Fake Plastic Noodles

Oh yeah, I knew I had on of these for a reason….

melanieseasons.tumblr.com

When I get to London and hook myself up with an iPhone, I’m turning my Tumblr into a daily photoblog à la Lish’s iPhone Magic. I figure it will be a good way for my mom to keep tabs on my daily adventures. In the meantime, I’ll be posting photos, but not in real time. Please subscribe!

I’m also taking ideas for names. I took a poll last year when I was starting this blog and Fake Plastic Noodles came out of it, so I’m hoping for equal creativity this year.

…and don’t look at me like I should be naming my own sites, I’m far too busy to be imaginative right now.

If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past about trying to move to the UK, it’s that they really don’t want anyone else coming into the country. The government puts up just about every roadblock I can think of to make sure that only a select few people are even able to apply for a work permit in the first place. Couple that with the fact that it takes a lot of time, money and patience to be approved and you have yourself a right little nightmare.

A lot of Americans have asked me how I managed to do this, so I decided to list - albeit rather flippantly - the ways you can move to the UK.

1. Get a job - Preferably one that no one in the entire United Kingdom or European Union is able to do. (And don’t even think of being able to prove that in under a month.)
2. Make a lot of money, be under 27, have UK work experience and an MBA from Harvard (The Highly Skilled Migrant Programme)
3. Become a High Integrity Pipe Welder for a shot at the National Shortage Occupation work permit
4. Marry a Brit
5. Become a movie star

That’s pretty much it. There’s not really an easy way to do it, I’m afraid. Just remember: it IS possible, but you have to be really serious about it. Because when Home Office takes a month and a half to even glance at your application and then loses all your supporting documents, you’ll want to throw your head through a wall.

I’ve spent the past few months trying to figure out how I was going to start off this post, but instead of doing something cute, I’m just going to come out with it:

I’m moving to London.

Last week I received my work permit to join Graham Lee and James Fitzgerald at Onlinefire PR as an Account Manager. I can’t even begin to tell you how much there is to do between now and my tentative start date (Sept. 1). Needless to say moving out of the country is a huge job.

That said, now that my big secret is out in the open, you can more frequent posts from me in the future. This blog was originally intended as an ex-pat/social media/all-things-Melanie blog, and I’m happy to announce - five days shy of my one-year Blogoversary - that it’s finally going to serve it’s purpose.

W00t!

Do you think it’s fair to charge for services online? According to this editorial by Steven Hodson on Mashable, it is - and you better get used to doing it.

Advertisements have traditionally paid for online services to remain free for their users, but as more people brag about iron-clad popup blockers or their superior ability to tune out online ads, how long before advertisers start pulling ads in favor of other more reliable avenues of brand awareness?

With presumably fewer advertising dollars coming in, users are either going to have to subsidize the service themselves or risk losing forever the time, energy and data that was invested in the company.

The biggest point he makes is that we shouldn’t be whining at all for having to pay for online services and really, he’s probably right. Plain and simple, why should we feel that we’re “owed” anything for free? Space costs money whether online or not.

If it ever came down to that, I know that there’s certain sites I would be willing to contribute to. I already pay $24.95 a year for Flickr pro and I’m sure I would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for Facebook and a bit less for Twitter, but I definitely wouldn’t be forking over anything to join new startups that I wasn’t 100% positive would be worth it.

How much (if anything) would you be willing to pay for the online services you use everyday?

The rumors have been around for a while, but it’s finally been confirmed: Twitter has bought Summize, the ever-popular Twitter search tool. And it’s official official here, folks - the Twitter logo has replaced the Summize logo on Summize.com

I have some reservations about this, but not because I don’t like Summize. I love Summize. In fact, it’s the only thing that’s ever really worked for me when tracking the most important term on Twitter (mseasons) 100 percent. Everything else has let me down time and time again. Let’s go through the list, shall we?

• Twitter-based text alerts for “mseasons” barely ever work now (except for direct messages). In fact for the last two months I think I’ve received two texts, despite the fact that I’ve checked that I’ve done my tracking correctly at least 10 times.
• After text proved unsuccessful, I used TweetScan. I used to laud it, but then it started randomly leaving Tweets things out.
• Then I moved on to Quotably and Flaptor, but mainly because I felt like I had to use more than one tool to cross-reference for accuracy.

Four different avenues and I wasn’t really happy with any of them. So, left with nothing to do but search for a new alternative, I found Summize, which never seems to miss a thing.

However, with Twitter’s not-so-stellar reputation for reliability and the fact that they’ve hired five out of six Summize employees, it makes a bit worried that Summize will start to go the same way.

**UPDATE** And now Summize/Twitter search has not reported any of my Twitter activity for the last 24 hours. I was sooooo right.

Controversy and pessimism seems to be fueling a lot of blog posts and ideas of mine lately, but not today. I’m going to be all sunshine and rainbows with this nice little story about the power of social media on a local level…

A couple weeks ago, I went with some friends to catch one of Ann Arbor’s better bands, Starling Electric, play a show in Pontiac, which is a little over an hour’s drive from Ann Arbor. After a couple hours, it became quite clear that we missed their set. (Granted, this is mostly due to my inability to read signs and therefore miss the fact that they were up first and NOT second, but still, we drove all that way for almost nothing.) Being the pseudo-Japanese tourist/social media geek that I am, I documented the journey from dinner to the crap headliner band we didn’t mean to see and posted everything on Flickr.

Fast forward to Monday afternoon when I get a Facebook friend request from someone named Jason DeCamillis. While uncontrollably rolling my eyes from what I was sure was another spam profile, I decided to check it out. Turns out he is from Starling Electric.

*Side note: I felt bad not knowing who he was considering one of my best friends used to work with the guitarist at Whole Foods and my ex still works with the lead singer at another health food store in A2.

**Side side note: This town is too damn small.

Somehow Jason came across my Flickr photos and felt so bad about the situation (I guess they went on earlier than expected too) he offered to put me on the list for the next Starling Electric show at the Blind Pig in two weeks as well as invite me to the after-party. W00t!

Moral of the story: If you bitch loud enough about something online, there will always be someone there to make things right, whether it’s a company as big as Comcast or an up-and-coming indie band.

Kidding (sort of).

Check out Starling Electric on MySpace or on Last.fm. And while I’m pimping, here’s the really weird Second Life-esque video for The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

It’s finally happened… This morning I received a spammy friend request from a non-person on Facebook:

Hi Ms Seasons

Let’s be friends! We are the staff at a Buddhist magazine and this is our new profile.

Oh, how this annoys me. Part of the reason I like Facebook so much is that I don’t get bombarded with these ridiculous requests like I did on MySpace. What’s next, Facebook webcam girls?

I have no problem plugging a store or person or product, but it has to be my own perogative. This is why I like Fan Pages so much - They’re free, they’re not spam and you’re likely to get into a News Feed as long as you get it to the right people (say, I dunno, the subscribers of the magazine, perhaps?)

I don’t want to be the Negative Nancy that cries “This is the End!” but I remember when this started happening on MySpace and it became a slippery slope very quickly.

Oh, and Happy 4th of July! Enjoy the day off, America. I’ll be sleeping in.