Pugster still contacting me

Since my post called Why won’t Pugster leave me alone?, I have received about 5 more e-mails from Pugster.  I’ve clicked Report Spam on all of them, but they keep sending them to me from new e-mail addresses.

I called Pugster again today and spoke with Cami.  She advised me to create a filter which clears out every e-mail with the word “Pug” in it.  I said, “So, if a friend sends me an e-mail regarding the character Pug from a fantasy series by Raymond E. Feist, I just won’t get it because Pugster keeps spamming me?”

She said to create a filter screening out the word “Pugster.”

“So,” I reply, “if I get an e-mail from someone saying, ‘Did you fix that Pugster spam issue?’ then I won’t get it?  It’s an imperfect solution.”

She promised to contact Pugster and ask them to stop contacting me.  I asked her to have someone call me and let me know what happens afterwards and gave her my phone number.  We’ll see if they stop.  In the meantime, I reported a 6th e-mail address to a spam filter today.

Accessing multiple Gmail accounts from one Gmail account

I read Stan Schroeder’s nice article, 5 Ways To Log Into Several Gmail Accounts At The Same Time, and found another way to achieve these goals.

My method is an improvement on method 2, Master account, from his article.  With this method, you will only need to log in to one Gmail account to access all of your other Gmail accounts, and all of your other POP3 accounts, as well!

I use this system to access multiple Gmail accounts and a POP3 account on my Droid 2, Outlook, and Web access.  I only need to add one Gmail account to Outlook and my Droid 2, so access and retrieval is quick!

As in Stan’s Master account idea, you will have one account in to which you will sign in to access the other e-mails.

1.  From all of your Gmail accounts other than your master account (i.e., not from the one account you will use to access the other accounts), activate POP access.

In your Gmail account, access Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP, and select either one of the Enable POP options.  Decide whether or not to keep e-mail on the server, archive it, or delete it when it’s accessed.

2.  In your master account, access Settings > Accounts and Import, and click Add POP3 email account in the Check mail using POP3 area.

Follow the wizard.  Add the e-mail address of your other Gmail accounts and click Next.
For the Username box, enter your entire Gmail username.
In the POP Server box, enter:  pop.gmail.com.
Specify Port 995.
Select Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail.
Select Label incoming messages as it makes it easier to figure out which e-mails came from which account.
Click Add Account.

You can also configure the account to allow you to send e-mail from the other e-mail address, so that it does not come from your master account address.

The outgoing mail server is smtp.gmail.com, port 587, do not use SSL encryption.

Why won’t Pugster leave me alone?

I signed up for Commission Junction (CJ) about a year ago.  I got tired of the spam, and no money earned, so I called CJ and cancelled my account.  All of the e-mails stopped immediately, except for Pugster’s marketing e-mails.

Pugster is some company that sells jewelry and other items.  I’m not interested in receiving e-mails from Pugster, so I look through the e-mail for an unsubscribe link or unsubscribe directions.  I find no such thing.  Next, I look for a physical address (required by law when sending out advertising e-mails); again, they lack the required information.

They do list some e-mail addresses that we can use to contact them, however, so I forward the e-mail to those e-mail addresses and ask politely for them to remove me from the e-mail list.  I get no reply, except more marketing e-mails.

I go on the Internet and look for a phone number for them; I found 800-555-1212.  They obviously don’t want to receive calls.  I kept searching and found another number, listed as a “voice number,” this goes to a fax machine.

I go to their site and look for contact information, unsubcribe instructions, or a way to cancel my account; although I can find e-mail addresses, I cannot find a phone number.  I continue to send e-mails (first politely asking them to stop, then directly ordering them to stop) to no avail.

Finally, I contact Commission Junction and explain it to them and ask them to have Pugster stop sending me e-mails.  The phone rep I spoke with told me to configure my spam filter to delete incoming Pugster e-mails.  I told her that I need for them to stop sending them.

She then tells me she can contact Commission Junction’s Compliance Department and explain that Pugster is not in compliance.  She said that she cannot guarantee that Pugster will stop.  I asked that if she fails to get them to stop, if she can escalate the matter to a supervisor, and she said that she cannot guarantee that she can escalate the issue to a supervisor.

She said she will contact me back this week to let me know whether or not Pugster chooses to get into compliance or not.  I told her if not, I will seek a legal remedy for this situation.

More Ratings than Views?

I happened to glance at one of iJustine’s videos, which has 2,700 ratings, and 322 views.  Since an account can only rate a video one time, how does a video get more ratings than views?

Twitter Needs to Fix the Spam Problem!

I keep reading articles that Twitter will fix the spam problem and keep spammers from creating and spamming.  On my Twitter just now, I notice someone named @urfengshui5 who mentions me in his Tweet.

To me, it’s painfully obvious just from looking that this tweet comes from a spammer.  To confirm that it’s not just some happy 12-year-old trying to be nice, I view his Twitter stream.

This guy send a lot of luck to a lot of people.  I’m not interested in having people find him when they do a search for @concertreviewer, however, so I decide to Block him.

When will Twitter help protect the users from this behavior?

Photography by Arenas Promotions

You can hire Arenas Promotions (my new band promotion company) to take pictures and video of your band.

For pictures, I use a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens mounded on a Canon Digital Rebel XTi camera.

The EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens is terrific for low-light photography.  The number f/1.4 means a greater amount of light that gets in during a short shutter time.  The lower the number, the better, and 1.4 is quite low, meaning this lens takes a relatively bright picture in a dark area, such as a variably lit concert stage.

For videos, I use a Sony HDR-SR12 Full HD 1080 camera which records to AVCHD video using a ClearVid CMOS sensor and X.V. Color for full 1920×1080i High Definition Recording.

See some examples of concert photography by Arenas Promotions.  English Beat, Blonde Goblin, and Pepper provide examples of what you can expect.

See some example videos recorded by Sean Arenas:

• Worlds to Burn by Blonde Goblin
• Break Your Fall by Loyal Enemy
• My Heart Skips a Beat by Sean Patrick McGraw

Arenas Promotions

I have started my band promotions company, Arenas Promotions.

Through this company, I can perform several services for your band or venue:

• Photography
• Videography
• Web design
• Band promotions
• Writing
• Press kits

You can see some examples of work I have already done.  Check out my Concert Photography page, which shows pictures I’ve taken of Blonde Goblin, English Beat, and Pepper.

Also check out the Web site that I built for Blonde Goblin.

EDD: We're currently receiving more calls than we can answer

I call the Employment Development Department today to discuss a couple of issues with them that I do not seem able to handle through their Web site or through mail.  I called several times today and received this message every time:

Thank you for calling the EDD
We're currently receiving more calls than we can answer
Please listen to this message
Some Californians are now running out of their second extension for benefits...

For some reason it seems silly that there’s so many unemployed people calling in for help with benefits, and the EDD seems to have a shortage of staff to handle the incoming calls.  It seems obvious to me that you can help two problems with one action:  hire some of the unemployed people to help answer the calls of other unemployed people.

The situations right now seems unconscionable.

iHate iLike

iLike is a service which allows you to list bands, songs, and venues that you like, rate them, and get notified when new stuff comes along.

I ran into a huge problem with their service recently, however, and I’d like to share that with you.

Every time I uploaded a video to YouTube, it would send a Tweet on my Twitter account about the new video.  I’m sure I told it to do this at some point in time, but after some experience with the feature, I decided I did not like it.  I want to broadcast those tweets at a more appropriate time, and put some different text in the tweet.

So I sign in to Twitter and revoke access.  No change, my YouTube uploads are still broadcast to Twitter by iLike.

So I sign in to iLike and try to remove the Twitter feature, but cannot find a way to do so.  Their Account Linking page doesn’t even show Twitter!

Strangely, it doesn’t broadcast to my Facebook account (because my Privacy option is set to allow Nobody! to see my profile), but still broadcasts to Twitter.

I go through their help system and account pages; no luck.  I even use their search feature; nothing:

I use their Contact Us link, but am told that it takes them “2 work weeks” to reply to contacts!

I looked up phone numbers for iLike.  One listed iLike telephone number was actually a FAX number, and the other forwards to Information!

Next, I sign in to YouTube to revoke access.  I browse to My Account > Account Settings > Manage Account > Authorized Sites and click Revoke Access.

Clicking this link just takes me to the YouTube home page, and does not revoke the access.  I tried two weeks ago to revoke it, and again today, and it won’t come out.  I tried removing it with Chrome and IE.

So, can anyone suggest a way to keep iLike from broadcasting on my Twitter account, short of cancelling one of my accounts?

Bands Helping Bands

I want to help bands reach a wider audience, and fill their venues more fully.

To this idea, I devote my current effort to help bands attend each other’s shows, with their own fans, in order to help fill venues.  In return, the bands you see will attend your band’s shows to help fill venues.

As we all know, when you can fill venues, you can start performing in bigger venues with better sound systems, that pay more (or charge you less), and get you wider coverage.  Everyone wants that for their band, right?

So here’s my idea:  We start a site on which bands sign up and list the dates they are playing.  As someone who signed up, you agree to attend some shows from other bands who sign up on the site, and they agree to see some of your shows.

This also gives the opportunity for bands to have an open dialogue with each other, during which they can give advice, share ideas, and perhaps start to book shows together.

You may also find new music you’re interested in, and this opens many opportunities for meeting new people in all aspects of the business.

You may also realize another benefit:  One of the opening bands for any event can usually add you to a guest list so that you can attend most of these shows for free!

Right now, we don’t have a site to control this, so I’m running this manually until someone volunteers to do the programming side of the site.

So far, I have proposed the idea to Loren Kofsky of Blonde Goblin (@blondegoblin) and Mikki Nilsen of Loyal Enemy (@loyalenemy), and both expressed interest.  I am also approaching The Northstar Session (@TNSmusic) and After Midnight Project (@ampla) to see if they have interest.

All of these bands play in Los Angeles, which makes it convenient for them to see each other’s shows.  If your band is also near Los Angeles or Hollywood and you are interested in participating in this pilot project, please let me know.

Benefits to a band:

• See new music you may love
• Get more people attending your shows - fill venues to move up to better venues
• Get in to shows for free
• More opportunities to meet people in music industry
• Meet other bands, give and get useful advice
• More opportunities to get booked for opening gigs

Contact la@yourconcertreviewer.com or @concertreviewer if you have interest or questions!