The Westerman Way

By Brandon Westerman

When my friends get an iPhone, one of the first things they ask me is, “What apps should I get?” The iPhone app store is crammed full of cool applications, with more being added to the library every day. Now that Mom and Dad have joined our iPhone family, I thought I’d share…

Brandon’s Top 5 Must Have iPhone apps - All are Free!

1. Shazam - Shazam is the coolest app so far introduced for iPhone. If you hear a song playing, Shazam it, and whether you’re by yourself in the car or in a noisy restaurant, Shazam will identify the song and tell you its album info as well as provide links to download it from iTunes, listen free on Youtube, etc. etc.

2. Facebook - Obviously only a “must have” for Facebookers. But if you aren’t on Facebook, you “must have” been living under a rock! Allows almost all of the most used FB features. Status updates, photo uploads, notifications, requests. Take pictures or video on your vacation and share them on your FB profile immediately!

3. Pandora - Free (and commercial free) internet radio. Streaming signal is great. And just like Pandora was orginally designed to do, it allows you to thumbs up-thumbs down the songs, and then plays more of the stuff you like. Especially great for identifying new songs you want for your permanent iPod collection.

4. Fandango - A movie lover’s must have. Displays movie info, photos, reviews and user comments. Box office info as well as Coming Attractions. Have the app ID your current location and see when your flick is playing at the closest theater. Then buy tickets from the app and pick them up at the door!

5. Kindle for iPhone - Like the real Kindle but fits in your pocket. Buy books from the app’s online Kindle Store. Download them to your bookshelf, and start reading immediately! Pages turn with a finger flick. Variable text sizes and the phone can turn vertically or horizontally for your reading preference.

Honorable mention
6. eReader - Kindle’s iPhone predesessor. Does everything Kindle does. Also free, and a good option in case the Kindle store doesn’t have a book you want.

And my Game Crush this week is Real Soccer 2009. For $0.99 you get a game that looks and plays with near PSP quality. Easy enough to control for the casual gamer, but detailed enough for more hardcore enthusiants. 198 teams with real player names, 12 stadiums and touchscreen and phone tilt tricks. Yes, I said $.99!

Brandon Westerman is the webmaster for ActionNewsJax.com, the website for CBS 47 and Fox 30 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes. This is one I’ll probably see at the theater. Here’s the link to the film’s backstory.

Many of you know that one of the things I do at Comcast is dive into the social media world in search of opportunities to help our beloved customers. This past week, one of our faithful read a blog post from another Scott and mistakenly thought it was me. The post was un-complimentary and the customer proceeded to tweet that I had set up a blog for the sole purpose of saying negative things.

My local team got a charge out of this because the vibe around the office is that I (quoting one of our employees) “exude positive energy to the point of exhausting everyone else”.

Guilty as charged. I do tend to look for the silver lining in a category 5 hurricane and have great admiration for anybody who can keep their cool when the world around them is losing it.

My tweetlater.com profile picked up the 140 character missive from our defamed tweeter. I quickly pointed out the location of my -real- personal blog and disabused the notion that I was the other guy. I’m not sure, but I think we might be friends now.

Many years ago, my company taught a class to local school PTAs called Media Literacy. The first lesson we shared was this: “All news stories have a point of view… challenge it.” That’s why most media outlets didn’t immediately pile on when TMZ.com first reported Michael Jackson’s death.

In our daily work at Comcast, we often get calls about issues that rest with a customer’s equipment. A router that’s not working quite right, a non-comcast video splitter that leaks, or a telephone modem that someone disconnected and forgot to plug back in. Comcast is usually guilty until proven innocent in these situations. Sometimes they lead to an un-necessary service call, at worst, a vitriolic tirade in the blogisphere.

Ironically, when we help customers fix problems that are not of our creation, there is rarely a correction on the web. That’s part and parcel of @comcastcares daily routine. Frank and his team can usually shrug it off as one of the few downsides that come with a passion for helping others.

Our customer care folks love what they do. We’re on a daily quest to sharpen our trouble shooting skills to make sure we’re asking the right questions and giving the right answers.

And so it goes in our larger world. We have to carefully evaluate what we see and hear. If it doesn’t make sense, question it, get clarification and whatever you do, don’t take action until you’re sure you have the straight scoop.

If you need any more proof, enjoy this clip about the “death” of actor Jeff Goldblum.



By Scott Westerman
I was in Tucson yesterday when the cell phone beeped that Michael Jackson had suffered cardiac arrest. As the day progressed, and my team was jumping on a plane back to ABQ it became clear that a troubled life was over and that another page in rock n roll history had turned.

Thanks to my friend Don Davis, I get to channel my DJ juices from time to time on Real Oldies 1600, a small AM oldies station here in New Mexico. I called the Queen when we landed and had her meet me at the studios with her Jackson Five CD collection. We went on the air at 7PM to spend an hour pondering MJ’s impact on the Keener generation. Read the rest of this entry »

Andy Warhol says that we all get our 15 minutes of fame. You never know when or where it will come. Being a good doggie mom, Colleen and Tanna exercise regularly with a couple of circles around our neighborhood. That’s what was happening when the Google Street Level camera car came by. If you search Google Maps in our neighborhood and zoom into the street level views. You’ll see The Queen. Perhaps it isn’t 15 minutes, but certainly 15 feet of fame!

By Scott Westerman
“The closing of the last mega buggy whip store”. That’s the header of an email we received from my good friend John Kajander about the final days of the Virgin’s Mega-store in NYC. He included this link to Ben Sisario’s NYT story about the demise of the retail record business.

We all remember buying our black vinyl at Harmony House, E.J. Korvettes, Hudsons and Discount Records back in the day. And more than one Keener13.com fan has written us over the years wondering if the decline of the record industry truly began when CDs marginalized the power of album art.

When LPs ruled the world, artists were defined and sometimes diminished by how they branded themselves on their album covers. Here are a few of our faves. Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Westerman

We’re coming up on the end of our T-Mobile contract. The new and improved iPhones are out. So is the Palm Pre. We use our cell phones primarily for talking, texting and an occasional MMS message. I use the web browser on my Dash extensively. We have an iPod touch and like the look and feel. The battery isn’t all that great and the memory barely gives The Queen enough space to load movies for a long round-trip to visit the kids in Florida. Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Westerman
From keener13.com:

We noted with interest Saul Hansell’s NYT piece entitled “The Ascendance of Internet Radio“. In it, he showcases the pricey Tivoli wifi radio boxes. They are but one of a growing number of Internet appliances that play music. I say play music, because the definition of Internet radio doesn’t necessarily comply with how us Keenerfans might define the term.

Services like Pandora and Rhapsody create playlists for you based on preferences you choose, playing your faves and interspersing them with stuff that the computer logic thinks you also might like. These services include applications that play on IPhones and wifi audio devices so you can take your playlists with you. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a regular reader, you know about my admiration for Rob Curley. I’ve written elsewhere about my visit to his Naples Daily News operation. As time has passed, a few of his team, notably Ellyn Angelotti, have gone on to work their own magic with other organizations. And I checked the link to the original podcast that turned me on to Rob and found it was dead. As often happens in the Internet world, servers change and webmasters don’t always check to make sure the links still work. I dug some more and found the two bits from his original IMA talk.. the one that brought Rob above the radar.

The main speech is here.
The Q&A is here. Read the rest of this entry »

May 6th, 1945. The Second World War in Europe ends as the Germans announce that they will sign surrender documents. While most eyes are focused overseas, life goes on in Detroit. At Henry Ford Hospital, Robert Seger is born. By the time he was six the family had relocated to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Seger’s father left the family when Bob was ten and the young man made his way through the Ann Arbor Public Schools, attending Tappan Junior High and graduating from what was then called Ann Arbor High School in 1963.

His classmates remember him as an athlete, one of the best runners in the State, and as a man on a mission… to make music.

Read the rest of this entry »