We are not the 99%

If people would focus more on themselves rather than things we’d be in a lot better place. People want and desire too many material items which places them in debt to those that they are organizing against. Just because you spent over $100,000 on your education doesn’t mean you are entitled to a well paying job. Learn a trade and actually do something that will be a life long skill, school is great but when times are tough hands on skills are what will get you by.

Go as in AWAY from Gowalla

For those of you that don’t know I have been an avid user of Gowalla (and Foursquare) for well over a year. I first started with checkin apps when I discovered Foursquare, I loved the concept of being able to track where I had gone for my personal benefit but also I enjoyed sharing cool places I went to with others that I socialized with. When I discovered Gowalla I was impressed and felt they took the Foursquare concept to the next level with the addition of pins and really nice looking stamps and badges that you could collect for your Gowalla page. Sure these weren’t real tangible but I still thought it was neat. For a months I would check in on both Gowalla and Foursquare. Then Gowalla came out with what I thought was the killer app they incorporated a way to checkin to both them and other sites at the same time, I no longer had to spend time checking into two applications. Since then I’ve been almost exclusively a Gowalla user (except when I checked on Foursquare to make sure I got checked in).

Unfortunately today my use of Gowalla ends. It appears with the next version of Gowalla 4.0 they have transitioned their business away from the checkin application and decided to become a travel guide. Now when I log into Gowalla and attempt to checkin to where I am the first list of 20 or so places I see are “Recommended places”. Which is Gowalla speak for places that have paid us money to make sure you see them instead of where you actually are. That’s great Gowalla, good for you! You have discovered a business model that has completely alienated they majority of your userbase, the locals. If I wanted to use Gowalla as a travel guide I shouldn’t be forced to use it that way because although I love Disneyland I don’t need to see every Disneyland location near me instead of the places I am actually next to.

Why did you fuck up so bad? Because you didn’t actually try it out with your CORE users before you screwed it all up. Changes like this are something you test out with users that are willing to try out new things, you don’t just change it and tell your users to deal with it. Wait that isn’t exactly what you said. You told the users reading your blog that there has been a “Fabulous response”, I don’t think you are reading the same response I’m reading, because the majority of the responses on your blog have been negative. You have completely alienated the userbase that created the database you now use as your travelguide. More power to you for taking advantage to our two years of patronage to create yourself a business model that will be the end of you.

Bye Gowalla.

Related articles

• Gowalla Updated To Version 4.0 – Removes Features, Adds Force Closes (androidpolice.com)
• Gowalla 4.0, Their Bold Revamp Towards Travel And Stories Goes Live (techcrunch.com)
• Gowalla flips its check-in service to be a social atlas for the world (thenextweb.com)
• Gowalla removes its defining features: Items and Notes (thenextweb.com)

Fight On!

We will always have the USC Trojan song girls to cheer us up.  Terrible loss by the Trojans this weekend, but honestly I didn’t think this team was as good as some of the last couple teams we’ve had.  The defense was very suspect this week.  Here is to bouncing back.  Looking forward to UCLA in a couple weeks, maybe we can continue their winless Pac-10 streak…

Politics / Funny
2010 CA Protection of Marriage Act, someone has decided to take protecting marriage one step further by trying to get a bill on the ballot to ban marriage.  Sure it’s to poke at the Prop 8 people, but honestly, divorce ruins marriage and hurts more children then any gay marriage ever would.

Cool Stuff
Comparisons of Inaugural Addresses, this is a pretty cool diagram of every presidential inauguration speech that compares the words used against all the other presidential inauguration speeches.
Handwriting Tips Penmanship – NYTimes.com, I’ve always been fascinated with handwriting and really liked this article about how the human mind sees it, and the best forms of handwriting to use so people can understand it.  I’m glad the writing I use is already considered the most efficient.
Online Dating Advice: Exactly What To Say In A First Message « OkTrends, for all my single friends out there, looking to score online, this is a must read.  They analyzed a number of 1st messages sent on a dating site and found the words to use or not use to get the most responses back.
Swingvine shows you what’s popular on the web, right now.

Tech / Funny
Penn & Teller, this iPhone application will trick your friends into thinking you have Penn & Teller on your speed dial to help you do magic tricks.

Funny Stuff
Hot Chicks Picking Up Dog Shit, Taking hot chicks with douchebags another direction.  Also don’t forget to check out their sister site, Hot Chicks with Dogs with Boners…  Sadly I’m not kidding.
Probably Bad News: News fails, because journalism isn’t dying fast enough., I’ve been criticized for my writing abilities, but these guys get paid to write…
What Stormtroopers do on Their Day Off | WildAmmo.com, Who hasn’t wondered what they do?

Food Stuff
Food In Real Life, Great site that compares what’s on the box, to what’s in it.

Videos

Amazing San Francisco Blue Angels Flybys!

Maxim Magazines Campus Cuties 2009.

Twitter / Reggie Bush: My prayers go out to all t ….

I’m glad his USC Edumication taught him well…  Oh well they aren’t all smart.  I loved ya at USC Reggie but well you need one of the guys in your entourage or Kim to proofread your Tweets before you send them…

Reggie Bush, effected does not mean what you think it means...

Ok another weekly links rounddup!  Wow 2 weeks in a row, almost as consistent as my nearly weekly posting over at Eat in OC!

So first something local, the guys over at Food Frenzy are asking What’s your favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant around Orange County.  I chimed in about Tom’s Tacos in Stanton.

Game Booster looks like a nice all in one tool to use to get your PC ready for gaming.  If you know me well enough you know I love the new TV show Fringe, someone on the intarwebs has figured out that the symbols they show out to commerical actually stand for letters!  Talking about great TV shows, there was a story this week about Dollhouse being canceled because the 13th episode isn’t going to be aired, but now it’s said there has been no decision has been made, and the reason the 13th won’t be aired is just because it’s not part of the agreement with FOX…  I’m really hoping FOX picks both Dollhouse and Sarah Connor Chronicles, I’ve been enjoying them both.  Back to computer stuff, I’ve been testing out Subsonic, basically it’s an all in one media server/web server, pretty good and appears solid so far.

On to a link about Politics, the Universal Free Church has a petition to ban Mormon marriage, and although I personally wouldn’t want to go that far, their real stance is that they want to people to understand the difference of religious freedom and religious fascism.

On to some sports stuff, spring practice started for USC 2 weeks ago, and I forgot to include this picture…

USC Spring Practice!

Talking about sports my heart goes out to the friends and family of fallen Angel Nick Adenhart who lost his life way too early as a result of an idiot drunk driver.

And lastly, I’ve finally started to try and listen to podcasts on a regular basis, ever since KLSX went off the air I’ve been craving some talk radio.  So far I’ve been listing to TWiT, Maximum PC No BS, and Windows Weekly.  I’m sure I’ll find some more techcentric podcasts to enjoy as well.  Plus I’m a big fan of Leo Leporte.

Oh and last but not least, Google finally adds the ability to ad images inline to emails via Gmail!   YAY now I don’t have to do it the stupid way I was forced to when I send emails to friends!

Sorry no real cool and interesting links this week, more of a tech week for me.

AMP Radio Coming to LA

(February 18, 2009) On Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. Tom Leykis passes the baton from a dozen years as the FM Talk Station, KLSX, to AMP Radio.  Playing “All the Hits,” AMP RADIO will kick off a music-intensive 10,000 songs in a row from artists such as Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, Rihanna, T.I., Kanye West, Usher, Britney, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, and Katy Perry.

FM Talk Radio with Adam Carolla, Frosty/Heidi & Frank, Tom Leykis, Tim Conway, Jr., and John & Jeff will be airing their last shows in the next 48 hours. Jack Silver, KLSX pd, will be leaving the station with the format change.

Anyway enjoy the followup updated video about the DTV transition.

It’s almost done, but we’ve had a couple things requested from the bank that we are getting our loan from, mainly just little things such as a copy of the contract from when we bought our business and new copies of my paystubs, simple things.

New closing date is to be by 01/09/09.

Shitty Cars

Get Out of Fail Free