See my full profile here.

First off, why am I still using Twhirl over TweetDeck or Destroy Twitter or any number of other clients?  There are two answers: 1) Twhirl integrates with Ping.FM, a service that allows all of your social updates to populate across any number of social networks, websites, and IM statuses from one location thus saving a lot of time, and 2) Twhirl allows for multiple Twitter accounts which TweetDeck does not.  I need to see both my personal Twitter account (@pkchrisjohnson) and the Education Technology Podcast (@edtechpodcast) that I co-host.  I haven’t found another Twitter client that includes both of those features, so I have stuck with Twhirl.

Unfortunately, Seesmic Desktop does not include  support for Ping.FM like its brother Twhirl does, which is a big deal to me.  I assume, though, that Seesmic will be adding this support in the near future thus porting over the feature from Twhirl.  Seesmic Desktop does support multiple accounts, and it does so in a more efficient manner than Twhirl does, docking all of the accounts into one unified window rather than seperate windows.  Seesmic desktop also has support for Facebook (TweetDeck does also) and gives a user the best of both worlds in one interface.  Seesmic combines all @replies and direct messages for all Twitter accounts into one view and color codes them based on the account through which they were received.

Seesmic Desktop is a versatile Twitter client that, even in its infancy, has proven to be a powerful tool for me.  There is a lot to like here, and I prefer the layout over that of TweetDeck.  I have enjoyed using the program as my Twitter and Facebook dashboard for the past several days and once it receives support for Ping.FM, I will probably switch to Seesmic Desktop full time.   The only other complaint that I have, and this seems to be a systemic problem with Adobe Air applications in general is that Seesmic Desktop takes up way too much memory on my system.  It is the second largest memory consumer right now, behind Firefox, always above 100Mb of system memory.  This is a problem that is present with all of the other Air Applications that I have used, and it forces me to shut down my Twitter applications when I need to do any serious work because I need that memory for the Adobe Creative Suite.  Hopefully, Adobe will work on this problem, and make the Air codebase more

Not sure I can say the same about the Sprint stores, though.  They tend to be a mixed bag.  Anyway, I was in one recently and I had a bad experience.  So, I Twittered about it (or is it Tweeted about it).  Within a few hours, I had received two @ replies to my tweet from two Sprint employees.  Now I knew that Comcast is actively on Twitter, and I was hoping that Sprint was too.  They didn’t disappoint.  This is what companies should be doing.  I will detail more about my correspondence with them when it has moved further along.

~Chris

Take a look, and tell me what you think.  They will be adding more content as time goes on, and you can subscribe to the feed to receive new content automatically.

I will never eat at Applebee’s again.  Consistently, over the past several visits to the restaurant I have received bad service.  I used to like Applebee’s.  I remember the first time I ate at one.  The food was fine.  The service was fine.  And the prices were good.  Not too cheap, not too expensive.  You knew that when you at at an Applebee’s whether it was in Pocatello, Idaho or Milwaukee, Wisconsin that you were going to get pretty much the same food. Consistency was key.  Applebee’s was safe; it was a place where you could go and find something on the menu that you liked and you would get decent service.
So what is the issue? For one thing, Applebee’s prices are no longer any different from the myriad of other restaurant options out there.  So, in order to compete, Applebee’s must offer something else to entice the customer through their doors.  For a restaurant, it seems like there are four options: good food, good service, interesting/unique atmosphere, or busty girls in tight shirts (ala Hooters).

Applebee’s food is unremarkable.  There is nothing unique or interesting about it.  Sometimes, it isn’t very good at all, which for the price is not a good thing.  What’s worse than the quality of the food is the quality of the service.  It sucks.

My girlfriend and I went out to dinner on Saturday night; we were going to drive a half an hour for an Outback Steakhouse (because she had been given a gift card by her students) but we decided because of the weather to eat somewhere closer.  The conversation went something like this:

So we pulled into the Applebee’s and went inside.  First thing we noticed was the waiting area was packed with people, probably 20.  Great, I thought, we are going to have to wait. ‘15-20 minutes’ the hostess told us when we asked how long it would be.  Anyone who has gone out to eat knows that waiting a few minutes to get a seat at a restaurant is fairly common and usually the wait is longer.  The problem was that the restaurant was only half full.  Literally half of the tables were completely empty.  And, they were clean, no dirty dishes on any one of them.

Every single person sitting in the very packed waiting area could have been seated comfortably at a table.  I assumed that this situation would be rectified quickly.  I assumed that we must have all arrived at once and that in a matter of a few minutes, everyone would be seated at a table.  Keep in mind that most of us were standing because there were not enough chairs for everyone in waiting area.  People kept coming in the door, though, and very few of us were seated at tables.  It took them a full 15 minutes to get us seated at a table, and there were still 10 tables in the restaurant that were completely empty, unlike the waiting area, which was packed full (people had continued to enter and wait while we were standing there).

I had been sitting at my table watching all of this for about 5 minutes (it took me 30 seconds to pick my order) and I began to get really hungry and really frustrated. We had not been acknowledged by anyone.  There was no “Hi, I will be right there” or “Can I get you started on some drinks”.  We were completely ignored by the two waitresses and one manager who were walking by our table helping the other customers who already had their food. Finally, after, 10 minutes of sitting at our table, we decided to leave.  And I will never be going back.

There is absolutely no excuse for what happened.  I counted five waitresses in the restaurant, plus one hostess, a buss boy, two bartenders, and a manager walking around.  Were they understaffed? I have no idea, but does it really matter?  It is not difficult to take a drink order or greet someone as they are seated at a table. It is such a simple concept that every other eating establishment seems to have mastered.  It should not be my responsibility to grab a waitress and place my own order.  They didn’t talk to any of the other people who had been seated at the same time as we were.  We were all ignored.

Applebee’s is competing for my dollar, now more than ever.  It costs me just as much to eat at Applebee’s as it does to go to Red Robin, TGI Friday’s, Outback Steakhouse, Macaroni Grill, Red Lobster, etc.  So when I go out to a sit down restaurant, I expect good service and good food or there is absolutely no reason for me to go back.  I can get better food and better service for less money from a Panera Bread or Noodles and Company than Applebee’s, and the only thing that I am losing is a waiter/waitress.  Heck, I get better service at McDonald’s 90% of the time.  There has to be a reason for me to spend the money and endure the hassle of dealing with a waiter.  For Applebee’s it is no longer worth it.

But, you might argue, surely this was an isolated incident.  You might say, ‘Chris, they were understaffed, give them a break.’  Unfortunately, if it were, I wouldn’t be writing this.  Both my girlfriend and I have had similar experiences at multiple Applebee’s in multiple states.  And I know many people who won’t eat at Applebee’s now because of incidents like this.  Applebee’s, you now have the reputation of bad service.  Do a search for “Applebee’s sucks” or look at their online ratings, and you will find many similar stories as mine.  Or, if you need even further proof, look at the stock price of the holding company that owns Applebee’s.  Ouch!  This is not isolated.  It will take more than a change of your logo and millions of dollars spent on advertisements to get people to come in.  You need to actually have good food and good service.  If you don’t understand this, you deserve what you get.