Maybe it shouldn’t even be called customer support at Microsoft.

More like spend 2 hours of your life getting no help. No help whatsoever.

I recently purchased an XBOX 360 Elite (you know, the expensive model), and I went to redeem an XBOX Live subscription card I had lying around. I got an error when doing so.

Oh wait, I should start with my first problem signing up for XBOX Live. I got an error each time I tried to sign up with the name JIconoclast, despite it not being in use. This happened at the very end of the sign-up process, which takes some time to do.

So, after realizing that xbox.com/support was no help at all, I finally decided to call Microsoft. My first call ended after 40 minute with the rep telling me to try again later. Try again later?

How is that support? So, you know what, I tried again today. I’m a generous man.

And the same error happened.

Eventually after 35 minutes, I just decided to make a new gamertag. The rep tried to tell me that sometimes gamertags get “corrupted.” How fucking stupid do you think I am?

Just tell you me you are in way over your head. Just tell me that Microsoft doesn’t provide good training. Just tell me that Microsoft doesn’t care about its customers.

After that, I was unable to redeem my 12 month XBOX Live subscription card. It is worth $50, and it doesn’t work. Thanks Microsoft.

My problem was escalated to the highest level. Lunka (who has no superior, she claims) told me that the Live subscription card had not been redeemed. So, it should work.

But I tried at xbox.com and on my 360 to get it to work. I received an error both times.

What was Microsoft’s solution to the problem? Was it to send me a new XBOX Live card? Was it to credit my account with 12 months of a Live gold membership (the simple thing to do)?

No, it was to tell me to send in proof of purchase and my Live subscription card. Then Microsoft would mail me another card (that may not work either). Here is the problem. I received the card as a gift awhile ago.

Where am I going to get this magic receipt from? It’s not like I’m asking for a cash reimbursement (which is a justifiable reason to ask for a receipt). I just want 12 months of XBOX Live Gold.

Microsoft is unable to deliver that to me. Despite the fact that Microsoft’s highest-level rep tells me that the card had not been redeemed and should work. Why is this my fault?

Why am I being ask to find a proof of purchase for this? Why isn’t Microsoft providing me with good, honest customer support?

Microsoft has continually been the worst customer support that I have ever experienced. They are unhelpful, slow moving and very bureaucratic.

Maybe I should just return my XBOX 360 and get a PS3 (I already have the block-rocking Wii). I should mention that I’m on my 3rd original XBOX, because XBOXes are made of paper, duct tape and dreams.

Unbelievable.

Or as my cat would say, “Monies, I can has it?”

Yes, it is true, I’m going to start experimenting with Google Ad Sense on this blog.

The main reason is that I want to better understand how much money blogs can make. Journalism needs to be able to make money on the Web.

Let me be clear: I don’t think this blog will generate a lot of revenue. If it can off-set my hosting and domain costs, I’d be very pleased. I think it can do that, but can it make a meaningful amount of money?

I’m more concerned, however, with seeing how monetizable RSS feeds are. Many news organizations have resisted doing full feeds because they fear they can’t make money that way. But those sites also don’t stick any ads in their feeds.

Personally, I get thousands of views a month from RSS. I imagine a popular Web site could get millions. Why not try to monetize that? Instead, traditional media outlets have chosen to offer partial feeds, which are worthless.

Can an RSS feed make money? I’d personally much rather have a full RSS feed with ads in it than a partial feed

But can full RSS feeds generate decent revenue? That’s the question.

As a side note: If this site makes $500 during the remainder of 2008, I’ll donate $100 to the local humane society.

Also, if you see some weird things happening today and the next few days, it’s because I’m tinkering with the site.

Philly.com has several openings for internships that Yoni Greenbaum says aren’t your average internships.

You won’t be getting coffee or doing other menial work, but rather doing actual work. And by actual work, I don’t mean just collecting clips to put in a binder, but real, modern Web work. Imagine that!

At Philly.com you won’t be opening mail or answering phones. Our interns get trained to step into every roll from video production to homepage management. Current interns are helping to build special pages and micro-sites, produce video shows, manage the homepage and are actually having fun. If you want a different type of internship and think you have the right skills/perspective then drop me a line.

If I was looking for an internship, I’d certainly apply to get in on some of the exciting things that philly.com is doing.

But seriously, you’ll want to have some clips too, whether they be in print, online or — gasp! — on a blog.

More and more talented journalists (often young) are leaving journalism for other industries.

Not because they fear being laid off or fired, but because the culture at newspapers (especially newspaper corporations) doesn’t allow for the kind of innovation necessary to save newspapers. Case in point: Braden Nicholson left the Indianapolis Star because corporate knew how to ruin every good idea:

You know what is a bummer about this? When INTake was first launched, the young men and women working there were so stoked that some of them actually slept on the office floor rather than take a break at home. It used to be fashionable for older journalists to bitch about young reporters not having “fire in the belly.” Well, these kids had fire in the belly.

Braden said it best. Corporate doused the fire.

Newspapers need that enthusiasm and fire to save themselves. This is do-or-die time for newspapers. This is not the time for red tape and bureaucracy.

Perhaps even more illuminating than Nicholson leaving journalism for another industry, is the comments left on the Gannett Blog. The first comment — anonymous, of course — has all the hallmarks of a curmudgeon that is shouting down new ideas (the kind of newsroom cancers that are killing newspapers):

Many of us at Indy are pleased to see Braden leave the Star. He was an arrogant kid who believed that he was smarter than the rest of us here.

Yes, at 29, Nicholson is certainly a kid. Another classy comment that wreaks of a curmudgeon:

IndyStar is full of a bunch of punks who think they are all innovators. I left there recently and always believed these little shit-stains were all immature.

On the other hand, we have comments about why people left Gannett because of curmudgeons:

I left the company a number of months ago and for good reason. If I were 20 years older, I would have been just fine, but because I wasn’t, the EE thought it necessary to let me know I wouldn’t be “respected.” (The same guy who no one respects in that newsroom).

Looks like this poison spreads in all Gannett newsrooms. I always thought Greenville was just unique. This attitude toward young people (aka future editors) will be the death knell of Gannett. Eventually the last 50-year-old will leave and there will be no one left to take their place.

I have heard of Gannett having cancerous newsrooms before. My girlfriend left a mid-size daily Gannett newspaper because of the newsroom culture (ageism and sexism abound). And I’ve heard it from other people about other Gannett newspapers.

This isn’t a unique Gannett problem, but corporate has to get its act together. Each newsroom should be a laboratory for innovation. That means corporate has to stop inhibiting innovation.

Bad things can happen:

I’m just saying.

But I’m saving more links to my delicious feed in the right column, and I’m conversing more than ever on Twitter.

And, of course, I’m blogging at BeatBlogging.Org. If you’re looking for beat reporters pushing the practice using online tools and social networking, that’s the place to be. Want to modernize your beat reporting? Go to BeatBlogging.Org immediately.

I encourage you to check out my delicious links. They are almost entirely journalism focused (often online journalism related), and I always save a blurb (either a quote or my thoughts) about each link. They are updating constantly throughout the day, and now that I looking into the journalism industry as my full-time job, I have a lot more links to share.

If there is sufficient demand, I would consider doing a daily link post like many blogs do. I put the the delicious feed in the right column so that you could get new links all day long, instead of once a day.

Time to go write a real post.

It was another crushing week of buyouts and layoffs at daily newspapers all over the country.

The Palm Beach Post will be seeing almost half of its editorial positions slashed by the end of summer. The San Jose Mercury News will be down to 155 editorial employees by the end of the week from a high of around 420. The Merc will have lost about 63% of its editorial staff.

Metro newspapers don’t really excel at anything, and in the era of niche publications, does that model still make sense? The Star-Ledger has found success with a niche publication, Pharmalot. Is that the model for metros to move forward?

John Hassell, the online editor at The Star-Ledger, said that he can envision a future where newspapers are a network of niche blogs like Pharmalot. That future makes more sense to me than the current metro newspaper model.

This all brings us to Today’s Thought: Are the days of the metro newspaper officially numbered?

If you haven’t downloaded Firefox 3 (on all your computers), you should do so immediately.

It rocks. It’s faster, more secure and has better features. Plus, it has a new UI that looks better, and matches each OS it is running under.

Firefox 3 is a testament to how powerful open source software can be. It’s substantially better than Internet Explorer 7. Heck, Firefox 2 was substantially better too.

It’s amazing/embarrassing for the human race that people still use Internet Explorer. It’s like admitting you’re a failure. Not only is Firefox a better browser than Internet Explorer, but so are Safari, Opera, etc, etc.

Mozilla and Firefox liberated us from the tyranny of Microsoft. Many forget that Internet Explorer once had market penetration in excess of 90%. Why is that a problem? Internet Explorer used to have poor Web standards support (it still lags behind all other major browsers), and Microsoft saw little need to build a better Web browser than Internet Explorer 6 because little money is made off of Web browsers.

Simply put, IE threatened the evolution of the Web. Firefox ultimately forced Microsoft’s hand into developing a better Web browser. IE 7 is substantially better than IE 6, and IE 8 finally promises to have good Web standards support. But, IE still lags behind Firefox for speed, features and security.

I guarantee you’ll love Firefox 3. What’s the best new feature in Firefox 3? Hands down, the awesome bar, which takes the location bar (where you type URLs in) to a whole new level.

There is no excuse not to upgrade to Firefox 3 today. It is the world’s best browser (Safari 3 on OS X 10.5 is a beast too).

I’m officially boycotting the Associated Press.

Today. Tomorrow. Forever.

Please do not forward me links to AP stories. There are plenty of other news outlets that cover the same exact stories from the same exact angles. But most of those news outlets aren’t bat shit stupid about the 21st century.

Why am I so angry? The AP just said fuck you to Fair Use. They just said fuck you to America. They just said fuck you to each and every one of us.

AP wants to charge people for taking excerpts as small as 5 words from its stories. 5 words?!?! I can understand asking for compensation if people lifted large passages of your work or the work in its entirety but for 5 words?

This is such an incredibly 20th century policy. People linking to AP stories is good for the AP. It sends traffic to their content.

The symbiosis that bloggers and media outlets have enjoyed over the past 10 years has been beneficial to all. In exchange for taking excerpts of content (which is permissible under Fair Use), bloggers link back to the original source. That way if people are interested in the topic, they can read more about it, which makes money for the original media outlet.

Patrick Nielsen’s analysis is spot on:

The New York Times, an AP member organization, refers to this as an “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt.” I suggest it’s better described as yet another attempt by a big media company to replace the established legal and social order with with a system of private law (the very definition of the word “privilege”) in which a few private organizations get to dictate to the rest of society what the rules will be.

You see what I did there? I took an excerpt of his post, and, in exchange, I linked to the original post (which you should all check out). I’m going to send his post a lot of traffic, which will make him and Making Light more money.

Heck, that’s why it is called the World Wide WEB. It’s a WEB of interconnected information. Can you imagine a world in which merely excerpting small amounts of information will result in you owing at least $12.50? Or $100?

This whole episode also has massive ramifications for free speech as Cory Doctorow points out (which the AP claims to like):

Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.

The people pushing for this stuff are not well-meaning, and they are not interested in making life better for artists, writers, or any other kind of individual creators. They are would-be aristocrats who fully intend to return us to a society of orders and classes, and they’re using so-called “intellectual property” law as a tool with which to do it.

Bloggers, citizens and people who believe in the rule of law should band together and pledge to boycott the AP, unless they drop this ridiculous policy.

One of the most insightful quotes I have seen in awhile came from journalism student Jessica DaSilva:

You know, throughout the day, the most advice I received was, “Change your major while you still can. It’s a bad time for journalism.” Personally, I think that comes from people who are more dedicated to their medium than the news.

It’s a great time for journalism. It’s a bad time for newspapers. Newspapers do not equal journalism.

Let’s not forget that newspapers are just a medium. Journalism is such much bigger and more powerful than a collection of printed pages.

People love online journalism. It’s more immediate. It’s more diverse. It’s more portable.

Our mission is to find ways to give people what they want. People want journalism. Never doubt that for a second.

And maybe journalism would better off if it had more wide-eyed and enthusiastic people like DaSilva, instead of people discouraging her from doing what she loves. Heck, why are those people still working in journalism?