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!