Category Archives: Web/Tech

Reading List September 5, 2005

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  • The Age of Cheap Oil and Easy Ignorance is Over (Dave’s Travels) – Dave says we need to share responsibility for creating the situation that led to the disastrous response to the aftermath of the Katrina disaster.
  • What Dave Said (Rex Hammock) – Rex, who is Dave’s (see above) political polar opposite, says that people with opposite political leanings, but similar "foundational convictions" end up coming full circle to meet each other.
  • You Can’t Cross-Examine a Hurricane (Is that Legal? via Ed Cone) – I’ll let the post speak for itself: "Mike Chertoff is probably one of the 2 or 3 smartest people I have ever known…
    Mike Chertoff is a career prosecutor, and an outstanding one by any
    measure. He is a law enforcement guy in every fiber of his being. It’s
    how he made his name…Mike Chertoff doesn’t know natural disasters.  This is why he would say, without seeing the absurdity of it, that a hurricane followed by breached levees was an unforeseeable succession of catastrophes, rather than foreseeable parts of the same catastrophe…So what do I think? I think that we are seeing what happens when a
    career prosecutor tries his hand at civilian disaster relief. And more
    generally, I think we are seeing what happens when a nation gets so
    fixated on its human enemies that it forgets its other vulnerabilities."
  • Bush’s Hurricane Response Time (Joe Write) – Joe compare’s the time it took Bush to get on the ground after different hurricanes.
  • War on Error (Doc Searls) – Doc describes quite well the issues we face as our national priorities change and we focus on the politics of governance as well as the politics of elections.  Yes, they are different.
  • The Scandal of Katrina (Buzz Machine) – Jeff Jarvis has quotes from two sources, one an editorial from the Times-Picayune and the other an interview with the president of Jefferson Parish that call for the immediate firing/replacement of the leaders of FEMA.  They offer compelling testimony for why this is necessary now, not later. Not sure if I agree with them, but like I said it is compelling.
  • The Bursting Point (New York Times) – David Brooks compares the current climate in America to the 70s; he doesn’t think it’s quite as bad thanks to a robust economy, but he thinks it’s still bad enough that we’ll see political changes.  Personally I’m wondering if the economy might start looking like the 70s too.
  • The Unsinkable Data Center (business2blog) – Seems that there’s a data center in New Orleans that has stayed operational throughout the disaster thanks to a diesel generator and a deeply buried cable.  An employee has kept his blog going throughout as well.  A full article from a Wired magazine about the center is here.  And in the ironic news of the day, the data center was built by Enron:)

Amazing Web Site for Tracking Katrina Damage

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There’s a website called scipionus.com that is a "mashup" of a wiki (an "open" website that allows users to add information themselves) and Google maps that allows people to input data about conditions at specific addresses on the map.

If you go to the site click on any of the balloons in an area you’re interested in, then zoom in.  You can see that people are putting in an address and then information like, "Wind damage, no power and no flooding.  Looting is rampant, pure anarchy."

As Steven Leavitt of Freakonomics describes the site:

"Surfing around, the devastation doesn’t seem as bad on the wiki as it
does on TV. Houses a block or two from Lake Pontchartrain with no
flooding, for instance. This shouldn’t be surprising. TV is only
showing us the worst. The people in good enough shape to be entering
info on the website are probably heavily selected towards those who
fared well. The truth is probably somewhere in between."

Reading List September 3, 2005

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  • Ballmer Throws a Chair at "F*ing Google" (John Battelle’s Search Blog) – John has an excerpt from a legal document in the case where Microsoft is suing Google over the hiring of a valued techie.  It is the testimony of someone else who left Microsoft for Google and it involves Ballmer doing a Bobby Knight with a chair and calling Google’s CEO an "f*ing p*ssy."  Nice.
  • Horror Show (Crooks and Liars) – There’s a link to a Hannity & Colmes segment from last night that is remarkable in that the reporters in New Orleans (Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith) pretty much take the government to task for the response to Katrina and don’t let the hosts spin this thing at all.

Reading List September 1, 2005

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  • Kids Just Get It (The Post Money Value) – While at dinner Rick Segal overheard a child say the following after hearing about benefit concerts being put together for Katrina victims: “How come they have to do music to get help, don’t people just want to help?”
  • Fred Barnes to Katrina Victims: Drop Dead (New Hounds) – Conservative pundits behaving badly.
  • Rant on the Hurricane (The Chairman’s Corner) – The Guilford County (NC) Republican Party is in deep doo-doo.  Why?  Just read a few posts from this guy’s blog for some clues.
  • Wedding Canceled (Patrick Eakes) – Anecdotal testimony from people on the ground in Louisiana.

Reading List August 30, 2005

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  • Identifont (bookofjoe) – Joe’s found a site, called identifont, that enables you to identify a font’s name by answering a series of questions.
  • Hired Because of His Blog (Rexblog) – At least one person has been hired because of his blog which, as Rex points out, makes a nice contrast to all the "fired because of his blog" stories.
  • Multipurpose Tools (EdCone) – Ed writes about an article in the NY Times that tells of the romance-killing effect on some men of viewing their wives giving birth.  He also links to an article in Slate that provides an overview of the very negative reaction of some female bloggers to the Times article.  To say I have a strong opinion here is an understatement, and will be the subject of a separate post.
  • Customer Relationship Mismanagement – (Doc Searls Weblog) – Oh my wife will love this post about how "f’d up" the Quickbooks customer service system is…she’s been-there, done-that.
  • Fletcher Grants Amnesty to 9 Charged in Probe (Lexington Herald-Leader via The Lex Files) – Read this article for more evidence of why no American can be too cynical about our politicians.

Yahoo! Sucks…Again

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It appears that Yahoo! isn’t just having problems with their Yahoo! Music Engine.  According to this article at MarketingVox they’ve had mega-problems with their search ad service for over a week.

As much of a pain-in-the-butt the music problem has been the ad problems are a much bigger deal, both for Yahoo! and its clients.  From the article:

Although ads continue to run and advertisers can now access their
accounts, some advertisers’ credit cards and bank accounts have been
and are still being charged continuously for amounts several times over
the budget they had set, advertisers have told MarketingVOX. Though
Yahoo in all likelihood will reimburse these greatly inconvenienced –
and in some cases bankrupted – advertisers, the process is not likely
to be pleasant.

And how is Yahoo! responding?  Again from the article:

…Yahoo’s Gaude Paez told MarketingVOX that the upgrade caused
"unexpected issues," and that their engineers were working around the
clock to fix the problem.

According to various advertisers, however, Yahoo has not proactively
contacted them to inform them of the ongoing problems, and others say
Yahoo has also not returned calls or responded to repeated requests for
answers.

I’m glad to know that I’m not the only who has a hard time getting a rise out of Yahoo!, and now I’ll expand on what I said in my original "Yahoo! Sucks…Today" post; I bet if Google had a music service it would actually work and I doubt we’ll see a snafu like this with their ad service.

My last thought on this: it’s one thing for them to screw up customer service on the music service, but I really can’t understand screwing up on one of their bread & butter "products" like advertising.  I think they’re about to get "Dell Hell’d."

Reading List August 26, 2005

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  • How Blogs Pertain to You (iMedia Connecton via Micro Persuasion) – Had to mention this one since I’m quoted in it.  The article asks how small fry (i.e. me) get treated by companies when we complain, versus how blog heavyweights (Jeff Jarvis) get treated by companies  when they complain.  Good stuff!
  • As Blogging Grows Companies Eye Legal Pitfalls (Yahoo! News) – Corporate types wonder what their liabilities are when it comes to blogging.
  • Blog Tools Tackle Content Management (InfoWorld via Yahoo! News) – Blog tools are essentially stripped down content management systems, and some people are beginning to use them that way.
  • simplehuman Uses Typepad to Build Press Room (via MicroPersuasion) – A company called simplehuman used Typepad (same service I use for this blog) to build a press room.  My lesson learned: I need to either improve my templates myself or get a real designer to do it.

Reading List August 25, 2005

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  • Link Selling: A Case Study (John Battelle’s Searchblog) – Should websites accept advertisers who aren’t interested in clicks, just in taking advantage of the website’s PageRank?
  • Google Gets Better. What’s Up With That? (New York Times) – A review of Google’s latest product releases, Google Desktop and Google Talk.
  • Thoughts on 9/11 (Patrick Eakes) – Patrick thinks that the National Geographic Channel’s "Inside 9/11" is well done, and I agree wholeheartedly.
  • User-Generated Market Intelligence (Business 2.0) – A new service called Jigsaw will aggregate the estimates of salespeople on the revenue and number of employees of private companies.  Using the "Wisdom of Crowds" theory this just might work.
  • Hatin’ (Half-life and times via Blog on the Run) –  A tech dude has some ideas about what to do with malware creators and none of them are pretty.
  • Touched (Chewie World Order) – Chewie links to the website of someone who seems to specialize in re-touching photos.  You can visit that site here.  Just click on any of the pictures and then run your mouse over the larger picture that appears and wonder at the powers of Photoshop.  Note, though, that even these people look great even in the before pictures, but a little augmentation takes them up a notch so to speak.
  • Location, Location, Location (A VC) – Why venture capitalists like to invest in companies that are close to home.
  • PR Pros as Eyes and Ears for Customer Service (Micro Persuasion) – Public relations and customer service are beginning to morph.

Yahoo! Sucks…Today

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So I signed up for a free trial of Yahoo!’s unlimited music plan (YMU).  On the surface it’s a great deal; $5 a month for unlimited streaming music and $.79 per song you decide to buy.  That’s much better than the alternatives like Napster, and to top it off you can try it for 7 days for free.

I should have remembered that nothing in life is free.

To use the YMU service you have to download the Yahoo! Music Engine (YME), which I did last Friday  and then I used it for a day. I was offline all weekend, but when I booted up on Monday the YME wouldn’t load properly.  The program works with Internet Explorer (IE) so basically you have a YME interface around an IE browser window.  The problem was that whenever I tried to use YME I got an "Action Canceled" message in the IE part.  That meant I couldn’t get to the Yahoo! music site, which meant I couldn’t get my songs fed to my computer.

After many attempts I got it restarted and used it all day on Monday.  Yesterday when I booted back up I started getting these weird "Scripting Error" messages, so I uninstalled the YME and then reinstalled it.  I stopped getting the scripting error messages, but I did get the "Action Canceled" message again.

Somewhere along the line I emailed tech support, but a day later I had no response.  Of course there’s no phone number, not even for paying customers (Note: YME is free, but the unlimited service is not and I have to be able to use YME to utilize my paid service).

So I decided to go to Yahoo! groups and see if there’s a group dedicated to YME.  Lo’ and behold there is, and there’s a crapload of messages there (1135 total, 135 in just the last 7 days), and almost all deal with problems with the service.  To his credit there’s a guy named Ian from the YME development team who posts replies there regularly, but the level of problems they’re having with this thing is stunning.  I’ve posted message number 1131, and hopefully Ian will be able to help me.

What’s bugging me now is that I had to put one year of service on my credit card to get the 7 day trial.  While it was working the service was great and I’d like to keep it, but I’m truly irked that even as a paying customer I can’t get around their buggy "free" program. 

And now I can’t find a phone number or any other contact info for canceling the trial before the 7 days is up, which is the only way to keep from getting charged for the service.  I ran into a similar situation years ago with MSN and it literally took me over a year to get the problem solved with them.

I bet if Google had a music service it would actually work:)

If something positive happens I’ll let you know, but for today Yahoo! sucks.

***Update***

I received an email from Mal at Yahoo! Customer Care on Friday, August 26.  Unfortunately the fix he suggests is one that was already posted on the YME group message board, so I’m going to have to reply and let him know it didn’t work.  So I heard from them…three days later. 

I’ll let you know when all is resolved.