The best and earliest story I know about how important digital reputation management was/would become was the story of this guy from Cincinnati. He was this developer who decided that he wanted to rehab some theater in a really bad part of town there called Over the Rhine. City council cut him a nice big check and he took off. About a year later, a woman he was trying to date threw his name into Google and pulled up the fact that he was wanted. He got arrested and that was that. Damn funny.That was 5 years ago. Think about how far the Web has come since then in the sense of becoming a giant soapbox for whomever wants to say something about anything without having to ID themselves…effectively relieving them of any responsbility whatsoever.

I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing; freedom of speech is very important. And keeping the Internet a place where speech can be exercised to its fullest extent is very important as well. It does open up a realm of possiblities though when it comes to what floats out there about you…and permanently for that matter.

There are now companies that have been created around the idea of digital reputation management and keeping it clean. I just read about one that charges $1500.00 a month to repair any damage, and that’s only to guarantee that the first page of results will come up clean. Given that it takes about 2-3 months for results to begin to change in the search engines, there’s at least 3-4K in your pockets beore its all said and done.

What’s really interesting is I don’t think our Generation Y friends quite get it yet that a good portion of them will most likely be the ones that actually grow those companies into real profitability. From a marketing perspective, there are studies that show Gen Y has this somewhat unhealthy obsession with the idea of fame on whatever level they can get it. One only has to take a look at myspace to see how crazy it can get.

Man…maybe I’m in the wrong business.

Let’s take me as an example. If I throw my name into Google, the first things that come up are the fact that I’m an interactive project/product manager and that I play music…

…and then something random about me being a weirdo and needing a life.  That has been a recent development, and one I brought down upon myself. Remember how I said something about how easy it is to throw things out there about anybody and anything? I did.  Specifically, I did it here on this blog. I wrote about a girl I used to date (and lived with) in college. Note that I’m going to avoid using her name here because I’ll draw more unnecessary results to her name and probably cause her to fly off into some kind of crazy rage which could potentially result in my physical demise…

Anyway…

So by creating that post about her, either she or one of her friends found it and decided to retalitate by writing some pretty funny stuff about me.

Let’s play a little Q&A now, shall we?

1. Andrew, did you spend time in Interwebz chat rooms?:  Yep. True. I worked in a computer lab at the College of Applied Science @ the University of Cincinnati. My spare time was spent chatting with other goofs who were fascinated with the internet. Good times.
2. Were you a Star Wars groupie?: I wouldn’t call myself a Star Wars groupie or anything…but I certainly dig Star Wars. Not ashamed, yo. The new Force Unleashed game is probably going to be my next game rental.  Ha!
3. Did you collect computer parts?: Yep. Previous to working in the computer lab, I worked for a place called Micro Direct where I sold and built computers during college. I made quite a bit of money, buying parts and building computers and then subsequently selling them to friends.
4. Do you still hold a grudge against this girl?: Nope. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t care a whole heck of a lot less. I genuinely and truly hope that she is having a good/better life than she had when I knew her. Beyond that…it doesn’t really register as a blip on my previous life radar.
5. Did you really post an “I Have No Life” revenge story about her?: Nope. But I did post a story about my time with her here. Someone else (her? her friend?) in her post called it a ‘revenge’ story. While most of my post about her is straight forward, I said a couple of more ‘kind’ things, like: “melissa was something else. she was older than me by five years. she was smart, confident and was one of the most talented and ambitious people in our program at school. the one thing i have to thank her for was that she gave me a little clout in my program, because as soon as i started dating her, the teachers all of a sudden started taking notice of me.” and, “but i don’t think i was sad about the fact that she was going to be out of my life. i was more sad that this talented, cool, attractive girl i had met almost two years earlier had taken such a terrible turn. it’s really awful to see a person self-destruct like that.” Note that I also removed her last name out of respect for privacy. I shouldn’t have used her last name. That’s really the only part I’m sorry about.
6. Does your wife wonder if you have old feelings for other women? Nope. Actually, my wife supports my writing. Some of the music & lyrics I’ve written reflect on or are directly about other women and heartbreak and all that typical stuff that makes up a good portion of music out there (stupid heartbroken musicians).
7. Did you create geochurn.com so you could “just…google [yourself] and get off on [your] self-created internet infamity [sic]: Infamity? Is that even a word. Well…to answer the question posed…nope. I didn’t really have to create this site to Google myself and have results come up. I’m just that cool that my name brings up some cool and amazing stuff without it. The funny thing is that geochurn doesn’t even COME UP as one of the first results. It’s on the second page of results.
   
8. Are you”disturbed and need to seek therapy”?  Nope. I mean…well…I’m disturbed by a lot of stuff, but certainly not ‘touched’ or anything like that, as the connotation of the word ‘disturbed’ is used here. I’m a sane dude.

I will tell you what is really disturbing though. At the bottom of her/her friend’s post it says something to the effect that Melissa is a very professional person and that she’s ignoring what that evil mean Andrew says. BUT, she’s going to show you a site that was created about me and how ‘creepy’ and awful I am. I can only assume that either her or her ‘friend’ created it.

Here’s the opening line, which is (I think) something to describe me:

“Dramaturgial = The term in its medical sense (usually referring to the evacuation of the “katamenia”, the menstrual fluid or other reproductive material.) literally: acceptance from the audience through manipulation, from the fact that one could create a way for others to suffer a worse fate than them was to his or herself a relief. It can also describe the effect of producing an outlet for violence, by acting as a form of release for violent behaviour. For example, in forms of media or in a dream.”

And then it goes on to describe how I’m ‘violent’, ’stalkerish’, and that I seduce 17 year old Norwegian girls in internet chat rooms for my own sick pleasures, make them break up with their boyfriends, and am scared of rejection or something like that.

Oh yes…and I was apparently almost 30 in 1999.

……..

Holy sweet mother of all that is good and awesome, Batman.

First of all…I have to congratulate whichever person took the task on of taking the time to create that site. I’m kind of flattered that I, Andrew Joseph Geonetta, could rile someone up so much that they’d create a little shrine to me (as crazy as that shrine may be).

And I also have to congratulate whichever person actually conjured up that stuff about the Norwegian girl. It’s kind of creative and funny in the same way one might think the banjo player in ‘Deliverance’ is creative and funny…

The real (summarized) story is as follows:

1. I talked to a Norwegian girl in a chatroom and over e-mail…10 years ago. She was really cool.  I guess you could call it a pen pal thing. I was talking about going to visit a friend in Germany at that point and remember saying something like, “Hey, it would be cool if it were possible to do some travelling while I’m in Europe and somehow could come visit in the Netherlands.” She sent me a packet of stuff that had things like recipes of traditional Norwegian food, some pics of her and where she lived, a map of her town, and a letter.  I know there was more, but I don’t have it because…
2. Melissa took it from me. It was really sad.
3. After that, I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden, this really cool girl couldn’t talk to me any more because her boyfriend (who I knew about…she lived with him, for God’s sake) all of a sudden decided that his girlfriend and me were “more than just friends”.  Because…you know…that makes sense. The only thing I can guess is that my fun-loving girl Melissa must have mailed something? E-mailed?  Called? this guy, telling him something terrible.  I honestly don’t know for sure though; just a theory.

I lost a friend out of it, and that really sucked.

So…digital reputation management, friends…make sure yours is clean and spotless. Me…I don’t think I’ll do anything about either of those sites. They are both pretty entertaining and defiitely make for good conversation.

Little known fact:  John McCain actually invented the device we have all come to know/love/hate as the Blackberry.

Surely you jest, Andrew. SURELY, right?

Friends, I JEST YOU NOT. Just as Al Gore invented the Intarwebz, Johnny Mack rocked the future of telecomms with his genius Blackberry invention.

OK…so I jest you a little.

This is pretty funny.

I have three little words for that one.

WTF. And maybe a 4th.  Mate.

A little while back, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama made appearances at the Saddleback Church in California. One of the questions was something like ‘define rich for the purposes of taxation’.

The question wasn’t that dificult.

Obama answered pretty succinctly in my opinion. If you’re making $150K+ as a family, you’re considered middle class. If you’re making$250K and above (as a family), you are in the top 3-4% in this country, and you would be considered ‘rich’.

Now…I don’t know exactly where those numbers came from or what they are based on. There are a lot of things that would need to be taken into consideration…where you live in the US, how many children you have, etc. But that sounds about right to me. $250K…for the average family of 2 adults and 2 children…no matter where you live in country (in my humble opinion) is a hell of a lot of cash to be pulling down. Depending on where you live, $150K a year for a family is STILL pretty damn great!

And then John McCain answers the question. He started off by not answering the question. He talked around it, stating that ’some of the richest people he knows are unhappy’ and ‘ rich should be defined by other criteria other than just cash’ etc.

Then…finally…he answers with, ‘I think if you’re talking about income, how about $5 million?’

Huh? $5 MILLION is the number you use to define someone who’s rich in America? That’s the criteria by which you are selected to pay into a higher tax bracket?!

Let’s put this in perspective. Less than 1/10th of 1% of people in the US make 5 million a year. So how is that even remotely in touch with the average American?

So basically what J McC is saying is this: If you make less than 5 million a year, you get to bear the burden of the taxes in this country.  And above that, you get to pay a extra………………

This makes absolutely no sense to me.

Interesting note: I’m not dead. I promise. Don’t get me wrong; sometimes I feel like I am at the end of the day, but I’m not.

Why, you ask?  I don’t think I’ve worked under a 55 hours in the past 2-3 months or so. At the end of the day, I pretty much want to come home and do…nothing. My general exit routine has been come home around 7-ish, either picking up food or cooking something quick at home, watch a DVR’d episode of Southpark (because for some reason, I’m on this big catch-up kick), play a game, read, talk to my lovely wife or something…and then go to bed.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Where did writing go? I’m not sure. I certainly could have squeezed it in there as one of my options, right? But I haven’t because I’ve realized that sometimes it’s in my personality to get really obsessed with doing something. And then, just as quickly as I am obsessed with it, I drop off. I’m the same way with reading. One minute I’ll be plowing through 1000+ page books, and the next minute flatline.

In this case, I think it has something more to do with the amount of working than anything. I just haven’t felt inspired to get on the computer and do more thinking. If I get on a computer after work, I generally just want to read mindlessly or feed my World of Warcraft addiction a little bit.

So what the heck have I been doing over the past four 3.5 months or so since I last posted?

Work
Work-wise, it has been pretty crazy as usual. There is a lot going on. I’ll spare the details.  But let’s just say that I’ve been working a lot. Did a little bit of a travel to New York and Costa Rica. During the week, I generally just want to come home and veg out.

Sometimes I think I’d love to have a job where the entire day isn’t spent thinking thinking thinking. Sometimes I think that it’d be awesome to own a Starbucks or something because, by the end of the day, you know that it is, indeed, the end. You’ve served your coffee, you’ve talked to a bunch of people, and you’ve gotten to come home to relax.

As it were, I don’t think I’ll ever own a Starbucks. Nor do I really think that’s a feasible option for me. I actually enjoy what I do very much, and will continue to do it for quite some time.

House
Being a homeowner is still great. We made a great move by buying a place that didn’t need a bunch of work. It has been nice only having to do small cosmetic upgrades. We bought all stainless appliances. We also got some really nice new leather furniture (couch, loveseat, and a coffee table/ottoman). Did a little bit of painting.  But that’s really about it. It’s great to walk into a place that is ‘yours’…your space that you have made your own. It makes it much easier to relax. I’ll have to post some pictures later.

Home Theater
Most importantly, the home theater setup is now complete, and that, friends, is freakin’ awesome. It’s nothing amazing, but it’s perfect for me/us. I believe in proportion rather than having something huge for the sake of having something huge. I measured out the wall and figured that a 40-42″ TV would be the ideal size without it becoming the centerpiece of the living room. So I went with w 40″ Samsung 550A and couldn’t be happier. It looks amazing.

My receiver isn’t awesome, but it’s good enough. It’s some model of Sony. It’s a 7.1 system,THX certified and gets the job done. I have a couple of larger Infinity front speakers, and then a Sony center, surround and sub set up. Again, nothing awesome, but it was made to be more ‘low profile’ and fit with an LCD setup which is kind of cool. At least it’s all digital which is what I was most interested in having. 

Of course, what good is having a nice TV without having a little HD action? So I used that as an excuse to buy a PS3 because it has a Bluray player. Which, by the way, if you’re going to buy a Bluray player, then you should just buy the PS3.

Of course, now since a video game system has been brought up, I feel obligated to talk about that…

PS3
At first, I was resistant to buying the PS3 because I thought it was far too expensive, the game library for it was (and still is, to some degree) poor and the Sony online network is nowhere near the beast that Xbox Live is. Now that I have the system, I have to say that I’m pretty damn impressed. Overall, I still think the Xbox is the better gaming system for the time being. But I can now see where they cut a few corners in order to get the thing out the door a year in advance of the PS3. 

To start, the PS3 is a FAR better built system than the Xbox. It feels like a very substantial piece of hardware. The first thing I noticed was when you are playing a game or watching a movie…it’s quiet. The fan on the Xbox is obnoxiously loud, but I guess I just got used to it. 

It has wireless capabilities out of the box. Xbox makes you buy a separate $100.00 USB device.

It has Bluetooth capabilities. Xbox doesn’t. That means you can hook up a keyboard and mouse.  Why would you do that? Well, there’s a built-in Web browser.  And should you decide to insall another OS (which I’ll talk about in a bit), you can take advantage there too. 

It has an accessible and non-proprietary A/V setup. On the Xbox, there’s a set of A/V cables you have to buy in order to use HDMI and get true surround processing. Sure, you can just buy a $20.00 HDMI cable and go from your Xbox to your TV. The problem here is that if you’re going to do true surround out to your stereo, that setup won’t do it. The system doesn’t pass through the full surround signal. So your only option is to run the optical out from the Xbox cable connection directly to your stereo and then run an HDMI cable to your TV…thereby separating out the two signals.  Seems easy…except for the fact that you can’t do that.

The regular Xbox cable connection actually overlaps the HDMI out on the Xbox so you can’t use it. The only conventional (note I say conventional; you could Macguyver your normal component…or analog…or whatever…cable connection to where it doesn’t overlap, but it requires you break the housing on it) way to do it is to buy a $50.00 HDMI Xbox setup. Kind of a rip-off.

You can stream media from a computer that is on the same network as your Playstation very easily.  I had it streaming music and video about 5 minutes after I got everything set up. It was like, “Oh…hey Andrew…looks like you have a laptop on your network with Windows Media 11 on it, and it looks like you have a bunch of music and video on it. Want to stream that here?” All I had to do was allow the connection in Windows Media 11 on the laptop. The Xbox wasn’t that difficult, but it definitely took a little more than what I just described.

You can, if you really want, install another OS on the PS3 in addition the PS3 OS.  Yellowdog Linux is apparently what has been optimized for it. And you don’t even have to hack it to get it to work; there’s simply an option in the PS3 menu interface that says “Install Another OS”.  Impressive.

And of course, the Bluray drive is what ultimately justifies the purchase. Considering that the least expensive decent quality Bluray player starts at $329, doesn’t it make more sense just to get a PS3?

Don’t get my wrong; if I were in the situation where I was buying a game system and my primary motive was getting it for the games, then I’d buy an Xbox…even if I had to buy the extra USB wireless dongle and the HDMI cables (which makes the highest model of Elite 360 more expensive than the PS3).  The reason why is because the overall Xbox Live service is excellent…far better than the Sony network…and there is a wider selection of better games. Sony will certainly catch up…but then that’s the problem, and ultimately the advantage that MS leveraged by releasing a year earlier. They may’ve sacrifced quality, but now they have a bigger install base.

The Post Conclusion
So my purpose was to just let everyone know that all is well and that I am not quite dead yet. Mission accomplished. More later.

.a.

Some of you may wonder just where I have dissappeared to. Never fear…I have not dissappeared. I have merely been pre-occupied mainly with something I did not expect myself to be pre-occupied with…and that would be yelp.com

I think it all started when I wrote about Torchy’s Tacos. It has gone downhill since then.

For those of you that don’t know, yelp.com is a user-driven review site/social network that allows one the opportunity to voice opinions about places…doctors, stores, restaurants…to other people. The whole ‘wisdom of the masses’ mentality for the Web shines full force here, and I’ve been enjoying writing reviews of restaurants I’ve been going to. I figure that I do my fair share of eating in restaurants; I consider myself fortunate to be able to do that. I know some people have to really make the time and effort to go out to eat. Therefore, I thought I might knock out two birds with one stone and do some reviews so I can:

1) Write a little more because I sure like writing and…

2) Pass on my experiences to those who might be looking for a well-deserved night out so they can hopefully avoid the swill

God, I’m so noble.

Besides yelp-ing…I’ve been playing GTA IV…probably one of the greatest games in the history of video gaming. I say that with full confidence and absolutely NO sarcasm whatsoever. There is something pretty amazing about this one that few games manage to capture. Violence, insanity, sexual innuendo and general bad stuff aside, I can pretty much promise you there hasn’t been a more fully realized non-contrived video game character than Nico Bellick. He’s a complicated person. And he’s further complicated by what you choose to put into him and put him through. The stats say I’m approximatley 11% of the way through the game, and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’m excited to see where it takes me.

And then a friend of mine at work got me started back on WoW. That’s all I’ll say about that. As a matter of fact, that’s what I’m going to go do now…

In the meantime, if you want to see what I’ve been writing on yelp, go here. You’ll hopefully get a chuckle or two…