How do you know that?: January 2004

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Great video courtesy of boing boing. Simple message, simple graphics. Very effective.

Monday, January 19, 2004

Mappoint web service

I've been doing some eval work with mappoint. It's very cool in a lot of ways. It does a great job of finding addresses, creating routes and driving instructions. Very impressive.

The problem is that I want to use it for tracking a boat on the water. When I key in a few waypoints in NY harbour it tells me to go ashore and take the Staten Island Ferry. That's good, but what's the fare for a 24 foot sail boat on the ferry? I'm amused.

Sunday, January 18, 2004

Funny Microsoft Q Articles From The Knowledge Base

Funny Microsoft Q Articles From The Knowledge Base fun stuff... I particularly liked the how-to for 'Read the ** manual"'

Friday, January 16, 2004

KM and the consumer ... cont'd...

No call from the ceo of Smartbargains (big surprise). No, delivery as promised (big surprise).....

Thursday, January 15, 2004

KM and the consumer

Warning... Rant to follow:

They call themselves SmartBargains, but I have to report that I've found no form of intelligent life. Today I spent another two hours on the phone trying to track down an order that started on December 19. This is call number 6. The order was a Christmas gift for a dear friend of mine. We even antied up for the expedited shipping. SB sent an order confirmation with UPS tracking number. UPS had it scanned for delivery here in Manhattan on 12/23. That was the point at which the minnow was lost.

Since then we've been calling UPS, who has indicated that they had to speak with the shipper. We spoke with SB who said they had to speak with UPS and they would get back to us. They never did. On one occasion I came up with the radical thought that the SB customer service manager I was speaking should conference on UPS... 'can't do that'. 'why?', 'policy' Arrrgghhh

Fast forward 20 days later. I called the CEO's office and got an assistant on the phone who assured me that she was calling the head of customer service and I could expect a call back in a half hour. One hour later, no callback. I called the head of customer service who hadn't heard anything about my case. I called the assistant who was all kinds of flustered and said she was on the line with the customer service head drone.
One hour later I get a call back from the customer service head and she offers to ship a new item, and sort out the shipping later. Lame. I've waited 20 days already. 'OK - I'll overnight it'. They just don't get how pissed I am.

The CEO assistant assured us that the CEO was returning in a half hour and she would inform him. I let her know that I thought her organization has a serious problem. She asked would I like him to call me. I said if he's interested in having a constructive dialog with an educated consumer about the horrible experience I've had, I'd be willing. But I didn't want to be brushed off any longer.
No call.

QED: Smart Bargains is neither.

Prediction: Chapter 11 in 2004.

Monday, January 12, 2004

Fast Company | Solving the real productivity crisis

Fast Company | Solving the real productivity crisis I've always believed in this. If you don't have a life, work can get out of hand real quick.

As a side note, the article mentions my home town and my high school! I had no idea they had a hockey team.

Saturday, January 10, 2004

Blog Direction

Sam's Blog Direction and Policies Going Forward post gets it right in alot of ways.. "My experiments in collaboration were not successful ...", "..this is not a democracy...".

Thursday, January 08, 2004

Mapping

I've been reading up on the mappoint web service. There seem to be plenty of resources available. .
One beef, getting a developer license key is a two or three day process. I'd love to be able to jump right in. Hey guys, an idea... I hear that the web is good for setting up this sort of registration process....

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

Remove 'hidden' data from Office files

For all you conspiracy theorists out there, New download to remove 'hidden' data from Office files. Thanks KC.

Monday, January 05, 2004

.net Mapping

GpsTools - GPS .NET framework NMEA C# VB.NET GIS Raster map. doing a little research on an interesting development topic. Mapping + gps.

Sunday, January 04, 2004

More Mail Help

This FAQ on the system.web.mail namespace should prove useful. Thanks Dave!

Saturday, January 03, 2004

SMTP Mail from .net

Scott Galloway's Personal Blog has a good article on one of the subtleties of sending email from a .net application...

Thursday, January 01, 2004

End of year predictions

UK's Independent predictions for 2004 always fun. Particularly when he recommends the 'average user' to run Linux at home.... Funny.

I would one thing to the mix that seems missing from this list ... Voice over IP. Maybe not in 2004, but in months/years to come this is going to become increasingly important.

Happy New Year

and healthy, safe and peaceful!

How do you know that?