Over the last couple months I came to the realization that I couldn’t continue intermittently sharing my son’s cell phone. He is going into the Army next month and will need his own phone and with our increased community volunteer work I need a phone of my own. After realizing I could no longer be cell phone free, the next logical decision was: what phone to buy?

I did what most techies do these days and twittered the question: what cell phone would you buy?

The most common response, of course, was the one phone I least wanted to buy: the iPhone. It wasn’t that I disliked Apple or the iPhone – I’ve owned a Mac for several years now and consider myself platform agnostic – plus the iPhone has looked like a sweet gadget from the get go. I also haven’t been swayed by the ditch the iPhone crowd although will admit these are some compelling reasons to stay away. Then again, when others zig, I tend to zag. Just my style. And I like most of Wayne Sutton’s reasons for sticking with the iPhone (question: what are you using for iPhone screenshots?).

My biggest hurdle has been getting over the company Apple partnered with to deliver the service: AT&T. I really, really, really dislike AT&T but realized that was based on too many things to get into that matter any more. Sometimes it’s best to leave the past in, well, the past.

Real world iPhone usefulness

So I kept coming back to the iPhone in my search for a phone which did everything I wanted to do and more:

• be an easy to use phone
• allow me store ample number of contacts
• decent digital camera so that I could stop carrying around two devices
• would store and play a reasonable amount of music in MP3 format (didn’t have to be our entire music libary, but needed to have at least 10GB of our favorite MP3)
• could take place of my aging Pocket PC and store all my online passwords
• GPS that might replace Garmin which needs map updates
• could be that magical *one* gadget to carry (almost) everywhere

It began with us heading off to the Apple store at the Southcenter Mall just south of Seattle. I didn’t even make it into the the Apple store as there was an AT&T kiosk out front that had the white 32GB iPhone 3GS. I bought that and two more touch phones (non iPhones) for our kids. After tax the three phones came to around $525 which doesn’t take into account the two year (gasp) contract we’re now locked into.

Despite salesman pressure to do so, we didn’t cancel our Sprint EVDO card and go with AT&T’s version of that, but canceled all other Sprint business. Interesting sidenote: Sprint wasn’t throwing any significant deals at us to stay. We told them one of our only problems with them was that they refused to replace a broken phone ($150 phone) for us when we had paid for the warranty for two years because they said it wasn’t “accidental damage.” Another reason we don’t have love for any of these cell phone carriers.

So we gave into the AT&T demons and bought an iPhone 3GS. I must say after using the iPhone 3GS the last week or so it’s the most useful phone I’ve ever used. I didn’t buy it to be cool or be the first one on the block with one or anything silly like that.

With that said, there are things about the iPhone 3GS I don’t yet understand how to do or like. The app screen organization is clumsy, for example. I’ll skip making a list as I haven’t owned it long enough to learn if the things I don’t like are my newbieness or actual design flaws.

Oh that glorious app store

Speaking of the app store. Wow, that thing is jammed. There are a bunch of free apps and paid apps. Here are the first two apps I paid for:

• eWallet ($9.99) – this allows me to sync via WiFi with my Windows desktop version of eWallet to manage all the logins and user accounts I keep online. Since I don’t duplicate passwords and use strong passwords where allowed, this application is indispensible
• Trek Keno ($0.99) – hey, Star Trek + Keno, gotta have it

Here’s a few free apps I’ve tried so far:

• Pandora (music) – wow, talk about getting a free radio station of music you like streamed. Just plug in an artist you enjoy like say, Ozzy Osbourne, and Pandora will create a station around that artist.
• Tap Tap Revenge (game) – think Rock Band drums and Guitar Hero and you’ll get the idea of what this is about. A bunch of free songs you can download and play.
• Waterslide (game) – tilt the iPhone to move you down a 3D waterslide. A quick distraction type game.
• SportsTap (sports / news) – keep track of sport scores. Also has a neat prediction section which will guess as to who is going to win based on a bunch of different stats. Might be of use to sports bettors.
• AroundMe (location based) – a portable version of our Garmin GPS that tells you what banks/ATMs, bars, coffee, gas stations, hospitals, hotels and more are nearby. Then you can get directions. Handy.
• Nike+iPod (fitness) – along with a pair of Nike+ shoes you can track how many calories you are burning walking around or running. Optionally you can have iTunes transfer the stats to nikeplus.com and do even more.

Being there are tons of apps, other iPhone users are welcome to suggest other apps I should check out in the comments below. Also, if you think I made a mistake or the right decision in this phone person, you’re welcome to weigh in.

My first reaction to Skittles.com turning their homepage into a hashtag (anybody who puts #skittles or mentions Skittles in their Twitter update) search result from the Twitter conversation was not positive. I mean look at this mess of an eyesore of two overlays:

But once past the terrible web design, I started thinking about marketing. Much more positive thoughts streamed in.

Skittles doesn’t have to keep this homepage for very long and I suspect when they see some of the hashtag spamming and racial slurs being posted through Twitter, they will get rid of it. It has succeeded in getting some passionate, web savvy folks talking about Skittles a lot more than they were yesterday. It’s got bloggers talking about them. Skittles is getting their name out there. A round of applause.

Then I started thinking about what Skittles, the candy, are. They are tiny pieces of yummy candy that, like Starburst, have many different packages of flavors. You munch a couple of them here and there. They are tiny like Twitter updates. Lots to be compared between the two. What kind of people munch on Skittles anyway? It’s a pretty good analogy to making Twitter updates. I give the marketing department thumbs up on this experiment as long as they don’t keep this gimmick running very long and let it get further vandalized. Here’s my famous Skittles tweet:

Sweet, can finally scratch off my life goal list making it to the #skittles homepage!

Now let’s hope we don’t see this copycatted by other ‘small’ things from marketing department. This is a one-off marketing idea and the other companies who jump aboard are not going to fare nearly as well in the buzz department.

WAIT - Wasting the buzz

But wait, this marketing buzz might be mostly for not. Just looked at the Google search results for Skittles and check out the results:

Notice the prominence of “Products” by Google? Now look what happens when you click on the Skittles product page link. It leads to a 404 not found IIS server message:

What? Did the marketing department forget to tell the webmaster that people might follow the buzz and try to maybe look up products? This is wasting the buzz! Skittles web monkeys get the wrench to this ASAP or your buzz will disappear like, well, the taste of skittles in your mouth.

Twittersheep is one of those does one thing service websites. Twitter has a lot of those, oddly enough. Just go there type in the twitter name you are interested in and wait for the result. It will show you a tag cloud of each Twitter follower’s bio section. Here is mine, taken (presumably?) from 1,600+ followers.

Interesting that so many people are following me using the words ‘social’ and ‘media’ in their bios. This either proves the words are cliched or reinforces that my comment last week about Twitter being a lot about those who are into Twitter and those type of services. Some readers will note that, blogging aside if you count that anyway, I haven’t fully embraced social media to date. I am planning to try and dive into this space and experiment with the 2009 reboot of our offline business, but not there yet.

Being nitpicky, the name of the service bugs me a bit. I don’t think the folks kind enough to follow my occasional Twitter update would like being referred to as sheep. Not sure being ‘part of the flock’ is flattering either. But hey, this is a long way from the dumbest named services on the web.

For readers active on Twitter, what are the prominent keywords for your Twitter followers? Note: if you have a lot of followers (like thousands) it may take a long, long time to process. I tried one Twitterer with tens of thousands of followers and it was still processing after the time it took to write this entire post. If you take a screenshot you can use BB tags to share the picture in the comments area (e.g [img=path_to_img]) below. Go ahead, give it a try. I’m curious if the tags social media comes up prominently for many others. Guessing the answer is yes.

Dave Fleet republished with permission Doc Kane’s curious take on why he thinks more businesses are getting into Twitter than blogs which boils down to blogging taking more time and effort:

Unlike many other forms of new technology, one does not need to be a tech whiz to get up and running on Twitter - and this is a huge advantage over blogging.

Huge advantage? I wonder about that. It takes much less time to craft 140 character maximum updates than write a blog post, no argument there, but what about the other time Twitter takes that blogging doesn’t? The time to track, follow and reply to updates from others you follow? The time to find new and add new followers or remove those who are disruptive?

I think Twitter is a bit overstated in terms of long term business value. It’s a lot more useful than I originally thought and have since taken that criticism back, but it’s not something that every business or even most businesses that require an online presence absolutely must be involved with to help their business grow and succeed.

And, despite my affection for them, blogs aren’t absolutely required either.

Twitter as the relationship builder for, well, Twitterers

Sure, Twitter is great for building relationships with those who are into Twitter. But is that demographic vital to your business? I can safely say I’ve never had one client mention Twitter to me – ever – in our offline business. We have done business with plenty of young, old and middle-aged folks. I mentioned Twitter to a salesman trying to pitch yellow page ads to me and you’d have thought I was an alien.

Reality check.

Twitter is a massive river, flowing fast, free and wild and untamed at times. An online comparison I’ve made several times is a gigantic IRC chatroom with comments aplenty. Some of this activity river is caught by Google, but quite a bit isn’t. If you want to get something out there very fast, Twitter works great. If you want to follow along with feedback on a topic or event in real time, especially if folks are using hashtags like #topic_keyword to group, Twitter is a functional tool.

But Twitter sucks when it comes to the past.

Yeah, you can search through past tweets, but if they are stale beyond a few days or weeks, or in some busy twitterers case a few hours, it isn’t as useful. You can retweet and try and start up an old discussion, but that doesn’t work too well. And what about search engines? Something every business should care about because if people can’t find your business and you, how are you going to do business?

I started a blog for the reboot of our insurance business, but haven’t gotten setup with Twitter yet. Am I doing things backwards? I don’t think so. I wanted to make sure our new website got ranked in the search engines ASAP. Commenting on and/or through Twitter might make that happen if somebody blogged one of my Tweets, but it would be faster to just setup a blog and write an introduction post.

Here’s the funny thing: I didn’t even get my first blog post written and Google had already indexed the blog. The blog isn’t even linked off the home page of the site yet (bad, I know, but I’m not happy with the design yet, long story). Wonder if I had setup a Twitter account and made a few tweets referencing the site and see if the tweets got into Google faster?

Here’s a humorous aside. I showed my first offline business blog post from Saturday to a couple different friends. One loved my introductory blog post entitled, Saturday Morning Insurance Fever and another remarked that it was “too personal.” Since we are in a small town and our insurance agency has a personal feel, I’m ok with things being a little more personal in tone. I think the blog format, even for a business, works better in a less polished, but still professional tone. I’m hoping to post more informational pieces related to the insurance world going forward, but when you start a blog out and realize that some people reading might not know what a blog even is, it makes you go hmm. I need to show this first post and the blog in general to some clients and get their feedback. It’s on the to-do list, believe me.

Back to Twitter. The same friend who gave me the feedback on my first blog post that it was too personal has been using Twitter for his new online business Merchant’s Mirror (MM). He seems really excited about how Twitter is working for him. Allowing him to communicate with people in real time. I’m not completely certain how great it has been for generating business for MM so far.

My friend, Ben, is also blogging through his business site. I checked how many updates the Merchant’s Mirror blog has had since the year started? Three. Decided to check Google and see if I could find his “Merchant’s  Mirror goes live!” post. Indeed, it was the second result. Interesting that the tag for ‘live’ was ahead of the actual permalink page. Next I went to see what I could find in Google for the MM Twitter account. A search through Google for ‘twitter merchants mirror’ leads to Ben’s personal twitter account, not the business twitter account which is, appropriately located at twitter.com/merchantsmirror 

I was impressed to see that this account had 157 followers already. Well done, Ben. But I think my search engine point is made by trying to find merchant mirror tweets versus blog posts. One is easy to find, the other is not. This is what leads me to Twitter and blogs being two entirely different tools for a business owner. I think if a business can do both, it should. Not every business must have a blog, but those who would like to share information with their clients in a pull instead of push environment as well as help improve the online visibility of the business website blogs are powerful and useful.

Business blogs must be updated on a schedule

But blogs are far from perfect. I think a blog that is seldom updated does very little to help the business. In fact, if the blog gathers too much dust — it’s been too long without an update or updates seem to come with no pattern or reliability — then it could give the impression that nothing is happening at the business. Ouch, that’s the opposite of helpful.

So once you decide to start a blog for your business, then make it part of the workflow to keep it updated. I think it’s even more important for a business blog to be updated than a non-business blog. I don’t mean posting nonsense just so you can say hey, the blog is updated, but if there isn’t activity in your business that you can write about, then it’s not living, it’s dying. If you haven’t got the writing chops then designate blog updates to a trusted employee or partner. Make that individual your reporter and have them send the copy through you before hitting the publish button for the final ok. Make it a priority.

Too much hassle? Then don’t do a blog at all. It’s not the end of the world having an online business presence without a blog. Not having a business Twitter account isn’t either.

Ben’s MM blog is on the edge of not being updated enough to be as useful as it could be to the business. I wonder if a client and/or prospective client with a busy life and business subscribe to something that isn’t updated on a schedule or routine? My feedback for my friend’s business blog is simple: update on a schedule. If the schedule is once every two weeks or once a month, that’s cool, but there should be a minimum amount of updates on a schedule for a business blog.

I’m going to try and have a minimum of once per week updates to our business blog. I have a bunch of different post ideas in my head and need to put them down digitally. If I can update a couple times a week that would be awesome, but my goal will be once a week updates on average.

Effort is everywhere in business

Now getting back to Doc Kane’s comment that blogs require effort. Of course they do. Running a successful business requires lots of effort. Running a successful marketing campaign requires effort. Heck, running a successful business Twitter account requires effort. I’m sure the MM twitter account didn’t get 157 followers with no effort. I’m having a hard time thinking of anything in business that doesn’t require effort. You have to work it.

I plan to get on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn with our business, but am taking it slower. First, I’m starting with a blog and making sure I can schedule regular updates. I’m doing this blog for tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, I’m worried about today too, and I think Twitter would be a handy tool for dealing with today.

For those businesses who don’t have a blog or use Twitter

Before publishing I asked another friend who is in the printing business how things were going. While some of their competitors are laying people off their business is up 30% and they are having a great year. They don’t use Twitter and they don’t have a business blog.

Twitter or blog absolutely required for business? No. Might one or both be helpful for some businesses? Yes. It’s up to you to decide in your own business how well these tools might fit. Be careful about jumping in just to say you have one because it might be better staying on the sidelines.

For those twitterers wondering which followers are leaving them and when, Qwitter will follow any twitter account and email when a follower leaves, along with the last message (er, tweet) that was made. Each email contains an unsubscribe link so you can stop the flow when it’s no longer desired. Basic service, but effective for those who believe strongly in and/or demand reciprocity.

Receive one of these emails then off to Twitter to unfollow the person who unfollowed you.

I care more about interactive twittering than reciprocity — after all, it’s a conversation and discussion tool, isn’t it? — but without the latter the former is more difficult using Twitter. If they aren’t following you then the hope is they are ego tracking their names but not everybody does. Have seen people complain that it’s lame to only follow those who follow you, and I might agree with that sentiment if that’s all there was to it, but given the nature of successful communication in Twitter, it kind of demands a two party signal. With tools like Qwitter, at least you’ll know when somebody leaves and breaks the chain.

Additionally, it could provide a timely opportunity to drop the unfollower (quitter or ‘qwitter’ seems too strong) a line and ask them, why? What is it something said? Our interests don’t align? Just cutting down the flow?

Hat tip to Luca who points out Qwitter is by Eoghan McCabe, an irish entrepreneur.

If you are following me on Twitter and I’m not following you — and as long as you are a person and not a bot or website twitter account — feel free to let me know in the comments or via trackback. There are people that I’m not following and have been lazy about keeping current. I would like to keep our discussions two-way, especially with those who also find this important.

Chris at Zune Thoughts is another fan of AmazonMP3 (emphasis mine):

Additionally, on Friday’s they offer 5 albums for $5 each. Sure, they might be taking a loss on some of these, but they are getting me in the habit of checking in daily to see what they have to offer, and of course as long as I’m there, I may end up picking up a song or too.

The folks at Amazon are smart, Chris. They have found a way to make money using Twitter, something that people have been wondering how to do since it became popular among the tech crowd.

AmazonMP3 is doing everything Chris mentions above in their Twitter feed in 140 characters or less. I’m sure this is 98% automated and a great example of how to use Twitter to keep people updated as well as to encourage shopping.

 
In the last week along I’ve bought a complete MP3 album and a couple individual songs that started the shopping from deals in the AmazonMP3 Twitter feed, something I can’t remember doing from another Twitter feed. @amazonmp3 is the only Twitter RSS feed I’m subscribed to in my RSS reader, as well to be certain I don’t miss a single message. Highly recommended for online music shoppers.

While everybody and their tech brothers and sisters are writing about the iPhone 3G launch today — and the launch has overloaded Apple servers — I’ve been thinking about the Samsung Instinct. Turns out they are paying $20 for the first 1,000 YouTube users to upload a video with the Instinct in it.

I surfed YouTube for ‘Samsung Instinct‘  videos and there were 334 as of this writing. You don’t have to actually own an Instinct phone, but do have to feature it in your video. Don’t forget your video camera as you head into the store to check out an Instinct if you’re interested in the deal. There are numerous unboxing videos like the one shown below:

Obvious comparisons are being made to the iPhone and Geek.com reviewed and compared to the iPhone:

Sprint has been aggressively pitching the Instinct, long before its arrival, as an iPhone killer. After using it for more than two weeks, and putting it through its paces, including surfing the Web, sending and receiving texts and e-mails, using it as a GPS navigator, and more, I can say that it’s not an iPhone killer, per se, but does offer a nice challenge to what the iPhone is known for delivering.

I have nothing against Apple or the iPhone, but cannot stand AT&T. I’m not that thrilled about any of the cell phone carriers, but Sprint has treated us ok with our EVDO and two phone accounts for our teenagers.  Adding a third account for the Instinct which costs $229 ($129 if you count the $100 mail-in rebate) and switching to their Everything Plan would cost us $40/month more than we’re paying. Not bad.

Any readers try or buy the Instinct yet? Would be curious what your thoughts are as we continue to mull this over.

Our weekend was active, how was yours?

On Saturday I went to the first Podcamp Seattle and learned about the service Twemes. A number of Podcamp Seattle attendees were using Twitter messages and the tag #podcampseattle (pictured) through Twitter to create an IRC-like experience.

You can tag any message in twitter with the # in front of the keyword and then follow along on Twemes. There wasn’t an official IRC room for podcamp, at least that I saw, which would have been nice. I attended the introduction to podcasting and Twitter 101 talks in the morning. Brought my HD camera and captured 3 of the 4 sessions I attended from beginning to end. I put the camera on a tripod this time around so no shaky hand syndrome.

Not enough podcasters at Podcamp
Had lunch with Stuart Maxell, Leif Hansen and Rob Greenlee at a local teriyaki restaurant. Stuart said he reads MakeYouGoHmm (thanks!).

I was a little disappointed that there weren’t more actual podcasters at an event called Podcamp.

After the event on the way to our cars I mentioned to Leif and Rob that the event seemed more geared to social networking and marketing. Not that this is bad, but not quite what I expected as far as who would be attending. I realize that the attendees are what make an unconference so I’m partly to blame for not getting more involved.

After lunch I did pipe up during Rob’s session on Advanced Podcasting and say a few words about how I felt my Zune podcast work was more about being a podcast promoter rather than being an ‘editor’ of podcast submissions. Also gave out my Zune email address if any of the podcasters in attendance needed help with their Zune podcast submissions. As of this writing, I’ve had one email thanking me for the offer.

There is a local Seattle podcaster meetup that I need to try and get to in the next few months and introduce myself to podcasters there and let folks now I’d like to help them if I can with their Zune Marketplace podcast submissions.

21 is the magic number
On Sunday my wife and I went to Hoquiam for some prospective business. Afterwards on Sunday we drove 15 minutes to the Quinalt casino and check out the speed limit sign on the driveway to the casino which is right on the beach.

First time I’ve ever seen a 21 MPH sign. Clever casino marketing, eh?

We had a nice lunch with the ocean in the distance and a live pianist in the background. We then proceeded to lose $40 rather quickly in their casino and then came home. The casino was pretty dead for a Sunday at lunch time. Rising gas prices have to be hurting their business.

Due to conflicting events our band wasn’t able to jam on Sunday night, but we’ll be back at it this coming Sunday. I’m planning on taking my HD camera to our next session and trying to catch some footage to bring back to the blog if the group is up to it, anyway.

George Carlin moves along
Sad to see comedian George Carlin has passed away at 71. Feel like I should post those seven dirty words that he was famous for outlining, but will save your eyes and ears in this post.

I can’t do what with my own name until I earn 40 Karma points?

This has to be among the most idiotic uses of karma point motivation I’ve seen on the internet, but I’ll get back to that.

If you’ve been Rip Van Winkle the last year, let me update you on the status of the tech web: the Attack of the Clone Wars are still upon us. And trust me it’s about as interesting as the Star Wars flick sharing the same name. I’ve been looking into and spending more time in other areas looking for, and at times finding, inspiration and excitement. More on that by separate post.

On the chat/conversation/social front, Pownce and to a much lesser extent Jaiku (acquired by Google last year) used to be the hip, cool services to visit when Twitter was down. Both those services are getting a lot less buzz, at least from the people I’m following. FriendFeed is continuing to gain traction as it offers something a little different than the others: a master aggregator of your activity stream. At least the activity you are exposing through FriendFeed, anyway. FriendFeed has added more features to share new content and create conversations around links like their quasi-chatroom called simply, rooms. I haven’t dipped a toe in there yet, but am open to suggestions for good rooms to join.

I’ve also been reading some praise being left at the welcome mat of Plurk. This morning I went and registered and what’s the first thing I see when I hit the form submit button?

The expression on Mr. T’s face is priceless. I couldn’t help but smile. Resisted the urge to add the caption: “Hey suckah, if you think Plurk is going to beat out Twitter I’ll bust you up.”

I’m a fan of the A-Team and all but how is this any positive sign of the future for Plurk when with a pinprick amount of the traffic and users that Twitter has currently they are having downtime and error screens during registration? I know, it’s a new service and we’re supposed to be patient, give the new kids a break. Label this premature extrapolation but I’m weary of cutting any of these wannabe clone services slack.

I should point out that despite the error screen above, it appears like my registration actually worked. I was using Firefox 2.0.0.14 in case any of the Plurk devs are lurking and curious. No matter, I doubt seriously it was a browser issue.

To me this illustrates the biggest problem with too many Web 2.0 services these days. Are we truly analyzing if using these clones are a lateral or downward move over more popular, similar services? My excitement level for a lot of these ‘new’ services has waned considerably in 2008 because I don’t see much in frequently writing posts like this one asking what is new here? What’s different, what’s fresh? Plurk has a somewhat interesting post that shows messages on a different style timeline. Woohoo, somebody get Murdock out of the mental ward. And karma points to encourage more activity at a site are a breakthrough? Not.

No loyalty for web services
I haven’t seen anything that exciting and different with Pownce and Jaiku versus Twitter. Sure, there are a few features that differ between them but by far the most useful component of the three is the number of people using the service (Twitter). Whatever service has the crowd in a service geared around social interaction, has the lion’s share of eyeballs and mindshare. Wrong or right, like it or lump it, that’s the way it is. Due to sheer numbers MySpace and Facebook remain leaders in their field, despite the attempts to nip their ankles by clones.

Today, what’s the #1 complaint about Twitter? It goes down too much. Any service — new, old, experienced, inexperienced, in beta, etc — has no breaks in this department. I don’t care if it’s FREE now, or ad-supported or whatever, because we all know it won’t be free forever. It’s surprising Twitter hasn’t busted out a monetization strategy by now, maybe the reality is what they keep saying: they don’t have one. The Twitter crew doesn’t strike me as being the most organized team. They just got a $15 million cash infusion, so maybe they’ll be able upgrade the backend. They say they’re trying.

I’m in Plurk now (lol, big deal) as of June 6, 2008. Feel free to add me as your friend/follower/fellow virtual drifter and I’ll try and return in kind. Name squatter more likely, as I was in Twitter originally.

Forgive me for going Lemming on this one because I’m not seeing what makes Plurk special. And the whole karma points motivation thing I started this post with is lame when somebody — including a freaking bot — can setup a competing Twitter account (assuming it’s not down) and have access to all that services benefits instantly. No hoop jumping. No spamming your friends “in real time” to sign up.

You have the comment space below, your own blog (trackback in), or use another service to show me the way; I’m not only listening here. If a miracle happens and Plurk somehow becomes more popular and stable than Twitter, I’ll use the service more. Ain’t web loyalty a peach?

Although I’d put your money on Mr. T making a comeback with a ‘new’ version of the A-Team happening first.

Got to get this one off my chest. Women who use hyphenated last names bug me. If my wife had been the type of woman who wanted to use a hyphenated last name, I would never have married her.

Now wait, before you bash me for being shallow. Look ladies, you marry someone, you don’t have to take his last name. You can keep your maiden name, but I do not like at all the whole maiden_name-married_name convention. The whole hyphenated last name thing needs to fly to a distant galaxy and never return. Those who have stage names should keep their names whether they get married or not. That’s part of your brand.

And while we’re at it, it’s 1000 times worse if you do this online. Women, I know you won’t listen to some blogger who doesn’t even have a last name, but I beg you to stop pointing at yourself, intentionally or not, with your 25+ character names. First rule of internet naming common sense: choose something short.

That’s at least partly why my name is ‘TDavid’ and even more preferably: TD. It’s easy to type, easy to remember, and easy not to screw up (but some people still do and miss the capital ‘T’). If you want to be Jane mynameisimportant-soIusetwoofthem make that your problem, not ours.

Ahhh, I feel so much better. I’ve been waiting to write this for years. I made it a Twitter message before blogging this, here are a few heartfelt responses before pressing the publish button.

@claynewton writes: “@TDavid, I don’t think it’s pretentious in the least to hyphenate. The “last name” matter is as complex as the fabric of our culture”

But *online* why hyphenate @claynewton? It seems to go against the KISS principle. Look at Twitter with 140 chars. 180 for married women?

@Trula: “married women who hyphenate aren’t being pretentious. it’s just they don’t realize the point. the name issue is mere icing.”

And then Trula’s follow-up: ” @TDavid take his name, keep your name, hyphenate. none is more valid choice. you’re still married, complicit in patriarchal institution.”

Ironic, but this post might seem pretentious to some. Wow, it’s also the second post of the day, been awhile since I could say that (gasp). Feel free to weigh in below whether or not you think hyphenated names are pretentious and please note that I didn’t use any freaking hyphens in the title, ha!