*** DISCLAIMER*** OK, so this isn’t social media based nor is it technically tech, but gimme a break. I think everyone should own this and now I’ve (sort of) created the means to do it. On with the post!

My mother left me with two very important guideposts for my life:

1. Forget ‘em if they can’t take a joke (censored for delicate audiences), and

2. There is no band greater than the Beatles.

Now we could sit here and debate this second point for hours, but for the sake of this special holiday post, grant my premise about the Fab Four. Consider it your holiday gift to me, a gift you didn’t even have to wrap!

While the impact of The Beatles continues to be felt, their presence continued to elude the world of music based video games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

Until now.

The great thing about these video games is that they really give you the feeling that you’re creating this great music (unless you play Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, which features a number of Joe Perry solo tracks. That guy singing? Not so much). Whether you’re playing guitar, singing, drumming, or slappin da bass they’ve done a great job of creating an authentic-feeling experience and a fairly diverse catalogue. The latest trend in these games has been dedicating an entire game to one band like Aerosmith or Metallica.

Finally, this past September, the Rock Band line of games released their collaboration with the boys from Liverpool: A 45-track masterpiece following the lads from their humble beginnings in Liverpool’s Cavern Club to the rooftop concert that would prove to be their swan song. The digital artwork (and it is artwork) is nothing short of jaw-dropping, and the selection of music includes early hits (I Saw Her Standing There), later hits (Something) and tracks designed to lead off B-Sides so people could skip them (Within You Without You).

In addition, there is downloadable content (DLC) that so far completes the Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper’s and Rubber Soul albums – playing the entire B Side of Abbey Road as one continuous track is like a rite of passage for this game. Online play is smooth and fun – finding other people looking to play along with is not difficult at all.

The game is available for PlayStation 3, XBox 360 and Ninetndo Wii – price varies by console but is usually around $50. If you have the means and can locate it, the collector’s edition box set includes a Hofner bass controller and Ludwig drum kit ala Ringo; George’s Gretsch Duo and John’s Rickenbacker guitars are sold seperately, but if you have controllers from another Rock Band or Guitar hero game, it is very likely that it will be compatible – check here for a list of compatible hardware.

This game is hours of fun, can be played be expert gamers and casual gamers who are just big Beatles fans. I’ll leave you with this clip of my favorite Beatles song, available for download ONLY on the Xbox 360 at the time of this post (NOTE – this is not how multiplayer appears during actual gameplay – everything shares the screen and is much easier to read):

Image courtesy of tiny white lights

I spent the wee hours of this morning walking down San Bruno road in the dark and the cold, walking over the 101 and into the San Francisco Airport until my father picked me up and took me to the airport monorail. Why, you ask? Well, to be honest, it’s kind of mix of my attempting to be frugal and some of the worst customer care I’ve seen.

I don’t like being a bother during the purchase process. I understand how difficult it is to be the person on the end of the deal, who is just trying to do their job, so I want to get in, get out, get what I paid for, and leave everyone happy. When the other side is down for the same, it’s a big thrill (and a win-win!).

I had the opposite of that experience yesterday while attempting to reach (and attain, and figure out how to return) my rental car. First, their office wasn’t located in the rental center – no big deal. there’s only so much space, and maybe their fleet of cars isn’t big enough to justify the lease. They have a shuttle to the lot. where, you might ask? Down by the “Kiss n’ Go” area, where I had to pick up a phone that I believe carries diseases left over from the Age of Enlightenment (which didn’t work, so I resorted to my cell phone) to call the guy working the office so he could come pick us up. When we got there, I discovered that I could’t drop the car off in time for my 7:40am flight, since they don’t open until 7:30. Their solution? Drop the car off with Ed, who works across the street at the 76 station (and who tried to charge me $10 bucks to keep a key on his counter and a car parked at his station for 90 minutes – nice try, Ed) and then call a cab. I don’t need to tell you how terrible a solution this is, as it absolves the car rental guy from any responsibility for my inconvenience, putting it all squarely on my (and Ed’s) shoulders.

As I walked in the cold, I was thinking about what we can learn from this. Clearly, situations where the customer comes last are not good for business, especially nowadays, where consumer feedback channels give us the power to dent (or ruin) a company’s reputation with the people who listen to our opinions. Maybe it’s time to go back to “the customer is always right” as a dominating philosophy and see how that helps us out – not only because consumers wield a lot of power in the new social landscape, but because it’s the right thing to do. Chris Brogan wrote a great post titled “Does Your Social Media Experience Extend?” where he discusses the need for a company’s social media presence (usually kind and engaging and caring) to extend to the physical experiences we have when dealing with the company. Chris says it really well, so I’m not going to try and duplicate it here, but consider this if you’re a business owner:

• I am not a super-well known guy in this great big world, but I have a lot of communication channels that I use on a regular basis (Facebook, Twitter, my 2 blogs, etc.). Using these channels, I can easily reach a few thousand people, a portion of whom give my feedback some credence.
• If I have a terrible experience with a company, I will not give a negative review. I will actively steer people elsewhere as a service to them because I care about their customer experience more than I think that you do.
• Conversely, if I have a great experience, I become a great champion for your brand.
• There are lot more people like me who hold a great deal more sway and feel the same way I do.

What kind of experience do you want me to have? I want me to have a nice experience (then again, I’m biased), and being on Twitter or having a Facebook fan page isn’t going to help me when I’m standing at your counter unless you have a corporate culture based around communication, openness and a desire to create the best customer experience possible for everyone who walks through your door. If you have that in place, you’re social media presence can become an extension of your corporate culture and create an army of citizen marketers who are spreading the good word instead of the bad.

Do you agree?

"Wear your Twitter badge with pride" courtesy of jmilles

If you’re only using the Twitter website, you’re not really using twitter – something I overheard at BlogWorld that keeps rolling around in my head along with the theme to “Family Ties”. The point is that even with their new “Lists” feature (I’ll talk about that another time), you’re losing out on squeezing everything you can out of Twitter if you limit yourself to the site. There are a bunch of Desktop applications – I prefer Tweetdeck – that let you manage your contacts (yay for groups), make ReTweeting a simple click of a button (no cutting and pasting) and their multiple columns let me run searches, monitor mentions of my name and even integrates with Facebook to allow me to keep up with friends and engage them without leaving my desktop (makes me feel like an evil genius with a centrally located lair). I would highly recommend it, and if I had an iPhone (get on the ball, Verizon) the tweeteck app is the first one I would try. Right now my Blackberry Curve 8830 looks like an old bag phone compared to what’s out there.

Seesmic Desktop is another popular desktop application that integrates Facebook, is supposedly using Twitter’s lists function (although not on the version I have). I’m not a huge fan because the Tweetdeck layout is bit more intuitive to me, but you should check them out and decide for yourself.

One last tool I’ll mention here is HootSuite, a web-based app that takes a more business oriented tack, allowing you to have multiple users manage an account, track statistic when you send out a link, and focus on brand monitoring – and it’s free! I’d be interested to see what kind of desktop app they would create – I can’t imagine it’s that far off for them.

So many people give up on twitter and get frustrated and confused by twitter because the web interface SUCKS. If you’re following more than 50 people and a percentage of those 50 tweet all the time you’re going to have a really tough time keeping up with them – if that was all I knew, I probably wouldn’t have stuck with twitter. Before you give it up, though, just look around at all the different ways you can sift through the stream, keep up with people and stay on top of it, you’ll see how amazing Twitter can actually be.

What are you using for Twitter? Spill it.