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Help Canadian Suicide Girl, pin-up model, & burlesque dancer Bettina May get her green card for the US! She has a lawyer, but she needs financial help! She humbly accepting donations so she can live in a place that makes her happy. Visit her site to find out more! You’ll even get a post card sent directly from her!
The official trailer for AMC’s new zombie TV series The Walking Dead! This looks real promising. I can’t wait to see it. Mark your calendars and watch the show’s premiere on Sunday, October 31!
From GeekTyrant
If you read my recent posts than you know the story. I know I bashed on foursquare something good last year, but they’re app was full of BIG holes, but since then they have made some improvements. Some. And while I was banned from Gowalla (see last post on the issue), I’ve been playing around with foursquare again. Both companies & their apps have some issues that I want to talk about. Let’s jump right in… Shall we?
Foursquare
- Unable to connect to server.
- Really bad venues.
- Impossible system to get venues fixed.
- Can check into venues from anywhere in the world, but only get points/badges when within 300m or so.
Gowalla
- Terrible communication skills.
- Horrible customer service to users.
- Can check into unlimited spots within 1km radius.
I’m not going to discuss the first two issues under Gowalla. You can see my recent posts on that and see how I feel.
I’m pretty sure Gowalla knows this, from my series of recent posts about a certain incident. Not sure if Foursquare is aware of some of these issue, since I haven’t visited or commented on their GetSatisfaction.com support forum. Both companies haven’t replied to several of my emails, which I just think is plain fucking rude.
Foursquare has changed how check-ins work a few times, mostly for the better. I don’t like that you can still check into venues from anywhere in the world. Gowalla HAD it right when they limited check-ins to a radius that was set by default or by the spots creator, but changed that to allow check-ins to spots within that 1km radius.
But with all of the above issues and a few that I really can’t put into words, they’re both putting me off from using their apps (besides no apology from Gowalla). Maybe I need to make my own geolocation company & apps for smartphones. Who wants to help?
I woke up this morning and decided to see if I could log into Gowalla for shits and giggles. Well looky looky here. I was able to log in! It seems they’ve finally unbanned me for NOT CHEATING. I’ve been checking every few days to see if they have or haven’t unbanned me, again for shits and giggles. It’s been over 4 weeks since they banned me for just picking up an exclusive item.
After a few emails back and somewhat forth with Gowalla CEO Josh Williams (and never a response back from their main support email), I didn’t hear back from him for over 2 weeks. Last he said that my account would be reinstated with a group of other accounts & I would be able to start checking in again “soon.” That was over 2 weeks ago. Like I said in my last post on this matter, “soon” is a few days to me, not a week and not 2 weeks.
I have been knocking Gowalla hard on Twitter the past few weeks for their lack of communication skills and their terrible customer support. Gowalla and Josh Williams really need to work on these. Over the past few weeks I’ve heard from other Gowalla users (current and former) that have the same complaints about Gowalla’s customer service. It’s pretty pathetic that such a company in these days, especially one that is involved with social networking, has horrible communication and customer service skills.
I’ve mentioned this news on my Twitter feeed and I’ve been asked by several people if I’ll start using Gowalla again. In my last post I did say “Goodbye & Fuck You Gowalla.” Right now I don’t know what I’ll do. I still haven’t received an email from Gowalla or Josh Williams apologizing for banning me when I never cheated. I still think what they did was wrong and it’s been compounded by their lack of communication, terrible customer support, speed to resolve the issue (see posts 1, 2, 3), and the lack of any form of apology for the entire situation. And I still haven’t heard why they never selected me as a STE (mentioned to Josh Williams in our emails). Great communication skills! I still need to think about using Gowalla again. My anger towards them has not changed yet. Maybe someone at Gowalla will grow some fucking balls!
I would like to thank Lucas and JefCon1 for showing solidarity with me during the past 4 weeks (I think they were the ONLY ones to do so publicly) and anyone else that stopped using Gowalla because of this. Thanks to everyone that retweeted my posts on this. And to anyone else that didn’t feel like showing your support, “Go fuck yourselves, you cunts!”
If you were a fan of the System 47 Star Trek LCARS screensaver, you’ll be happy to know that a few fans have taken it upon themselves to update this great screensaver. The last update to the Mac & Windows versions were back in 2006.
2 fans, Bilal & Godzfire, have worked hard to get working updates out for the Mac (not sure if they’ve done a Windows update), but unfortunately they’re only way to get word out is via the user comments section of the official System 47 website. The original creator of System 47 has been unreachable by all attempts made. Bilal & Godzfire are working on taken ownership of System 47 on MacUpdate and maybe Version Tracker soon. Right now, you can grab the Fan Updated Mac version of the System 47 screensaver here.
Hopefully Bilal & Godzfire will let me know when they have some updated info to share. Great work so far guys!
Well, it’s been over three weeks since I was banned from Gowalla. If you need to catch up on what’s been going on, check out post 1 and post 2.
Here’s the latest. Since last week I have not heard back from CEO Josh Williams or Gowalla support on the matter. Josh said my account would be unbanned “soon” with a bunch of other accounts that were to be unbanned also. Well, “soon” to me means a few days. It’s been a week. Josh could have just had someone unban me right then, but it’s obvious that Gowalla doesn’t want me as a user.
Well, all I have to say to that is…
I don’t care if Gowalla unbans me or not any more. It’s been over 3 weeks and it took them only 3 hours to unban the person that was cheating. They consistently ignored my emails on different instances. And it appears they really don’t care about their once dedicated users.
Normally I can be a patient person. Shit, I waited 7 months to hear back about becoming part of your Street Team Elite so I could help other Gowalla users. Never heard back from them. They had set up other, less dedicated, less knowledge NEW users as STEs the very next day they sent you an email (go look on GetSatisfaction.com). FUCK YOU! Their support email never responded to my emails when I got banned, but the person I know that cheated they had unbanned in 3 hours. I didn’t cheat. Let me repeat that… I DID NOT CHEAT! FUCK YOU!
Josh Williams, you lied to me. That just makes it worse. You should not ignore your users. You really need to fix your communication skills and you need to learn some customer service skills too.
So now I’ll be using their main competition, Foursquare.
Goodbye Gowalla. Maybe you’ll learn from this.
