Cross-posted from hums, beeps or clicks powered by Make It Work.

I was recently introduced to the Greenopia app by one of our Neighborhood Technology Consultants after he helped their founder with her technology needs.  Greenopia was founded right here in our home town of Santa Barbara, ‘to help people lead healthier lives in an increasingly toxic world’.  Their website is full of a ton of fantastic information to help you eat, shop and live green and the iPhone app will help find locations in your area that are eco-friendly!

This *free* application is very easy to use. Within seconds you will find yourself scrolling through green locations in your area.  From restaurants and grocery stores, to travel and transportation,  pet care and other services, this app has it all!  You can even call, get directions, and read Yelp reviews right from the application.  Every time I look for a restaurant, store or service in my area I now start with Greenopia, and you can too!  If we all do our part to support earth-friendly companies in our area we all benefit in the long run.

To hear more about the latest and greatest mobile applications, tune in to Make It Work with Jeremy Anticouni where we spotlight the hottest apps in our App Watch segment every Saturday at 3pm on KSFO 560 (or download the podcast!).

Cross-posted from hums, beeps or clicks powered by Make It Work.

Recently we took an early Valentine’s getaway to Las Vegas and while sitting with him at the counter of his favorite cigar lounge, Casa Fuente in The Forum Shops at Caesars, I had the urge to play Scrabble. I whipped out my iPhone and again debated purchasing the Scrabble app. As I browsed through the App Store I stumbled across a different app that I just have to share with you: Words With Friends Free.

Within seconds of installing this app, I was challenging my boyfriend to a round of a game that was nearly identical to Scrabble. The coolest thing about this app is that you can invite your Twitter or Facebook friends to play, search your Contacts, enter your buddy’s username directly, or search for a random opponent to challenge.  Pick your preference and voila, let the games begin! If you choose the online play option, you can even chat with your opponent via the app while you play, and if you are a die-hard fan you can play up to 20 games simultaneously.

Don’t be shy, download the app, take it for a test drive and if you love it you can download the full version, for only $2.99 (so you don’t have to deal with any ads between plays). If you’d like to challenge me to a game some time, go ahead and search by username for “heatherburlesci”…I dare ya!

For more information or to Download Words With Friends click here.

Cross-posted from hums, beeps or clicks powered by Make It Work.

Pulling up to the hotel we felt a bit like we were arriving at LAX; the property had a modern/industrial feel, the roads split and turned in several different directions and after following a few signs and looping around a few times we arrived at the valet at the front entrance.  The attendant hurried over to our truck, helped us with our suitcase and pointed us in the direction of the front desk.  Once we checked in, the gentleman at the front desk described to us that the Vdara is very different from other properties in Las Vegas because it is a non-smoking property (score!) and they don’t have a casino (it connects to the Bellagio™ though and is just across the way from Aria™).  We got our keys and headed up to our room on the 48^th floor.  The room was perfect in every way and we had a gorgeous panoramic view of Vegas.

You can check out their website to get a pretty good idea of just how beautiful this place is but it was the customer service that took our experience to the next level.  They nailed it on every front!  From the amazing aroma you smell as you enter the property, to the courteous crew at the front desk, to the awesome attendant that delivered the room service meal (which was somehow piping hot) and offered for us to call him back to remove the dishes  when we finished eating, and to the fact that he didn’t leave a huge cart in our room and run over everything in the process of entering the room because he propped open the door himself, delivered the dishes by hand and then took the cart back with him.  As we departed from the hotel the next day, already completely satisfied with our experience, the crew at the valet sealed the deal!  We gave them our ticket and were offered ice-cold (Vdara-labeled) water bottles for our trip home.  We then watched the attendant as he sprinted up the hill to retrieve our truck which really wasn’t that far away but he wanted to make sure that we didn’t have to wait.  He drove our vehicle down the hill, jumped out to help us put our suitcase inside and when he realized we had a bed cover on the back of our truck scrambled back to the ignition to grab the keys to open the back for us.  After getting us situated he offered to provide us directions to our destination and off we went, COMPLETELY content!

Here at Make It Work we are all about providing mind-blowing customer service and being “BIG on the little things” so I have come to expect others to do so as well.  Since my expectations are typically failed, but this time achieved on every level, I felt it necessary to share my experience at the Vdara in Vegas!  On the MIW delight scale, they get a 4.0 in my book!

FLOW on!

HMB

I’m not a doctor or anything, but in my not-so-expert opinion the explosion in sales of these smartphones is causing ADD in the users that purchase them.  I can’t even count the number of times per day I look at my iPhone.  Unless I’m typing at my computer, you’ll probably find it in my hand, and if not it’s DEFINITELY within reach!  The crazy thing is that many people I know are on their smartphone even more than I am each day.  No longer can we make it through a meeting at the office, a dinner with friends/family, a sporting event, a TV show, etc. without checking our smartphone multiple times.  Many times we are either so focused on the need to check our phones or the information we are accessing that we COMPLETELY tune out anything else going on around us.

Can you blame us consumers though?  Smartphones provide us INSTANT information at the tips of our fingers, almost ANYWHERE we go, at ANY time of day!  Whether used for business or personal reasons, they not only store our contacts, calendar and email but also provide us access to: news, our favorite social networking sites, travel information, any music you could think of, games, sports information, weather conditions, financial institutions, movies, etc. (I could go on but Apple has over 100,000 apps alone so you should get the point!)  So, is it really our fault that we crave all of this information? Probably not.  Should we let this distract us from our surroundings? Probably not!

I just turned 28 and already can’t help but think of how scary this obsession/addiction with these devices, and they information they provide us, is going to shape our lives and those of future generations.  I have already seen a decline in written and verbal communication skills just in the last few years (truncated words, missing punctuation, the excessive use of acronymns, etc.)…but we sure as heck can send an email, text, tweet or the like at lightning speed from our smartphones!  This pretty much sums up my point:  my birthday was 12 days ago, I got 33 birthday wishes via facebook, 10 via twitter, 9 via text message, 3 phone calls and 0 cards.

Let’s take a minute and think about all of this…without grabbing our smartphones!

FLOW on!

HMB

In case you have any upcoming holiday travel plans, here are some of the airport highlights…and LOWlights I came across in my coast-to-coast travels:

• If you ever have the chance, fly through SBA!  It is, by far, my favorite because it is the easiest airport that I’ve ever flown in and out of!  It took me a whopping 5 minutes to check my bag (I had already printed my boarding pass and paid my $20 baggage fee online), go through security, and take a seat at the gate!  How can you NOT love that?!
• I was let down that the only restaurant in my terminal at LAX was “Chili’s Too”.  Their food is simply NOT good!  I was ALSO let down that I didn’t realize that I had lost one of the gel ear buds for my Bose headphones on the plane from SBA to LAX and they don’t carry them in the airport.  Thankfully I had brought a spare set of iPhone headphones so I was able to watch some TweetDeck tutorial videos during my 2 hour layover!
• Several airports now have gadget vending machines where you can purchase things like iPods, headphones, digital cameras, gaming systems, and other gadgets and gizmos! Pretty cool but don’t expect that you’re going to get any sale prices…you’re buying it in an airport after all!
• MIA REALLY needs to do some work!  The gate I waited at for roughly four hours (as a result of a delay) stunk of mildew…to the point where I could hardly breathe!  The smell was so strong that I couldn’t even smell the Starbucks coffee brewing at the stand across the room.  Shocking, I know! Once we were finally called to board…for the second time…we were shuttled over in a bus.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it was raining harder INSIDE the bus than it was outside!  The roof was leaking all along one side, the floor was soaking wet and people were sitting in puddles of water by the time we made it over to the plane.  Somebody needs to get it together over there!
• JAX was a very nice airport and even nicer because it has free Wi-Fi throughout the airport until 1/15/10, courtesy of Google!
• I remember flying through ORD roughly 7 years ago on my way back from a month-long visit in Madrid, Spain, but one thing I didn’t see THEN was the H1N1 flu vaccination booths NOW setup throughout the airport.  I thought that was a little weird; a great idea because of all of the germs spreading around airports and airplanes but the whole idea of getting a flu shot in the airport just didn’t settle with me very easily for some reason.  Another thing that ended up not settling well with me was the pizza that I simply couldn’t resist at Wolfgang Puck’s.  I guess several hours of traveling and several months of not eating pizza can do that to somebody!
• By the time I got to SFO my iPhone battery was running very low, common I know, and one suggestion I would have for them is more electrical outlets or charging stations.  The hallways were littered with travelers sitting on the ground in order to charge up their computers, phones and any other gadgets.  I was back in California and less than an hour’s flight away from home so I couldn’t complain too much though!  Speaking of complaining, the two people next to me were awfully upset that United had overbooked our flight so much and therefore they wouldn’t be able to make it back to SBA until the next morning. I departed for home, on-time, so I was happy though!

All in all, I was quite impressed that after taking a total of six flights over the Thanksgiving weekend, only one of them was delayed!  That was the flight from MIA to JAX and was a result of weather conditions and an issue with the plane we were supposed to take and they therefore switched us to a new plane right as we were ready to board.  No complaints on my part there though, I’d rather wait and take a plane that is safe any day!  Happy Holidays everybody and safe travels!

P.S. I think that raw onions should be forbidden in airport restaurants (like they are at the Make It Work office)!  Having to sit next to a stranger for several hours that reeks of raw onions is torture!

FLOW on!

HMB

My latest, cost-cutting measure came last week when I made the switch from Cox to DIRECTV for television.  Through the ups and downs, I had been a loyal Cox customer for over 5 years, but decided that I was sick of paying over $150 per month for internet and TV.  When my co-workers Carson and Ashley told me about their recent switch to DIRECTV and the savings that came along with it I was ALL EARS!  When it came down to it, I end up with pretty much the same service for $50 less per month.  I say pretty much because there are so many channels on this DIRECTV guide that I honestly don’t yet know all that I have or don’t have!  Because MIW has all of our cell phone accounts with AT&T, I qualified for an additional discount on DIRECTV services and was introduced to this AWESOME representative named Christina who got me all signed up and dialed in!  Christina was GREAT, no complaints there…but as I proceeded with the registration I could see that DIRECTV had similar policies to those “other” companies out there!  I guess I hold my standards so high because Make It Work is not one of “those” companies…at all!  I was given a 4-hour window of arrival (MIW gives a 30-minute window!) and was told to expect my installer between 8am-12pm that Friday morning.  Thanks to our trusty CTO, Jeremy Anticouni, and the power of Citrix’s remote desktop software I am fully setup to work from home when I need to.  Friday morning…well…all day as it turned out…was one of these days when I’d need to be working from my home office!

Friday morning rolled around and I was ready for my DIRECTV technician at 8am, the beginning of the window they had given.  I ate my oatmeal with fresh berries from my desk and logged in to start working and taking calls from my living room.  Several calls and hundreds of emails later I looked at the clock to find it was already 11:30am and my doorbell still hadn’t rung!  The text message on my iPhone rang shortly thereafter though.  It was Christina, the awesome rep at AT&T, asking how my installation was going.  I had to break the news to her that *it wasn’t*!  She instantly replied apologizing and insisting to call DIRECTV herself to get them to wave the $22 delivery fee that I had paid.  She delivered…but the installer still hadn’t!  Shortly thereafter my boyfriend called to tell me that DIRECTV had called and they were running late…DUH I thought…and would be there at 1pm.  One o’clock passed by and we then got another call, directly from the installer, letting us know he wouldn’t be there til 2.  There wasn’t much I could do at this point, and at least I was able to work, right?, so I continued waiting.  Around 2:20 the technician pulled in to my driveway, sat in his truck for about 5 minutes and then came to the door.  He was nice, apologized for being late, and started working on the installation.  In his defense, our house couldn’t have been an easy installation.  In addition to installing the dish on the roof he spent quite some time in our attic running cables and fishing lines in the walls.  When he came back down from the attic I asked him about adding a second HD-DVR box because when I setup the order I had forgotten about the TV in my spare room so I wanted to get another box.  This ended up causing more issues…he had a box in his truck, but no remote apparently, and had to call in to DIRECTV to ask about options/pricing since he was “only a contractor”.  The woman on the other end of his bulky black two-way phone was less than pleasant and basically said that the only way I could get another box would be to cancel my entire order, which he had already almost finished setting up, go back to AT&T to replace the order and then wait for another tech to come back another day with the 3 boxes I needed since I only had ordered 2.  REALLY?!  I was Floored!  I was trying to upgrade my package and they made it so unnecessarily complicated that it deterred me from doing so.  I told her that I thought that was “silly,” I was trying to be nice after all, handed the phone back to the installer and told him to continue doing what he was doing.  In the meantime, I sent a text message to Christina letting her know what was going on and she insisted that I call DIRECTV to speak to a Supervisor about my experience.  I waited until the installer left, which was after 5:30pm (remember I had been waiting since 8am!) and called DIRECTV’s customer service number.

Recording Glee from my iPhone

My experience with their customer service was rather delightful, to quote MIW’s idea of service!  The phone was quickly answered after pressing a few prompts, the agent Lonnie was very nice, she LISTENED to my concerns, apologized and then asked to put me on hold so that she could speak to her Supervisor regarding my situation.  In the end, Lonnie, with the help of her Supervisor, made me a happy customer again.  They credited my account accordingly, offered me some additional services free of charge for 3 months and arranged for the delivery of a third box at my house the next morning at 8:20am.

As I stated earlier, I’m still getting used to all of the channels but am happy with the service and the outcome of my switch.  I think my FAVORITE thing about the service, besides the savings of course, is the iPhone app they have!  I can browse channels, search for shows and even set programs to record, right from the palm of my hand!  Now that is COOL!!!!

FLOW on!

HMB

Today at the Make It Work World-Wide Headquarters, we proudly hung our red, white and blue as a salute to our people in service and our beloved veterans. I’d personally like to take this time to salute all of the veterans that have served our country and all of the men and women that currently serve in the US Armed Forces.  There’s one special soldier I’d really like to show my appreciation to, Sergeant James P. Beck of the US Army, aka my brother!  James joined the Army a few years ago and is getting ready to head to Iraq for his second tour.  He spent roughly 16 months on his first trip to the Middle East in 2007 and is departing again in December.  He is currently living in Georgia, based out of Fort Stewart, with his wife of a year and a half.  I haven’t seen James for several months but am looking forward to spending time with him, his wife, and the rest of my immediate family for Thanksgiving this year in Georgia.  What more could I be thankful for?!

Sergeant James P. Beck, US Army

Thank you James, you’re a hero!

FLOW on!

HMB

Meet my Mangatar: brown hair, blue eyes and buzzing around in my bee outfit (everybody calls me “B” so I just go with it)!

Tip: use this for your profile picture on Twitter,  facebook, or your other social networking site!  It’s great for those of you that are camera shy!!!

Have fun with it and FLOW on!

HMB

Since Maray is an “only child,” she is awfully spoiled! So spoiled in fact that she comes to work with me nearly every day and has won the hearts of several employees at Make It Work…along with the Staples delivery guy that always gives her treats when he comes in!

I’ll tell you more about Maray later, until then, I hope you at least get a bit of a chuckle out of this video! Goodniiiiiight!

FLOW on!
HMB