Hi Everyone,
Merry Christmas if you celebrate it and Happy Holidays if you do not. I meant to get this up here earlier, but the Christmas crunch has been worse than any other year this year. With many orders being ordered just last week and needing Christmas Eve delivery it was quite a busy holiday season for Reimagine Memories. All of that business has taken its toll though, and it was nice to get a complete break from work on this Christmas day. That said, being able to reimagine all of those old home videos into memories reborn again on DVD or online is such a great experience. From the large orders of over 50 camcorder tapes to the small orders of just one or two each customer is a unique experience for us that makes the work always exciting.
I hope all of you are having a great holiday season, and continue to have one. It has been great helping so many of you be able to regain those memories that have been stored in closets, attics, and under beds. I hope that during this holiday season you have been building and capturing many new memories that will forever be remembered and available for future generations.
Have a safe and happy holiday season,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/CoFounder of
Reimagine Memories
http://www.ReimagineMemories.com
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
There's Bad Customer Service, Then There's Capital One's Customer Service
Hi Everyone,
I've finally gotten everything resolved with Capital One after literally months of work to clear up a credit card charge, and now that I've gone through that experience I want to discuss the insane leaps and bounds I went through to get this sub-$3o0 charge off my credit card. So here's the story of how Capital One lost a customer and unveiled the horrible customer service of their company:
So Capital One reeled me in through their many commercials, and their constant stream of credit card mail offers that seemed to invade my mailbox everyday. Having used a debit card for years, I decided that I wanted to begin building credit and get some cash rewards in the process so I decided to take the plunge and get a Capital One Credit Card. For the first year or so there were absolutely no problems other than the somewhat annoying website problems that would have me find their payment system down for a day or more at a time. Despite all of this I was quite satisfied with my choice of going with Capital One until one faithful day in August.
This past August a friend and I decided to spend the weekend at Pechanga Casino, a local Indian Casino, in Temecula, CA . Having driven nearly two hours to get there we were told that we would not be able to stay there as we had booked through Orbitz and it didn't correspond with their system or their rooms. Now I had many words with nearly everyone who worked at the casino, and yet they just wouldn't put me up in a room due to being overcrowded, which was the first customer service I have ever had at a hotel. So after driving back, now taking 3 hours as the traffic started, I attempted to get Orbitz to give me a refund. At first they were quite receptive, but after numerous follow-up calls they never made good on their promise to refund my credit card for the nearly $300 room charge. At this point I sure was happy that I had used a credit card for the purchase, and envisioned getting my money back quickly and easily from Capital One with just one phone call. Boy was I wrong.
I was able to file the dispute online and had the charge taken off my account immediately. I then received a letter in the mail a few days later asking for additional information, which I gladly gave and sent back in the same day. At this point I couldn't believe how well this was going, and was happy that I had decided to go straight to my credit card company. I received some more letters stating that they had not received my letter, and resent it as well as faxed it. I even called customer support to confirm that it had gone through. While a bit perturbed that my original letter got lost in the mail or was misplaced by Capital One I still had a great impression of Capital One's service.
While on a date towards the end of October I tried to use my credit card and found that it had been declined. I figured that it was either a fluke or the waiter didn't know how to put it through so I paid with cash and pulled out my iPhone to see what was up. Nearly two months after the original dispute I find the complete charge, nearly $300, billed back to my credit card by Capital One, my own credit card company. It was nearly the end of the month so my credit card was quite full of charges so this $300 had pushed it past my limit causing overdraft fees, and my inability to use the card anymore.
At very few other times had I been so angry with a company (The only other comparable time was when I had to switch hosting companies due to them not responding for 12 hours despite promising 24/7 service). I called that night and for the next two nights after that, but was told that office was not open until Monday by outsourced call center representatives. Come to find out Monday when I finally get through to the New York office that they are indeed open 24/7 all year-long, which made me even angrier. The fact that they told me I had never sent them any of their letters back only made the fire burn stronger. They also wouldn't temporarily take the charge off either. So I had to wait for another letter to be sent out, it took 3 days, which should have been sent out before my account was charged along with a phone call notifying me of the pending charge.
After submitting the letter again nothing happened so I called another representative and confirmed the faxed letter with her. Yet still nothing is taken off my account, and I haven't been even acknowledged that they were reviewing it a week after the fact. At this point I called once again and asked for a supervisor. Well I should was in for a treat. After explaining my situation in a somewhat calm if not completely unemotional way this customer service woman began to raise her voice. This was new for me, and as she continued by yelling at me that she didn't like being told what to do or being insulted (Neither of which I had done) I told her how I really felt and hung up.
Calling another number got me to the head of the claims department who was the first person to actually help me through this whole fiasco. She apologized for the other supervisor's behavior, and promised that she would be dealt with. She then informed me that they had recieved every single one of the letters that I had either faxed or mailed, but that they had a question about one of the items of information. She informed me that their limited software only allowed them to send that one generic letter stating that they had never received the email. She quickly resolved my problem, and I was able to get all of my money back.
To give you an idea of the hassle this whole thing was I talked to literally 8-10 people with nearly half of them being outsourced call center representatives, had to mail 5 or so letters, faxed 3 or so letters, and spent hours on the phone trying to figure out what I was doing wrong when the whole thing could have been solved if the employees were educated on the computer system's generic letter limitation, and/or that more specific letters were mailed to customers.
Morals of the Story for Me:
1. Be sure that every customer service member is trained
2. Don't outsource your customer service that deals with any type of account problems, money problems, or any other situation where your customer is going to be easily irritated and is not going to appreciate having to repeat everything due to you saving a couple pennies
3. Use the phone to notify customers of problems so you can verify they have been informed
4. Don't do anything to a customer's account without informing them well beforehand
So I am looking for a new credit card company (I've heard American Express is good???), and being sure that we as a company and even more so myself personally don't make any of the mistakes that Capital One did in the future, even as we grow.
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/CoFounder of
Reimagine Memories
http://www.ReimagineMemories.com
I've finally gotten everything resolved with Capital One after literally months of work to clear up a credit card charge, and now that I've gone through that experience I want to discuss the insane leaps and bounds I went through to get this sub-$3o0 charge off my credit card. So here's the story of how Capital One lost a customer and unveiled the horrible customer service of their company:
So Capital One reeled me in through their many commercials, and their constant stream of credit card mail offers that seemed to invade my mailbox everyday. Having used a debit card for years, I decided that I wanted to begin building credit and get some cash rewards in the process so I decided to take the plunge and get a Capital One Credit Card. For the first year or so there were absolutely no problems other than the somewhat annoying website problems that would have me find their payment system down for a day or more at a time. Despite all of this I was quite satisfied with my choice of going with Capital One until one faithful day in August.
This past August a friend and I decided to spend the weekend at Pechanga Casino, a local Indian Casino, in Temecula, CA . Having driven nearly two hours to get there we were told that we would not be able to stay there as we had booked through Orbitz and it didn't correspond with their system or their rooms. Now I had many words with nearly everyone who worked at the casino, and yet they just wouldn't put me up in a room due to being overcrowded, which was the first customer service I have ever had at a hotel. So after driving back, now taking 3 hours as the traffic started, I attempted to get Orbitz to give me a refund. At first they were quite receptive, but after numerous follow-up calls they never made good on their promise to refund my credit card for the nearly $300 room charge. At this point I sure was happy that I had used a credit card for the purchase, and envisioned getting my money back quickly and easily from Capital One with just one phone call. Boy was I wrong.
I was able to file the dispute online and had the charge taken off my account immediately. I then received a letter in the mail a few days later asking for additional information, which I gladly gave and sent back in the same day. At this point I couldn't believe how well this was going, and was happy that I had decided to go straight to my credit card company. I received some more letters stating that they had not received my letter, and resent it as well as faxed it. I even called customer support to confirm that it had gone through. While a bit perturbed that my original letter got lost in the mail or was misplaced by Capital One I still had a great impression of Capital One's service.
While on a date towards the end of October I tried to use my credit card and found that it had been declined. I figured that it was either a fluke or the waiter didn't know how to put it through so I paid with cash and pulled out my iPhone to see what was up. Nearly two months after the original dispute I find the complete charge, nearly $300, billed back to my credit card by Capital One, my own credit card company. It was nearly the end of the month so my credit card was quite full of charges so this $300 had pushed it past my limit causing overdraft fees, and my inability to use the card anymore.
At very few other times had I been so angry with a company (The only other comparable time was when I had to switch hosting companies due to them not responding for 12 hours despite promising 24/7 service). I called that night and for the next two nights after that, but was told that office was not open until Monday by outsourced call center representatives. Come to find out Monday when I finally get through to the New York office that they are indeed open 24/7 all year-long, which made me even angrier. The fact that they told me I had never sent them any of their letters back only made the fire burn stronger. They also wouldn't temporarily take the charge off either. So I had to wait for another letter to be sent out, it took 3 days, which should have been sent out before my account was charged along with a phone call notifying me of the pending charge.
After submitting the letter again nothing happened so I called another representative and confirmed the faxed letter with her. Yet still nothing is taken off my account, and I haven't been even acknowledged that they were reviewing it a week after the fact. At this point I called once again and asked for a supervisor. Well I should was in for a treat. After explaining my situation in a somewhat calm if not completely unemotional way this customer service woman began to raise her voice. This was new for me, and as she continued by yelling at me that she didn't like being told what to do or being insulted (Neither of which I had done) I told her how I really felt and hung up.
Calling another number got me to the head of the claims department who was the first person to actually help me through this whole fiasco. She apologized for the other supervisor's behavior, and promised that she would be dealt with. She then informed me that they had recieved every single one of the letters that I had either faxed or mailed, but that they had a question about one of the items of information. She informed me that their limited software only allowed them to send that one generic letter stating that they had never received the email. She quickly resolved my problem, and I was able to get all of my money back.
To give you an idea of the hassle this whole thing was I talked to literally 8-10 people with nearly half of them being outsourced call center representatives, had to mail 5 or so letters, faxed 3 or so letters, and spent hours on the phone trying to figure out what I was doing wrong when the whole thing could have been solved if the employees were educated on the computer system's generic letter limitation, and/or that more specific letters were mailed to customers.
Morals of the Story for Me:
1. Be sure that every customer service member is trained
2. Don't outsource your customer service that deals with any type of account problems, money problems, or any other situation where your customer is going to be easily irritated and is not going to appreciate having to repeat everything due to you saving a couple pennies
3. Use the phone to notify customers of problems so you can verify they have been informed
4. Don't do anything to a customer's account without informing them well beforehand
So I am looking for a new credit card company (I've heard American Express is good???), and being sure that we as a company and even more so myself personally don't make any of the mistakes that Capital One did in the future, even as we grow.
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/CoFounder of
Reimagine Memories
http://www.ReimagineMemories.com
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Reimagine Memories By William Edwards: Fine Portraiture
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone,
I hope all of you are having a very relaxing Thanksgiving full of family/friends, football, and lots of food. While I enjoy all of that I am also getting ready for one of the most significant days for Reimagine Memories in our short company's history.
William Meck, the President and Founder of William Edwards: Fine Portraiture, was reading the Daily News Paper the day my article was in it, and decided to contact us. The paper published my personal cellphone number, which at first I was quite concerned about as calls from readers began to pour in. However, luckily William was able to contact me directly, which let us go past just his initial questions of getting his own physical media converted to a discussion about a partnership between our two companies. Bill, as he prefers to be called, is quite well-known in the San Fernando Valley, but even more so in the Antelope Valley where his biggest photography studio resides and where he has been providing high-end professional portraits and photographs for over 20 years. Ironically, Bill actually took one of my childhood photographs, which was so well done that my Mom remembers that he took it to this day and was quite excited to learn this is who we would be partnering with.
Over the past three weeks since the newspaper article was first published, and Bill first contacted me we have done something that I wasn't sure we would be able to accomplish in such a short time frame. We have ironed out a formal partnership agreement right in time for the Thanksgiving Shopping Weekend, which is easily the biggest shopping weekend of the year. William Edwards: Fine Portraiture has operated a booth in the Antelope Valley Mall for quite a while now, and Bill was nice enough to allow us to take over a part of it to market our new joint venture Reimagine Memories By William Edwards: Fine Portraiture. Starting tomorrow morning we will begin this joint venture, which is truly a beneficial partnership for both companies as well as our customers. Reimagine Memories now gains a retail presence along with the association with a very well known brand name, while William Edwards: Fine Portraiture is able to add conversion services that are a natural addition to their product line.
Reimagine Memories will handle every step of the conversion process to ensure that our quality-standards are continued to be met, and that Reimagine Memories By William Edwards: Fine Portraiture customers get exactly the same quality as our past customers have received. William Edwards: Fine Portraiture is going to help us out through promotion and by providing a retail presence along with providing helpful and knowledgeable sales associates. This is the most exciting event in our short history as I mentioned before, and adds another element, a retail presence, to our company's portfolio. While we estimate extremely strong growth of our customer base in the next two months we are more prepared to meet these new customers with more customer service staff and more production staff being added with the ability to bring in more qualified employees if needed. Continued growth is one of our biggest goals, but I know that we can't grow if we don't focus on the customer experience and on providing the same great experience for every single customer no matter how many there are.
As this is our first weekend of this joint venture with William Edwards: Fine Portraiture, and the first partnership for us of this magnitude I am personally being involved from Friday to Sunday at our retail booth in the Antelope Valley Mall. Starting very early tomorrow morning, before 8AM, and continuing throughout the rest of the holiday weekend I will be one of our employees out there. So come out and say hello to me, the rest of the Reimagine Memories gang, and our great new partners William Edwards: Fine Portraiture.
Antelope Valley Mall
1233 Rancho Vista Blvd.
Palmdale, CA 93551
http://www.AV-Mall.com
Have a Safe and Great Holiday Weekend,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/CoFounder of
Reimagine Memories
http://www.ReimagineMemories.com
I hope all of you are having a very relaxing Thanksgiving full of family/friends, football, and lots of food. While I enjoy all of that I am also getting ready for one of the most significant days for Reimagine Memories in our short company's history.
William Meck, the President and Founder of William Edwards: Fine Portraiture, was reading the Daily News Paper the day my article was in it, and decided to contact us. The paper published my personal cellphone number, which at first I was quite concerned about as calls from readers began to pour in. However, luckily William was able to contact me directly, which let us go past just his initial questions of getting his own physical media converted to a discussion about a partnership between our two companies. Bill, as he prefers to be called, is quite well-known in the San Fernando Valley, but even more so in the Antelope Valley where his biggest photography studio resides and where he has been providing high-end professional portraits and photographs for over 20 years. Ironically, Bill actually took one of my childhood photographs, which was so well done that my Mom remembers that he took it to this day and was quite excited to learn this is who we would be partnering with.
Over the past three weeks since the newspaper article was first published, and Bill first contacted me we have done something that I wasn't sure we would be able to accomplish in such a short time frame. We have ironed out a formal partnership agreement right in time for the Thanksgiving Shopping Weekend, which is easily the biggest shopping weekend of the year. William Edwards: Fine Portraiture has operated a booth in the Antelope Valley Mall for quite a while now, and Bill was nice enough to allow us to take over a part of it to market our new joint venture Reimagine Memories By William Edwards: Fine Portraiture. Starting tomorrow morning we will begin this joint venture, which is truly a beneficial partnership for both companies as well as our customers. Reimagine Memories now gains a retail presence along with the association with a very well known brand name, while William Edwards: Fine Portraiture is able to add conversion services that are a natural addition to their product line.
Reimagine Memories will handle every step of the conversion process to ensure that our quality-standards are continued to be met, and that Reimagine Memories By William Edwards: Fine Portraiture customers get exactly the same quality as our past customers have received. William Edwards: Fine Portraiture is going to help us out through promotion and by providing a retail presence along with providing helpful and knowledgeable sales associates. This is the most exciting event in our short history as I mentioned before, and adds another element, a retail presence, to our company's portfolio. While we estimate extremely strong growth of our customer base in the next two months we are more prepared to meet these new customers with more customer service staff and more production staff being added with the ability to bring in more qualified employees if needed. Continued growth is one of our biggest goals, but I know that we can't grow if we don't focus on the customer experience and on providing the same great experience for every single customer no matter how many there are.
As this is our first weekend of this joint venture with William Edwards: Fine Portraiture, and the first partnership for us of this magnitude I am personally being involved from Friday to Sunday at our retail booth in the Antelope Valley Mall. Starting very early tomorrow morning, before 8AM, and continuing throughout the rest of the holiday weekend I will be one of our employees out there. So come out and say hello to me, the rest of the Reimagine Memories gang, and our great new partners William Edwards: Fine Portraiture.
Antelope Valley Mall
1233 Rancho Vista Blvd.
Palmdale, CA 93551
http://www.AV-Mall.com
Have a Safe and Great Holiday Weekend,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/CoFounder of
Reimagine Memories
http://www.ReimagineMemories.com
Monday, November 12, 2007
Back In The Headlines
Hi Everyone,
Reimagine Memories has once again infiltrated the pages of the Los Angeles Daily News this year, and this time we have quite a bit more than just a snippet of text written about us. The Daily News has been really great in supporting us, and other local LA area small businesses. They sent out a photographer who took a ton of photographs of the office, and of course the one that got in there of me with one of our trade show banners. They also let us talk a bit about the business including how it got started, where it is at now, and where we see it going in the future. The article was positioned right below the weather section, and was given a small spot on the front-page shout-out advertising that it was on the back of the business section. These two occurrences, specifically the placement near the weather, brought in an incredible number of phone calls and emails.
So many of these emails and phone calls were people congratulating us for getting into the paper, and for thinking of such a service. I was quite blown away by these paragraph or longer emails that were simply telling us great job. It's a great feeling to have your idea validated by so many in the community after a year and a half to get the idea off the ground. We also have gotten quite a few new customers, and have many other interested who are waiting to take a journey into their closets or attics to return with their old physical media that we will reimagine for them. We also are close to a very exciting partnership that I can't wait to get finalized and be able to announce. Until then though thank you to the Daily News for supporting us throughout our start-up journey.
Check Out the Article Online
On a side note, I know I haven't posted too many interesting posts lately, but I do have quite a few posts in the pipeline (Half-written, sort of thought about, and nearly finished) that I will be posting on here in the next week or so. To give you sort of a lame sneak peek here are some of the topics I have been thinking about: Rackspace Hosting Outage (Considered Best in Industry), Google Android Phone Platform, Google Open Social Social Networking Platform, Online Ads and Their Performance, Capital One Doesn't Understand Customer Service, and of course a full round-up of StartUpLA.
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/CoFounder of
Reimagine Memories
http://www.ReimagineMemories.com
Reimagine Memories has once again infiltrated the pages of the Los Angeles Daily News this year, and this time we have quite a bit more than just a snippet of text written about us. The Daily News has been really great in supporting us, and other local LA area small businesses. They sent out a photographer who took a ton of photographs of the office, and of course the one that got in there of me with one of our trade show banners. They also let us talk a bit about the business including how it got started, where it is at now, and where we see it going in the future. The article was positioned right below the weather section, and was given a small spot on the front-page shout-out advertising that it was on the back of the business section. These two occurrences, specifically the placement near the weather, brought in an incredible number of phone calls and emails.
So many of these emails and phone calls were people congratulating us for getting into the paper, and for thinking of such a service. I was quite blown away by these paragraph or longer emails that were simply telling us great job. It's a great feeling to have your idea validated by so many in the community after a year and a half to get the idea off the ground. We also have gotten quite a few new customers, and have many other interested who are waiting to take a journey into their closets or attics to return with their old physical media that we will reimagine for them. We also are close to a very exciting partnership that I can't wait to get finalized and be able to announce. Until then though thank you to the Daily News for supporting us throughout our start-up journey.
Check Out the Article Online
On a side note, I know I haven't posted too many interesting posts lately, but I do have quite a few posts in the pipeline (Half-written, sort of thought about, and nearly finished) that I will be posting on here in the next week or so. To give you sort of a lame sneak peek here are some of the topics I have been thinking about: Rackspace Hosting Outage (Considered Best in Industry), Google Android Phone Platform, Google Open Social Social Networking Platform, Online Ads and Their Performance, Capital One Doesn't Understand Customer Service, and of course a full round-up of StartUpLA.
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/CoFounder of
Reimagine Memories
http://www.ReimagineMemories.com
Friday, October 26, 2007
StartUpLA Starts Today
Hi Everyone,
I've been meaning to post about this for quite a while, but I didn't want to until I was sure it was going to happen and that I was going to attend. Anyway, the LA tech conference called StartUpLA starts today at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. This is the first tech conference that I have been to in a while as E3 has been pretty much demolished, and CES isn't until January. The Southwest Computer User Group in July was quite a bit of fun, but other than that I haven't been able to get to attend TechCrunch40, Web 2.0 Conference, D Conference, etc. The biggest reason I haven't been able to attend any of these great conferences is their location either down in San Diego for the D Conference or up North in the San Francisco area for the others. Whenever you have to go on a trip the costs become incredible as you have to eat out, pay for the hotel, and pay for the airplane ticket on top of the conference fee. Well StartUpLA is looking to bring the tech conference to local LA start-ups and investors.
The cost is quite reasonable if you are local to the area, and the conference has some great sessions lined up, and what should make for quite the interesting chat with Jason Calacanis.
Friday – Oct 26th 2007 – A half day of invited panel speakers
So if any of those sessions sound interesting to you, and you have a free Friday/Saturday afternoon there are still a few tickets left. I'll be at the event from about 3PM until 7:30PM today (Friday October 26th), and tomorrow (Saturday October 27th) from 10:30AM until 12:30PM.
Hope to see you there. If you do decide to attend be sure to contact me so we can meet up.
Have a great weekend,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/CoFounder of
Reimagine Memories
I've been meaning to post about this for quite a while, but I didn't want to until I was sure it was going to happen and that I was going to attend. Anyway, the LA tech conference called StartUpLA starts today at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. This is the first tech conference that I have been to in a while as E3 has been pretty much demolished, and CES isn't until January. The Southwest Computer User Group in July was quite a bit of fun, but other than that I haven't been able to get to attend TechCrunch40, Web 2.0 Conference, D Conference, etc. The biggest reason I haven't been able to attend any of these great conferences is their location either down in San Diego for the D Conference or up North in the San Francisco area for the others. Whenever you have to go on a trip the costs become incredible as you have to eat out, pay for the hotel, and pay for the airplane ticket on top of the conference fee. Well StartUpLA is looking to bring the tech conference to local LA start-ups and investors.
The cost is quite reasonable if you are local to the area, and the conference has some great sessions lined up, and what should make for quite the interesting chat with Jason Calacanis.
Friday – Oct 26th 2007 – A half day of invited panel speakers
- 1:00pm-1:30pm: Registration - Venue: Alumni Plaza
- 1:30pm-2:25pm: Welcome & Keynote Speaker
- 2:35pm-3:25pm: Parallel sessions
- Topic 1: Raising Money (Venue: B313)
- Topic 2:Top 10 Legal Mistakes (Venue: C301)
- 3:35pm-4:25pm: Parallel sessions
- Topic 3: Marketing 101 (Venue: B313)
- Topic 4: Technology Infrastructure (Venue: C301)
- 4:35pm-5:25pm: Parallel sessions
- Topic 5: Success Stories: How to succeed in today global market (Venue: B313)
- Topic 6:Networking How-to (Venue: C301)
- 5:25 – 6:25pm: Fireside Chat with Jason Calacanis (Venue: Alumni Plaza)
- 6:25 – 7:30pm: Network reception (Drinks & Appetizers)
___________
Saturday – Oct 27th 2007 – Day of unconference
- 9:05am-10:05am: Networking
- 10:05am-10:55am:: First round of Open Space sessions (Venues: A202 & D313)
- 11:05am-12:05pm: Fast Pitch Competition (Venue: Alumni Plaza)
- 1:05pm-1:55pm: Second round of Open Space sessions (Venues: A202, D313, B301)
- 2:05pm-2:55pm: Third round of Open Space sessions (Venues: A202, D313, B301)
- 3:05pm-3:55pm: Fourth round of Open Space sessions (Venues: A202, D313, B301)
- 3:55pm-4:15pm: Announcement of Fast Pitch Winner and Closing Remarks (Venue: Alumni Plaza)
So if any of those sessions sound interesting to you, and you have a free Friday/Saturday afternoon there are still a few tickets left. I'll be at the event from about 3PM until 7:30PM today (Friday October 26th), and tomorrow (Saturday October 27th) from 10:30AM until 12:30PM.
Hope to see you there. If you do decide to attend be sure to contact me so we can meet up.
Have a great weekend,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/CoFounder of
Reimagine Memories
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Internet is Out in Our City
Update: As of 9:50PM we are back-up and running. I apologize again for the short outage, and I will be talking to the cable company ASAP to see why our Internet Connection went down. If you have any questions contact us at: http://www.ReimagineMemories.com/contact
Thank you for using Reimagine Memories,
-Brad
Hi Everybody,
I wanted to let all of you know that the Cable Internet for the entire city is out right now (At home I have DSL, which is what I'm on right now), and has been for the past 20 minutes (It's 9:40 Pacific Time on Wednesday). Once the outage happened all of us at the company get text messaged and then all began to man the battle stations by coming in at this late hour. We got there to find our systems are working perfect so we call the cable company (They provide our Internet connection), and were told the entire city is out right now. I wanted to let you know that we are down, and we have no ETA of when we will be back up. With such a big outage affecting so many people I doubt it will be long. All of our systems are working wonderfully and will be back online as soon as the Internet connection is restored to Simi Valley, CA.
Sorry about the outage, I wish it was our problem so we could fix it.
I'll let you know when everything is back up,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/CoFounder of
Reimagine Memories
Thank you for using Reimagine Memories,
-Brad
Hi Everybody,
I wanted to let all of you know that the Cable Internet for the entire city is out right now (At home I have DSL, which is what I'm on right now), and has been for the past 20 minutes (It's 9:40 Pacific Time on Wednesday). Once the outage happened all of us at the company get text messaged and then all began to man the battle stations by coming in at this late hour. We got there to find our systems are working perfect so we call the cable company (They provide our Internet connection), and were told the entire city is out right now. I wanted to let you know that we are down, and we have no ETA of when we will be back up. With such a big outage affecting so many people I doubt it will be long. All of our systems are working wonderfully and will be back online as soon as the Internet connection is restored to Simi Valley, CA.
Sorry about the outage, I wish it was our problem so we could fix it.
I'll let you know when everything is back up,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/CoFounder of
Reimagine Memories
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Free Upgrade to 500MB of Storage Space
Happy Labor Day Weekend Everyone,
To coincide with Labor Day we are ironically working this weekend on adding new features and switching over to our new Internet Service Provider. The most exciting feature is we are upgrading everyone's free accounts to 500MB of storage space and every new account will also receive 500MB of storage instead of our previous 100MB of space. We know how much digital media all of you have, and how that media continues growing more and more making 100MB of space just not enough anymore. We heard your cries for more space and decided to implement the 500MB of space to satisfy your digital needs. As the site continues to grow we will continue upgrading accounts every few months, but if you have a ton of files the best option is to sign-up for our Premium Account to receive unlimited space.
The next exciting news is that this weekend our amazing Chief Technical Officer, Daniel Story, is reinstating the edit and delete features that have been missing from the site for the past couple weeks due to our platform switchover. Those as well as a quick login button on the front page should be added to the site by Tuesday. We also have a ton of other features in the pipeline right now such as more tutorials, an easy to use sharing page that allows you to post your files on other sites, public profile pages, and much more. This weekend will also mark the beginning of our first set of ad campaigns, which will run all throughout September.
The last development of note over here at the Reimagine Memories' headquarters is we have switched providers. We no longer are hosting the site in a third-party data center, but instead at our own data center at our offices. All of the servers are in the brand new rack system from APC that we got last month, and we have new servers along with much more capacity. Our new Internet Provider is Time Warner Cable, which allows us to grow our bandwidth with just a quick phone call. With back-up battery power along with a gas generator as well as full earthquake mounting protection and fire protection, you can be assured your files are safe with us. We also do full back-ups all of the time to insure that even if our office was attacked by aliens your files would still be safe.
And on that note have a great and safe Labor Day weekend. Be sure to share all of your memories from this weekend using http://www.ReimagineMemories.com
Thanks for Reading,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/Cofounder of
http://www.ReimagineMemories.com
To coincide with Labor Day we are ironically working this weekend on adding new features and switching over to our new Internet Service Provider. The most exciting feature is we are upgrading everyone's free accounts to 500MB of storage space and every new account will also receive 500MB of storage instead of our previous 100MB of space. We know how much digital media all of you have, and how that media continues growing more and more making 100MB of space just not enough anymore. We heard your cries for more space and decided to implement the 500MB of space to satisfy your digital needs. As the site continues to grow we will continue upgrading accounts every few months, but if you have a ton of files the best option is to sign-up for our Premium Account to receive unlimited space.
The next exciting news is that this weekend our amazing Chief Technical Officer, Daniel Story, is reinstating the edit and delete features that have been missing from the site for the past couple weeks due to our platform switchover. Those as well as a quick login button on the front page should be added to the site by Tuesday. We also have a ton of other features in the pipeline right now such as more tutorials, an easy to use sharing page that allows you to post your files on other sites, public profile pages, and much more. This weekend will also mark the beginning of our first set of ad campaigns, which will run all throughout September.
The last development of note over here at the Reimagine Memories' headquarters is we have switched providers. We no longer are hosting the site in a third-party data center, but instead at our own data center at our offices. All of the servers are in the brand new rack system from APC that we got last month, and we have new servers along with much more capacity. Our new Internet Provider is Time Warner Cable, which allows us to grow our bandwidth with just a quick phone call. With back-up battery power along with a gas generator as well as full earthquake mounting protection and fire protection, you can be assured your files are safe with us. We also do full back-ups all of the time to insure that even if our office was attacked by aliens your files would still be safe.
And on that note have a great and safe Labor Day weekend. Be sure to share all of your memories from this weekend using http://www.ReimagineMemories.com
Thanks for Reading,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/Cofounder of
http://www.ReimagineMemories.com
Friday, August 10, 2007
Reimagine Memories In the Business Section of the Paper
Those are scans of the front-page of the business section of the Monday Edition of the Los Angeles Daily News with the red box I placed on top of it containing the little blurb article about Reimagine Memories. Waking up on Monday morning and seeing this while browsing through the paper was unbelievably exciting and validated the work that we have done over the past two years. The text of the article is:
"Simi Valley-based Reimagine Memories recently launched its Web site, www.reimaginememories.com, where members can share video, sound, text and image memories with people around the world for free. Reimaginememories.com also offers a premium service that allows members to upload an unlimited number of memories and to use the Memories Through the Mail system. This system allows members to mail their CDs, tapes, records and photos to Reimagine Memories for them to digitally convert and upload to the member's account."
I hope this will be the first of many occurrences for Reimagine Memories in the media.
Stay tuned,
CEO/Co-Founder of
Reimagine Memories
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Reimagine Memories at the Southwest Computer User Group Conference
We went down to San Diego on Friday, July 13th, and spent the rest of the weekend at the Southwest Computer User Group Conference (SWUGC) where we finally launched Reimagine Memories to the public. We attended the conferences and dinners with the attendees, and during these were able to meet some really passionate computer users. By far the most fun was the vendor faire where we had a booth fully-decked out in an Island theme featuring an inflatable palm tree, inflatable monkey, grass table skirt, beach balls, and surfing music to complete the theme. It was incredibly popular with the attendees and we saw the most foot traffic as our sweepstakes was a big draw for people to come all the way to the back of the convention center to visit our booth.
I personally gave about 20-30 complete demos of the site and pitched it at least 150 times to eager attendees who wanted to know what Reimagine Memories was about. We generated a lot of interest, got a few hugs, gave away a ton of stuff, and had the other vendors jealous of the attention we were receiving. By popular demand we gave away both the palm tree and monkey to attendees with the monkey being especially popular with the woman who one it. So much so she ran up, gave it a hug, and gave the monkey it's own sit at the table. It was moments like that, which made the weekend unforgettable despite all of the hard work that went into it.
Special thanks to Derek Palmer who is a honorary RM employee and a best friend of mine for coming down to San Diego and helping me out all weekend. Couldn't have done it without you.
Check out the booth pictures below.
We hope to be back next year,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/Co-Founder of
Reimagine Memories
Check out the pictures that we took:
Another poster advertising Reimagine Memories at our booth
3 computers showing off our website (2 Macs, 1 PC, all running FireFox)
Our inflatable monkey with an RM shirt on it. Along with our fortune cookie,
beach balls, and poster giveaways. Also our sweepstakes entry forms.
Inflatable Monkey with the RM Shirt
Our whole booth
Another picture of our booth
I personally gave about 20-30 complete demos of the site and pitched it at least 150 times to eager attendees who wanted to know what Reimagine Memories was about. We generated a lot of interest, got a few hugs, gave away a ton of stuff, and had the other vendors jealous of the attention we were receiving. By popular demand we gave away both the palm tree and monkey to attendees with the monkey being especially popular with the woman who one it. So much so she ran up, gave it a hug, and gave the monkey it's own sit at the table. It was moments like that, which made the weekend unforgettable despite all of the hard work that went into it.
Special thanks to Derek Palmer who is a honorary RM employee and a best friend of mine for coming down to San Diego and helping me out all weekend. Couldn't have done it without you.
Check out the booth pictures below.
We hope to be back next year,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/Co-Founder of
Reimagine Memories
Check out the pictures that we took:
Other booths next to us
Buffet Eating Area for the Attendees
Our booth with our inflatable palm tree, and our poster
advertising Memories Thorough the Mail
advertising Memories Thorough the Mail
Another poster advertising Reimagine Memories at our booth
3 computers showing off our website (2 Macs, 1 PC, all running FireFox)
Our inflatable monkey with an RM shirt on it. Along with our fortune cookie,
beach balls, and poster giveaways. Also our sweepstakes entry forms.
Inflatable Monkey with the RM Shirt
Our whole booth
Another picture of our booth
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Moving Our Datacenter In-House
Hi Everyone,
Reimagine Memories started life on our personal computers, specifically Dan's machine (Our CTO), where he hosted the site during our first months of development. As we entered the alpha stage of development I purchased an old E-Machine Computer from a friend for $100 that finally gave us a dedicated computer for our site. My great ISP, DSLExtreme, allows for sites to be hosted through their DSL connection, which is exactly what I did. I ran some wire to the back of a closet in my family room, and hooked up the E-Machine Computer, and then we began to offer hosting services to our first testing members (TBSUnion.com). A month or so after moving the server to my house my Vonage phone that runs through the same Internet connection began to stop working, and causal browsing had become slow and difficult due to how much traffic we were getting. I soon began looking for an outside service to host with, and that's when I was referred to a local place only minutes from my house. After visiting many data centers around the state I decided to choose SiteServer, and bought a new server to put into their data center.
Now after a nearly a year at SiteServer as Reimagine Memories has now finally opened to the public and is offering premium services we have made the decision to move the servers back into our offices. We have always had the back-up servers here, but want to move the primary servers here as well now that are able to get Business Cable from TimeWarner at an economical cost for a faster speed than we currently get at SiteServer. The transition will be happening during the month of August, and users should not be interrupted at all by the move as we are planning for a no downtime transition.
If you have any questions about the move just ask.
Thank you for your membership,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/Co-Founder of
Reimagine Memories
P.S. Here are some pictures of our first server rack from APC:
Reimagine Memories started life on our personal computers, specifically Dan's machine (Our CTO), where he hosted the site during our first months of development. As we entered the alpha stage of development I purchased an old E-Machine Computer from a friend for $100 that finally gave us a dedicated computer for our site. My great ISP, DSLExtreme, allows for sites to be hosted through their DSL connection, which is exactly what I did. I ran some wire to the back of a closet in my family room, and hooked up the E-Machine Computer, and then we began to offer hosting services to our first testing members (TBSUnion.com). A month or so after moving the server to my house my Vonage phone that runs through the same Internet connection began to stop working, and causal browsing had become slow and difficult due to how much traffic we were getting. I soon began looking for an outside service to host with, and that's when I was referred to a local place only minutes from my house. After visiting many data centers around the state I decided to choose SiteServer, and bought a new server to put into their data center.
Now after a nearly a year at SiteServer as Reimagine Memories has now finally opened to the public and is offering premium services we have made the decision to move the servers back into our offices. We have always had the back-up servers here, but want to move the primary servers here as well now that are able to get Business Cable from TimeWarner at an economical cost for a faster speed than we currently get at SiteServer. The transition will be happening during the month of August, and users should not be interrupted at all by the move as we are planning for a no downtime transition.
If you have any questions about the move just ask.
Thank you for your membership,
-Brad Jashinsky
CEO/Co-Founder of
Reimagine Memories
P.S. Here are some pictures of our first server rack from APC:
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
ReimagineMemories.com Launch
After more than a year of on and off development, ReimagineMemories.com is finally at a point where we feel it is ready for public consumption. An unbelievable amount of work as been put into Reimagine Memories over the last year with constant funding meets, early acquisition talks, and corporate phone calls that made us realize that going it on our own with self-funding might not be such a bad thing. And that is where we are today; releasing the first version of ReimagineMemories.com with numerous features implemented and numerous others in the works both physically and mentally. It is my pleasure as CEO and as one of the co-founders of ReimagineMemories.com to welcome you to our corporate blog and to our site. So now you're asking what the heck is Reimagine Memories. Check out our launch commercial:
The biggest innovation created by Reimagine Memories isn't even an innovation at all; it's a realization.
We are giving free members:
500MB of Storage for Videos, Music, Photos, and Documents
(Perfect for podcasters, vidcasters, MySpace/LJ, bands, directors, etc.)
Unlimited Bandwidth
(Share your creations with as many people as you would like)
For only $10/Month:
Unlimited Storage for Videos, Music, Photos, and Documents
(Perfect for podcasters, vidcasters, MySpace/LJ, bands, directors, etc.)
Unlimited Bandwidth
(Share your creations with as many people as you would like)
Memories Through the Mail
If you have a premium account (Upgrade "link the word upgrade to PayPal page") an included feature of your account is unlimited use of our Memories Through the Mail program. The Memories in the Mail program allows you to send your tapes, CDs, DVDs, DV tapes, Hi-8 tapes, LP records, photos and other physical media formats to be reimagined into the digital medium. Share all of your classic memories with your family and friends all over the world and reimagine your lost memories preserving them forever on the Internet.
Reimagine Memories brings a social community to the web by putting memories on the Internet for the first time. Allowing members to upload memories captured as videos, pictures, music and text for free. ReimagineMemories is the new social-networking site on the Internet taking up the net by storm with innovation and the bundling of many different features on one site. You're able to share video, sound, text, and image files to people around the world as well as all of its tools and community interaction for free.
The biggest innovation created by Reimagine Memories isn't even an innovation at all; it's a realization.
We are giving free members:
500MB of Storage for Videos, Music, Photos, and Documents
(Perfect for podcasters, vidcasters, MySpace/LJ, bands, directors, etc.)
Unlimited Bandwidth
(Share your creations with as many people as you would like)
For only $10/Month:
Unlimited Storage for Videos, Music, Photos, and Documents
(Perfect for podcasters, vidcasters, MySpace/LJ, bands, directors, etc.)
Unlimited Bandwidth
(Share your creations with as many people as you would like)
Memories Through the Mail
If you have a premium account (Upgrade "link the word upgrade to PayPal page") an included feature of your account is unlimited use of our Memories Through the Mail program. The Memories in the Mail program allows you to send your tapes, CDs, DVDs, DV tapes, Hi-8 tapes, LP records, photos and other physical media formats to be reimagined into the digital medium. Share all of your classic memories with your family and friends all over the world and reimagine your lost memories preserving them forever on the Internet.
Reimagine Memories brings a social community to the web by putting memories on the Internet for the first time. Allowing members to upload memories captured as videos, pictures, music and text for free. ReimagineMemories is the new social-networking site on the Internet taking up the net by storm with innovation and the bundling of many different features on one site. You're able to share video, sound, text, and image files to people around the world as well as all of its tools and community interaction for free.
Go check out the About Page and the FAQ for more information and become a member of ReimagineMemories.com
Thursday, April 12, 2007
MySpace Vs. PhotoBucket
As an almost start-up (We're about 2-4 weeks from coming out of beta) I follow Web 2.0 religiously and learned of the battle between MySpace and PhotoBucket off from TechCrunch yesterday. Obviously I want to see cross-site pollination not only be allowed by MySpace and every other social network out there, but I also would like to see it embraced. The news of MySpace blocking PhotoBucket videos is quite scary as a similar action would put a less established company out of business overnight. Once I read the PhotoBucket blog post detailing the whole situation I decided to do the little that I could to help them by emailing MySpace to voice my complaints as they suggested. Sadly and ironically this is the response I received back:
Hello,
To upload a video, begin by going to 'home', then click the 'Upload/Change Photos' link. Next, find the 'Upload Video!' heading. Below that is a link, 'here'; click on that.
Now, you will want to add a title and description. Next, decide whether or not you want your video to be public - viewable by searching videos, or private. If you are familiar with our Terms of Service, then click the box next to 'I agree to the MySpace Terms and Conditions'. If not, then click on the link for the Terms and Conditions to view them.
You will now need to click on the 'Browse' button. Choose the video file that you desire to add and click the 'Upload' button. Please ensure that your chosen video is the proper format and is under 100 MB. Now, the system will process your video (please be patient).
If you are having troubles uploading, please first ensure that it is the proper format. Also, please note that if you are uploading inappropriate material, it will likely be deleted by MySpace.
If you see that your video has been in the 'uploading' state for more than 12 hours or so, there may be a small glitch. Please try uploading again.
If this does not address your issue completely, please press "Reply" and provide any additional information you feel is relevant.
Thank you,
MySpace.com
Sunday, March 11, 2007
DNS Problems (Use http://69.36.94.211)
Hi Everyone,
Quite an early morning this morning with the combination of server alerts being sent to my phone and the whole daylight saving's time change problem. Getting the text messages to my phone (From the amazing service Host-Tracker.com) first alerted me to there being a problem. Host-Tracker has servers all over the country that ping my site every minute and send me a text message the minute the site doesn't ping back. The next indication was the few emails I had gotten from different band fan sites that use my service asking me what was going on. It's about 7:30 in the morning at this point on a Sunday and my mind is just racing since I know there's a big problem here and trying to get in-touch with other members of the team would be hard if not near impossible.
I try the site out myself and receive the same server not found error as everyone else who had emailed me reported. I then pull up the list of our ip addresses that I keep both in a text document and in a sticky note on Dashboard. To my amazement the site is up and running perfectly when I type in the ip address. Then it dawns on me; the DNS servers are messed up because of the early time change. This is quite ironic as we had been joking about this being another fake media scare just like the Y2K scare. Unfortunately, this was real and had taken down our site among others that I tried to visit. My next step was to call GoDaddy to double-check my hypothesis since they host all of our domains.
Go-Daddy is quite an amazing company despite what I hear about them on Digg and other tech news sites. I've never had a problem with them in anyway and today was no different. I sat on hold for about 5 minutes and then spoke to a support technician. I immediately described my problem and even in my half-asleep state he still understood my problem right away without having to transfer me to someone else. He informed me that the Internet was only at about 70-80% capacity worldwide due to DNS servers at ISPs having problems due to the time change. This would explain why other sites I tried to visit had the same problem as RM was having.
Anyway, that was my morning and after sending emails off with new link pages up and running with the ip address hard-coded in everything is resolved for now. I was told that the domain should be working sometime today. Depending on where you live and who your ISP is it may be working already. I know that in parts of Europe RM is working fine while here in California we can't get to the site using the domain name. Sorry for any inconveniences this has caused; I wish this was in our hands, but unfortunately it's not.
Use http://69.36.94.211 to access the site until the problem is resolved.
Thanks for using ReimagineMemories.com,
-Brad
Quite an early morning this morning with the combination of server alerts being sent to my phone and the whole daylight saving's time change problem. Getting the text messages to my phone (From the amazing service Host-Tracker.com) first alerted me to there being a problem. Host-Tracker has servers all over the country that ping my site every minute and send me a text message the minute the site doesn't ping back. The next indication was the few emails I had gotten from different band fan sites that use my service asking me what was going on. It's about 7:30 in the morning at this point on a Sunday and my mind is just racing since I know there's a big problem here and trying to get in-touch with other members of the team would be hard if not near impossible.
I try the site out myself and receive the same server not found error as everyone else who had emailed me reported. I then pull up the list of our ip addresses that I keep both in a text document and in a sticky note on Dashboard. To my amazement the site is up and running perfectly when I type in the ip address. Then it dawns on me; the DNS servers are messed up because of the early time change. This is quite ironic as we had been joking about this being another fake media scare just like the Y2K scare. Unfortunately, this was real and had taken down our site among others that I tried to visit. My next step was to call GoDaddy to double-check my hypothesis since they host all of our domains.
Go-Daddy is quite an amazing company despite what I hear about them on Digg and other tech news sites. I've never had a problem with them in anyway and today was no different. I sat on hold for about 5 minutes and then spoke to a support technician. I immediately described my problem and even in my half-asleep state he still understood my problem right away without having to transfer me to someone else. He informed me that the Internet was only at about 70-80% capacity worldwide due to DNS servers at ISPs having problems due to the time change. This would explain why other sites I tried to visit had the same problem as RM was having.
Anyway, that was my morning and after sending emails off with new link pages up and running with the ip address hard-coded in everything is resolved for now. I was told that the domain should be working sometime today. Depending on where you live and who your ISP is it may be working already. I know that in parts of Europe RM is working fine while here in California we can't get to the site using the domain name. Sorry for any inconveniences this has caused; I wish this was in our hands, but unfortunately it's not.
Use http://69.36.94.211 to access the site until the problem is resolved.
Thanks for using ReimagineMemories.com,
-Brad
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