This week on the 5 Tech Things You Should know:

1. Google TV – What we should be looking forward to with Google Android for a Television Set top box
2. Commodore might be coming back with a new system
3. A Sprint / HTC Phone might be coming along with 4G service.
4. The FBI wants to go undercover to some social Networks. A 30 Page DOJ document has been drafted. What does that mean to you
5. A joke at SXSW that Conan has joined Revision 3. Sometimes jokes turn into reality. Should we get on Facebook and petition it?

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Seattle from the Plane

So you may have heard the story from my Facebook page. On Friday, March 12, I missed a connection flight and had to stay in the Denver Airport for the night. I made the best of it and created a little video. Although it worked itself out, I still have to wonder if this could have been avoided?

Here is the story:

Flight itinerary was 3:50 PM take off from San Fransisco Airport to Denver. Arrive at 7:15, then board the next flight at 8:17 to Madison. Arrive in Madison, WI at 11:30 P.M.

The first plane was arriving from Reno. The weather in San Fransisco was rain, so there were slight delays – which pushed back the first flight to 4:17. United Airlines didn’t push back the new take off time until 4:15. We finally boarded the plane and took off around 4:40 P.M.

The switch was going to be close, but it was expected a 8:05 landing, which was true. However, we then sat on the Tarmac because United Airlines decided to give our assigned gate to another plane. 15 minutes later, we pulled into gate E35 (If I remember correctly).

Before landing, the flight attendants talked about other flights and their gates. They did not seem to know that I was connecting to the Madison flight and did not have that information. When I talked to the attendant, she was quick and said – well just consult the board.

I deplaned at 8:20. There was nobody at the end directing anyone. I went to a kiosk and found my flight was at 85 – a run to the other side of the terminal. However, the status was “Closed”. I found and asked an attendant what that meant. She looked it up and said “Oh. That flight left already.”

Therefore I proceeded to Customer Service to figure out how I was going to get home. As I got in line I heard over the speaker – “Madison Flight – You have one minute to board or the doors will close”. I was floored at that point, and still way too far away to make a run for it.

The customer service line was way too long. 50 people in front of me that missed a connection? A lot of angry people and a Manager that looked like he was ready to give the same answer – That scripted paragraph that comes from the United Airlines manual. I have to admit: He didn’t sway from that script at all.

Customer Service Line

As we were standing in line, another man apparently swore at a woman. 3 big words came from his mouth. She called a guard over and that is when it got interesting. He basically was belligerent as he talked to the officer. He walked out of the terminal in Handcuffs. So this is a lesson to all: An Airport is kinda like an Embassy building. It’s not really a place to practice freedom of speech. Freedoms are pretty limited; and I completely agree with it – That is why he was hauled away.

I finally got to the front of the line. I was told that the next few flights to Madison were booked and I wouldn’t get out of Denver until Sunday morning. Not liking that answer, we started to look for alternatives. She finally found a flight to Chicago that would leave at 6 AM the next morning, with a connecting flight at 3 PM, although I would be put on the list to get bumped up. There were no other flights out of Denver to the East coast, so I was basically staying at the Airport. Of course, they offered a hotel discount coupon, but otherwise I would have to stay in the Airport Terminal overnight.

At this point it was 9:30 P.M. I was hungry and getting a little frustrated. To top it off, all the establishments were closing or closed. By 10 P.M, all I could do in Terminal B was walk around or sleep.

Luckily, a passing employee suggested I go to Terminal A – for there was a McDonalds that was open until 2 AM. I also found the bar next door to McDonalds was also open, so I was able to get a more substantial meal.

The idea to do the video came shortly after that. I decided that if I was going to be stuck here (in which I also assumed there have been and will be others that had that same issue), I would make the best of it and take video of the experience.

After a couple hours of footage and first round of post-production, I sat in one of the chairs and got a couple hours of sleep. Woke up to get to the 6 AM Chicago flight.

So with all that said and done, here are my issues with this flight:

• Yes, inclement weather pushed our flight back, but that was known before we left San Fransisco. They could have made appropriate plans for connecting flights – especially since most of them were the last flights of the day. Holding a plane for 10 minutes is not the end of the world.
• When we landed, the flight attendants did not direct or ask passengers for help  in letting those who needed to run to a connecting flight get off first. It just became a regular push to get off, which added about 5 minutes to the wait.
• There was nobody at the terminal to give us direction to our flights. If someone would have said “85″ as I got off the plane, I would have been running to the gate without asking someone who really didn’t have the right answer. I might have been home by 11:30 P.M.
• The Customer Service line pretty much said it all. We waited over an hour to talk with someone. If you have 50 people waiting for Customer Service, it’s too long.

I would like to add a couple more for the Airport itself. I don’t have any qualms with the Denver Airport – I really appreciate the place that I could sleep and the wifi connection, but it would have been better if:

• Some of the stores stayed open just a bit longer. It would have really sucked if I would have waited for 10 hours without any food or drink.
• Maybe an after hours vending machine so I could get a soda or candy bar.

Even though United Airlines stuck with the “Inclement weather” excuse, I believe my issues and rebuttle are valid ones. Waiting 15 minutes for a gate and holding the connecting planes 10-15 minutes would have gotten us all home without issue. Not having someone do Quality Control when we walked off the plane is poor organization. Simple changes and there might not have been 50 people standing in a Customer Service line.

By the way – The flight to Chicago – The flight attendants did everything I mentioned above to get those off the plane who had connecting flights leaving shortly. There WAS someone at the door to guide us. I made it to my next plane with 2 minutes to spare.

So with that said, here is the video of my stay. Enjoy!

We come from a hotel in Palo Alto CA. We just got done with the HP Road Show – Converged Infrastructure. This week on the 5 Tech Things:

• Large File Programs. Josh Lowensen looks at your options.
• OnLive puts gaming in the cloud
• William Shatner creates MyOuterSpace.com
• University of Wyoming studys in Video Games
• The Intel i7 – Why you should think about getting a 6 core processor

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This week’s 5 Tech Things you should know.

• 10 Billion Twitters coming up
• Apple vs. HTC – 20 patents violated
• Hulu looses Stewart and Colbert
• Blockbuster is Still Around? Streaming from TiVo
• RealDVD gives up. Pays 4.5 million

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That’s right. This week, Jeffrey Powers puts on his Bard hat and sings the 5 Tech Things you should know for February Album Writing Month (FAWM). It’s a challenge to write 14 songs in 28 days and Jeffrey is right now on 11… er… 12 after this one.

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Because this is a writen song, we have Lyrics! So sing along with Jeff!

Apple loves the iPhone, this we know is true
They want to give that OS in many ways to you.
They posted on their website a job for us to find
an engineer that will take the iPhone to another device

Just like the Android, they see that there is hope
to move beyond the smartphone, to widen the scope
But do we want to see our fridgidare get a upgrade
The App store update to tell us the milk is not grade A

These are the 5 tech things
You should know is what we sing
We have 4 more to go, and that is what we know
To these, the 5 tech things

Nine years of research, the Bloom Box has emerged
A solid oxide fuel cell the energy of the future
Taking fossil fuel and turning electro
with 100 Kilowatts of energy, they could power 100 homes

Unlike solar energy, the technology could run all day
saving customers thousand through their bill of energy
It would make for greener server rooms and still keep them up
A savior in the power market that could fill the cup

Congrats to the iTunes user, who scored 10 thousand bucks
They downloaded the ten billionth song which strengthened their luck
As Steve Jobs turns 55, his guru skills you see
And Apple rakes the money for his prosparity

The e book reader game, is heating up you see
As Nintendo throws their big old hat into that game
The DS system will release 100 classics for their Dsi
June 14th for $20, is the price you should eye

Twitter takes a staggering 50 million tweets a day
That’s 600 tweets per second of people voices to say
A year ago the number was only at 2.
That’s a 1,400 percent increase, now we’ll see businesses vie

For that means Twitters’ business model, is about to change
and that tweet that I just sent wont really mean a thing
for it’s in a sea of Twitters that try to be heard
And I only read within a day about 250 twitters

And that is the show, I hope you had a good time
You should check out fawm dot org for more rhymes
My name is Jeffrey Powers, I thank you for coming
to check out this song, and the 5 tech things

Til next time – take care.

During the party – I got to talking to part of the board of directors at the Social Media Club – Madison, WI. chapter. Jessica Binder is the party planner, which we started talking about events. I (in my infinite wisdom) didn’t have a business card to give her. I noticed she had an iPhone, so I suggested we “bump”. She did not know what that was, so we setup and configured the application.

During that time, the chair of MadisonSMC – Marlena Deutsch stopped by to find out what was going on. She, too did not know about this iPhone application. Therefore, we installed and setup her device with the software and collected contact information.

Marlena did ask a great question – is there a field to put in Twitter info. I did a quick scan, but could not find any other place than the nickname.

In this backchannel video, we go through the bump application and learn how to swap contact info with just the tap of a phone.

On Wednesday, the Social Media Club Madison chapter held their first kickoff meet at the Brocach by the Capitol. About 125 were in attendance as the board of directors was introduced. We met one another and learned a lot about how everyone can work together.

The sponsors of the event created gift bags for the registered guests. Each table had products and a sign that said either Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or YouTube. You had to sit at each station and write out how you would promote the products on your given Social Network site. However, with the larger turnout, it was more difficult to move around, therefore I am not sure if they got the response they expected for that social game.

I went through the crowd and talked to a lot of Social Media and PR people. I ran into a few of the Web608 group who were also mingling. An interesting conversation about Twitter and their business model between myself, Nick and Brandyn. I also showed part of the board the iPhone application “bump” – to share contact information. The video will be forthcoming.

The Social Media Club started by Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells. The first chapter was launched on August 16, 2006 to bring all artists, creators, journalists, students, public relations and more together. The initial membership is free – with business and group memberships available.

In this video, we meet the Board of Directors for the Madison WI chapter of the Social Media Club. I took some backchannel on the event.

In the last couple months, we have been talking about online backup through Mozy.com. It is a great way to take your pictures and audio off-site. That way if you have a fire or theft, you do not loose your data.

It’s not the fastest thing in the world – but the more data you have, the longer the initial backup will take. Also, it is dependant on your internet connection – The initial upload took 4 days for me.

Mozy Home Configuration Screen

They counter it by compressing the file before uploading. It encodes, then uploads the file using 128 bit Encryption. The Data Centers are SAS70 and ISO certified. You can change how fast or slow the update can take by moving the slider during backup.

One thing I would love to see on the program would be a “Pause” button. While I can move the slider to the lowest part, the pause button would be more for those times I don’t want to have the backup start. I can then pause, do higher bandwidth tasks, then unpause. It could even unpause after 20 minutes.

Once again, don’t be discouraged about it’s possibly long upload. Once that is done, it gets a lot faster. Of course, if you have a faster connection, you might not have that problem. To have your pictures backed up, to have your audio files backed up and to have your valuable documents backed up is well worth it.

This week we look at:

• Windows Phone 7 (Formerly Windows Mobile 7) and what it might mean to smartphones
• Google Buzz Sued over privacy issues. I found this one on Google Buzz.
• HBO Go shows us that at least Pay TV channels get it
• Social Networking in Microsoft Outlook – Good idea, or will the IT department just block it?
• Happy 20th birthday Adobe Photoshop!

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Last week when Google Buzz came out, all the Social Mediates jumped on board like the last boat of the day starting to leave the dock. Instantly, we saw everyone posting “I am Buzzing”, and others rebuilding their Social Media lists. The big names pretty much dominated the Buzz. But it did become an opportunity for a new name or two to get in there. And – as far as I know – Ashton Kutcher is not on Buzz.. Yet.

Two big questions people had about Buzz in the first week – Is Buzz like which Social Media Micro Blogging device, and which one is Buzz going to replace? In this video, we look at Google Buzz, Friend Feed, Twitter and Facebook. Jeffrey talks about what Buzz is close to and gives answers to these two questions.

What do you think? Will Buzz replace Facebook? Friend Feed? Twitter?

January’s Roundtable was another great event. Todd Cochrane was your host for the TechPodcasts Roundtable.

Jeffrey Powers talked about ways to podcast via a mobile device. He introduced Mark Smith – CEO of iPadio.com -We provided TPN updates from CES by phone right from the show floor, in audio podcast form. Learn how the technology from the UK Company spearheaded coverage of the disaster from Haiti a few days after CES. Mark even used the iPadio service to also stream out his portion of the discussion to his followers.

Andy McCaskey introduced Rob May from BackUpify.com. Backupify offers a way to safely back up all of the social media data that you have stored in the cloud – such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Gmail. It’s in beta right now, so if you want to try it for free, you can get your current social media content backed up.

Sponsor: GotoMeeting get your free 30 day trial today atgotomeeting.com/techpodcast Unleash the power of online meetings with GotoMeeting

There are a lot of options to watch of listen select one below.

• Watch the Interactive Video
• Watch Apple TV Ready Video
• Listen to the Audio Only

Or just watch the video below.