Tech consultant for Olympia, Lacey, And Tumwater

There is no such thing as bad music

BadMusic

I know what you are thinking, “Mark slams more bands than anyone, so what the hell is he talking about?” Well, a few weeks ago I saw the band Suicidal Tendencies in concert. They started the set off with “You Can’t Bring Me Down”. One of the lines from that song goes “Just cause you don’t understand what’s going on
…don’t mean it don’t make no sense And just cause you don’t like it,…don’t mean it aint no good.” Meaning just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it isn’t good. The worst band in the world has fans and Justin Bieber has more fans than my favorite band by far.

I remember when I first started hearing the true “bear on the mic” Metalcore bands and I was thinking, “Wow, these guys are not ready for prime time.” Turns out I was wrong. Flat, monotone ,bear on the mic impressions are now the hottest style of vocal in Metal. Just because I don’t have any respect or interest in it doesn’t mean it isn’t music or any good. I think the brutality race in Metal is ruining everything I love about this musical style. The craft of song writing is taking a backseat to just trying to make as much noise as possible. But does that make it bad music? No, because it has a ton of fans that relate to and enjoy it. This music helps millions of people a day get through the drudgery of work and school. That makes it legit no matter what I think.

When I talk smack about the more extreme forms of Metal I try to never say that it all sucks. I try as much as possible to never say that an entire band sucks. Instead I try to pinpoint exactly what is missing. Most of the time it is that the vocals need more work. More times than not the music is down right amazing. A lot of the guitar work in the higher ranking Death Metal bands is some of the best guitar work around. There are some song structures that are as impressive as it gets. Hell, many times the vocalist has a great tone, but maybe is a one trick pony. Instead of beating the dead horse of the “Beauty And The Beast” thing and getting a hot female to inject massively contrasting vocal styles, how about just using several harsh vocal styles? Keep things interesting. It’s not the harsh vocal I have a problem with. It’s the lack of creativity. However, just because I don’t like it, tons of people do. So it not “bad music”. The issues I have with it are my issues alone.

I love to make fun of how pathetic Justin Bieber is as much as anyone, but an insane amount of pre-teen little girls make it through their day because of him. I honestly think Justin Bieber is a good thing for music because it makes us all question what makes music good. What makes an artist legit. We all know he is a product. He is what they used to call in accounting class a “widget”. Sure it makes us question his artistic integrity, but does it make it “bad music” in the true definition? No, because of all the people who are enjoying what the people behind him are forcing him to put out. Music does not take artistic integrity. Justin Bieber is proof of that. He is also proof that music with zero artistic integrity still isn’t bad music. It just has zero artistic integrity.

This is the reason I really hate the term “wigger” when it comes to white guys who listen to rap. People in the Metal scene would call white Rapcore bands “wigger music” and I think that helped Rapcore stick around longer.  It turned the argument into a racial thing and that made most people dismiss it as nothing else. The reason is that it ignored what was really wrong with it. Instead it just let people dismiss the questionable elements of Rapcore. Rapcore had some legit things we could have been questioning. It had nothing to do with it being a race thing. I think some of the insults that are thrown at disposable pop widgets like Justin Bieber help fuel their careers. When we throw insults at music make sure you have solid and factual reasons to hate it. Otherwise you are making your opposition of that music look like it has no real argument. Don’t help the enemy, have your facts straight. There is no such thing as bad music. One man’s garbage is another man’s favorite band in the world. If you are going to bash it, make sure you know what you are talking about. They know more about that artist than you do and you are going to look like an idiot if you attack their music just because you don’t like it.

Talk about the artistic integrity of the band. Is the artist a creation of a corporate entity or a producer? Do they write and record their own music from start to finish? How many “Handlers” does the artist need to make an album happen? Talk about the production value of the album, talk about how much was put into the craft of song writing, the about the talent level of the musicians, talk about the motives of the musical style, but try not to call it bad music. It may both suck and blow to you, but it is the greatest thing ever to someone. I could fart on a snare drum, sell the recording online, and find fans. So there is no such thing as bad music.

Witch Hunts Never Get Their Facts Straight

Witch Hunt

When I was a hardcore bible thumper I went to many anti-rock seminars. Guys would travel around talking to us kids about why rock music was evil. The problem was that they never got their facts straight. The kids knew the facts and when they would catch the guys getting their facts wrong a few times, it allowed the crowd of kids to dismiss everything else they said. They would tell us that this band called Metallica was trying to convince kids that they wanted Satan to control them and be their master. The truth was that “Master Of Puppets” was a song talking about the evils of drugs. More specifically it was about how cocaine would become your master and you would become it’s puppet. These preachers just had to pick the song with the most positive message to pick on? After that they would go after Ozzy Osbourne and his song “Suicide Solution”. They would talk about how the song was telling kids that suicide was a solution. Did they even read the lyrics? The song is very clearly speaking about the evils of drinking. Again, they just had to pick one of the most positive songs he had. The only thing shocking about these seminars was the lack of research these idiots did. They would loose all credibility with the kids they were trying to reach, so the message fell on deaf ears. This is only one way the religious right really screws up when they are trying to form a witch hunt.

When it comes to the extreme left things get just as retarded though. I once did a music video show at the local public access channel. The staff there hated my show because I played mostly Metal. So they would hear about the bands and assume things with zero research. There was a band called Forced Entry that I played often and one of the staff members was convinced that their name was encouraging rape. When I tried to tell her that the name was a reference to breaking an entering. It is when someone breaks into a place. Watch any cop show and they will ask if the murder scene had signs of a forced entry. Did someone break into the house before they killed the person? How she got the connection to rape and why she held so strong to that line of thinking is beyond me. This same person ended up watching the video for Denis Leary‘s hit song “Asshole” he released in the early 90′s. A big part of what makes the video (and song) so funny is that it is so extremely over the top obnoxious. It is beyond sexist, misogynistic, and not at all politically correct. That is the whole point. He is about as far from trying to hide the sexist message of the song as it gets. Well, she loved the video and song and wanted a copy of it.  She was absolutely convinced that it was making fun of sexism and not celebrating it.  She was an instant fan and I could not convince her what the real message was. She was otherwise a very intelligent woman, but when it came to getting a witch hunt together she just didn’t get her facts straight.

I follow someone on my Google reader that loves the wild conspiracy websites. These sources many times contradict each other and themselves. They sometimes contradict themselves within the same article! They are so crazy with their witch hunts that they can’t even focus on what the focus of their witch hunt is. They just want “the truth” even if they are not sure what that means.  Follow enough Tea Party blogs and you will see that these people getting into office (and they are) means that the mental patients are starting to run the asylum. It used to be that these people were kept busy with their wild conspiracies that they never took time to vote or do anything that was the least bit of a threat. But now they are getting people into office. The problem is that they still don’t have their facts straight. They can’t even agree with what exactly is the focus of their witch hunt. They know they want smaller government, but they can’t agree on what services should be cut. You start cornering them into specific things that should be cut and they start stammering like that girl in 4th grade we all used to make fun of (and later made pathetic attempts to get a date with). Witch hunts never get their facts straight. The problem is they can still do a ton of damage if we don’t fact check them. Knowledge is power people. Now go read a book!

Did Tech Crunch Pull A Story?

So I’m looking through my RSS feed this morning and I come to a very interesting story titled “Googler Accuses Twitter Engineer Of Sexual Assault, Trial By Twitter Commences” from TechCrunch by their writer Alexia Tsotsis. I click to open up the story and I get a 404. So I do a search for the term “ApacheCon” and find a link in their own search. When I click that link I get another 404. They story has been pulled? For what reason they have not said, but since I never remember this ever happening before I figured it was worth a little post here. The url to the post was at http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/05/trial-by-twitter/ if this was a technical thing. Was it a favor to a friend? TC just doesn’t do that. Was it due to a legal threat? I doubt that since Michael Arrington graduated from Standford Law School, he eats legal threats for breakfast. Could it be because of the recent purchase of Tech Crunch by AOL? Did the AOL gods step in here? Is this just a hint of the editorial control AOL will show over TC in the future? Am I over reacting? All I am asking for is that Tech Crunch explain why they would pull this story.

Here is the story as it appeared in my Google RSS:

Google technical writer Noirin Shirley wrote a post on her personal blog earlier this evening entitled “A hell of a time,” purportedly detailing her experiences last night at ApacheCon in Atlanta. Shirley recounts a drunken post-conference party she organized in her hotel room and describes a rather disturbing (if true) interaction with Twitter engineer Florian Leibert:

“He brought me in to the snug, and sat up on a stool. He grabbed me, pulled me in to him, and kissed me. I tried to push him off, and told him I wasn’t interested (I may have been less eloquent, but I don’t think I was less clear). He responded by jamming his hand into my underwear and fumbling.”

With such incendiary subject matter it is no surprise that the post rose to the top of Hacker News in a matter of hours. What’s even more interesting is that the accusations have reverberated on Quora and Twitter with people @ replying both Leibert and Shirley with Shirley’s post.

“It’s not the first time something like this has happened to me, at all. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me at a tech conference. But it is the first time I’ve spoken out about it in this way, because I’m tired of the sense that some idiot can ruin my day and never have to answer for it.”

It is notable that the allegations of wrongdoing now have a realtime venue to play out, primarily because the players in the drama have tech community prominence and are both on Twitter. Neither Leibert or Shirley have tweeted anything since Shirley sent out her blog post about the incident.

I have contacted Leibert for his side of the story and will update this post when he responds. Shirley makes no indication she has filed any formal complaint.

Now as I guy I feel I can only say this is kind of messed up. Why would Tech Crunch pull this story?  That’s all I want to know. To get this story out though I ask that you vote for my friends story and not mine. Vote for her story on Digg, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and of course promote it on Twitter, and Facebook. Let’s get the word out on this!  Her story on this can be found HERE

FOLLOW UP:

Tech Crunch has responded to the pressure of the pulled story, but it still leaves a few questions I think. CLICK HERE to read their response. To be clear, I in no way mean to imply that TC would respond to this tiny little humble blog. My feeling is that it was pressure from many slightly bigger bloggers that got even bigger bloggers to respond. The questions that remain for me however are simple. Why did it take so long to respond? Did they think their tech savvy readers would not notice the pulled story? Did they think that no one would be left wondering when they got the 404 error? Paul Carr is a great writer and wrote a really great response. It was very diplomatic and he did a great job at not picking a side in any way. However, I will always feel that it was just plain bad journalism to pull the story with no explanation. I expect better from Tech Crunch and it was this behavior from them that is truly to blame for lighting the fire of the exact same wild speculations that Paul Carr shakes his finger at in THIS ARTICLE. But they left this Pandora’s Box open and will have to suck it up and deal with the ramifications. Don’t complain for that which you are guilty of. You fueled the wild expectations when you pulled the story without an explanation.

Please give $1 to this project THEN you can wish me a happy birthday.

So my birthday is Oct 31st (seriously it is)
On Facebook when it is someones birthday the tradition is to flood their wall with a ridiculous amount of posts that all say the same thing. No, not one post with a bunch of replies. Each person makes a separate post. Then you all think I’m being unreasonable by blocking people from posting on my wall?! Really? I’m the unreasonable one? Of course on Twitter you will get a ton of @ messages and every social network does the same thing. This on the day after The Rally For Sanity?

Let’s Do Something Good
So instead of doing the normal meaningless mess online, I propose something that does a little good. I have always been a supporter of the arts, especially when it is actually original. So instead I want to support the most original production I have seen in a very long time. It is the Heavy Metal Opera put on by a local band called Arakus. I know what you are thinking. Probably the same thing I was thinking. “Oh crap this is going to be so painfully low budget that it will break records of how much failure a production can have.” But I have seen the first part of this production and it was amazing. GO HERE for some photos I took to see that this is no low budget hack work. GO HERE to check out some music from the production.

THE IMPORTANT PART OF THIS POST
All I ask is that before you wish me a happy birthday please just give this production one measly dollar. I follow thousands of you online between the many social networks. I am only asking for one little dollar so this production can happen. If they make their goal I will unlock my wall for 24 hours and let you all post away as much as you wish. Deal? One dollar. Can we do it?

You can also check out this video for a sample of what this Opera has to offer NOT just for metalheads, but fans of good art.

Why Name Dropping Will Never Help Your Band

Name This Band?

I read way too many band bio’s doing what I do for RockMyMonkey. After a few decades of doing so I have ended up with a few pet peeves about bad bios. If you read enough of these posts you will learn quickly what those are. The one I want o talk about this time though is name dropping bigger bands. No one cares, so stop that!

The most popular version of useless name dropping is where a band drops all the big bands they have played with. This means nothing. It means you paid a big bag of cash to get on a bigger stage. Yes this will get you in front of a bigger crowd and I am one of the very few people who supports this kind of “Pay To Play” model. It gets a band in front of more people and that is a good thing. Especially if that bigger band might have some crossover with their fanbase. But it means nothing about how good you are or what you sound like. It tells the person nothing as far as if your band will fit their publication or if that music fan will like your band. So just stop it!

There is also the band that name drops every popular band at the time under their influences. Which pretty much makes listing influences totally worthless. I have seen bands name drop the band Trouble when they sound more like Korn. Listing your influences is a great thing, but only if you are honest about it and only list those bands that would have a crossover of fans. Would fans of Slayer enjoy your Limp Bizkit style band? Probably not, but they might give you the beating you deserve. So maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all?

The third style of name dropping in a bio that needs to stop is listing a quote from a member of an established band. “Dave Mustaine said o the band, “Awesome. I love it!” when really what happened was that a friend of the band got backstage, that friend played 10 seconds of the band from their phone, Dave placated them to be nice and said what he needed to so the person would go away without hurt feelings. When I read these quotes it means nothing.

Stop name dropping. Just explain what the band sounds like. Be honest about your influences. Stick to the facts. Unless you suck that is enough. If you can’t find enough to say without the B.S. maybe your band is more interested in what is popular of cool than what kind of music is truly in your heart. There is a local band in Seattle that played full on mall-metal for well over a decade. It was horridly painful rap-core garbage. They went nowhere! Then about a year ago they switched to this doom/stoner style and their fanbase is growing at an insane pace. The band is exploding very fast and all they did was start being honest about what music was in their souls. Try that instead of name dropping.

Top Ten Reasons Google Is The Instant King Of The URL Shortners

Goo.gl

1. QR codes
The whole QR thing is exploding like crazy. To be honest I’m not even sure why an article needs a QR code, but they give you one for everything you submit.

2. Google Rank
I don’t know if it actually counts to your Google rank, but it can’t hurt.

3. Analytics
Yeah I know the others give this too, but this is Google so it will be of course end up linked in with everything else. When it’s linked in with everything else Google offers it will be analytics on a big bag of crack!

4. Brand Recognition
The problem with URL shortners is that most people still feel unsure about them. Spammers and virus makers use them to hide their suspicious links. People (The non tech savvy) will feel more comfortable with the name of Google than anyone else.

5. All Our Bass Belong To Them
Google is the king and trying to go against them is just suicide

6. Tools, Widgets, And API
Google has been known to make things open source, give the most powerful API’s, and offer the greatest tools. It is why they are king. This will evolve to be one massive beast.

7. Security
A few years back Google started giving alerts to websites that are not safe. I’m pretty confident this level of security will be a major part of this service as well.

8. You Are Already Logged In
If you run a website (or two, three, four), chances are pretty big that you already are logged into the Google system. No need to remember what your username is for that other service.

9. Longevity
The biggest problem with URL shortners is that they are start ups that may go under once the initial funding runs out. Google will be around much longer than any of them. The chances of them going away are smaller than with anyone else. So your links won’t stop working or be taken over by some spammer.

10. Trust
I don’t see Google adding advertising frames around my content anytime soon like some others have done in the past. I can trust them from the webmaster point of view.

Many of Google’s projects a full of all kinds of fail. But notice recently how that is becoming the outcome less and less? Android is kicking butt, Google voice is doing great, and this has the other URL shortners running scared for a good reason too. Has Google become too powerful? Well I for one love our new leaders and will obey them without question. All hail the great and powerful Oz…er, I mean Google.

Top Ten Cute Sayings For The Retarded

cute

There are so many cute little sayings that people say everyday, but make no sense. In fact if you actually believe them you have to be slightly mentally handicapped.

1. Nuff Said
In almost every case what ever the short comment preceding this statement is, it leaves many questions. In other words, not enough was said. Give me some details and stop being such a lazy little bitch.

2. This Too Shall Pass
People say this about all kinds of things. Most often about things that will never pass. As the band Crowbar once said, Time Heals Nothing!

3. The Cream Always Rises
No it doesn’t! Have you heard of the show “So You Think You Can Dance?” Of course you have. It has gone on for several years and many seasons. Ever heard of the show Firefly? One of the most amazing shows ever. It lasted one season and 14 episodes. Ever heard of Justin Bieber? Annoying twat isn’t he? How about the band Supershine? Didn’t think so. Emil Krotky once said “Mediocrity is forgiven more easily than talent.” The crap always rises. Cream gets shoved to the bottom unless it’s an overpriced cup of coffee. Now shut your pie hole.

4. The Grass Is Always Greener On The Other Side
I asked Bill Gates and he said you were full of crap. He has no interest in the other side. His grass is greener.

5. Mother Always Knows Best
Really? What if the persons mother is a crack head? What if she’s selling anything she can for another hit of meth? Or maybe she’s just a drunk? What about all the mothers who beat their kids? What if your mother is a mental case, is really depressing to be around, and refuses to admit she has a problem? Mother doesn’t always know best and you need to think for yourself before you wind up doing nothing with your life except playing Farmville and watching American Idol you mindless sheep.

6. That which does not destroy us makes us stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche is the one that came up with this one. The truth is that you can also end up beaten, crippled, and a shell of your former self. If you’ve given it your all you could just end up a totally spent sorry excuse for human life. If you are trying for that one you are really reaching and it’s pathetic.

7. You can’t buy love
Well, Nelson Rodrigues once said “Money buys everything, even true love.” Another version of this saying is that “Money can’t buy happiness.” Well I can tell you first hand that being poor doesn’t buy jack either. When I go to the movies it makes me happy. When I buy a candy bar it makes me happy. Sure that happiness is fleeting, but that is besides the point. It did buy happiness and the saying is a bunch of crap.

8. Something Something
So if you say the word twice it changes the meaning? No? Oh, well in that case you’re just an idiot! Some put on their extra stupid leotards by removing a letter or two off of the end. Not sure if it is possible to be more retarded, but it just might be so.

9. Kick it
As in “I’m just going to kick it.” or “I’m just kicking it.” What is so wrong with just saying that you are going to hang out for awhile? Or just say, “I’m just going to relax for awhile.” Oh, you don’t sound like an idiot if you say it that way. Ok, I didn’t realize that was your goal. Douche!

10. That’s What I’m Talking about
In almost every case the person wasn’t talking about anything. When people say this, they are almost never talking about “THAT”. You might as well just say “Why yes I totally agree Reginald.” for as lame as it sounds.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, trendy sayings bug the living hell out of me. Mostly because people say them for decades after they have become lame. Instead why not think for yourself and work on trying to sound intelligent? Or is that too much to ask? Maybe you need to see if they have a sale on braincells? Or it that the problem? You bought your brain from Wal-Mart on sale didn’t you? No wonder you’re so retarded. Just kill your self please. Seriously. World Won’t Miss You!

Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel review

Marriott Chef delivering bun

So another weekend of Gnomedex and another weekend at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel. This may have been the last year of Gnomedex but another tech conference had it’s first year at the exact same conference center. For some reason they thought PII was a good name despite everyone already pronouncing it like Pee. So even though I won’t be going up for Gnomedex next year, I do hope to go up for Seattle Geek week and Pee…er, I mean Pii. So I figured why not review this years stay at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel?

The staff as always was great. I’ve never seen a group of people work so hard to make little ol’ me feel as comfortable as possible. It was nice to see Nicole (I’m starting to learn names, how sad is that?) at the front desk again. She has a pleasant laugh and a relaxing smile. Even though I know she is paid to have that laugh and smile she does it so well I am led to believe there is some sincerity to it. I’m as cynical as it gets, but she seems to actually give a crap and have fun with her job.

The chef made me laugh this year though. Last year Ciabatta buns were all the rage, so I understood why they had one of those nasty things on the burger I ordered. This year however it was a freakin’ pancake! No joke. I was told it was some sort of flat bread, but if it looked like a pancake, smelled like a pancake, and sure as heck tasted like a pancake, I think it is safe to say that was a damn pancake! It reminded me of those images of a rabbit with a pancake on it’s head. “I have no idea what you are saying so here’s a bunny with a pancake on it’s head.” So I felt like the chef was telling me, “I have no idea what you are saying, so here’s a burger with a pancake on it’s head.” To be clear, the burger tasted great otherwise. It would have been better with a real (traditional) bun, but the pancake made me laugh more than anything. It was more goofy and silly than anything that would have ruined the meal. The omelet I had on Sunday morning was way better than the one I had on the Sunday morning last year. Not sure why. Maybe it was cooked more thoroughly? Maybe I ordered different ingredients? Maybe they changed cooks, methods, recipes, equipment, or something else. All I know is that It was pretty packed with awesome.

The maid service was great of course. I think the maids got used to me leaving at 8 am for the conference. So when I slept in until about ten and was still getting stuff ready for check out at 11:00 a very polite and apologetic lady came in to change the bed sheets. If I was forced to find one complaint it would be that they kept moving the program schedule and remote to the tv. Who needs it there? I need it on the nightstand! But if that is the biggest complaint I can think of, that is some awesome work! Let me also say the guys out in front are always jumping on any excuse they can to serve you. It kind of threw a guy like me for a loop to be honest. I’m just not used to that sort of thing. I heard that the hotel was packed all weekend, but yet it just didn’t seem like it. Everything was nice and quiet. Sure there was people, but it still maintained a very relaxing vibe to me. I have heard about hotels that are about half the price just a block or two up the street, but the staff at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel treat me so well that I am afraid to try anywhere else next year. Now everyone, let me hear you scream, “Pee, Pee, Pee, Pee, Pee!” Oh, right. It’s Pii. Sorry, I keep forgetting.

The Cheaper Price Is A Rip Off!

Cheap

Free Gets Rid Of The Riff Raff
So this weekend National Parks in the U.S. will wave their fees. So our parks will now be wall to wall with no room to fart if you need to. Yet you will be able to smell the methane of the camper next to you. How can you enjoy nature when your head is in the armpit of the family camping “next” to you? You would get way more value by paying the entrance fee the following weekend. However, the fools that go during the “free” weekend are the reason. When you pay they won’t be there! With all of them going the weekend before, they make things extremely more enjoyable for you the next weekend when you pay. The cheaper price is a rip off! Unless you like being ass to mouth with the stranger camping next to you? This free weekend clears out everyone else so you can enjoy the experience.

Beat Up The Deaf Guy?
Recently some security guards ended up tackling a deaf guy coming out of a store and choking him until his face turned all kinds of pretty colors (click here). The reason they tackled him? He didn’t stop when the alarm went off. The mall probably went for the cheaper security company. Now they will end up being sued to the tune of millions of dollars and end up with a crippling PR nightmare. If they would have spent a little more money they would have ended up with a highly trained security staff that would be able to figure out why the man didn’t stop before just tackling him. Maybe his friend frantically throwing sign language at them could have been a sign? That cheaper price is going to cost them dearly.

It’s Not Just HFCS That Is Making You Fat
If you buy high quality food for your family their bodies will feel nourished with less food than if you feed them junk. This will cause them to eat less, not get sick as often, and just offer a higher quality of life over all. The children will be able to focus in school better, get better grades, learn more from the experience, and end up with way better jobs in the end. The family that eats the cheaper food will spend more time at the doctors, always feel more lethargic, not be as focused, and not get near as far in life. The cheaper price is a rip off!

Go Big Or Go Home Wussy
If I buy a computer, I always like to get the best computer I can possibly afford. I want the fastest processor, the biggest hard drive, the most memory, and the highest quality parts. Because of this my stuff lasts for years and years. I edit hi rez images that are thousands of pixels wide. I edit video that looks great on a widescreen tv. I do all kinds of very processor intensive stuff for several years without a problem. My computers last with very few repairs. It’s when I bought a cheaper computer that I ended up with endless repair bills, breakdowns that cost me days of productivity, and an overall more expensive experience. The cheaper price is a rip off!

Short Term Thining Or Long Term Thinking?
So why does the United States always look so hard for the cheaper price? They fail to see the big picture. They think they need to pay the cheaper price because they “don’t make a lot of money.” The problem is that they don’t have enough money because it is spent on the costs of always going for the cheaper price. It’s short term thinking instead of long term thinking. Always ask yourself why that bag of vegetables is cheaper than the other bag of vegetables? Maybe it’s because the cheaper vegetables were grown on a massive corporate farm with tons of pesticides. The more expensive farm was grown organically without tons of chemicals. It was a smaller farm with a family of farmers that have grown up generation after generation passing down the knowledge of how to grow the highest quality vegetables possible. How do you make sure that your vegetables have the most nutrition it possibly can? The big corporate farm only cares about whatever the cheapest method is. It has nothing to do with quality of the product or making sure your family get a healthy meal. The cheaper price is a rip off…even when they both seem like the same exact product on the surface.

A Cheap Widget Vs A Quality Widget
A Widget for the record is a non specific product. It is used in situations where you want to discuss something without someone missing the point because of the example. So fill in whatever you want when I say widget. If you have the choice to buy a widget for $10 or buy a widget for $1 which is the better deal? Most would go right to the $1 widget without a thought. Of course the key part ot that sentence is “without a thought”. What if you end up replacing that cheap $1 widget every week. But the person who bought the $10 version of the widget has to replace it once a year? Who saves more money? What is the better deal?

Almost always the cheaper price is a rip off! Look for quality instead.

What SquareSpace is getting wrong!

Now before I go into what they are doing wrong, I want to talk about what they do right. First off I love that there is no way to download the CMS and use it on another server. Why? Because they take care of all the software patches and security updates behind the scenes. Stuff just works. I want to focus on content, not some security patch. They also respond very quickly to Twitter questions and their support tickets. The site looks very modern with very little work. Posting updates is at least as easy as it is on Word Press. In many cases it is even easier because no one has to worry if they installed something wrong. I have to use a hack to get images to work on this site. Never could figure out what setting is wrong, but the internal image upload has never worked. It’s part of the reason I wanted Squarespace to work. This Word Press isn’t working as well as I would like. I wanted to replace it. I wanted Squarespace to be that replacement.

Squarespace

Now For The Negative
So here I am trying out Squarespace. I am trying to figure out their really horrid interface so I can explain it to my client. So far it is driving me nuts! It is nowhere near intuitive. I feel like I need to take a week of classes to figure out what the heck they mean on these tutorials. No wonder this place is only being used by the hardest core geeks. You have to be a super nerd to even fight through this freakin mess! Unless Squarespace improves quickly I predict they will go under in a few years. This is as intuitive as brain surgery!

Not Intuitive at all!
There is a spot where it said to edit site name. I clicked on the link and it just kept refreshing the page. Why would it do that? Why not send me to the page where I can edit the site name instead? Why else would someone click on that? Just an idea SquareSpace folks. Make it work like people would guess it would work. Now I figured out how to get this to work eventually, but that is my problem with Squarespace. It is not at all intuitive. There is a major learning curve to their system. Most will get frustrated before they get that far and just keep putting up with Word Press.

Video Tutorials Good. No Full Screen bad!
So I go to watch the video tutorial they have available. I love video tutorials and find them to be the best method of showing people something like this. So they earn points for having those available. Problem is they don’t let me watch it full screen! I have a feeling they are using Vimeo to host their video. I use Vimeo as well so I know Vimeo has a square button to the bottom right that let’s me watch the video in full screen mode. For some reason SquareSpace has that blocked. Why would they do that? I tried watching the video. It looks like I could learn a ton from it if I could see what is going on better. Without going fullscreen things were too small and I found it only left me more frustrated.

Support Ticket?
Although they do respond very quickly to the support tickets, they sometimes fall into the tech support trap of coming off like a bot. . On my first question I thought it was a bot! Either that or their support is outsourced to India and the person was just giving me what the book told him was the standard answer. It was almost as if my question was ignored. A very quick phone call could have solved this. They don’t have phone support.

What Could Save Squarespace
Phone support. Plain and simple. Their CMS is great once you get the hang of it, but most will get frustrated with the learning curve and go back to putting up with the evil they are used to (Word Press). Charge $60 a week for phone support. I would pay that without hesitation. I understand good phone support is expensive for a start up like theirs, so charge extra. The customers that are serious will pay it.

Serious Design Still Goes To The Pros
Just as with Word Press, if you are really serious about your site you will want to hire a pro designer. Just like with Word Press you can get a site that looks ok without one. In fact, as far as design goes it is pretty much even. That is why Support is where Squarespace can beat them. If only they had phone support.

Please take my money Squarespace…I beg you! Let me pay for phone support!