>ANAHEIM INTEGRATES TWITTER WITH 311 SERVICE CALLS

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ANAHEIM, Calif. (August 31, 2009) –City of Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle (@CurtPringle) announced the integration of Twitter with the City’s 311 service request system, effective today. Residents, businesses and visitors who are on-the-go around Anaheim can send service messages using Twitter, making this addition to 311 a truly mobile application. Twitter users can get started immediately by following @Anaheim311.

Using technology in its most effective form means engaging in useful and meaningful applications,” said Mayor Pringle. “I am proud of the City’s 311 service request system, and expanding 311 by integrating Twitter as a way to reach City Hall is an exciting venture. Now, residents, businesses and visitors have yet another avenue by which to access city services anytime and anywhere.

The use of Twitter enhances customer service for residents, businesses and visitors who engage social media on a daily basis, allows Twitter users a safe and relevant portal for communicating with the City, and creates an additional avenue by which residents, businesses and visitors can reach the City regarding a question and/or service request. Requests received via Twitter will be responded to in the same manner as all 311 requests.

  1. Text message “follow anaheim311″ to 40404 or click “Follow” at http://twitter.com/anaheim311
  2. Send a direct message “d anaheim311 I am reporting…”

The City’s 311 hotline is one of the major components of the City’s customer service initiative, Anaheim Anytime. Callers to 311 are able to obtain answers to questions or make requests of City Hall without having to know the exact phone number for the department they are calling. Callers can dial 3-1-1 from a landline phone in the City of Anaheim, or (714) 765-4311 from a cell phone or from outside Anaheim. Service Representatives are available to answer your questions in English and Spanish Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. After hours users can access a list of frequently requested services (listed in English and Spanish), or simply leave a message for follow up on the next business day.

Anaheim Anytime, introduced by Mayor Pringle in 2006 at his State of the City address and launched in 2007, is a comprehensive customer service program enabling residents and businesses to interact with the City. The system improves communications, ensuring requests for services or information are tracked and properly routed to the correct City department. Citizens can enter a request, suggestion or comment at any time on the City’s website, www.anaheim.net, by clicking the Anaheim Anytime logo.

For more information please visit www.anaheim.net.

>ANAHEIM OFFERS COOLING CENTERS DURING UPCOMING HOT WEATHER

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The following Anaheim City library and community center facilities will be available for residents to rest and cool-off indoors, and take advantage of enjoying a good book or magazine, browsing the Web, or enjoying any of the features offered at the sites.

 

Central Branch Library
500 West Broadway
Anaheim, CA 92805
(714) 765-1880
Monday-Friday: 9 am to 9 pm 
Saturday: 9 am to 6 pm

 

Haskett Branch Library
2650 W. Broadway
Anaheim, CA 92804
(714) 765-5075
Monday-Thursday: 10 am to 9 pm
Friday & Saturday: Noon to 6 pm
Sundays: Noon to 5 pm

Euclid Branch Library
1340 South Euclid
Anaheim, CA 92802
(714) 765-3625
Monday-Wednesday: 12 pm to 9 pm
Thursday: 11 am to 9 pm
Friday & Saturday: 11 am to 6 pm

 

Sunkist Branch Library
901 South Sunkist
Anaheim, CA 92806
(714) 765-3576
Monday-Wednesday: Noon to 9 pm
Thursday: 11 am to 9 pm
Friday & Saturday: 11 am to 6 pm

 

Canyon Hills Branch Library
400 Scout Trail
Anaheim, CA 92807
(714) 974-7630
Monday-Thursday: 10 am to 9 pm
Friday: 10 am to 6 pm
Saturday: 10 am to 6 pm

 

East Anaheim Branch Library
8201 Santa Ana Canyon Rd.
Anaheim, CA  92808
(714) 765-3887
Monday-Wednesday:  10 am to 8 pm
Thursday & Saturday:  10 am to 6 pm
Sunday: 1 pm to 5 pm
Closed Fridays

 

Downtown Community Center
250 E. Center St.
(714) 765-4500
Monday – Friday 9 am – 5 pm
Saturday 8 am – 4 pm
Sunday 8 am – 8 pm

 

Brookhurst Community Center
2271 W. Crescent Ave
(714) 765-3373
Monday – Friday 9 am – 3:30 pm

*Not open to the public on weekends, only rental groups.

 

West Anaheim Youth Center

320 S. Beach Blvd.

(714) 765-6400

Thursday & Friday 8/27 & 8/28: 8 am to 8 pm

Saturday 8/29: 3 pm to 8 pm

Sunday 8/30: 4 pm to 8 pm

 

For questions regarding the City of Anaheim, simply dial 311 from any Anaheim-based landline phone, dial 311 using an AT&T mobile phone within the city limits, or call (714) 765-4311 from any phone outside the city limits. Anaheim Anytime representatives are available from 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Recorded information is also available.

>Add some {brackets}

>From Seth Godin:

If you need to get your audacious proposal/clever ad/new project past your boss, go ahead and add some gratuitous brackets here and {there}.

‘Hey, what are these weird brackets doing here,’ she might say.

‘Oh, I like them. I think they add drama to the headline.’

‘Take them out!’

Giving in early makes it easier to keep the important stuff in later.

>Time for a Blog Revolution

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When Khris and I showed Robert Scoble Echo prior to the Launch at the Real-Time Crunchup he said “Wow, Blogs are Back!”. – Chris Saad


As early adopters, it’s our job to never be satisfied. In 2004, Blogger became mainstream; suddenly everyone had a worldwide voice. Then came Delicious with shared bookmarks in the cloud, Flickr built community around photos, and Digg changed the way we read news. Then came the real-time web.


Micro blogging is short and sweet and can scale both technically and consumptively. Twitter, FriendFeed, and Google Reader allow us to communicate in near real time so that we can virtually chat or carry on an asynchronous conversation.


It’s exciting where we’ve ended up technologically, but we can’t ever be satisfied. We must always be a little hungry. It’s time to take back ownership of our content.



It’s too easy to set up a blog on Blogger, or WordPress, Tumblr, or Posterous. Own your own domain and own the authority that goes with it.

>Will you ask your friends and family to help us add 10,000 commitments by Wednesday night?

>LIVESTRONG Action: A World Without Cancer

It only takes a moment and every name counts:

http://www.livestrongaction.org/campaigns/spread_the_word

Cancer affects all of us. By 2010, cancer is projected to become the leading cause of death worldwide, yet the fight against cancer lacks urgency and focus. That is why we must take matters into our own hands and force cancer onto the global agenda.

>Twitter had been in talks to buy FriendFeed too, co-founder Stone says

>Twitter had been in talks to buy FriendFeed too, co-founder Stone says: “

biz-stoneTwitter had been in talks to acquire FriendFeed before the start-up of ex-Googlers decided to sell the company to Facebook last week.

“If that’s where they wanted to end up, that’s the right move for them,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an interview with VentureBeat, acknowledging that the company approached FriendFeed several times and would’ve considered buying it at its reported sale price of $50 million in cash and equity.

“We know them from Google and we talked to them on and off. But you ultimately end up where you should be. They’re definitely a talented bunch of guys,” he said.

Facebook acquired FriendFeed, a social sharing site founded by Google Gmail creator Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor, last week. The sale paired the world’s largest social network with a team of experienced hands from Google, making Facebook an even more formidable competitor to the three-year-old microblogging network. Launching later, FriendFeed was never able to catch up to Twitter’s explosive growth. But it won respect for its aggressive development of commenting and sharing features.

Regarding competitors like Facebook and Google, Stone said: “They’re moving, while we’re changing very fast. When technology is evolving at this pace, companies get closer then they change and drift apart. No one would’ve said we were competing with Google until this year when we changed our homepage.”

Stone said he wasn’t concerned with the acquisition. While previously working at Google Blogger, Stone said Google employees would pose similar questions about competition to CEO Eric Schmidt. At the time, Google was a much smaller player in search, so employees wondered how it could compete against Yahoo and Microsoft.

“Schmidt said ‘Let’s not check the rearview mirror, or else we’ll drive off the road.’” Stone said. “And it was funny he said rearview mirror.”

(It’s notable that Peter Fenton, who sits on Twitter’s board of directors, was a lead venture capital investor in FriendFeed — presenting what in hindsight could have been a conflict. With both Facebook and Twitter courting FriendFeed, what was he advising the small company? He told us last week that he didn’t actively negotiate on FriendFeed’s behalf, but instead advised them “to think through where they were going to be most effective after the transaction and where they were going to flourish.”)

Stone spoke with VentureBeat today on the occasion of Twitter’s announcement of a location API.

>IT Professionals Have It Wrong

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As an IT professional, what is most important to enterprises today?

IT professionals have it wrong. Efficiency doesn’t matter, if better opportunities exists. It’s mantras, like this, that get businesses locked into the wrong paradigms.

A decade ago, little company called Google, demonstrated that it could provide better search results by executing queries in parallel. This was perceived as inefficient, but they proved that clustering x number of cheap white boxes together was more advantageous than using one efficient super computer.