Users Manual as well, you’ll need it for configuring your server and your sites, as well as setting your permissions.

Using MAMP Pro, you can set up your sites locally using the GUI in about two minutes (if you use Wildcard DNS as I described above, you set up as newsite.mydevelopmentserver.com). Set up your databases and database users using PHPMyAdmin, and then locally install whatever you need to install for the project at hand. MAMP Pro comes with a two week free trial, after which you have to buy a license for $56.00.

Now… if you are only going to be developing from the same office where your server is, you’re pretty much done – you can upload files locally using good old fashioned sneakernet. However, these days who works like that? What if you need to bring in a freelancer, or are working with a team on a project? You need to be able to upload files to your server from anywhere, just like on your production server. Hardcore peeps can use SSH to upload files (which is free), but not everyone is comfortable doing that. In that case, you’ll want to download and install PureFTPd Manager, which puts a very user friendly GUI on a BSD FTP server that runs very nicely on OSX. PureFTPd Manager is free, but donations thru PayPal are encouraged.

And speaking of working remotely, what if you need to set up a brand new project while you are out of the office? You’ll need a way to access the MAMP interface from out of the office – but who in their right mind is going to pay $300 for Apple’s Remote Desktop? Well, luckily there is an alternative – Devon Technologies Desktop Transporter, which does the exact same thing as Remote Desktop – for $29.00. Note that there are other free alternatives for remote access (one I have used with success is Chicken of the VNC, but I prefer Desktop Transporter). Desktop Transporter also comes with a free 30 day trial, so you can test drive before you commit.

Of course, make sure that you keep this server backed up at all times. You’ve spent valuable time building your development environment, and the sites you are working on need to be protected. Use Apple’s Time Machine (it’s free, and built right into the operating system) to back up your server regularly.

So, where are we on the cost front?

• $ 8.00 – Dedicated URL
• $ 56.00 – MAMP Pro
• $ 29.00 – Desktop Transporter

Total Cost: $ 93.00

There you have it – your very own development server for under a hundred bucks!

Over the last week, I’ve been doing my usual amount of “tweeting” during work hours and after – ranging from bouncing design ideas off of others, discussing my favorite hockey team, or just conversing with any number of people I’ve met thru Twitter. In case you’ve been living in a cave for the past year or so, Twitter is a »microblogging« platform – allowing people to communicate with each other in 140 characters or less. CommonCraft does a great way of explaining how Twitter works in this two minute video.

What that video does not tell you is this – Twitter can be a great equalizer. Take what happened to me over the last week, thanks to what I’ve been tweeting.

I was using the web interface supplied by Network Solutions to take care of some technical issues on some of my domains. I ran into what I’ll politely call a few “snags” (see this and this) and tweeted my frustrations. Within a few hours I was not only contacted via Twitter by two Network Solutions representatives, but was also contacted by phone by a senior Account Representative the very next day. The rep on the phone didn’t really understand how my account had been brought to his attention (read: has no earthly idea what Twitter even is), but he knew this – I had an issue with his company’s product, and he was told to fix it (read: shut me the hell up).

While talking about these issues last week, I also was tweeting about NetSol’s competitor, GoDaddy. Surprisingly, I was tweeted back by the GoDaddy representative on Twitter within a few hours. They were interested to hear about my issues with both NetSol and GoDaddy, and were willing to assist in whatever way they could.

Now get this: yesterday (the holiest day of the e-comm world known as CyberMonday), I got an e-mail offer from VMware, offering their software for half-price for the next 24 hours. I followed the link in the email and found that there was an issue with my existing account not letting me log in to purchase. I had been following @vmwarefusion on Twitter for a while, so I tweeted them about the issue and was tweeted back within fifteen minutes. Turns out my issue was not something easily fixed, so they contacted me by e-mail. Needless to say, by the end of the day I had purchased the software I wanted, and was happily tweeting about it.

But here’s the best use of Twitter for customer service that I personally have witnessed, from the nice tweeps over at Rackspace. I have been a client of theirs for about two years now, and have occasionally tweeted about it. This afternoon, I got a phone call from a member of their design crew, who had read some of my tweets about their DNS control panel (flashback to the NetSol issue the week previous). They have a web GUI that I use to administer my servers hosted there, and are about to launch a new web GUI – v6 in the next month or so that they have been beta-testing very quietly. The guy that called me wanted to know specifically what version of the GUI I have been using (both, actually) and what my impressions were of the new design vs. old. I have to say, I was very flattered.

The great thing about Twitter is that like the internet itself, it is constantly evolving. There are some people and brands out there who just don’t seem to get it, no matter how well known and respected they are (or appear to be). I won’t mention them here, I’m not really in the market to make any enemies at this point. I will however mention two whom I do think “get it” when it comes to Twitter – @mleis and @armano. From the writing side, Michael Leis gives us a great 1,000 word explanation of what’s going on in the twitterverse, and from the creative side, David Armano sums it up with a single picture.

Like their homepage says – Join the conversation.